Theme Editor Questions...

[Draco1962]

Hey gang,

I've started working on my theme and had a few questions for ya.

Somehow I've lost my weather. Any thoughts on what I should check?

Also I'm also only seeing one icon (window icon), should I be seeing the home and exit icons?

Can I change the colors of the top menu bar and the 'Start' text?

Thanks guys! I'm sure I'll have some more questions as I go.

You will also need to look under the Options withing theme editor to ensure that the Weather option is selected. For now, all text is one color. BTW, looks like you have a nice Confluence port in the making.

[Chazz]

You will also need to look under the Options withing theme editor to ensure that the Weather option is selected. For now, all text is one color. BTW, looks like you have a nice Confluence port in the making.

I've disabled my overlay and still not seeing the weather. It is checked in the theme editor, and Enabled=True in my theme.ini. Is there a minimum size the weather has to be to see it?

Can the List text be Right Justified? (i don't think it can)

Can I change the size of the MediaControl.png file? Or does it only work with the original size?

Any idea when we'll be able to have more control of fonts for all objects?

[Draco1962]

It's been requested be several and suggested in the Pinned Topics under Feature requests (font controls, etc.). The options allow you to Right Justify Title Text only. You might want to upload a copy of your theme.ini file along with your gameex.ini file so we can take a look.

[Chazz]

EDIT:

Weather is back!

[Chazz]

If the text for SelectLine is longer than the width of the SelectLine, does it stretch to fit all the text?

Example...

My SelectLine1 is 200px wide, but with an item with long text it seems to be showing all the text, even though my SelectLine should only be 200px.

If this is the case, and the text is too long for the SelectLine box, can we have a ellipsis at the end of the text so it doesn't stretch the text longer than what the SelectLine width is?

Does this make any sense?

[Chazz]

More questions!!

Is it possible to move the Please Wait info at the bottom of the screen?

When playing a song, it seems to be showing the Now Playing art AND the visualization both in Image2. Is this correct? Can we only show just the Now Playing art, and not the visualization? Also is there any text for showing "Now Playing: Queens of the Stone Age" and maybe the track time for the song that's playing?

What image is being used behind this text? Can we change the position of this text?

[Chazz]

I'm working with the 'Now Playing' image, which kinda looks cool, but Image2 isn't showing up on the Start Page.

It would be nice to have the image shown on Start Page with text saying what song is playing.

[Draco1962]

Glad ya like the image! Don't forget me in your credits! LOL! In Theme Editor, do you have Image2 enabled and coordinates within the image size?

[Chazz]

Glad ya like the image! Don't forget me in your credits! LOL! In Theme Editor, do you have Image2 enabled and coordinates within the image size?

Everything looks good in the Theme Editor.

...and of course you'll be getting major kudos! You've helped me more than you know!

[Tom Speirs]

Hi Chazz, as I said in Chat most of these are not really questions but feature requests. Therefore a lot of it is currently limitations. As I said HeadKaze and I will be bringing skinning to a whole new level but it will be a while. I will be adding a few tweaks and features to the existing support and working with you and others but some of it will wait. Feel free to put in feature requests though as that will be very useful.

[u-man]

Hello skinning-dudes,

i like gameex very much and after years of usage, i wanted to start my own skinning project. so looking at the theme-editor, i must say, i have no clue how to use it properly (no documentation or manual leads to trouble-postings ). i think i understand the layering and i can manage basic things. i startet to use the RETRO-theme as my default, cause i like the 1920 format .

my first question is, how can i display marquee and snapshot simultaneously?

i did a small cab, where i want to display the snapshot and over it, the marquee. how i supposed to do that?

where can i see, what action a button, line or pict do?

are there more fx than zoom and where i can control them?

what is really annoying is the nag-screen, for the not registered.... like me. it would be much better, if the screen would show up, when you start your first game or something like that. if you want to see the changes, it takes a long time for it. what changes can i do, while gameex is running?

ok, thats enough for the start i think.... more to come

[u-man]

sad.... nobody can help?

in search for manuals, i found the Basic Theme Editor Usage Pack. in the second movie (of six), there is mentioned that you can have different layouts for selected entries, maybe in a future release (state 2006). for example, i want to place image and image 2 in a different place in the "Mame" and "Mame select" entries. how can i achieve this?

my problem is, i want a picture view for my game-selection in the field "List", but when i do this, "Image" and "Image2" change the linking to their object (i.e. where the marquee should be, there is my videosnapshot and vice versa). if i would have 2 different layouts, this could be easily fixed. i started with the "Default - Default" Theme, assuming this is version 4 and best place to start with, but i have only one layout for the whole frontend.

THIS IS WHAT I WANT (and get) IN SELECTED MAME :

BUUUUUT, THAT CHANGES MAME AND I WANT THIS VICE VERSA:

AND THE SNAPSHOTS IN MAME SELECTED ARE NOT CENTERED

LOOKS UGLY FOR HORIZONTAL GAMES

the strange thing is, if i would use the "Image" that is used for the marquees and put the snapshots there, then the snapshots are centered and both vertical and horizontal snaps are centered and looks right. but if i do this, i have no marquees anymore .... very sad

LAST THING..... IS THIS POSSIBLE ????

what are the differences between V2 and V4 themes? which theme is best to start off, if you want 1920 resolution and most flexible options?

it would be sooo much easier, to have the option to say, where "Image" and "Image2" belongs too.

please help me with my questions, i would like to make a new theme.

[Adultery]

Long story short:

You can't do what you're trying to do.

1 involves determining which image is shown where which isn't currently possible.

2 involves changing the image centering which isn't currently possible.

3 involves a whole new image (image 3) which isn't available and you can't determine what goes where anyhow.

Sorry to bear bad tidings friend nut you'll have to see what future updates hold.

[u-man]

sad to hear that.... but THX for reply ;-)

@ answer 2: i do not understand, why in one "image" my snapshots are centered and in the other "image" not?

can not believe, that this is such a hard task to do... to say where one image belongs and to place that. and in 6 years no approach to use different lay-outs.... thats sad too.

i do not want to bitch here, but with these 2 options alone, you can do a whole bunch of different style, with the theme editor.

but ok, at least i know that i am not missing something important here. by the way, what are the differencies between v2 and v4 themes?? what more can i do in v4??

enough said and THX anyway

[Adultery]

These are a couple reasons why the skinning system is slated for an overhaul.

[u-man]

i think it is the only thing, where GameEx suffers comparing to other frontends. everything else is superior comparing to others. thats what i liked it for all the years. outthere now, are a whole lot of pretty nice themes in other frontends, thx to the community. they have nice fx too and that i am missing in GameEx. by the way i liked Retro-theme and your MegaMame-theme the most, especially your theme in your cab ... i hope my dream will come true soon....

i dont get it, why there are so many objects in the object-browser. for what do i need the whole stuff, if it all do nothing? its a pain to always browse up and down, i a tiny window, which i cannot resize. if they are useless, why dont get rid of them? it would be far more easier editing if i only have the layout, back and foreground, the buttons etc.... but what is the other stuff: Jukebox, Radio, Pictures etc.

hope everone understand me, i am talking about the Object Browser window in the theme-editor.

__>

EDIT: i found out how to use different layout settings. you need to enable this, in the theme-editor... go to edit menue: --> select options and in the following dialog go to --> settings and check custom module layouts... this way, you can have different layout-ordering for objects for each menue avalaible in the object-editor window. that helped a lot, now i have only the problem with the centered picture, which seems a bug, because one "image" centers all pictures and other "image" dont. so i ask here, if this can be fixed, as it exists allready for one "image". for a extra "image", where you can put 3D-cabs... i can wait and live with the state, how it is. hope that helped someone

by the way: how can i make the fonts used like in post # 232 ?? that look like a nice wheel...... i want to have that too

[Chaos.Tiki]

So, I'm essentially trying to skin a theme to fit more of my style, but the theme I liked as a base has its backgrounds that shake and move around. How do I get this to stop?

Edit: found my answer.

Though now, I can't seem to find out how to alter 1 thing. When you start up GameEx, the GameEx logo pops out, and 6 symbols zoom out. I need those symbols to go away. I just can't find where that is done. I know I can change the GameEx logo. I know that other themes don't have those 6 symbols. So I just need to figure out how to remove those symbols.

[u-man]

hello again ,

as i am doing a new theme, i allways thought that the "selection"-bar consists of 15 .png-frames. lately i was scrolling through all the themes that are allready done (in search of new ideas and inspiration ) and realized that there are themes that have 20 frames for the selection-bar and some are even .bmp.

so my question here is, what is the frame limit for the selection bar and what formats are supported beside the .png and .bmp formats ??

knowing that i can use 20 frames is a saint for my theme but maybe it is not limited to that.

i also found out, that if you create a new theme with the theme-editor, the resolution you choose is sticked. what i mean is, if you choose your resolution and want to change it later because you make a mistake i.e. than you can not do this with the theme-editor, as the resolution-setting is greyed out. so long so bad but i found out, you can change it in the theme.ini file and it works. this maked me very happy, as i dont needed to start from scratch .

i dont know if this is a bug in the theme-editor, that if you once choose a resolution you are sticked with it, but if you can change that manually, why not integrate that function in the theme-editor for easier handling ?

and last but not least, i still dont know what the differencies are between a V1, V2, V3 and V4 theme. beside this, you are only capable of choosing V2 or V4 in the theme-editor, off course this also can be changed by manually fixing the theme.ini file , which a newbie probably will never know. the only difference i found out, by patiently reading posts is, that the "sort"-bar where you can choose by year, manufacturer, genre, change view, back and home stuff in a V4 theme is allways a "one-liner" and always on top. this is a backstep in my eyes, as a theme-editor should always have the priority to change the stuff how YOU like it. beside this, it does not goes well with the popping out menue with the icons on it (dont know how to call it), so you can barely click it with a mouse, only with the arrow-keys.

this is no harras on Tom or a flaming regarding the theme-editor. this is meant as a constructive critic, so no offense here. maybe i am totally wrong and there is a logic behind it, i cant see. if so, consider this just as a newbie-question.

thats all for now.... happily working further on my theme

[AlphaUMi]

Hello!

For the first time I'm experimenting with the Theme Editor. I have no graphic skill, so no way to create a new theme from scratch.

But I'm in the process to update I theme I like very much (Future Retro). I added weather and scrolling, but couldn't find a way to add, apart from snap/video images, other artwork like cover, title, etc.

Draco, I opened your theme "Enter the Dragon", and I saw an "Image2" box in a place that correspond to the cover or title display. How can I add these images?

Alpha.

[u-man]

@AlphaUMi :

try to start with a V2 theme, if you want to use the theme-editor, just to learn how the stuff works .

i think the future retro theme you like, is one of the first themes created for gameex and maybe it is that old that it only had one image at that time. my suggestion is, try to make a copy of that theme and change the "theme.ini" in the future-retro-theme by ADDING this line to the layout option right after the image line. it should look like this (example):

Image=158,310,538,638

Image2=138,350,575,614

the numbers are just for the cordinates and size of the image2 field and are an example, you can change this once you open it in the theme editor . it will be there and it is behind the description field. try it for yourself.

[Draco1962]

...

Draco, I opened your theme "Enter the Dragon", and I saw an "Image2" box in a place that correspond to the cover or title display. How can I add these images?

I am not quite sure of what you are asking. Image and Image2 frames will display varying items. Image will display video snaps, logo files, and also 3D cabinets, marquees, etc., when you have clicked on a game. Image2 will also vary but generally will display cabinet art, box, art, etc. The images for both are picked up from whatever path you have set for your ROM snaps, cabinet art, marquees, etc. when you run GameEx. If there are no images that correspond, then GameEx will load an Image Not Found snap if setup to do so. Hope this is of help.

[u-man]

i think he tries to experiment with the future-retro-theme and to customize it for his needs. if you open that theme in the theme-editor there will be no image2-field and he wants that field. i tried it for my self and came with the solution above.

but good that we are at that point, because it is a question i have. is there a chance to force gameex to display that "image not found" snap if he can not find a marquee for example??

at the moment gameex just grabs a title-snap if he can not find a marquee for a game and i want to change that so badly, is there a solution for this??

and if there is a solution, where i can find that "image not found" snap to change it for my desires.

hope you can answer me Draco, that would be such an improvement for me

[Draco1962]

You can set this up for each emulator (look in the Advanced Emulator setup for the section Not Found Snap). I usually use the same image saved to the \GameEx\Media path, however, you can create an image or video snap to do the same thing and make it individualized for each emulator you are using.

[u-man]

ok thats nice and thanks for that usefull tip, that helps a lot and great that this can be a videosnap .

but where i can find this for MAME ??

[Draco1962]

There is also a setting under Game Extender (in Setup Wizard). I have to admit that I have forgotten where the default image can be sotred and read by GameEx when a specific image is not listed. No matter, the settings are controlled by a default path or custom path as defined in the Setup Wizard and not via Theme Editor.