Pixel Theme

Rookervik

Yeah I remember going over things with Herb on the icons. Was a neat idea, but really tedious to get custom icon packs to copy over. I made the icons for Pixel, but I don't think they typically show, since it's not a "theme" aspect, it's actually "box art" for the "games" in the RetroPie menu. Maybe in the future we can make icon packs or something. But still, users can use whatever they want. :D Just edit the gamelist.xmls, or overwrite the icons with what ever you want.

Redstoner

Awesome theme, will definitely use this on my arcade build!
can you also please upload the ESThemeHelper ?

Rookervik

I haven't re-uploaded anything since the site change. You can get the Theme Helper in my dropbox: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60872572/EmulationStation/ES Theme Helper3.rar

It's windows-only. If more than 2 or 3 people used it, I might use Construct 2 and make an HTML5 version of it that would work in a web browser on any system. But I think there are.... exactly 3 people that use it. LOL.

Necro

So, I'm just adding a new system to my setup (Turbografx CD). It's not supported by default - it just falls under TG16 - but I'd still like to seperate it. While I've gotten the logo made, I'm wondering if you're hand doing each console, finding them somewhere, or using some process to get the nice defined pixel art. I'm guessing tracing and hand done, but just curious before I start digging in on making the TGCD one.

Rookervik

@Necro

To make the pixel art I try to find a photo of the system at a particular angle, then take it into Graphics Gale and do the outline. Then transfer it into Photoshop to color it. But you brought up a great point...

TG16 CD really should have it's own section. It's no different than the Sega CD. So if you'd like, I will make a section for it.

Rookervik

Here's the console.png that I will add to Pixel. You can use it right away :D Make sure to rename it "console.png" since I named it "tgcd_console.png" just to keep it sorted out from other files in my dropbox.

TGCD Console Image: https://db.tt/SSnoScao

Pixel Theme update 8 (Including TGCD theme): https://db.tt/5Eqmr1oF

Necro

You rock, thanks! Mine's close, but I'll use the official!

Redstoner

@Rookervik thx!
im gonna try and make my own theme now.

mattrixk

@Rookervik

I love the look of the Pixel theme, but is there a way to get the game's metadata (game summary and number of players are the main ones I care about) in the space under the main image, instead of the console details?

Rookervik

@mattrixk Yep, code it! It's pretty easy!* I meant to do it months ago but... yeah.

*"easy" depends on your region and your background

Rookervik

There's currently a massive debate on what is the most important meta data to include. One persons' most-important is much different from the next persons'. The only way to make everyone happy is to put all of the meta data in that bottom right area. But that doesn't give us enough room for description.

I could use a different font and make it much smaller and fit everything, but that would look nasty against the pixel art. I really don't think there's a great way to add it and make people happy.

I say if you really want those couple of metadatas, you can use my theme helper and work the code. It's really not too bad once you understand the percents.

If I have 20 or 30 people ask me for the same meta data, and we all agree that's what needs to go there, then by all means, I will add it. It's just so blooming hard to make everyone happy without making someone else post irate ramblings against it. :-(

mattrixk

@Rookervik I've downloaded Pixel v8 and your Helper tool, and I found this url:

https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/blob/master/THEMES.md

So I have enough to get me started. I don't have any dirext xml experience, but I do have HTML/CSS/PHP/JS experience, so I might be able to muddle my way through. I think I'll also get the files for the Carbon theme and compare it to Pixel. I might have the time for it this weekend (but probably won't get to it for a few weeks knowing my time management skills).

The next step for me after this would be integrating it with the Child Friendly version.

Rookervik

@mattrixk

Knowing that ES goes by a "Percentage of Screen" measurement system should help you. "0.5" is 50% across the screen, or 50% the size of the screen. Depending on which tag you're editing.

So the <image> tag will have a <size> or even <maxSize> ....

would make the image 50% of the screen wide, and 25% of the screen tall. First number is X (width) and second is Y (height)

Let me know if I can help more. I really intended to add the meta data myself, but found there wasn't really enough room.

mattrixk

Thanks @Rookervik

The space issue was one I noticed too. I was actually considering doing some rejiggering to the space everything takes up. I was going to make the border squares about half the size, and make the main (box art/screenshot) image smaller so that there was more room for the metadata.

I was even thinking I might just duplicate the Carbon theme and replace the graphics, colours and fonts, and add the border box graphics to make a theme that has a layout out like Carbon, but looks just like Pixel.

hiulit

Would it be possible to pixelate the images in RetroPie settings? They doesn't fit with the rest of the art, don't you think?

Rookervik

@hiulit

The pixel theme actually has it's own set of icons for the RetroPie menu. They can be found in "/retropie/icons" inside the theme's folder. Note: Because of how ES uses gamelists to display art, we were not able to have per-theme RetroPie system icons. You can, however, edit the retropie gamelist.xml and point each menu entry to the art in this folder.
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hiulit

Hey, sorry, is this the path ~/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/gamelist.xml that I should be looking for in order to change the icons path? Because I tried change the path and restarting EmulationStation and also restarting the system and nothing changed.

I've already found the path to the pixel theme icons /etc/emulationstation/themes/pixel/retropie/icons, is that right?

Thanks!

Rookervik

@hiulit To be COMPLETELY honest, I don't know which to edit. There is another one in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/gamelists/retropie. -_- So many of the same thing in so many places.

Load that one up and save it in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/retropie... I think ES will actually load a gamelist from the rom folder. Then, change that one to point to the icons? I hope that works. LOL

mattrixk

@Rookervik
I've started playing with your Pixel theme (just starting slow, changing border colours and such while I get a feel for it), and I have a question about your workflow.

I saw on another thread you mentioned using the Windows version of EmulationStation because it was easier to work with and get screenshots (oh boy to I agree with you there), so I've done that and I have it all set up so it works fine, but...

Do you have an easy way to see your changes as you make them? The easiest way I've found is this:

make a change to the XML.
save XML.
go into ES and change the theme to something other than Pixel.
change the theme back to Pixel.

This works fine to show the changes, but takes many button presses (start, down, down, A, down, down, down, down, down, down, left, B, B, start, down, down, A, down, down, down, down, down, down, Right, B, B) just to switch between 2 themes.

Is there maybe a hot-key I can set up to switch themes, or some way to refresh ES? Is this how you do it, or have you found something a bit more efficient?

Rookervik

Nope, that's how I do it. Either change themes and back, or close it and re-open it. That's all you can do. -_-