Dan Patrick

Hello CMOSS. Yes! It is possible to have an image wider than the screen. This is what I'm currently testing on my theme. I’m creating scrolling backgrounds essentially and they are wider than 4k. The image was originally created that way and then I when I load it into the theme creator I picked the scaling option uniform to fill. So it kept the aspect ratio. I set my starting point to a negative number and then move it to a positive number in a left to right animation. The kicker is, I created the image at a wider aspect ratio, not 16x9. I tried it at 32x9 and yeah you can do that. But the image was created that way outside of the creator and then brought in. You simply can't set an image to a resolution wider than your screen though. Make the image wider outside of the theme creator. Do it in photoshop or something. Then use that “uniform to fill” option.

Thanks for your reply! Well, I haven't tried that and maybe that's what I need. The kicker is, would this have to be set per console because every box shape is different? I would like it to be a rounding setting and I say y'know 15 pixels and that works on each box regardless of its shape. Even within one system there can be different box shapes. For instance if you have a Japanese GBA game amongst your US GBA games then the box will be more of a rectangle than a square. I have already found that it's possible to "fake" an outline. It's imperfect but it does work. I had my box art where I wanted it and added a second slightly larger box behind it tinted 100% opacity white and then it gave the outline effect. The problem is that some of my games have more than one box art that was downloaded for it and it will load one box art for the visible box and and a different box art for the "outline box" that sits behind it. It does work 95 percent of the time. But I just want my theme to look polished for every user so I have since not wanted to use that idea just for that reason. I know you're really busy making so many more major changes such as the parent/child situation which is very smart. I was hoping you'd add that. I'm listening to that stream on my phone while I'm at work today lol!

Y2guru, I have a request... For my current theme I would like to have a simple outline around boxart and be able to set the pixel amount and color of the outline. I would also like the ability to round corners on box art. I love how the rounding corners works for frames. The rounded corners may be difficult to do because theres the box art container and the actual box art image within that container. I, of course, am referring to rounding the box art itself not the container. So therefore, that may be terribly difficult on your end. I don't know! But I think that would be a super cool feature and super useful! Thanks so so much for the many hard hours you have put in theme creator! The hard work really shows!

Yes, UI scaling is a little strange. I've noticed that it's best to start the theme with a 100% scale so that all the backend files initially create the files at 4K or whatever res you want. I actually lost some progress because I started a theme at 4k at 225% scaling and I was confused by why all the measurements were saying I was essentially at 900p res. I then realized that I needed to be at 100% scaling and you can't change it in the editor (the xaml text files won't show a difference if you change windows scaling) once it's initially created. So I forced to to be 3840x2160(4k) by editing on line in the xaml text file but this then threw off my entire theme because it got way smaller in the editor. So that's why I say start your themes at 100% scaling! What sets the resolution is that initially starting resolution and scaling of your theme. If later you then want to have the larger UI scaling for the editor and go to say 225% at 4k then the backend xaml files will still be 3840x2160 (4k) but sadly the measurement numbers will still be showing a lower res based on your scaling amount. So what I now do is this...once I set me theme initially at true 4k 100% scaling, I then set it back to 225% like i prefer for the ui scaling to be more readable. The pixel count of element sizes will still be off (but scaled proportionally so it still will stay in place with scaling changes) but the background xaml files will still say 3840x2160(4k). Once I have my theme loosely where I want want it I will then switch my dpi back 100% to do the precise movements and measurements. It's a bit of a pain but at least I understand it. Ideally, it should set the background xaml files and usable pixel measurements at 3840x2160 without it looking at your dpi scaling of windows. It should only be scaling the UI of the editor and not the theme element measurements. This is probably quite a hard issue to resolve I would imagine. I've also noticed that at times animations seem to be smoother at the initially set resolution and scaling. Sometimes when I change my scaling from 100% to 225% and test my theme the animations are a tiny bit laggy. But switching back to 100% they will be perfectly 60fps again. That doesn't always happen though so I'm still not sure what's up there. Maybe that's just me. On an unrelated note, just as a tip, I'll say this; If you are making custom art for your theme I have found it will only be fully clear if it's exported/created at 72ppi. At work I commonly export things at 300 dpi for print files. 72ppi is for web/screens generally. Anyway, I was drawing all these custom icons for my new theme (which I have yet to reveal) and was exporting them at 300ppi and when I tested them in my theme they were all super blurry! I was going crazy trying to figure out why. Then when I went back and reexported the files at 72ppi they were showing the real resolution and not a blurry mess. So I just scaled them up in Adobe Illustrator (they can scale because it's vector art) so that they'd still be pin sharp at 72ppi.

Y2GURU, If your reading this, I want this feature too! Ideally on the list of animation triggers there should still be a general "during selection" animation trigger, but there should also be a "during left selection" and "during right selection". Good luck mgerety!

No problem! Don't worry about it!

That is an interesting problem! I have put about 15-20 hours in the theme editor so far on a theme that I'm cooking up. What you are asking is doable I can assure but it may not be easy. I don't fully know how you would do this but I have have part of it solved in my head. Instead of having something trigger which animation plays, I think it would be more doable to have two separate wheels in the exact same location. The animations would be set to "During Selection" and there would also be some clever opacity switching so basically if you had just used the left one, the right one would instantly fade in and the left would fade out. The real problem is...how does is know you've done right or left? I think this will have to require some small amount of code. Some sort of "if, then" statement or something (I'm not good at that sort of thing). To do this without coding anything will require serious clever thinking.

Man, you're putting out themes left and right! I definitely like the minimalism here! I'm in the process of making a theme myself and I can't relate to your statement of it being hard to come up with new layout ideas! That theme editor is great though. That's such a game changer for themes. You should really consider taking a quick video of your themes with OBS or something so people can get a better idea of your theme before downloading. Nice work on this though! I'm glad to see more minimalism on here!

I still would like to have MPC as an option! It's so lightweight that it could really help performance.