Futura Theme

FlyingTomahawk

Thanks guys.
That is simple enough for me.
Hopefully I'll be able to finish this theme in the next few days and then move it to my RPi for further testing.

FlyingTomahawk

I finished the theme but I need to get it running on my Pi for further testing.
What are the right steps to do that? I accessed my Pi via FTP but can't find any theme folder.

lilbud

@FlyingTomahawk The file path is /etc/emulationstation/themes

Rookervik

A less dangerous directory to place a theme is /home/pi/.emulationstation/themes This directory takes dominance over /etc/emulationstation/themes and does not require you to chmod the directory to give you write permissions.

liquidzoo

To go along with what @Rookervik said, you can also add that path to your Samba shares so you can modify the theme without SSH or FTP just in Windows Explorer (or another OS, I'm not picky). Here's how:

SSH into your Pi (I use PuTTY) and type sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Scroll all the way to the bottom and add the following:

[themes]
comment = themes
path = "/home/pi/.emulationstation/themes"
writeable = yes
guest ok = yes
create mask = 0644
directory mask = 0755
force user = pi

After that, you will need to restart the samba service:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba stop
sudo /etc/init.d/samba start

Then when browsing to \RETROPIE you will see a themes folder where you can add and modify your theme all you need.

FlyingTomahawk

Thank you guys.
I'll get to it asap.

FlyingTomahawk

Everything worked as explained, thanks. Putty is a very nice tool. I could create that theme folder and uploaded the theme files to my RPi.
I then downloaded the missing emulators/cores and put 1 fake rom in each rom folder.

30+ systems showed and I could finally test this theme on the resolution that it was build for. On my Notebook I only had max 1366x768.
Because of that all the custom text needed to be moved to its right positions again.
It did work with one rom in each system and detailed view worked fine too.
When I activated the show FPS feature in ES it showed 45-59 fps VRAM: 172.78mb (texs: 130.83mb, fonts: 41.94mb). I am not sure if the theme crashes if you have 10+ systems active with 50+ scrapped roms in each one of them.
Would be nice if someone could test this in the near future.

I think the next step now would be to create a package with a readme file and then offer it for download? Not very familiar with github. I used it once, a while back though, in combination with a program called sourcetree. Never really figured out the whole push and pull stuff.

lilbud

I'll test if you need someone to test. You can create a README file with screenshots and info on the theme. Just a reminder, name the repository with the naming convention.

es-theme-futura

FlyingTomahawk

I somewhat managed to upload the theme to github. YEAH!
I have no idea how to proceed from here but I guess I'll soon find out.

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk Congratulations. It feels good to get your first theme up there for people to take a bite of.

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk said in Futura Theme:

...to get your first theme up there...

first? that is my first and last theme. :-D

The work behind it is very tedious and time consuming and mine is rather a simple theme.
I can only imagine the work behind a theme like Pixel where all the console icons and system names are self made.
All the people that have released themes thus far have my out most respect since I now know how much hard work is put into it.

backstander

@FlyingTomahawk
Awesome looking theme! I can see all the attention to detail!

lilbud

@FlyingTomahawk Will you be doing the alternate color schemes shown here? http://blog.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/newgen-theme/#post-118636

FlyingTomahawk

@lilbud

That could certainly be done.
Is there a particular one you like?

Or I could create a couple backgrounds and frames and let the user decide which combo he likes.

FlyingTomahawk

@backstander

Thank you. :-)

lilbud

@FlyingTomahawk Just create the backgrounds. If the frame is white, we can color it with color codes

Ex: setting the frame to ff0000, would make it red

FlyingTomahawk

@lilbud

Roger that. I'll see what I can do.

FlyingTomahawk

@lilbud said in Futura Theme:

@FlyingTomahawk If the frame is white, we can color it with color codes

Ex: setting the frame to ff0000, would make it red

THAT is very cool! I just gave it a try and I could change the frame colors very easy using the hex codes. It also works for the current background, but colors are not that clear. I got an idea now that I'm currently working on.

FlyingTomahawk

I did some testing and the idea I had works pretty good.
Here is what I thought. Thanks to lilbud I learned that if something is white, like a frame or background or even a gradient, the color can be changed by using hex color codes.
The current background is just a simple 960x540 with a 3 step gradient.

Now what if we would have a total of 4 backgrounds?

main background
gradient left & right
gradient top & bottom
gradient only in the middle

All of them are white and can then be changed inside the futura.xml file to any color you like.
Any thoughts on this? good? bad?
Some might need to be deactivated inside the code with  to not interfere with each other.

here some sample images.

Top & Bottom
alt text