Input needed: ES theming improvements

Rookervik

@TMNTturtlguy Carbon was created by me, for the RetroPie project, to deal with the VRAM issues that EmulationStation had. It did take several weeks to create all the vector controllers and probably 1/2 of the logos. (About 1/4 were already in the Simple theme and another 1/4 were found online.)

So I can't really tell you if you can use the controllers or not. I don't really consider that my theme even though I made it. I took direction from Herb and Jools on how it would look. It's had it's art stolen many times already without permission. So I guess you can do with it what you want.

TMNTturtlguy

@Rookervik thanks! I will use it as a place holder for now during development and resting and work on something unique for the final release. Thanks again

jdrassa

@TMNTturtlguy Carbon license info is in the readme.txt included with the theme. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Here is a summary of the license directly from the readme.txt

ALLOWED:      - Share and duplicate as it is
              - Edit, alter, change it

REQUIREMENTS: - Attribution, give credit to the creator
              - Indicate changes to it
              - Publish the changes under the same license

PROHIBITED:   - Commercial distribution

As long as you follow the requirements of the license, you can use and change the theme as you like without the need to ask for permission.

TMNTturtlguy

@jdrassa thanks! Yes I did read that before and was aware of those rules and allowing their uses. I just saw this thread and thought I better be safe and ask.

herb_fargus

@jdrassa it's a common courtesy though which I'm sure rookervik appreciates considering all the work he has done for the project

mattrixk

@Zigurana Considering this was originally an ES theming improvement thread, I'm curious: is it possible to make the UI themeable? Or is that just not likely to happen?

masteryoer

@mattrixk

This was a work in progress. I'd be interested in working with somebody else on the project though to make it easier for theme designers to match UI to theme.

I was able to do it by rebuilding the source with the new assets, but the system already has some functionality in place for using external resources already.

If you want to work with me on it, since I need to do it with my xcade anyways, I'd be interested in sharing it with everyone.

mattrixk

@masteryoer It's cool that it's already part-way there, but I've no knowledge of the guts of ES. I can make themes okay, but I don't even know where to start with the actual programming.

masteryoer

@mattrixk

Well I just meant possibly helping lay out the theme structure to support the new additions. That way theme designers can build the UI along with their theme.

mattrixk

@masteryoer I would be curious to see what the innards look like, to know what would be the best way to name/use the UI theming elements. I wonder if anyone has written an "Idiot's Guide to Playing With the Guts of ES".

masteryoer

@mattrixk

They aren't very clean. It's basically just one element for the window frame, a separate svg for the button and help icons, and a splash screen.

Syhles

Is it possible to get an alignment feature added for the carousel? It's more for the vertical mode.

mattrixk

@Syhles An alignment feature would be great. At the moment everything is center aligned, but you could put the carousel against the top of the screen and top-align the logos so the larger active one sits a bit lower than the rest. Or left-align a vertical carousel so the active one sits out to the right more. I mentioned this feature at one point during testing, but I don't know how viable it is.

Syhles

@mattrixk
I have zero experience coding but, I feel like it should be doable. It's seems that the <text> <size> function works the same as the carousels <size> function as it makes an invisible box for said object to sit in, but this is just my guess, this may be completely wrong.

pjft

@mattrixk I downloaded your theme but seems to have the carousel bits commented out, do you confirm?

I'm trying to get hold of a sample theme that uses the carousel features, just to make sure I'm not breaking anything during development. Doesn't need to be complete - Indent should be fine.

Thanks in advance - to you or to anyone who has something I can use!

Syhles

@pjft
Here's a left aligned vertical carousel.

<carousel name = "systemcarousel">
	<type>vertical</type>
	<pos>0.027 0.05</pos>
	<size>0.33 0.835</size>
	<color>00000000</color>
	<logoScale>1.5</logoScale>
	<logoSize>0.20 0.15</logoSize>
	<maxLogoCount>5</maxLogoCount>
</carousel>

pjft

@Syhles Thanks. I take it I just add this to the system view?

Syhles

@pjft
Yeah, just put it under System, it does work for certain as I'm using it for the Modern theme.

pjft

@Syhles thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately I must be doing something wrong in my end. I tried to add it to the carbon theme, in the theme.xml file but had little success, which left me confused. Tried to troubleshoot it but led me nowhere.

Would it be to much of an inconvenience if I could ask you to zip your theme folder and share it with me via any kind of file sharing service? No urgency whatsoever.

Thank you in advance.

Syhles

@pjft
Where was the theme.xml located, in the carbon folder or in a game system folder like snes?