Crylen

Oh wow thanks, that's awesome. You're a life saver =) Looking forward to them!

Fixed green tint to the selector background. Resaved all the backgrounds in the dropbox to allow for the new foreground. Every background in the dropbox is now missing video and selector frame, bottom dock, and time icon. Just imagine they're there for the time being. Changed the Daphne and Gameboy Mono to a more cleaned up version. Added... Arcade - Raine Nintendo - Stellaview Misc Console - Apple PipPin, Casio Loopy, Tangerine Oric, Mamotech MTX Total console list now stands at 126.. whew! Special thanks to KRC for letting me used his awesome cleaned up logos! Atari XE, Commodore 16, Commodore MAX and Doujin games to come Having trouble finding logos for FBA, Kawaks and PinMAME... I may have to skip them until I can find something decent to work with.

Thanks! BTW, there's a bunch of free games on Steam you can use (http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Free%20to%20Play/)

Came up with a semi-clever way of adding just the time and game info (while omitting the date and game name) by hiding unwanted objects behind the dock in the foreground. Also did some minor touch-ups to the borders and whatnot. Also lowered the dock by a lot since its now a foreground item and can't cover up the main item list. Before After Next up - Media bar and other small UI things. If all goes well I should be ready to release this in the next few days... *EDIT* Just noticed the transparency on the main selector got overly green in the process and the top bar has to be moved up a bit... I'll fix it up tomorrow.

Added... Misc Console - Amstrad GX4000, Amstrad CPC, Philips VG-5000, Sharp X68000, TI99/4A, Imagination Machine, Super Cassette Vision, MSX, MSX2, Odyssey, Odyssey 2, Intellivision, CDi, ZX Spectrum, WoW ActionMax, CreatiVision, RCA Studio II, 3D0, Mattell Aquarius, GCE Vectrex, FM Towns, Fiarchild Channel F, Adventurevision, Arcadia 2001, Colecovision, Casio PV-1000, Casio PV-2000, Apple 2, Bally Astrocade Software Based - MSDOS

I've currently created 120 variations of the menu theme and there's many more to come. Here's a list of what's been completed so far... Main Menu - GameEx, Jukebox Arcade - AAE, American Laser Games, Daphne, DICE, Triforce, MAME, Taito Type X, Atomiswave, Zinc, HBMame (Formerly Misfit Mame), NeoGeo, Cave, ST-V, Model 2, Model 3 Atari - 800, ST, 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, Lynx Commodore - Vic-20, Amiga, 64, CDTV Nintendo - NES, Famicom, Famicom Disk System, SNES, Super Famicom, N64, Gamecube, Wii, GB, GBC, GBA, Virtual Boy, DS and Game&Watch. NEC - PCFX, SuperGrafx, PCE, PCE CD, TG16, TGCD Sega - SG1000, SMS, Mega Drive, Genesis, 32x, CD, Saturn, DC Blue, DC Orange, Naomi, Game Gear SNK - Neo Geo CD, Neo Geo AES, NGP, NPG Color Sony - PSX, PS2, PSP Misc Portable - Bandai Wonderswan, Bandai Wonderswan Color, Watara Supervision, Tiger Game.com, Gamepark GP32, Creatonic Mega Duck, Pokemon Mini Pinball + Other - Future Pinball, Visual Pinball, Fruit Machines Software Based - Big Fish Games, Adobe Flash, Touhou Project, PC Games (GFW Live), Mugen, Steam, ScummVM, OpenBOR, PopCap, Gog.com In the interest of time and space I've decided to host everything on my Dropbox account rather than posting each variation on the forums. Previews - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0d7d9yd1twuehjj/syqaVvylaJ This link is purely to be used as a preview. Keep in mind the video border is missing since these files will be directly pasted into the theme folder. Just imagine its there for the time being =) I will be releasing a completed theme package once I get most of the menu files done. Lastly, first post has been updated to reflect everything that's gone on for the last two pages. I'll be posting here as I create new layouts.

Finished up a lot more system sets.. Commodore - Vic-20, Amiga, 64, CDTV SNK - Neo Geo CD, Neo Geo, NGP, NPG Color Atari - 800, ST, 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, Lynx NEC - PCFX, SuperGrafx, PCE, PCE CD, TG16, TGCD Sega - SG1000, SMS, Mega Drive, Genesis, 32x, CD, Saturn, DC Blue, DC Orange, Naomi, Game Gear, ST-V, Model 2, Model 3 Next up are Arcade based systems and some of the lesser known portables... Previews are upcoming, I just have to sit down and actually save each file individually. I'm still trying to figure out the naming convention for these systems. Any help would be appreciated =)

Thanks! Yeah it can get to be a bit of a mess sometimes. Thankfully I have a pretty good repository of logos and backgrounds from a previous project I've been working on - so its not as bad. There's also some insane artists out there in the emulation community (yourself included) that've spent hours slaving away at redrawing logos in hi-res that make everything so much easier =) Finished up every Nintendo and Sony system.. Nintendo NES, Famicom (seperate image for Japanese games), Famicom Disk System, SNES, Super Famicom (seperate image for Japanese games), N64, Gamecube, Wii, GB, GBC, GBA, Virtual Boy, Nintendo DS and Game&Watch. Sony PSX, PS2, PSPAnd the aforementioned themes - Sega CD, Saturn, 32x, and Main Manu.I'll start posting previews soon-ish. Does anyone know how GameEx deals with naming backgrounds? For example NES is "Theme_Background_Nintendo NES". Where does the naming convention of "Nintendo NES" come from (As opposed to Nintendo Entertainment System or just NES)? Is it from the emulator files? Is there a global database of these names somewhere?

Yeah it would go over the reflections and whatnot. I think it's easiest just to leave the time/date out for now and maybe update it if such a feature gets added. The current unselected.png is just a 2 pixel semitransparent white line that creates the separator seen between items. My minor gripe is the minor gap between each item that GameEx has (It can be best seen on the default theme). I can't really do much about it, and it honestly doesn't detract too much. I think I'm pretty much done with the design here outside of some minor touchups. I replaced that ugly border with a glass-style reflective overlay and completely redid the borders for the item selection (although its barely noticeable). I promise I'll stick with this one =). I've now started going through the long process of creating pages for each theme. Here's a small sampling...

Doh, I didn't even consider the date thing but it's so obvious. I might have to scrap the date and maybe replace it with a GameEx logo or something - I'll think about it. There's no hidden way to change the justification of select items within the theme editor, right? Thanks for the suggestion about transparency on the selector bar. I added a bit of opacity and it looks more uniform.

And here it is in GameEx... Really like how this turned out and I'm glad it still maintains the XBMC look which was set as an original goal of the project. I'm still not entirely happy with the video border/fade in so that'll probably get switched. Can't do much about the weird gap between the selected text and unselected line. GameEx leaves a bit of a space between items by default. It's not too awkward though.

Yep I tried moving it all the way on the left side and it still displays. I'm fairly confident something has to be covering it, either a foreground, video, snap or something else. As for this theme... I went back to the drawing table for a third time. Sorry if anyone was eagerly anticipating the versions posted above. If you'd like I can release an unfinished version and the PSD files if someone wants to complete it. Sorry again, but that's why this thread is still titled concept =) The new version goes back to the Aeon look. I originally wanted to make something that matched my HTPC setup and veered a little off track from that original concept. Here's advance launcher working Aeon Nox (a variation of Aeon for XBMC) And here's where I'm at so far. I switched from using a title and snap to just a snap/video since having both seemed a little redundant.The top bar will probably be used for menu bar. I may split it off to display counter as well since the original has that.The list will be difficult to replicate because of how the selector works but I'll try my best to come up with something similar.Lastly, I'm still trying to figure out a place for line 1 and 2.. Maybe extend the border the top or bottom of the video and add it in there? Maybe omit it all together? Not sure yet.As per usual, taking suggestions and whatnot.

Thanks for the GameEx logo guys. As for the counter, I think it depends on how your theme is structured. It only defaults to going behind artwork and your foreground. On this theme my foreground is just the two frames for titles/snaps so I could move it anywhere on the left side and it'd be fine (where the console logos are).

Thanks Tempest, I'll have to mess around with the attached files and see what comes of it. I'm fairly new to GameEx, so I'm learning as I go along. Few small changes.. Added opacity to the background, moved the counter up to make room for long titles (as seen in the image), tweaked shadows around the title/snap and came up with a better system for dealing with the foreground image. Does anyone know where I can find a high quality version of the GameEx logo? Preferably transparent? I'd like to incorporate it into the main menu.

Yeah the original wasn't bad, but I was stuck at a stand still. Since I can't display three images at the game select screen (correct me if I'm wrong), I'd have to do something about the empty box in the bottom left. The easiest solution would've probably just been extending the game select area, but it'd be a lot of wasted space. Additionally, the popup game info display works well in a limited scope. Certain systems don't display any metadata and regular menus (such as the main menu) were left empty as well. So while it looked great when selecting games, it looked pretty awful in the main menu or during the system select. Lastly, the white border produced by the popup info bugged me and stood out. I've read some rumblings on the forums about a potential redesigned theme system in the works. I might attempt returning to the original concept when that's made available. However, with the current limitations of the theme-ing system, I don't that layout is possible without making it overly clunky and awkward.

Thanks! Think I got the layout finalized.. I changed the selector to something simpler, messed with the font and fixed up the general placement of items. Now I've started sampling the system menus. Pretty happy with how it looks so far. I should probably come up with a new name for this... too bad I'm awful at names, heh.

Turning my second concept into a theme was much more successful. Had to double the size of the bottom bar to accommodate the game name and extra info. I couldn't find a way to hide just the game name portion. The end result isn't too bad though. Some spacing issues here and there. Need to move the list down a bit, maybe the counter icon up a bitI need to come up with a different solution for the selector. It seems like GameEx leaves a gap which makes the gradient look awkward.Maybe mess around with a couple of different fonts, this one is a little 'chunky'Overall I'm much happier with this version over the Aeon concept. While the Aeon concept looked great in Photoshop, it didn't translate all that well to GameEx. This one looks great in both.

Whoops, thanks Tempest. I originally attached the images using standard BB code. I switched them to using the image upload feature of the forums. In other news, after some more experimentation I think this theme is going on the back burner. The popup description works fairly well but is kind of slow to load. The white outline boxes also makes it stand out far too much within the context of the theme. I'm also fairly convinced there's no way to attach box art to the system page. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with something entirely different that better fits the GameEx environment. It's no longer based on XBMC. infact, it's probably more inspired by 'Pure GameEx' by vsilvalopes (one of my favorite GameEx themes) Here's the concept art... It should be pretty easy to implement. I'll try to make it an actual theme tonight and see how it looks.

Quick update... I decided to actually take this into the theme manager and see what came out. The results are... mostly good. Here's the modified concept art for comparison - I had to swap the top bar since its justified to the right and I can't seem to change it. - Select/highlight box for the text isn't finished (or even started). - Still have to mess around with the video/title border since they aren't perfectly sized up yet - GameEx makes fonts look pixelated.. Doesn't seem to be much I can do about that. - Still trying to find the best looking font size.. smaller seems to hide more flaws I have a couple of questions I'm hoping someone with more experience in theme creation can assist with... 1) Is there anyway to change the white outline for the description/star ranking? It's currently white (as you can see in the image) 2) I'm guessing it's not possible to show three types of art on the system screen? I currently have title + snap/video and would like to add boxart. Is such a thing possible? If not I'll have to rework the space. So far I'm pretty happy with the results.. Still has a long way to go though.

Download Link http://www.gameex.com/themes/Aeon%20Inspirat.zip Video Preview - Thanks to Celly for putting this together! As of this writing I've currently created customized layouts for the following systems: Main Menu - GameEx, Jukebox Arcade - AAE, American Laser Games, Daphne, DICE, Triforce, MAME, Taito Type X, Atomiswave, Zinc, HBMame (Formerly Misfit Mame), NeoGeo, Cave, ST-V, Model 2, Model 3, Raine, WinKawaks, Final Burn Alpha Atari - 800, ST, 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, Lynx, Atari XE Commodore - Vic-20, Amiga, 64, CDTV, MAX, 16 Nintendo - NES, Famicom, Famicom Disk System, SNES, Super Famicom, Stellaview, N64, Gamecube, Wii, GB, GBC, GBA, Virtual Boy, DS and Game&Watch. NEC - PCFX, SuperGrafx, PCE, PCE CD, TG16, TGCD Sega - SG1000, SMS, Mega Drive, Genesis, 32x, CD, Saturn, DC Blue, DC Orange, Naomi, Game Gear SNK - Neo Geo CD, Neo Geo AES, NGP, NPG Color Sony - PSX, PS2, PSP Misc Portable - Bandai Wonderswan, Bandai Wonderswan Color, Watara Supervision, Tiger Game.com, Gamepark GP32, Creatonic Mega Duck, Pokemon Mini Misc Console - Amstrad GX4000, Amstrad CPC, Philips VG-5000, Sharp X68000, TI99/4A, Imagination Machine, Super Cassette Vision, MSX, MSX2, Odyssey, Odyssey 2, Intellivision, CDi, ZX Spectrum, WoW ActionMax, CreatiVision, RCA Studio II, 3D0, Mattell Aquarius, GCE Vectrex, FM Towns, Fiarchild Channel F, Adventurevision, Arcadia 2001, Colecovision, Casio PV-1000, Casio PV-2000, Apple 2, Bally Astrocade, Mamotech MTX, Apple PipPin, Casio Loopy, Tangerine Oric, Microsoft Xbox Pinball + Other - Future Pinball, Visual Pinball, Fruit Machines, PinMAME Software Based - Big Fish Games, Adobe Flash, Touhou Project, PC Games (GFW Live), Mugen, Steam, ScummVM, OpenBOR, PopCap, Gog.com, MSDOS Special thanks to KRC for letting me use his cleaned up logos! In the interest of time and space I've decided to host everything on my Dropbox account rather than posting each variation on the forums. Previews - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0d7d9yd1twuehjj/syqaVvylaJ This link is purely to be used as a preview. Keep in mind the video border is missing since these files will be directly pasted into the theme file. Just image its there for the time being =) I'll will be releasing a completed theme package once I get most of the menu files done. Heya, Before I begin, here's what I used for reference. This is XBMC Aeon with a list style that is (IMO) best suited towards emulators. I took a close look at the numerous themes available in GameEx and mimicked functionality that already existed in them. I've never actually created a GameEx skin, but I spent some time messing around in the theme editor and it seems pretty robust. Here's the concept for the Aeon inspired GameEx theme... I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community. I'll also use this spot to post updates as the theme (hopefully) come to fruition. Also feel free to let me know if this concept is impossible to achieve with the current GameEx =)

I've never posted on these forums but I wanted to drop by and say that these look absolutely amazing. Really looking forward to seeing what the complete set looks like =)