Pixel Theme

dankcushions

Eh, too much work... 70+ of these? No thanks. Haha

omg, you tease! that is so ace :)

Rookervik

Got tired of the ugly Ports graphics. So I boosted the green, and changed the logo a little. I like it better.
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mattrixk

@Rookervik Is there any particular reason you chose the Linux penguin as your image for Ports? When I made MetaPixel I changed it to your default Computer image, I guess because I just see Ports as "computer games" so the Computer image fit.

Also, your colour choices are much better than mine. Do you have any sort of system for choosing colours? I started trying to make companies follow a colour scheme (all Sega consoles are red, all Nintendo are blue etc), but it was time consuming so I didn't really follow through with it.

Unrelated note: Have you ever been able to get the Gamelist to show in lowercase? It's frustrating being stuck in uppercase.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Ports was the hardest logo to try to think up. I sketched a dozen different things. I asked a bunch of people what would make a good ports logo. I didn't want to re-use art from other sections. I finally just said, "fine, it's linux, I'll just draw the linux penguin."

For colors, I just matched a color in the system's logo. If the logo was just black and white, I tried to look at the console to see some colors to use. If none of that worked, I just looked at all the colors and picked one that hadn't been used too much, yet.

As for upper case gamelists, I don't think you can change it. I have the <forceUppercase> set to zero and it doesn't change the gamelist. So that's something we'd have to as the ES coders to fix.

Rookervik

Also kinda tired of tetris. Messing with new ideas.

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Rookervik

undefined Give it a little transparency like SNES could do :D

mattrixk

@Rookervik That looks really, really nice. You are very good at backgrounds especially.

How would you do the borders and transparent background? Would you just do a big png and use <size> to stretch it to the size you want? You'd risk messing with the border width doing it that way...

I've been meaning to try using <ninepatch> for borders, then a small 16x16 white png stretched as the background (and then use <color>00000033</color> to change colour and opacity), but I haven't had the chance to see if it works yet. Have you given ninepatch a go?

Rookervik

9 patch was never implemented. Luckily ES uses point filtering to stretch images so it will still look sharp no matter how much it's stretched. And yes, just stretch it to full screen. If I wanted, I could cut them into sections and make them stretch based on screen width, but that's a hassle. And you run the risk of things not lining up exactly.

mattrixk

@Rookervik No ninepatch? Shame. The things I could have done... Oh well.

I just matched a color in the system's logo

Duh. I never even thought of that. I'm not really happy with any of the colours I used in MetaPixel, but colours have never been a strong suit for me.

What program do you use for all your images? I really like your backgrounds (but you may have been able to tell that).

Rookervik

@mattrixk I use irfanview, photoshop, paint tool sai, illustrator and graphics gale. The pixel backgrounds are done just in Photoshop. The consoles are done in graphics gale and colored in photoshop.

mattrixk

@Rookervik Cool. I think I heard of Graphics Gale when I was researching pixel art programs a while ago. I ended up settling on Pyxel Edit, which I really like.

mattrixk

@Rookervik said in Pixel Theme:

As for upper case gamelists, I don't think you can change it. I have the <forceUppercase> set to zero and it doesn't change the gamelist. So that's something we'd have to as the ES coders to fix.

Breakthrough! I've been playing with a new theme, and I've figured out how to make gamelists lowercase. Just don't set <forceUppercase>. If you try to set it to 0 it will make it uppercase, but if you leave it out of your theme entirely, the gamelist will be lowercase.

Woo Hoo!

Rookervik

@mattrixk Haha, that's crazy, but seems very much on par with ES in general. Great find! Non-uppercase allows you to fit a lot more of the game title in a smaller space. :D

mattrixk

@Rookervik said in Pixel Theme:

Non-uppercase allows you to fit a lot more of the game title in a smaller space

Yahuh, plus I think it looks better and is easier to read.

edmaul69

@Rookervik so what if i want both? I believe some fonts i have are only uppercase.

Rookervik

@edmaul69 I prefer uppercase in gamelists and capitalization in the additional data. As far as wanting both, not sure what you're talking about.

edmaul69

@Rookervik i would like lower case in some systems but uppercase in others. Are you saying for lower case to completely remove it from the entire themes set or just that system?

mattrixk

@edmaul69 said in Pixel Theme:

Are you saying for lower case to completely remove it from the entire themes set or just that system?

That depends on how the theme is coded.

Carbon theme for example has <forceUppercase> set to 1 on both in the root carbon.xml and in the individual theme.xmls, so if you wanted some systems to have lowercase gamelists you would need to first remove <forceUppercase>1</forceUppercase>from carbon.xml, and then also remove it from the systems you would prefer be lowercase.

Pixel theme also has it set in both the root pixel.xml and the individual system theme.xmls.

MetaPixel however only has it set in the root metapixel.xml, so you would need to add it to the systems you want to be uppercase.

edmaul69

@mattrixk sweet. Good to know. Ive spent the whole day working on my theme and had no desire to get back on the computer tonight to test.

mattrixk

@edmaul69 said in Pixel Theme:

Ive spent the whole day working on my theme

Awesome, I can't wait to see it. The more themes the better. I've only made one so far (MetaPixel), but I'm working on some others, as well as something special that is taking a while to pull together (I can only really work on it during my lunch break at work).