[RELEASE] Amiga Workbench EmulationStation Theme

[Rookervik]

W O R K B E N C H

A Commodore Amiga Workbench-styled theme for EmulationStation.

Splashscreen... scales beautifully to 1080p.

Screenshots... 4 teasers to get an idea of how it looks.

Video Preview...

Features:

• Pixel Theme graphics used in most cases - some logos now have an outline to increase visibility on the blue background.
• All current RetroPie systems included, as well as some PC-only systems like Wii and Gamecube.
• Additional support for Pipplware (though it seems the project is halted at the moment)

Download from GitHub: Workbench .
Or from the RetroPie Theme Downloader. More info.

[lilbud]

I downloaded this a couple days ago, confused because I never saw any posts beforehand

[Rookervik]

@lilbud Well, I originally made this theme for Buzz. I had no intention of releasing it to the public. I wanted to do something for him as appreciation for everything he does for us. He said he wanted everyone to enjoy it and put it on the downloader. So I made some screenshots for it. I just forgot to post it on the forum for a while.

[BuZz]

@Rookervik it's a great theme :-) cheers!

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik awesome theme. I am going to use it as a template to make an "apple ii desktop" theme for my apple iie.

[Rookervik]

@edmaul69 Sounds fun! I have a Windows 3.11 theme almost finished. Was going to do a Mac OS 7 and C64 GeOS as well. :D

[lilbud]

@Rookervik You should do a Windows XP one.

[Nismo]

@Rookervik Amazing job, you really match the Amiga workbench style, congrats.

[mattrixk]

@Rookervik: Your creativity never ceases to astound me. Fantastic work mate.

[backstander]

@Rookervik I didn't know EmulationStation could do this! This theme is so creative and very unique! Great work!

I have a suggestion. In the Game List, sub-folders and ROMs are the same shade of white so you can't tell them apart. In most of the other themes sub-folders are a little bit dark color than the ROMs. I've never used an Amiga Workbench so I'm not sure how it distinguished Folders from Files.

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik since you made all the groundwork for the detailed stuff this should be really easy to make the apple ii desktop theme. When i finish i will post it. i dont do detailed view so thats been hard for me to release a theme. But this makes it easy for me for this theme. So i can finally release something.

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik well i finished the apple ii desktop theme. i did it in a white version and a green version. i also made a 1080p and a 1024X768 version. i personally needed a 1024x768 version since my apple iie has a 15" flatscreen non widescreen tv in the apple ii monitor case. you didnt by chance make a pixel "console" for a bally astrocade or a sega sc-3000? the only two i am missing a pic for. after i test out the 1080p versions i will be ready to upload them. these are pics of the green version since its my preference. i know some would prefer the white, hence why i made both. the middle pic is little closer to the true green color but that much green is impossible to photograph properly. hope you dont mind that i kept your name in the credits along with mine since you did a lot of the work that allowed me to create this.

[mattrixk]

That looks really good @edmaul69. I just want to mention that a pure white (#FFFFFF) can look really bright and overwhelming on certain screens, so if you are using a pure white you may want to consider using a slightly light grey instead. Granted it seems you have a lot of grey/black on the screen as well, so that may mute the brightness of a pure white a little.

[Rookervik]

@edmaul69 You aren't using 1080p backgrounds are you? That's incredibly resource intensive and it would be best for you to use 640x480 or even smaller. They scale very, very nice. They don't get fuzzy edges like stretching an image in a graphics editor. Use my background image as a template.

You can also put black or very dark green behind the carousel to darken it some. It's kind of blindingly white against the green and grey themes.

Looks like you also need to take the time to make all the 160+ graphics monochrome. Don't get lazy! Finish it! If I can spend a month drawing all the graphics, you can at least take a couple days to tweak them. :P

And no, I haven't done those that you mentioned. They don't have folders in Retropie and are about the equivalent of me doing Vic, Pet, C64/128, MacOS1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and any emulator that supports a ton of models.

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik no i didnt make the image 1920x1080. I used your files as a template. The reason why they are listed as 1080 is because the background has a checkerboard pattern. So for it to look right the resolution has to be divisible by 640 and 360. The 1024x768 one however is that size. I could reduce the images by 50% if i could get a program to reduce it without pixelating the image. The original image has a 2x2 pixel layout so reducing it by 50% would make a single pixel so i am not sure why all the blurring when resizing when i disabled antialiasing.

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik also, i have redone about 40 of the icons by hand making them perfect pixelated images. I am going to remake all of them. I do plan on making them monochrome as well just because i want it. However the consoles i am not sure the best route to monochrome/grayscale those. I also made the monochrome icons for the retropie menu. I reused a few i made but remade several to use icons that were used in the apple ii desktop program.

[edmaul69]

@mattrixk yes the checkerboard really helps cancelling out the brightness of the pure white. At least on my screen. I will test on a big tv when i test my 1080 versions.

[Rookervik]

@Rookervik Most excellent! Don't forget you can tint the images. So if you make all the consoles and logos white, you can tint them green for the green-colored theme without having to make new graphics. :D

[edmaul69]

@Rookervik my logos that i personally use are now black and transparent. Still need to do the rest. And i am making all new console pics by hand. To make the console pics universal to everyone i made them black and transparent. I have been working hard on this. I think and hope my console pics will be used for several other peoples themes that need a retro look.

[mattrixk]

@edmaul69 said in [RELEASE] Amiga Workbench EmulationStation Theme:

I think and hope my console pics will be used for several other peoples themes

I would be interested in this. I don't have the wherewithal to make my own icons, images and logos (no time, motivation, etc), so I've just been using the ones from Pixel and Carbon. I did alter the Carbon logo SVGs by making them monochrome (#0c0c0c and #d8d8d8), but just doing that was a lot of work, I can't imagine creating them from scratch.

It's great that RetroPie supports so many systems, but it can make it hell on theme makers.

It has got me thinking though, maybe we could have a repo of the different images people have created for the systems (logos, icons, controllers, system images), something like theme templates maybe with a couple of different basic styles... I'm rambling.

Anyway, I'm thinking a basic theme template might not be a bad idea, as a place for people to start, containing all the folders and skeleton XML files. I might just make it for personal use anyway.