ES-DE/THEMES-DEV.md

ES-DE (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) v3.0 (development version) - Themes

Note: This document is only relevant for the current ES-DE development version, if you would like to see the documentation for the latest stable release, refer to THEMES.md instead.

If creating themes specifically for ES-DE, please add -es-de to the repository/directory name, as in slate-es-de. Themes made for ES-DE are not compatible with any other EmulationStation forks (and vice versa) and the -es-de extension makes it clear that it's an ES-DE theme. The actual theme name as defined using the themeName tag in capabilities.xml does of course not need to include the -es-de extension as that's the actual theme name that will be displayed when selecting themes from the UI Settings menu. For example slate-es-de will be listed simply as Slate in this menu.

Before your start, make sure to download the Theme engine examples theme that contains a number of example variants for things like vertical and horizontal carousels, wheel carousels, system view text lists, grids etc:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/theme-engine-examples-es-de

More themes to use as a starting point can be found on the official themes list:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/themes-list

There is also some documentation written by lilbud covering general tips and tricks as well as how to port themes from the legacy RetroPie theme engine to ES-DE:

https://github.com/lilbud/es-de-theme-stuff

To test whether your theme includes support for all ES-DE systems, download one of the following archives which contain ROM directory trees fully populated with dummy files:

ROMs_ALL_Unix.zip
ROMs_ALL_macOS.zip
ROMs_ALL_Windows.zip

If you unzip and temporarily replace your ROMs directory with one of these, every system will be enabled on startup.

It's recommended to use a proper code editor for theme development, such as VSCode with the Red Hat XML extension.

A general comment regarding SVG graphic files is that fonts are not supported by the LunaSVG library so these need to be converted to paths in order for them to get rendered inside ES-DE. In Inkscape the relevant command is named Object to Path but there should be equivalent functionality in other vector graphics editors. Embedded bitmaps are also not supported but this is generally a good thing as it's sometimes abused by simply embedding a raster image inside an SVG file, which is very misleading.

Another general remark is that Linux almost always uses case-sensitive file systems (that's sometimes true for macOS as well). Therefore it's a good idea to always name files with lowercase characters only. Also make sure to regularly test on Linux if that's not your primary operating system.

Table of contents:

[[TOC]]

Introduction

An ES-DE theme is a collection of assets like images, videos and fonts as well as XML configuration files which contain various elements, each with their own properties that define the way the theme looks and behaves. These elements include things like text, images, videos, animations, carousels, grids etc.

Internally ES-DE uses the concept of components to actually implement the necessary building blocks to parse and render the elements, and although this is normally beyond the scope of what a theme author needs to consider, it's still good to be aware of the term as it's sometimes used in the documentation.

Every game system may have its own subdirectory within the theme directory tree, and these directory names are defined in the systems configuration file es_systems.xml either via the optional <theme> tag, or otherwise via the mandatory <name> tag. When ES-DE populates a system on startup it will look for a file named theme.xml in each such directory.

By placing a theme.xml file directly in the root of the theme directory, that file will be processed as a default if there is no system-specific theme.xml file available. This means that the structure of having a separate directory per supported game system is entirely optional.

In the example below, we have a theme named mytheme-es-de which includes the snes and nes systems. Assuming you have some games installed for these systems, the files mytheme-es-de/nes/theme.xml and mytheme-es-de/snes/theme.xml will be processed on startup. If there are no games available for a system, its theme.xml file will be skipped.

The directory structure for our example theme could look something like the following:

...
themes/
   mytheme-es-de/
      core/
         font.ttf
         font_bold.ttf
         frame.png
      nes/
         background.jpg
         logo.svg
         theme.xml
      snes/
         background.jpg
         logo.svg
         theme.xml

      fonts.xml
      theme.xml

An alternative approach would be to instead rely on variables for populating system-specific information and media files, and this way it's not necessary to setup separate directories per system:

...
themes/
   mytheme-es-de/
      core/
         font.ttf
         font_bold.ttf
         frame.png
      systems/
         backgrounds/
            nes.jpg
            snes.jpg
         logos/
            nes.svg
            snes.svg
         metadata/
            nes.xml
            snes.xml

      fonts.xml
      theme.xml

The ES-DE theme functionality makes it easy for users to install different themes and to choose between them from the UI Settings menu.

There are two places that ES-DE can load themes from:

• [HOME]/.emulationstation/themes/
• [INSTALLATION PATH]/themes/

An installation path could be something like this:

/usr/share/emulationstation/themes/slate-es-de/
/Applications/EmulationStation Desktop Edition.app/Contents/Resources/themes/
C:\Program Files\EmulationStation-DE\themes\

If a theme with the same name exists in both locations, the one in the home directory will be loaded and the other one will be skipped.

Differences to legacy RetroPie themes

If you are not familiar with theming for RetroPie or similar forks of EmulationStation then you can skip this section as it only describes the key differences between the updated ES-DE themes and these legacy themes. The term legacy is used throughout this document to refer to this older style of themes. ES-DE as of 2.2.0 can no longer load legacy themes, so if you need to view them when porting them to ES-DE, either use a legacy EmulationStation fork or ES-DE 2.1.1.

With ES-DE 2.0.0 a new theme engine was introduced that fundamentally changed some aspects of how theming works. The previous design used specific view styles (basic, detailed, video and grid) and this was dropped completely and replaced with variants that can accomplish the same thing while being much more powerful and flexible.

In the past EmulationStation basically had hardcoded view styles with certain elements always being present and only a limited ability to manipulate these via positioning, resizing, coloring etc. As well so-called extras were provided to expand theming support somehow but even this was quite limited.

With the new theme engine the view presets were removed and the only views now available, system and gamelist, were rewritten to be much more flexible. Essentially the element selection and placement is now unlimited; any number of elements of any type can be used, although with a few notable exceptions as explained throughout this document.

In addition to variants, support for color schemes and aspect ratios was introduced. The former makes it possible to provide different color profiles via variable declarations, and the latter makes it possible to define different theme configurations for different display aspect ratios. That could for example be a choice between a 16:9 and a 4:3 layout, and perhaps also a vertical screen orientation layout. All these options are selectable via the UI Settings menu.

New theming abilities like GIF and Lottie animations were also added to the new theme engine.

The NanoSVG rendering library has been replaced with LunaSVG which greatly improves SVG file support as NanoSVG had issues with rendering quite some files. There might be some slight regressions with LunaSVG, but most of these are probably due to issues in NanoSVG that caused some non-conformant files to render seemingly correct. Make sure to compare any SVG files that don't seem to render correctly in ES-DE with what they look like if opened in for example Firefox or Chrome/Chromium.

As for more specific changes, the following are the most important ones compared to legacy themes:

• View styles are now limited to only system and gamelist (there is a special all view style as well but that is only used for navigation sounds as explained later in this document)
• The hardcoded metadata attributes like md_image and md_developer are gone, but a new <metadata> property is available for populating views with metadata information
• The concept of extras is gone as all element can now be used however the theme author wishes
• The concept of features is gone
• The <formatVersion> tag is gone as tracking theme versions doesn't make much sense after all
• The video element properties showSnapshotNoVideo and showSnapshotDelay have been removed
• The ambiguous alignment property has been replaced with the horizontalAlignment and verticalAlignment properties (the same is true for logoAlignment for the carousel element)
• The forceUppercase property has been replaced with the more versatile letterCase property
• Many property names for the carousel have been renamed, with logo being replaced by item as this element can now be used in both the gamelist and system views. As well, setting the alignment will not automatically add any margins as is the case for legacy themes. These can still be set manually using the horizontalOffset and verticalOffset properties if needed. The way that alignment works in general for both carousel items and the overall carousel has also changed
• The rating elements were previously not sized and overlaid consistently, this has now been fixed and rating images should now be centered on the image canvas in order for this element to render correctly rather than being left-adjusted as has previously been done by some theme authors (likely as a workaround for the previous buggy implementation). Images of any aspect ratios are now also supported where previously only square images could be used
• The carousel text element hacks systemInfo and logoText have been removed and replaced with proper carousel properties
• The carousel property maxItemCount (formerly named maxLogoCount) is now in float format for more granular control of logo placement compared to integer format for legacy themes. However some legacy theme authors thought this property supported floats (as the theme documentation incorrectly stated this) and have therefore set it to fractional values such as 3.5. This was actually rounded up when loading the theme configuration, and this logic is retained for legacy themes for backward compatibility. But for current themes the float value is correctly interpreted which means a manual rounding of the value is required in order to retain an identical layout when porting themes to the new theme engine. As well carousels of the wheel type now have the amount of entries controlled by the two new properties itemsBeforeCenter and itemsAfterCenter. This provides more exact control, including the ability to setup asymmetric wheels.
• The full names of unthemed systems (or systems where the defined staticImage file is missing) will now be displayed in the system carousel instead of the short names shown for legacy themes. So for instance, instead of "cps" the full name "Capcom Play System" (as defined in es_systems.xml) will be displayed.
• The carousel now has a zIndex value of 50 instead of 40. This means it's aligned with the textlist element which already had a zIndex value of 50.
• The textlist property selectorOffsetY has been renamed to selectorVerticalOffset and a selectorHorizontalOffset property has been added as well.
• The helpsystem textColorDimmed and iconColorDimmed properties (which apply when opening a menu) were always defined under the system view configuration which meant these properties could not be separately set for the gamelist views. Now these properties work as expected with the possibility to configure separate values for the system and gamelist views
• When right-aligning the helpsystem using an X origin value of 1, the element is now aligned correctly to the defined position instead of being offset by the entrySpacing width (in RetroPie ES the offset was instead the hardcoded element entry padding)
• Correct theme structure is enforced more strictly than before, and deviations will generate error log messages and make the theme loading fail
• Many additional elements and properties have been added, refer to the Reference section for more information

Attempting to use any of the legacy logic in the new theme structure will make the theme loading fail, for example adding the extra="true" attribute to any element.

Except the points mentioned above, theme configuration looks pretty similar to the legacy theme structure, so anyone having experience with these older themes should hopefully feel quite at home with the new theme engine. Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that as there are no longer any view presets available, some more effort is needed from the theme developer to define values for some elements. This is especially true for zIndex values as elements could now be hidden by other elements if care is not taken to explicitly set the zIndex for each of them. This additional work is however a small price to pay for the much more powerful and flexible theming functionality provided by the new theme engine.

Note that the legacy theme engine had quite inaccurate text sizing and font rendering and while this has been greatly improved in the new engine, for legacy themes most old bugs are retained for maximum backward compatibility. This means that you may need to revise font sizes and text placements when porting a legacy theme to the new engine. Here are some examples:

• Line spacing for the textlist element was not consistently applied across different screen resolutions
• Carousel text entries did not multiply the font size by the itemScale (logoScale) property value
• The defined line spacing was not always applied for automatically sized text elements
• Font sizes were rounded to integers, leading to imprecise text sizing across different resolutions (the rounding was also done incorrectly)

Theme assets repositories

There are several useful repositories hosted by the ES-DE project that provide system metadata and system graphics files. Using these greatly simplifies the work of adding support for all ES-DE systems to your theme.

Make sure to regularly check for updates in these repositories as corrections, improvements and additions of new systems are made continuously.

Metadata

The metadata repository provides descriptions, release dates, per-system color palettes etc. and it can be found here:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-metadata

By adding this to your theme, either via manually downloading and including it, or by adding it as a Git subtree, you'll be able to access its defined variables. Check the README.md file in the repository for details on how to actually use the variables.

Here's how to add this repository as a subtree inside your theme's Git repository:

git remote add system-metadata https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-metadata.git
git subtree add --prefix=system-metadata --squash system-metadata master

To later pull in repository updates you'll run the following:

git subtree pull --prefix=system-metadata --squash system-metadata master

The directory name can be changed to whatever you like using the --prefix flag.

Controller outline graphics

This repository provides controller graphics files for each system in an outline style and it can be found here:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-controllers-outline

Here's how to add this repository as a subtree inside your theme's Git repository:

git remote add system-controllers-outline https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-controllers-outline.git
git subtree add --prefix=system-controllers-outline --squash system-controllers-outline master

To later pull in repository updates you'll run the following:

git subtree pull --prefix=system-controllers-outline --squash system-controllers-outline master

The directory name can be changed to whatever you like using the --prefix flag.

Mini system graphics

This repository provides graphics files for each system in a "mini" style and it can be found here:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-graphics-mini

Here's how to add this repository as a subtree inside your theme's Git repository:

git remote add system-graphics-mini https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-graphics-mini.git
git subtree add --prefix=system-graphics-mini --squash system-graphics-mini master

To later pull in repository updates you'll run the following:

git subtree pull --prefix=system-graphics-mini --squash system-graphics-mini master

The directory name can be changed to whatever you like using the --prefix flag.

Logos

This repository provides logos for each system in color and white (the latter for use with color shifting) and it can be found here:

https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-logos

Here's how to add this repository as a subtree inside your theme's Git repository:

git remote add system-logos https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-logos.git
git subtree add --prefix=system-logos --squash system-logos master

To later pull in repository updates you'll run the following:

git subtree pull --prefix=system-logos --squash system-logos master

The directory name can be changed to whatever you like using the --prefix flag.

Adding remotes

Note that the remotes are only setup for your local repository, so if you clone a theme you'll need to manually add the repository remotes to be able to pull from these subtrees. That means you'll need to run one or more of the following commands on a freshly cloned theme repository:

git remote add system-metadata https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-metadata.git
git remote add system-controllers-outline https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-controllers-outline.git
git remote add system-graphics-mini https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-graphics-mini.git
git remote add system-logos https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/system-logos.git

After doing this you'll be able to pull repository updates as described above.

Simple example theme

Here is a very simple theme that changes the color of the game name text:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="gameName">
            <color>00FF00</color>
        </text>
        <image name="frame1">
            <pos>0.5 0.5</pos>
            <origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
            <size>0.8 0.8</size>
            <path>./core/frame.png</path>
            <zIndex>10</zIndex>
        </image>
    </view>
</theme>

How it works

All configuration must be contained within a <theme> tag pair. That is true for each separate .xml file used to build the completely theme.

The <view> tag pair refers to the available views within ES-DE, which is either system or gamelist. There is a special all view available as well, but that is only used for defining the navigation sounds as these are always applied globally to both view types.

Views are defined like this:

<view name="viewNameHere">
    ... define elements here ...
</view>

An element is a particular visual component such as an image, an animation or a piece of text. It has a mandatory name attribute which is used by ES-DE to track each element entry. By using this name attribute it's possible to split up the definition of an element to different locations. For example you may want to define the color properties separately from where the size and position are configured (see the example below). The name attribute can be set to any string value.

This is the element structure:

<ElementTypeHere name="elementNameHere">
    ... define properties here ...
</ElementTypeHere>

Finally properties control how a particular element looks and behaves, for example its position, size, image path, animation controls etc. The property type determines what kinds of values you can use. You can read about each type below in the Reference section. Properties are defined like this:

<propertyNameHere>valueHere</propertyNameHere>

Let's now put it all together. The following is a simple example of a text element which has its definition split across two separate XML files.

themes.xml:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="systemName">
            <pos>0.27 0.32</pos>
            <origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
            <size>0.12 0.41</size>
            <zIndex>40</zIndex>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

colors.xml:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="systemName">
            <color>707070</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

As long as the name attribute is identical, the element configuration will be combined automatically. But that is only true for elements of the same type, so for instance an image element could be defined that also uses systemName for its name attribute without colliding with the text element:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="systemName">
            <pos>0.27 0.32</pos>
            <origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
            <size>0.12 0.41</size>
            <zIndex>40</zIndex>
        </text>
        <!-- Does not cause a collision, but is probably a bad idea for readability reasons -->
        <image name="systemName">
            <pos>0.49 0.8</pos>
            <maxSize>0.4 0.28</maxSize>
            <zIndex>35</zIndex>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

Whether this is a good idea is another question, it would probably be better to set the name attribute for the image to systemLogo or similar for this example.

In addition to this, if the name is used for the same element type but for different views, then there will also not be any collision:

<theme>
    <view name="system">
        <text name="systemName">
        <pos>0.04 0.73</pos>
        <origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
        <size>0.12 0.22</size>
        <zIndex>40</zIndex>
    </view>
    <!-- This will not cause a collision as these two text elements are defined for different views -->
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="systemName">
        <pos>0.27 0.32</pos>
        <origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
        <size>0.12 0.41</size>
        <zIndex>40</zIndex>
    </view>
</theme>

Debugging during theme development

If you are writing a theme it's recommended to enable the Debug mode setting from the Other settings menu or to launch ES-DE with the --debug flag from a terminal window. You can also pass the --resolution flag to avoid having the application window fill the entire screen. By doing so you can read error messages directly in the terminal window without having to open the es_log.txt file. With debug mode enabled you can also reload the current gamelist or system view with Ctrl + r and you can highlight the size and position of each image and animation element by using the Ctrl + i key combination. Likewise you can highlight each text element via Ctrl + t.

Here's an example of launching ES-DE in debug mode at a limited resolution, which will make it run in a window:

emulationstation --debug --resolution 1280 720

Enforcement of a correct theme configuration is quite strict, and most errors will abort the theme loading, leading to an unthemed system. In each such situation the log output will be very clear of what happened, for instance:

Jan 28 17:17:30 Error:  ThemeData::parseElement(): "/home/myusername/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/theme.xml": Property "origin" for element "image" has no value defined (system "collections", theme "custom-collections")

Note that an unthemed system means precisely that, the specific system where the error occured will be unthemed but not necessarily the entire theme. The latter can still happen if the error is global such as a missing variable used by all XML files or an error in a file included by all XML files. The approach is to only untheme relevant sections of the theme to be able to pinpoint precisely where the problem lies.

Sanitization for valid data format and structure is done in this manner, but verification that property values are actually correct (or reasonable) is handled by the individual component that takes care of creating and rendering the specific theme element. What happens in many instances is that a warning log entry is created and the invalid property is reset to its default value. So for these situations, the system will not become unthemed. Here's an example where a badges element accidentally had its horizontalAlignment property set to leftr instead of left:

Jan 28 17:25:27 Warn:   BadgeComponent: Invalid theme configuration, property "horizontalAlignment" for element "gamelistBadges" defined as "leftr"

Note however that warnings are not printed for all invalid properties as that would lead to an excessive amount of logging code. This is especially true for numeric values which are commonly just clamped to the allowable range without notifying the theme author. So make sure to check the Reference section of this document for valid values for each property.

For more serious issues where it does not make sense to assign a default value or auto-adjust the configuration, an error log entry is generated and the element will in most instances not get rendered at all. Here's such an example where the imageType property for a video element was accidentally set to covr instead of cover:

Jan 28 17:29:11 Error:  VideoComponent: Invalid theme configuration, property "imageType" for element "gamelistVideo" defined as "covr"

Error handling for missing files is handled a bit differently depending on whether the paths have been defined explicitly or via a variable. For explicitly defined paths a warning will be logged for element properties and an error will be triggered for include files. Here's an example of the latter case:

Jan 28 17:32:29 Error:  ThemeData::parseIncludes(): "/home/myusername/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/theme.xml" -> "./colors_dark.xml" not found (resolved to "/home/myusername/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/colors_dark.xml")

However, if a variable has been used to define the include file, only a debug message will be generated if the file is not found:

Jan 28 17:34:03 Debug:  ThemeData::parseIncludes(): "/home/myusername/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/theme.xml": Couldn't find file "./${system.theme}/colors.xml" which resolves to "/home/myusername/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/amiga/colors.xml"

It works essentially the same way for element path properties as for include files. This distinction between explicit values and variables makes it possible to create a theme configuration where both include files and files for fonts, images, videos etc. will be used if found, and if not found a fallback configuration can still be applied so the system will be themed.

By default all debug messages regarding missing files will be logged for regular systems and automatic collections and suppressed for custom collections. This behavior can be changed by modifying the DebugSkipMissingThemeFiles and DebugSkipMissingThemeFilesCustomCollections settings in es_settings.xml. You can read more about those settings here.

Variants

A core concept of ES-DE is the use of theme variants to provide different theme profiles. These are not fixed presets and a theme author can instead name and define whatever variants he wants for his theme (or possibly use no variants at all as they are optional).

The variants could be purely cosmetic, such as providing different designs for a theme, or they could provide distinctive functionality by for instance using different primary elements like a carousel or a text list.

Before a variant can be used it needs to be declared, which is done in the capabilities.xml file that must be located in the root of the theme directory tree. How to setup this file is described in detail later in this document.

The use of variants is straightforward, a section of the configuration that should be included for a certain variant is enclosed inside the <variant> tag pair. This has to be placed inside the <theme> tag pair, and it can only be used at this level of the hierarchy and not inside a <view> tag pair for example.

The mandatory name attribute is used to specificy which variants to use, and multiple variants can be specified at the same time by separating them by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). It's also possible to use the special all variant that will apply the configuration to all defined variants (although this is only a convenient shortcut and you can explicitly define every variant individually if you prefer that). Note that all is a reserved name and attempting to use it in the capabilities.xml file will trigger a warning on application startup.

It could sometimes be a good idea to separate the variant configuration into separate files that are then included from the main theme file as this could improve the structure and readability of the theme configuration.

It's also possible to apply only portions of the theme configuration to the variants and keep a common set of elements that are shared between all variants. This is accomplished by simply adding the shared configuration without specifying a variant, as is shown in the first example below for the infoText01 text element. Just be aware that the variant-specific configuration will always be loaded after the general configuration even if it's located above the general configuration in the XML file. As this is potentially confusing and error-prone it's instead generally recommended to use the special all variant to define common configuration used by all variants in the theme rather than mixing variants configuration with non-variants configuration.

Here are some example uses of the <variant> functionality:

<theme>
    <!-- Implementing the variants via separate include files could be a good idea -->
    <variant name="gamelistTextlist">
        <include>./gamelist_textlist.xml</include>
    </variant>
    <variant name="gamelistCarousel">
        <include>./gamelist_carousel.xml</include>
    </variant>

    <!-- The special "all" variant is a convenient shortcut for some situations -->
    <variant name="all">
        <include>./${system.theme}/systeminfo.xml</include>
    </variant>

    <!-- This will be parsed before the variant-specific configuration -->
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <fontPath>./core/font.ttf</fontPath>
            <fontSize>0.035</fontSize>
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- In other instances it may make more sense to apply the variant configuration inline -->
<theme>
    <variant name="withVideos">
        <view name="gamelist">
            <video name="gameVideo">
                <imageType>cover</imageType>
                <delay>1.7</delay>
                <scrollFadeIn>true</scrollFadeIn>
                <zIndex>42</zIndex>
            </video>
        </view>
    </variant>
    <variant name="withoutVideos">
        <view name="gamelist">
            <image name="gameImage">
                <imageType>titlescreen</imageType>
                <scrollFadeIn>true</scrollFadeIn>
                <zIndex>42</zIndex>
            </image>
        </view>
    </variant>
</theme>

<!-- The following is NOT supported as <variant> tags can't be located inside <view> tag pairs -->
<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <variant name="lightModeNoVideo">
            <image name="gameImage">
                <imageType>titlescreen</imageType>
                <scrollFadeIn>true</scrollFadeIn>
                <zIndex>42</zIndex>
            </image>
        </variant>
    </view>
</theme>

Variant triggers (overrides)

Variant triggers is an optional feature which can be used to replicate the automatic view style switching functionality of the legacy theme engine. This can be used to automatically override the selected variant based on two triggers, either when there are no game videos found for a system, or if there are no game media files of some specified types found for a system. These two trigger types are named noVideos and noMedia respectively.

For the noMedia trigger there's an optional mediaType tag that can be used to specify precisely which media files should be checked for to determine whether to switch to the override variant. Valid values are miximage, marquee, screenshot, titlescreen, cover, backcover, 3dbox, physicalmedia, fanart and video. Multiple values can be defined, in which case they are separated by a comma, or by a whitespace character (tab, space or line break). If no value is defined, it will be set to miximage.

The useVariant tag specifies which variant to use to override the selected variant.

You'll probably rarely need to use the noVideos trigger as video can be defined also when using the noMedia trigger. The reason for including both trigger types is that it makes it possible to apply a specific variant only when videos are missing and another variant when no media files at all are present.

The following example (from the capabilities.xml file) defines a noGameMedia variant which is used as the override for the withVideos variant if no miximages, screenshots, covers and videos are found for any game in a system. For this example the noGameMedia variant has been set as non-selectable from the UI Settings menu by defining the selectable property as false.

As can be seen here, the overall variant trigger configuration needs to be enclosed within an override tag pair. And you can only define a single trigger type inside an override tag pair.

<variant name="withVideos">
    <label>Textlist with videos</label>
    <selectable>true</selectable>
    <override>
        <trigger>noMedia</trigger>
        <mediaType>miximage, screenshot, cover, video</mediaType>
        <useVariant>noGameMedia</useVariant>
    </override>
</variant>

<variant name="noGameMedia">
    <label>No game media</label>
    <selectable>false</selectable>
</variant>

It's also possible to define both the noVideos and noMedia triggers for the same variant like the following example:

<variant name="withVideos">
    <label>Textlist with videos</label>
    <selectable>true</selectable>
    <override>
        <trigger>noVideos</trigger>
        <useVariant>withoutVideos</useVariant>
    </override>
    <override>
        <trigger>noMedia</trigger>
        <mediaType>miximage, screenshot, cover</mediaType>
        <useVariant>noGameMedia</useVariant>
    </override>
</variant>

<variant name="withoutVideos">
    <label>Textlist without videos</label>
    <selectable>false</selectable>
</variant>

<variant name="noGameMedia">
    <label>No game media</label>
    <selectable>false</selectable>
</variant>

In this case the withoutVideos variant will be selected if there are no videos but if there is other media available. If there is however no media matching the mediaType property then the noGameMedia variant will be selected instead. Note that noMedia always takes precedence over noVideos. If you would like to trigger the withoutVideos variant if there are videos but no other media, then you'll need to add video to the mediaType property for the noMedia trigger.

It's however not possible to define multi-step variant triggers like this:

<!-- This is NOT allowed, you can't have two-step triggers -->
<variant name="withVideos">
    <label>Textlist with videos</label>
    <selectable>true</selectable>
    <override>
        <trigger>noVideos</trigger>
        <useVariant>withoutVideos</useVariant>
    </override>
</variant>

<variant name="withoutVideos">
    <label>Textlist without videos</label>
    <selectable>false</selectable>
    <override>
        <trigger>noMedia</trigger>
        <mediaType>miximage, screenshot, cover</mediaType>
        <useVariant>noGameMedia</useVariant>
    </override>
</variant>

<variant name="noGameMedia">
    <label>No game media</label>
    <selectable>false</selectable>
</variant>

If the above configuration is used, then the trigger will work correctly if there are no videos, i.e. the withoutVideos variant will be selected, but the override tag in the withoutVideos variant will be ignored so the noGameMedia variant will never be triggered even if there is no media whatsoever.

Note that variant triggers will only apply to the gamelist view and not the system view. Also be aware that it will add a potentially noticeable application slowdown as game media files need to be scanned for at various points when using the application, as well as during startup. The impact of the performance penalty depends on multiple factors such as the game collection size, how many games have been scraped, as well as disk I/O and filesystem performance. So only use variant triggers if really necessary for your theme design. As well, specifying many values for the mediaType tag will lead to more files potentially being scanned which could introduce further lag and latency.

As a final note, variant triggers can also be globally disabled by the user via the Enable theme variant triggers option in the UI Settings menu. Not everyone may want the variant auto-switching to take place, and if all systems contain scraped media then disabling the functionality will eliminate the performance penalty described above.

Color schemes

Color schemes are essentially a collection of variables that can be selected between from the UI Settings menu. This makes it possible to define different values that will be applied to the overall theme configuration based on this menu selection. Only variables can be used for the color schemes, but since variables can be used for almost everything this makes the functionality very flexible. In most cases you'll probably want to apply different color values to <color> properties and similar, but it's also possible to apply different images, animations, fonts etc. per color scheme.

To understand the basics on how to use variables, make sure to read the Theme variables section elsewhere in this document.

Before a color scheme can be used it needs to be declared, which is done in the capabilities.xml file that must be located in the root of the theme directory tree. How to setup this file is described in detail later in this document.

The <colorScheme> tag pair can be placed directly inside the <theme> tags, inside the <variants> tags or inside the <aspectRatio> tags.

The mandatory name attribute is used to specificy which color scheme to use, and multiple values can be specified at the same time by separating them by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks).

Note that the use of color schemes for a theme is entirely optional.

Here's an example configuration:

<theme>
    <colorScheme name="dark">
        <variables>
            <backgroundColor>404040</backgroundColor>
            <defaultTextColor>F0F0F0</defaultTextColor>
        </variables>
    </colorScheme>

    <colorScheme name="light">
        <variables>
            <backgroundColor>707070</backgroundColor>
            <defaultTextColor>262626</defaultTextColor>
        </variables>
    </colorScheme>

    <variant name="withVideos, withoutVideos">
        <colorScheme name="dark, light">
            <panelColor>74747488</panelColor>
        </colorScheme>
        <view name="system">
            <image name="background">
                <pos>0 0</pos>
                <size>1 1</size>
                <path>./core/images/background.png</path>
                <tile>true</tile>
                <color>${backgroundColor}</color>
            </image>
            <text name="gameCounter">
                <pos>0.5 0.6437</pos>
                <size>1 0.056</size>
                <color>${defaultTextColor}</color>
            </text>
        </view>
    </variant>
</theme>

Aspect ratios

The aspect ratio support works almost identically to the variants and color schemes with the main difference that the available aspect ratios are hardcoded into ES-DE. The theme can still decide which of the aspect ratios to support (or none at all in which case the theme aspect ratio is left undefined) but it can't create entirely new aspect ratio entries.

In the same manner as for the variants and color schemes, the aspect ratios that the theme provides need to be declared in the capabilities.xml file that must be located in the root of the theme directory tree. How to setup this file is described in detailed later in this document.

The <aspectRatio> tag pair can be placed directly inside the <theme> tags or inside the <variants> tags.

Once the aspect ratios have been defined, they are applied to the theme configuration like the following examples:

<!-- Implementing the aspect ratios by separate include files could be a good idea -->
<theme>
    <aspectRatio name="4:3, 5:4">
        <include>./../layout_narrow.xml</include>
    </aspectRatio>
    <aspectRatio name="16:9, 16:10">
        <include>./../layout_wide.xml</include>
    </aspectRatio>
    <aspectRatio name="21:9">
        <include>./../layout_ultrawide.xml</include>
    </aspectRatio>

    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <fontPath>./core/font.ttf</fontPath>
            <fontSize>0.035</fontSize>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- In other instances it may make more sense to apply the aspect ratio configuration inline -->
<theme>
    <aspectRatio name="4:3, 5:4">
        <view name="gamelist">
            <image name="imageLogo">
                <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
            </image>
        </view>
    </aspectRatio>

    <aspectRatio name="16:9, 16:10, 21:9">
        <view name="gamelist">
            <image name="imageLogo">
                <pos>0.42 0.31</pos>
            </image>
        </view>
    </aspectRatio>
</theme>

<!-- Placing aspectRatio tags inside the variants tags is also supported -->
<theme>
    <variant name="withVideos, withoutVideos">
        <aspectRatio name="4:3, 5:4">
            <view name="gamelist">
                <image name="imageLogo">
                    <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
                </image>
            </view>
        </aspectRatio>
    </variant>
</theme>

<!-- The following is NOT supported as <aspectRatio> tags can't be located inside <view> tag pairs -->
<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <aspectRatio name="4:3, 5:4">
            <image name="imageLogo">
                <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
            </image>
        </aspectRatio>
    </view>
</theme>

Transitions (animation profiles)

Using the capabilities.xml file it's possible to define granular transition animation profiles. Prior to ES-DE 2.0 there was only a user-selectable option for Instant, Slide or Fade animations that was applied globally. It's now possible to select each of these animation types individually for the following transitions:

• System to system
• System to gamelist
• Gamelist to gamelist
• Gamelist to system
• Startup to system
• Startup to gamelist

This is a brief overview of the supported animations:

• Instant - as the name implies, transitions are immediate
• Slide - pans the camera to move between views which may look broken with some elements like textlists and grids when used in the system view
• Fade - fades to black when transitioning between views

Here's an example configuration:

<transitions name="instantAndSlide">
    <label>instant and slide</label>
    <selectable>true</selectable>
    <systemToSystem>instant</systemToSystem>
    <systemToGamelist>slide</systemToGamelist>
    <gamelistToGamelist>instant</gamelistToGamelist>
    <gamelistToSystem>slide</gamelistToSystem>
    <startupToSystem>fade</startupToSystem>
    <startupToGamelist>fade</startupToGamelist>
</transitions>

<transitions name="instant">
    <label>instant</label>
    <selectable>true</selectable>
    <systemToSystem>instant</systemToSystem>
    <systemToGamelist>instant</systemToGamelist>
    <gamelistToGamelist>instant</gamelistToGamelist>
    <gamelistToSystem>instant</gamelistToSystem>
</transitions>

The name attribute is mandatory and it must be set to a unique value for each profile. Any string can be used except the three reserved values builtin-instant, builtin-slide and builtin-fade.

The selectable property which is set to true by default defines whether the transitions profile can be selected from the Theme transitions entry on the UI Settings menu. The label defines the label to show there. If no label value is set then a default Theme profile label will be applied.

At least one of the six transition types must be defined or the transitions entry is not considered valid. Any non-defined types will be set to instant with the exception of startupToSystem which will be set to the same value as systemToSystem and startupToGamelist which will be set to the same value as gamelistToGamelist.

The profiles will be listed in the UI Settings menu in the order that they have been defined, and the first profile (regardless of whether it's set as user-selectable or not), will be used if the Automatic entry has been selected, unless a per-variant configuration is defined in the theme configuration.

In addition to defining custom transition profiles it's possible to suppress the built-in profiles. For example slide transitions will look very broken with some theme designs so in such cases it could make sense to disable this animation type altogether. Suppressing a profile simply means its entry will not show up under Theme transitions in the UI Settings menu, making it impossible to select and use it.

Here's an example where all the built-in transition profiles have been disabled:

<suppressTransitionProfiles>
    <entry>builtin-instant</entry>
    <entry>builtin-slide</entry>
    <entry>builtin-fade</entry>
</suppressTransitionProfiles>

Regardless of whether any custom profiles have been created or whether the built-in profiles have been disabled there will always be an Automatic entry added to the Theme transition animations menu. If no theme profiles have been defined and all built-in profiles have been suppressed, then the Automatic entry will be the only available option. In this case instant animations will by applied to all transition types.

Finally it's possible to apply theme-defined transition profiles on a per-variant basis. This requires that the user has selected the Automatic profile from the Theme transitions menu as selecting any other profile will override whatever is defined in the theme configuration. Note that the built-in transition profiles can't be used in this manner, only profiles defined in capabilities.xml.

<variant name="withVideos">
    <transitions>instantAndSlide</transitions>
</variant>

<variant name="withoutVideos">
    <transitions>instant</transitions>
</variant>

capabilities.xml

Variants, variant triggers, color schemes, aspect ratios and transition animation profiles need to be declared before they can be used inside the actual theme configuration files and that is done in the capabilities.xml file. This file needs to be located in the root of the theme directory, for example:

~/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/capabilities.xml

The capabilities.xml file is mandatory and if it doesn't exist ES-DE will not attempt to load the theme.

The structure of the file is simple, as can be seen in this example:

<!-- Theme capabilities for mytheme-es-de -->
<themeCapabilities>
    <themeName>My theme</themeName>

    <aspectRatio>16:9</aspectRatio>
    <aspectRatio>4:3</aspectRatio>
    <aspectRatio>4:3_vertical</aspectRatio>

    <colorScheme name="dark">
        <label>Dark mode</label>
    </colorScheme>

    <colorScheme name="light">
        <label>Light mode</label>
    </colorScheme>

    <transitions name="instantAndSlide">
        <systemToSystem>instant</systemToSystem>
        <systemToGamelist>slide</systemToGamelist>
        <gamelistToGamelist>instant</gamelistToGamelist>
        <gamelistToSystem>slide</gamelistToSystem>
    </transitions>

    <variant name="withVideos">
        <label>Textlist with videos</label>
        <selectable>true</selectable>
        <override>
            <trigger>noMedia</trigger>
            <mediaType>miximage, screenshot, cover, video</mediaType>
            <useVariant>noGameMedia</useVariant>
        </override>
    </variant>

    <variant name="withoutVideos">
        <label>Textlist without videos</label>
        <selectable>true</selectable>
        <override>
            <trigger>noMedia</trigger>
            <mediaType>miximage, screenshot, cover</mediaType>
            <useVariant>noGameMedia</useVariant>
        </override>
    </variant>

    <variant name="noGameMedia">
        <label>No game media</label>
        <selectable>false</selectable>
    </variant>
</themeCapabilities>

The file format is hopefully mostly self-explanatory; this example provides three aspect ratios, two color schemes, one transition animation profile and three variants, one of which is a variant trigger override. The <label> tag for the variants and transitions is the text that will show up in the UI Settings menu, assuming <selectable> has been set to true. The same is true for color schemes, although these will always show up in the GUI and can't be disabled.

The optional <themeName> tag defines the name that will show up in the Theme option in the UI Settings menu. If no such tag is present, then the physical directory name will be displayed instead, for example MYTHEME-ES-DE. Note that theme names will always be converted to uppercase characters when displayed in the menu.

The variant, color scheme and transitions names as well as their labels can be set to arbitrary values, but the name has to be unique. If two entries are declared with the same name, a warning will be generated on startup and the duplicate entry will not get loaded. Variants, color schemes and transition animations will be listed in the UI Settings menu in the order that they are defined in capabilities.xml.

Unlike the types just mentioned, aspectRatio entries can not be set to arbitrary values, instead they have to use a value from the horizontal name or vertical name columns in the following table:

Horizontal name	Vertical name	Common resolutions
16:9	16:9_vertical	1280x720, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160
16:10	16:10_vertical	1280x800, 1440x900, 1920x1200
3:2	3:2_vertical	2160x1440
4:3	4:3_vertical	320x240, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200
5:4	5:4_vertical	1280x1024
21:9	21:9_vertical	2560x1080, 3840x1600, 5120x2160
32:9	32:9_vertical	3840x1080, 5120x1440

The 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios are approximate as monitors of slightly different ratios are collectively marketed using these numbers.

It's normally not necessary to define all or even most of these for a theme, instead only a few are likely to be needed. The element placement will always adapt to the screen resolution as relative positions are utilized, so in most cases similar aspect ratios like 4:3 and 5:4 could be used interchangeably. The same is true for instance for 16:9 and 16:10. But if precise element placement is required, a separate configuration can still be made for each aspect ratio.

The declared aspect ratios will always get displayed in the UI settings menu in the order listed in the table above, so they can be declared in any order in the capabilities.xml file. If an unsupported aspect ratio value is entered, a warning will be generated on startup and the entry will not get loaded.

The use of variants, variant triggers, color schemes, aspect ratios and transition animation profiles is optional, i.e. a theme does not need to provide any of them. There must however be a capabilities.xml file present in the root of the theme directory. So if you don't wish to provide this functionality, simply create an empty file or perhaps add a short XML comment to clarify that the theme does not provide this functionality. In this case the theme will still load and work correctly but the menu options for selecting variants, color schemes and aspect ratios will be grayed out.

Note that changes to the capabilities.xml file are not reloaded when using the Ctrl + r key combination, instead ES-DE needs to be restarted to reload any changes to this file.

The <include> tag

You can include theme files within theme files, for example:

~/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/fonts.xml:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <fontPath>./core/font.ttf</fontPath>
            <fontSize>0.035</fontSize>
            <color>00FF00</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

~/.emulationstation/themes/mytheme-es-de/snes/theme.xml:

<theme>
    <include>./../fonts.xml</include>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
            <color>FF0000</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

The above is equivalent to the following:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <fontPath>./core/font.ttf</fontPath>
            <fontSize>0.035</fontSize>
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
            <!-- This may or may not be what is intended, i.e. overriding the <color> tag in fonts.xml -->
            <color>FF0000</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

As covered earlier in this document, as long as the name attributes are identical for the same element type, the properties are combined automatically. The potential issue with the current example is that the color tag is defined in both the fonts.xml and snes/theme.xml files. As parsing is done sequentially, the property value that is defined last will overwrite the earlier value. This may be used intentionally to override a general property value, so the configuration in the example above example is not necessarily a mistake.

The paths defined for the <include> entry and <fontPath> and similar properties are set as relative to the theme file by adding "./" as a prefix. That is usually how paths would be defined as you commonly want to access files only within the theme directory structure. This prefix works for all path properties. Windows-style backslashes are also supported as directory separators but their use is not recommended.

Explicitly defining a path will lead to an error (and the system getting unthemed) if the file is missing, but if instead using a variable to populate the <include> tag then a missing file will only generate a debug log entry. This makes it possible to use system variables to build flexible theme configurations where it's not guaranteed that every file exists. Such an example would be to implement default/fallback configuration for custom systems that may get added by a user.

Note that include loops are not checked for, it's the responsibility of the theme developer to make sure no such loops exist. If you accidentally introduce a loop the application will hang indefinitely on startup.

You can add <include> tags directly inside the <theme> tags or inside the <variant> and <aspectRatio> tags, but not inside the <view> tags:

<!-- Adding <include> directly inside <theme> is supported -->
<theme>
    <include>./../colors.xml</include>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- Adding <include> inside <variant> is supported -->
<theme>
    <variant name="lightMode">
        <include>./../colors.xml</include>
    </variant>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- Adding <include> inside <aspectRatio> is supported -->
<theme>
    <aspectRatio name="4:3">
        <include>./../colors.xml</include>
    </aspectRatio>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- Adding <include> inside <view> is NOT supported -->
<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <include>./../colors.xml</include>
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

<!-- Adding <include> outside <theme> is NOT supported -->
<include>./../colors.xml</include>
<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

Theming the system and gamelist views simultaneously

Sometimes you may want to apply the same elements and properties to both the system and gamelist views, for instance defining a common background image. For these situations both views can simply be defined in the name attribute. The values can be separated by a comma, or by a whitespace character (tab, space or line break).

<view name="system, gamelist">
    <image name="background">
        <tile>true</tile>
        <size>1 1</size>
        <pos>0 0</pos>
        <origin>0 0</origin>
        <path>./core/images/background.png</path>
        <zIndex>0</zIndex>
    </image>

The above is equivalent to:

<view name="system">
    <image name="background">
        <tile>true</tile>
        <size>1 1</size>
        <pos>0 0</pos>
        <origin>0 0</origin>
        <path>./core/images/background.png</path>
        <zIndex>0</zIndex>
    </image>
</view>
<view name="gamelist">
    <image name="background">
        <tile>true</tile>
        <size>1 1</size>
        <pos>0 0</pos>
        <origin>0 0</origin>
        <path>./core/images/background.png</path>
        <zIndex>0</zIndex>
    </image>
</view>

Theming multiple elements simultaneously

You can theme multiple elements of the same type simultaneously, which can lead to a more compact and easier to understand theme configuration. To accomplish this you simply define multiple entries inside a single name attribute, separated by commas or whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks).

Here's an example of defining a common color to multiple text elements:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <!-- Weird spaces/newline on purpose -->
        <text name="labelRating, labelReleasedate labelDeveloper labelPublisher,
                labelGenre,    labelPlayers,        labelLastplayed, labelPlaycount">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

The above is equivalent to:

<theme>
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="labelRating">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelReleasedate">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelDeveloper">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelPublisher">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelGenre">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelPlayers">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelLastplayed">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
        <text name="labelPlaycount">
            <color>48474D</color>
        </text>
    </view>
</theme>

Just remember, this only works if the elements have the same type.

Navigation sounds

Navigation sounds are configured globally per theme, so it needs to be defined using the special all view. It's recommended to put these elements in a separate file and include it from the main theme file (e.g. <include>./navigationsounds.xml</include>). Enabling the Debug mode setting in the Other settings menu or starting ES-DE with the --debug flag will provide feedback on whether the navigation sound elements were parsed correctly. If no navigation sounds are provided by the theme, then ES-DE will use the bundled navigation sounds as a fallback. This is done per sound file, so the theme could provide for example one or two custom sounds while using the bundled ES-DE sounds for the rest.

When fast-scrolling the textlist (by holding the up/down or shoulder buttons) the scroll and systembrowse sounds always play to completion before being played again, so it will sound weird if you have long samples such as those with reverb or silence added to the end. As such make sure to always use short samples for these sounds and test thoroughly with fast-scrolling. This is not an issue if using the carousel or grid elements.

Example debug output:

Jul 12 11:28:58 Debug:  NavigationSounds::loadThemeNavigationSounds(): Theme includes navigation sound support, loading custom sounds
Jul 12 11:28:58 Debug:  Sound::getFromTheme(): Looking for tag <sound name="systembrowse">
Jul 12 11:28:58 Debug:  Sound::getFromTheme(): Tag found, ready to load theme sound file
Jul 12 11:28:58 Debug:  Sound::getFromTheme(): Looking for tag <sound name="quicksysselect">
Jul 12 11:28:58 Debug:  Sound::getFromTheme(): Tag not found, using fallback sound file

Example navigationsounds.xml file:

<theme>
    <view name="all">
        <sound name="systembrowse">
            <path>./core/sounds/systembrowse.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="quicksysselect">
            <path>./core/sounds/quicksysselect.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="select">
            <path>./core/sounds/select.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="back">
            <path>./core/sounds/back.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="scroll">
            <path>./core/sounds/scroll.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="favorite">
            <path>./core/sounds/favorite.wav</path>
        </sound>
        <sound name="launch">
            <path>./core/sounds/launch.wav</path>
        </sound>
    </view>
</theme>

Element rendering order using zIndex

You can change the order in which elements are rendered by setting their zIndex values. All elements have a default value so you only need to define it for the ones you wish to explicitly change. Elements will be rendered in order from smallest to largest values. A complete description of each element including all supported properties can be found in the Reference section.

These are the default zIndex values per element type:

Element	zIndex value
image	30
video	30
animation	35
badges	35
text	40
datetime	40
gamelistinfo	45
rating	45
carousel	50
grid	50
textlist	50

The helpsystem element does not really have a zIndex value and is always rendered on top of all other elements.

Theme variables

Theme variables can be used to simplify theme construction and there are two types available:

• System variables
• Theme defined variables

System variables

System variables are system specific and are derived from values defined in es_systems.xml (except for collections which are derived from hardcoded application-internal values).

• system.name
• system.name.autoCollections
• system.name.customCollections
• system.name.noCollections
• system.fullName
• system.fullName.autoCollections
• system.fullName.customCollections
• system.fullName.noCollections
• system.theme
• system.theme.autoCollections
• system.theme.customCollections
• system.theme.noCollections

system.name expands to the short name of the system as defined by the name tag in es_systems.xml
system.fullName expands to the full system name as defined by the fullname tag in es_systems.xml
system.theme expands to the theme directory as defined by the theme tag in es_systems.xml

If using variables to load theme assets like images and videos, then use the .name versions of these variables as short system names should be stable and not change over time. The .fullName values could change in future ES-DE releases or they could be user-customized which would break your theme.

The .autoCollections, .customCollections and .noCollections versions of the variables make it possible to differentiate between regular systems, automatic collections (all games, favorites and last played) and custom collections. This can for example be used to apply different formatting to the names of the collections as opposed to regular systems.

The below example capitalizes the names of the auto collections while leaving custom collections and regular systems at their default formatting (as they are defined by the user and es_systems.xml respectively). The reason this works is that the .autoCollections, .customCollections and .noCollections variables are mutually exclusive, i.e. a system is either a real system or an automatic collection or a custom collection and never more than one of these.

<theme>
    <view name="system">
        <text name="systemName, autoCollectionName, customCollectionName">
            <pos>0.05 0.83</pos>
            <size>0.9 0.06</size>
            <fontSize>0.06</fontSize>
            <fontPath>./core/font.ttf</fontPath>
        </text>
        <text name="systemName">
            <text>${system.fullName.noCollections}</text>
            <letterCase>none</letterCase>
        </text>
        <text name="autoCollectionName">
            <text>${system.fullName.autoCollections}</text>
            <letterCase>capitalize</letterCase>
        </text>
        <text name="customCollectionName">
            <text>${system.fullName.customCollections}</text>
            <letterCase>none</letterCase>
        </text>
</view>
</theme>

Theme defined variables

Variables can also be defined in the theme.

<theme>
    <variables>
        <themeColor>8B0000</themeColor>
    </variables>
</theme>

Usage in themes

Variables can be used to specify the value of a theme property:

<color>${themeColor}</color>

It can also be used to specify only a portion of the value of a theme property:

<color>${themeColor}C0</color>
<path>./core/images/${system.theme}.svg</path>

Nesting of variables is supported, so the following could be done:

<theme>
    <variables>
        <colorRed>8b0000</colorRed>
        <themeColor>${colorRed}</themeColor>
    </variables>
</theme>

Variables can also be declared inside the <variant> and <aspectRatio> tags, but make sure to read the comments below for the implications and possibly unforeseen behavior when doing this:

<theme>
    <variant name="lightMode, lightModeNoVideo">
        <variables>
            <colorRed>8b0000</colorRed>
            <themeColor>${colorRed}</themeColor>
        </variables>
    </variant>
</theme>

Variables live in the global namespace, i.e. they are reachable by all configuration entries regardless of whether variants are used or not. This means that if a variable is defined directly under the <theme> tag and then redefined inside a <variant> or <aspectRatio> tag then the global variable will be modified rather than a copy specific to the variant. As well, since all general (non-variant) configuration is parsed prior to the variant configuration, any overriding of the variable will be done "too late" to apply to the general configuaration. Take this example:

<theme>
    <!-- Set the value of variable themeColor to 8b0000 -->
    <variables>
        <colorRed>8b0000</colorRed>
        <themeColor>${colorRed}</themeColor>
    </variables>

    <!-- Override the value of variable themeColor by defining it as 6533ff -->
    <variant name="lightMode, lightModeNoVideo">
        <variables>
            <themeColor>6533ff</themeColor>
        </variables>
    </variant>

    <!-- color will be set to 8b0000 as it's parsed before the variants configuration -->
    <view name="gamelist">
        <text name="infoText01">
            <pos>0.3 0.56</pos>
            <color>${themeColor}</color>
        </text>
    </view>

    <!-- color will be set to 6533ff -->
    <variant name="lightMode, lightModeNoVideo">
        <view name="gamelist">
            <text name="gameName">
                <pos>0.8 0.12</pos>
                <color>${themeColor}</color>
            </text>
        </view>
    </variant>
</theme>

Due to the potential confusion caused by the above configuration it's recommended to never use the same variable names under the <variant> or <aspectRatio> tags as have previously been declared directly under the <theme> tag.

Configuration parsing order

It's important to understand how the theme configuration files are parsed in order to avoid potentially confusing issues that may appear to be bugs. The following order is always used:

1. Transitions
2. Variables
3. Color schemes
4. Included files
5. "General" (non-variant) configuration
6. Variants
7. Aspect ratios

When including a file using the <include> tag (i.e. step 4 above) then all steps listed above are executed for that included file prior to continuing to the next line after the <include> tag.

For any given step, the configuration is parsed in the exact order that it's defined in the XML file. Be mindful of the logic described above as for instance defining variant-specific configuration above general configuration in the same XML file will still have that parsed afterwards.

Property data types

• NORMALIZED_PAIR - two decimal values delimited by a space, for example 0.25 0.5
• PATH - path to a resource. If the first character is a tilde (~) then it will be expanded to the user's home directory ($HOME for Unix and macOS and %HOMEPATH% for Windows) unless overridden using the --home command line option. If the first character is a dot (.) then the resource will be searched for relative to the location of the theme file, for example ./myfont.ttf or ./../core/fonts/myfont.ttf
• BOOLEAN - true/1 or false/0
• COLOR - a hexadecimal RGB or RGBA color value consisting of 6 or 8 digits. If a 6 digit value is used then the alpha channel will be set to FF (completely opaque)
• UNSIGNED_INTEGER - an unsigned integer value
• FLOAT - a decimal value
• STRING - a string of text

Element types and their properties

There are three groups of elements available for use which are named primary, secondary and special. They are all covered in detail below.

Common to almost all elements are pos and size properties of the NORMALIZED_PAIR type. They are normalized in terms of their parent's size. Most of the time this is just the size of the screen. In this case, <pos>0 0</pos> would correspond to the top left corner, and <pos>1 1</pos> the bottom right corner (a positive Y value points further down). You can also use numbers outside the 0 to 1 range if you want to place an element partially off-screen.

The order in which you define properties for a given element does not matter and you only need to define a property if you want to override its default value. If a property is defined multiple times then the latest entry will override any previous occurances.

Primary elements

Elements from this group can only occur once per view (for a certain variant) and they handle basic functionality like controller input and navigation.

carousel

A carousel for navigating and selecting games or systems.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• single

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Default is 0 0.38378
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.05 and maximum value per axis is 2
  • Default is 1 0.2324
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the carousel exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• type - type: STRING
  • Sets the carousel type and scroll direction.
  • Valid values are horizontal, vertical, horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
  • Default is horizontal
• staticImage - type: PATH
  • Path to a static image file. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
  • This property can only be used in the system view.
• imageType - type: STRING
  • This displays a game image of a certain media type, and can only be used in the gamelist view. Optionally two types can be defined, in which case the entries should be delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). The media will be searched for in the order that the entries have been defined, and any superfluous entries will be ignored. Note that defining two entries can lead to quite a performance penalty so in general it's recommended to define a single value and instead use defaultImage as a fallback in case no image is found.
  • Valid values:
  • marquee - This will look for a marquee (wheel) image.
  • cover - This will look for a box front cover image.
  • backcover - This will look for a box back cover image.
  • 3dbox - This will look for a 3D box image.
  • physicalmedia - This will look for a physical media image.
  • screenshot - This will look for a screenshot image.
  • titlescreen - This will look for a title screen image.
  • miximage - This will look for a miximage.
  • fanart - This will look for a fan art image.
  • none - No image will be used, instead the game name will be displayed as text. Has no effect if defaultImage has been defined.
  • Default is marquee
• defaultImage - type: PATH
  • Path to the default image file which will be displayed if the image defined via the staticImage or imageType property is not found. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• defaultFolderImage - type: PATH
  • Path to the default image file which will be displayed if the image defined via the staticImage or imageType property is not found and the item is a folder. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
  • Default is the same value as defaultImage
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view.
• maxItemCount - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the number of carousel items to display.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 30
  • Default is 3
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal or vertical
• itemsBeforeCenter - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Sets the number of items before the center position (the currently selected item). By setting this property and itemsAfterCenter to different values an asymmetric wheel can be configured. Combine with itemRotation to control how many entries to display in the carousel.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 20
  • Default is 8
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• itemsAfterCenter - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Sets the number of items after the center position (the currently selected item). By setting this property and itemsBeforeCenter to different values an asymmetric wheel can be configured. Combine with itemRotation to control how many entries to display in the carousel.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 20
  • Default is 8
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• itemStacking - type: STRING
  • Controls how to stack overlapping items. When set to centered the selected item will be raised and items further from the selected item (to the left/right or above/below depending on the carousel orientation) will be progressively rendered lower than the items closer to the center. If set to ascending then items will be rendered progressively higher from left to right or from top to bottom depending on the carousel orientation. If set to descending the opposite takes place with items being progressively rendered lower from left to right or top to bottom depending on the carousel orientation. Finally ascendingRaised and descendingRaised work identically to ascending and descending with the only difference that the currently selected item will be raised above the other items.
  • Valid values are centered, ascending, ascendingRaised, descending or descendingRaised
  • Default is centered
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal or vertical
• selectedItemMargins - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • By default items are evenly spaced across the carousel area, but this property makes it possible to define margins (extra space or less space) around the currently selected item. The first value in the pair defines the margin to the left of the item if it's a horizontal carousel or above the item if it's a vertical carousel, and the second value of the pair sets the right or bottom margin for the selected item depending on the carousel orientation.
  • Minimum value per margin is -1 and maximum value per margin is 1
  • Default is 0 0
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal or vertical
• itemSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Size of the item prior to multiplication by the itemScale value, i.e. the size of all unselected items. Both axes need to be defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.05 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.25 0.155
• itemScale - type: FLOAT.
  • Selected item is scaled by the value defined by this property.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.2
• itemRotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that items should be rotated. This value should be positive if the itemRotationOrigin X axis has a negative value, and it should be negative if the itemRotationOrigin X axis has a positive value, otherwise the wheel will rotate in the wrong direction.
  • Default is 7.5
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• itemRotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the items will be rotated. The X axis of this property is the distance from the left side of the item to the center of the wheel in multiples of the size defined by the itemSize X axis. So if for instance the itemSize X axis is set to 0.2 and itemRotationOrigin is set to -2, then the center of the wheel will be at a -0.4 distance from the left side of the item. In other words, if specifying a negative number the item will be located on the right side of the carousel, i.e. the wheel will be to the left and if specifying a positive number the wheel will be to the right. Note again that this is calculated from the left side of the item, so to get an identically sized wheel as the -2 wheel just mentioned you need to define 3 as the value rather than 2 if you want the wheel to the right side of the item. This is not an error but due to the way that coordinates are calculated. The Y axis should normally be left at 0.5 or you may get some weird results. It is however possible to use this axis value creatively if you know what you are doing.
  • Default is -3 0.5
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• itemAxisHorizontal - type: BOOLEAN
  • Wheel carousel items are normally rotated towards the center of the wheel as defined by itemRotation and itemRotationOrigin. But if enabling this property the items will not get rotated along their own axis, meaning they will retain their original horizontal orientation regardless of their position along the wheel. Make sure that itemVerticalAlignment is set to center when using this property or you'll get strange alignment issues.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• itemAxisRotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that items should be rotated around their own axis. Note that this does not work well with reflections as these are rotated too which does not look right.
  • Default is 0
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal or vertical
• imageFit - type: STRING
  • Controls how to fit the image within the aspect ratio defined by itemSize. To scale and preserve the original aspect ratio, set the value to contain, to stretch/squash the image to fill the entire area set it to fill and to crop the image to fill the entire area set it to cover
  • Valid values are contain, fill or cover
  • Default is contain
• imageInterpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating images. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image smoother. This property has limited effect on scalable vector graphics (SVG) images unless rotation is applied.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is linear
• imageCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the images defined by staticImage, imageType and defaultImage. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. The size is calculated internally with itemScale set to 1. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• imageColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the images defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the images by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after imageSaturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• imageColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as imageColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as imageColor
• imageGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both imageColor and imageColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• imageSelectedColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the currently selected item's image as defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the images by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after imageSaturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is the same value as imageColor
• imageSelectedColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as imageSelectedColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as imageSelectedColor
• imageSelectedGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both imageSelectedColor and imageSelectedColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• imageBrightness - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the relative level of brightness. This is intended primarily for fine adjustments, for example if a color shift has been applied which may have lowered the overall brightness of the image.
  • Minimum value is -2 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0 (no brightness adjustments applied)
• imageSaturation - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of color saturation.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• itemTransitions - type: STRING
  • How to render item transitions when navigating the carousel. By default a slide, scale and opacity fade animation will be played when moving between items (the latter two assuming itemScale and unfocusedItemOpacity have not been set to 1) but if this property is set to instant then transitions will be immediate.
  • Valid values are animate or instant
  • Default is animate
• itemDiagonalOffset - type: FLOAT
  • Offsets all items to the left/right or above/below the selected item (depending on the carousel orientation) to achieve a diagonal layout. The defined value is the per-item offset (screen height percentage if type is horizontal or screen width percentage if type is vertical)
  • Minimum value is -0.5 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal or vertical
• itemHorizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Sets staticImage / imageType and text alignment relative to the carousel on the X axis.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is center
  • This property can only be used when type is vertical or verticalWheel
• itemVerticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Sets staticImage / imageType and text alignment relative to the carousel on the Y axis. Make sure to set this to center if you've enabled itemAxisHorizontal
  • Valid values are top, center or bottom
  • Default is center
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal, horizontalWheel or verticalWheel
• wheelHorizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Sets the horizontal alignment of the actual carousel inside the overall element area. Note that the positioning is calculated before itemAxisHorizontal is applied.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is center
  • This property can only be used when type is verticalWheel
• wheelVerticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Sets the vertical alignment of the actual carousel inside the overall element area.
  • Valid values are top, center or bottom
  • Default is center
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontalWheel
• horizontalOffset - type: FLOAT
  • Offsets the carousel horizontally inside its designated area, as defined by the size property. The value of this property is relative to the width of the carousel (with 1 being equivalent to its entire width). This property can for example be used to add a margin if using itemHorizontalAlignment or to offset the selected item of horizontal carousels to a non-centered position.
  • Minimum value is -1.0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0
• verticalOffset - type: FLOAT
  • Offsets the carousel vertically inside its designated area, as defined by the size property. The value of this property is relative to the height of the carousel (with 1 being equivalent to its entire height). This can be used to add a margin if using itemVerticalAlignment but is even more useful if reflections has been set as it allows the control of how much of the reflections to display by relocating the carousel inside its clipping area. It can also be used to offset the selected item of vertical carousels to a non-centered position.
  • Minimum value is -1.0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0
• reflections - type: BOOLEAN
  • Enables reflections beneath the carousel items. It's probably a good idea to combine this with the verticalOffset property to define how much of the reflections should be visible.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal
• reflectionsOpacity - type: FLOAT
  • Defines the base opacity for the reflections.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0.5
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal
• reflectionsFalloff - type: FLOAT
  • Defines the reflections opacity falloff, starting from the item's base opacity and ending at complete transparency. The value is set relative to the item height, so 1 will fade the bottom of the item to full transparency, 2 will fade to full transparency at half the item height and 0.5 will place the full transparency point at twice the item height.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 1
  • This property can only be used when type is horizontal
• unfocusedItemOpacity - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the opacity for all items except the currently selected entry.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0.5
• unfocusedItemSaturation - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the saturation for all items except the currently selected entry. This property takes precedence over imageSaturation if that has also been defined.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• unfocusedItemDimming - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the dimming for all items except the currently selected entry.
  • Minimum value is 0 (pure black) and maximum value is 1 (no adjustment)
  • Default is 1
• fastScrolling - type: BOOLEAN
  • Normally the carousel scrolls at a constant and somehow slow pace, but via this property it's possible to introduce faster scrolling with an additional higher scrolling tier similar to the gamelist textlist (although slightly slower than that). This requires that the carousel has three or more entries, otherwise the highest scrolling tier will never be triggered. Be aware of possible performance implications when enabling this property as images have to be streamed at a higher speed which may introduce stuttering on slower machines.
  • Default is false
• color - type: COLOR
  • Color of the carousel background panel. Setting a value of 00000000 makes the background panel transparent.
  • Default is FFFFFFD8
• colorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Setting this to something other than what is defined for color creates a color gradient on the background panel.
  • Default is the same value as color
• gradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both color and colorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• text - type: STRING
  • A string literal to display if there is no staticImage or defaultImage property defined and if no image is found.
  • Default is the full system name.
  • This property can only be used in the system view as for the gamelist view the game name is always used as fallback.
• textRelativeScale - type: FLOAT.
  • This property makes it possible to size the text relative to the overall item size. If using this and also defining a text background color using textBackgroundColor or textSelectedBackgroundColor then this color will still fill the entire item size.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• textColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is 000000FF
• textBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is FFFFFF00
• textSelectedColor - type: COLOR
  • Sets the text color for the currently selected item.
  • Default is the same value as textColor
• textSelectedBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Sets the text background color for the currently selected item.
  • Default is the same value as textBackgroundColor
• textHorizontalScrolling - type: BOOLEAN
  • If this property is enabled then text that does not fit within the item width will scroll horizontally. If the property is disabled, the text will instead be truncated with an ellipsis (...). Using this property will automatically convert all line breaks to spaces so that a single line of text is always displayed.
  • Default is false
• textHorizontalScrollSpeed - type: FLOAT
  • A relative speed for how fast to scroll the text.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 1
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollDelay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before scrolling starts.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 3
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollGap - type: FLOAT
  • As the scrolling text is looped, a second copy is rendered after the first one. This property defines a relative gap value to control the distance between these two text instances.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 5
  • Default is 1.5
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• fontPath - type: PATH
  • Path to a TrueType font (.ttf) used as fallback if there is no staticImage / imageType image defined or found, and if defaultImage has not been defined.
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area. This property value is effectively multiplied by the itemScale value for the currently selected item (but if this property is omitted then the default value will not get multiplied by itemScale).
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size.
  • Default is 0.085
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for all entries.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is none (original letter case is retained).
• letterCaseAutoCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for automatic collection entries (all games, favorites and last played) which have their names spelled in lowercase by default.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
  • This property can only be used in the system view and it will take precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
• letterCaseCustomCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for custom collections entries. Be cautious about using this property as it will override whatever lettercase the user has defined for their custom collection names. This property takes precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
• lineSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the space between lines (as a multiple of the font height). Due to the imprecise nature of typefaces where certain glyphs (characters) may exceed the requested font size, it's recommended to keep this value at around 1.1 or higher. This way overlapping glyphs or characters being cut off at the top or bottom will be prevented.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.5
• systemNameSuffix - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to add the system name in square brackets after the game name when inside a collection system (automatic as well as custom collections). This assumes a fallback to text is made.
  • Default is true
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view.
• letterCaseSystemNameSuffix - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for the system name suffix.
  • Valid values are uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is uppercase
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view and only when systemNameSuffix is true
• fadeAbovePrimary - type: BOOLEAN
  • When using fade transitions, all elements in the system view with a zIndex value higher than the carousel are by default still rendered during transitions. If this property is enabled then all such elements will instead be faded out. Note that elements below the carousel will be dimmed to black and elements above the carousel will be faded to transparent.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used in the system view.
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 50

grid

An X*Y grid for navigating and selecting games or systems using the left/right and up/down buttons. The layout including the amount of columns and rows is automatically calculated based on the relevant property values.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• single

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Default is 0 0.1
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.05 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 1 0.8
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the grid exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• staticImage - type: PATH
  • Path to a static image file. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
  • This property can only be used in the system view.
• imageType - type: STRING
  • This displays a game image of a certain media type, and can only be used in the gamelist view. Optionally two types can be defined, in which case the entries should be delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). The media will be searched for in the order that the entries have been defined, and any superfluous entries will be ignored. Note that defining two entries can lead to quite a performance penalty so in general it's recommended to define a single value and instead use defaultImage as a fallback in case no image is found.
  • Valid values:
  • marquee - This will look for a marquee (wheel) image.
  • cover - This will look for a box front cover image.
  • backcover - This will look for a box back cover image.
  • 3dbox - This will look for a 3D box image.
  • physicalmedia - This will look for a physical media image.
  • screenshot - This will look for a screenshot image.
  • titlescreen - This will look for a title screen image.
  • miximage - This will look for a miximage.
  • fanart - This will look for a fan art image.
  • none - No image will be used, instead the game name will be displayed as text. Has no effect if defaultImage has been defined.
  • Default is marquee
• defaultImage - type: PATH
  • Path to the default image file which will be displayed if the image defined via the staticImage or imageType property is not found. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• defaultFolderImage - type: PATH
  • Path to the default image file which will be displayed if the image defined via the staticImage or imageType property is not found and the item is a folder. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
  • Default is the same value as defaultImage
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view.
• itemSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Size of the overall item prior to multiplication by the itemScale value, i.e. the size of all unselected items. If one of the axis is defined as -1 then it will be set to the same pixel value as the other axis, resulting in a perfectly square item. If not using this approach then both axes need to be defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.05 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.15 0.25
• itemScale - type: FLOAT.
  • Selected overall item is scaled by the value defined by this property.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 1.05
• itemSpacing - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The horizontal and vertical space between items. This value is added to the unscaled item size, i.e. itemSize before it's been multiplied by itemScale. This means that if an axis is set to 0 then unscaled items will be perfectly adjacent to each other on that axis but if itemScale has been set to higher than 1 then the currently selected item will overlap adjacent items. If this property is omitted then spacing will be automatically calculated so that no overlaps occur during scaling. However you'd normally want to define and adjust this property for an optimal layout. If one of the axis is defined as -1 then it will be set to the same pixel value as the other axis. Note that all spacing calculations are based on the value defined by itemSize which may or may not be the same as the actual image sizes, depending on their aspect ratios and if the imageFit property is used.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 0.1
• scaleInwards - type: BOOLEAN
  • Enabling this property will scale items along the outer grid boundaries towards the center of the grid. This means that it's possible to fill the entire screen width or height while still allowing scaling to take place.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used if itemScale is higher than 1
• fractionalRows - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to allow rendering of fractional rows of items. If set to false then the effective area of the overall element size will be snapped to the item height multiplied by itemScale. Note that if setting itemScale too high relative to the itemSpacing Y axis value then fractional rows may still be rendered even if the fractionalRows property is set to false.
  • Default is false
• itemTransitions - type: STRING
  • How to render item transitions when navigating the grid. By default a scaling and opacity fade animation will be played when moving between items (assuming itemScale and unfocusedItemOpacity have not been set to 1) but if this property is set to instant then transitions will be immediate.
  • Valid values are animate or instant
  • Default is animate
• rowTransitions - type: STRING
  • How to render row transitions when navigating the grid. By default a sliding animation will be rendered when moving between rows but if this property is set to instant then transitions will be immediate. If setting this to instant it's recommended to do the same for itemTransitions or otherwise the animations will look a bit ugly.
  • Valid values are animate or instant
  • Default is animate
• unfocusedItemOpacity - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the opacity for all items except the currently selected entry.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• unfocusedItemSaturation - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the saturation for all items except the currently selected entry. This property takes precedence over imageSaturation if that has also been defined.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• unfocusedItemDimming - type: FLOAT
  • Sets the dimming for all items except the currently selected entry.
  • Minimum value is 0 (pure black) and maximum value is 1 (no adjustment)
  • Default is 1
• imageFit - type: STRING
  • Controls how to fit the image within the aspect ratio defined by itemSize. To scale and preserve the original aspect ratio, set the value to contain, to stretch/squash the image to fill the entire area set it to fill and to crop the image to fill the entire area set it to cover
  • Valid values are contain, fill or cover
  • Default is contain
• imageInterpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling images. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image smoother. This property has limited effect on scalable vector graphics (SVG) images.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is linear
• imageRelativeScale - type: FLOAT.
  • This property makes it possible to size the image defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage relative to the overall item size. This is mostly useful when combined with the backgroundImage and selectorImage properties.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• imageCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the images defined by staticImage, imageType and defaultImage. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. The size is calculated internally with itemScale and imageRelativeScale set to 1. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• imageColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the images defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the images by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after imageSaturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• imageColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as imageColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as imageColor
• imageGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both imageColor and imageColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• imageSelectedColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the currently selected item's image as defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the images by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after imageSaturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is the same value as imageColor
• imageSelectedColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as imageSelectedColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as imageSelectedColor
• imageSelectedGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both imageSelectedColor and imageSelectedColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• imageBrightness - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the relative level of brightness. This is intended primarily for fine adjustments, for example if a color shift has been applied which may have lowered the overall brightness of the image.
  • Minimum value is -2 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0 (no brightness adjustments applied)
• imageSaturation - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of color saturation.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• backgroundImage - type: PATH
  • Path to an optional background image file which will be displayed behind the image defined by staticImage, imageType or defaultImage. The aspect ratio for this image will not be preserved, it will be stretched or squashed to the aspect ratio set by itemSize. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• backgroundRelativeScale - type: FLOAT.
  • This property makes it possible to size the background relative to the overall item size. This is mostly useful when combined with the selectorImage property.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• backgroundCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the image defined by backgroundImage. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. The size is calculated internally with itemScale and backgroundRelativeScale set to 1. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• backgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift or draws a colored rectangle. If an image has been defined using the backgroundImage property then each pixel of that image is multiplied by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. If no background image has been defined, then a colored rectangle will be drawn instead.
• backgroundColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as backgroundColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color gradient.
  • Default is the same value as backgroundColor
• backgroundGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both backgroundColor and backgroundColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• selectorImage - type: PATH
  • Path to an optional selector image file which will be displayed for the currently selected item. The aspect ratio for this image will not be preserved, it will be stretched or squashed to the aspect ratio set by itemSize. Most common extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• selectorRelativeScale - type: FLOAT.
  • This property makes it possible to size the selector relative to the overall item size. This is mostly useful when combined with the backgroundImage property.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• selectorLayer - type: STRING
  • Defines at what layer position to place the selector. It can either be placed at the bottom, in the middle between the background and image/text or on top.
  • Valid values are bottom, middle or top
  • Default is top
• selectorCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the image defined by backgroundImage. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. The size is calculated internally with itemScale and selectorRelativeScale set to 1. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• selectorColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift or draws a colored rectangle. If an image has been defined using the selectorImage property then each pixel of that image is multiplied by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. If no selector image has been defined, then a colored rectangle will be drawn instead.
• selectorColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as selectorColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color gradient.
  • Default is the same value as selectorColor
• selectorGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both selectorColor and selectorColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• text - type: STRING
  • A string literal to display if there is no staticImage or defaultImage property defined or if no image is found.
  • Default is the full system name.
  • This property can only be used in the system view as for the gamelist view the game name is always used as fallback.
• textRelativeScale - type: FLOAT.
  • This property makes it possible to size the text relative to the overall item size.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• textColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is 000000FF
• textBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is FFFFFF00
• textSelectedColor - type: COLOR
  • Sets the text color for the currently selected item.
  • Default is the same value as textColor
• textSelectedBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Sets the text background color for the currently selected item.
  • Default is the same value as textBackgroundColor
• textHorizontalScrolling - type: BOOLEAN
  • If this property is enabled then text that does not fit within the item width will scroll horizontally. If the property is disabled, the text will instead be truncated with an ellipsis (...). Using this property will automatically convert all line breaks to spaces so that a single line of text is always displayed.
  • Default is false
• textHorizontalScrollSpeed - type: FLOAT
  • A relative speed for how fast to scroll the text.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 1
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollDelay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before scrolling starts.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 3
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollGap - type: FLOAT
  • As the scrolling text is looped, a second copy is rendered after the first one. This property defines a relative gap value to control the distance between these two text instances.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 5
  • Default is 1.5
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• fontPath - type: PATH
  • Path to a TrueType font (.ttf) used as fallback if there is no staticImage / imageType image defined or found, and if defaultImage has not been defined.
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size.
  • Default is 0.045
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for all entries.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is none (original letter case is retained).
• letterCaseAutoCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for automatic collection entries (all games, favorites and last played) which have their names spelled in lowercase by default.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
  • This property can only be used in the system view and it will take precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
• letterCaseCustomCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for custom collections entries. Be cautious about using this property as it will override whatever lettercase the user has defined for their custom collection names. This property takes precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
• lineSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the space between lines (as a multiple of the font height). Due to the imprecise nature of typefaces where certain glyphs (characters) may exceed the requested font size, it's recommended to keep this value at around 1.1 or higher. This way overlapping glyphs or characters being cut off at the top or bottom will be prevented.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.5
• systemNameSuffix - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to add the system name in square brackets after the game name when inside a collection system (automatic as well as custom collections). This assumes a fallback to text is made.
  • Default is true
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view.
• letterCaseSystemNameSuffix - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for the system name suffix.
  • Valid values are uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is uppercase
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view and only when systemNameSuffix is true
• fadeAbovePrimary - type: BOOLEAN
  • When using fade transitions, all elements in the system view with a zIndex value higher than the grid are by default still rendered during transitions. If this property is enabled then all such elements will instead be faded out. Note that elements below the grid will be dimmed to black and elements above the grid will be faded to transparent.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used in the system view.
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 50

textlist

A text list for navigating and selecting games or systems.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• single

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Default is 0 0.1
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.05 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 1 0.8
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the textlist exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• selectorHeight - type: FLOAT
  • Height of the selector bar. This is expanded downwards so you'll probably want to adjust its position using selectorVerticalOffset if making use of this property.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1.5 times the value defined by fontSize
• selectorHorizontalOffset - type: FLOAT
  • Allows moving of the selector bar left or right from its calculated position. Useful for fine tuning the selector bar position relative to the text.
  • Minimum value is -1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0
• selectorVerticalOffset - type: FLOAT
  • Allows moving of the selector bar up or down from its calculated position. Useful for fine tuning the selector bar position relative to the text.
  • Minimum value is -1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0
• selectorColor - type: COLOR
  • Color of the selector bar.
  • Default is 333333FF
• selectorColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Setting this to something other than what is defined for selectorColor creates a color gradient.
  • Default is 333333FF
• selectorGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color gradient if both selectorColor and selectorColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• selectorImagePath - type: PATH
  • Path to image to render in place of the selector bar.
• selectorImageTile - type: BOOLEAN
  • If true, the selector image will be tiled instead of stretched to fit its size.
  • Default is false
• primaryColor - type: COLOR
  • Color of the primary entry type. For the gamelist view this means file entries and for the system view it means system entries.
  • Default is 0000FFFF
• secondaryColor - type: COLOR
  • Color of the secondary entry type. For the gamelist view this means folder entries and for the system view this property is not used.
  • Default is 00FF00FF
• selectedColor - type: COLOR
  • Color of the highlighted entry for the primary entry type.
  • Default is the same value as primaryColor
• selectedSecondaryColor - type: COLOR
  • Color of the highlighted entry for the secondary entry type.
  • Default is the same value as selectedColor
• selectedBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Background color of the highlighted entry for the primary entry type. This follows the sizing of the selector bar and is expanded downwards so you'll probably want to adjust its position using selectorVerticalOffset if you have defined a custom selector height using selectorHeight
  • Default is 00000000
• selectedSecondaryBackgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Background color of the highlighted entry for the secondary entry type. This follows the sizing of the selector bar and is expanded downwards so you'll probably want to adjust its position using selectorVerticalOffset if you have defined a custom selector height using selectorHeight
  • Default is the same value as selectedBackgroundColor
• textHorizontalScrolling - type: BOOLEAN
  • If this property is enabled then text that does not fit within the element width (minus margins) will scroll horizontally. If the property is disabled, the text will instead be truncated with an ellipsis (...). Using this property will automatically convert all line breaks to spaces so that a single line of text is always displayed.
  • Valid values are vertical or horizontal
  • Default is true
• textHorizontalScrollSpeed - type: FLOAT
  • A relative speed for how fast to scroll the text.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 1
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollDelay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before scrolling starts.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 3
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• textHorizontalScrollGap - type: FLOAT
  • As the scrolling text is looped, a second copy is rendered after the first one. This property defines a relative gap value to control the distance between these two text instances.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 5
  • Default is 1.5
  • This property can only be used when textHorizontalScrolling has been set to true
• fontPath - type: PATH
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Default is 0.045
• horizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the X axis.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is left
• horizontalMargin - type: FLOAT
  • Horizontal offset for text from the alignment point. If horizontalAlignment is "left", offsets the text to the right. If horizontalAlignment is "right", offsets text to the left. No effect if horizontalAlignment is "center". Given as a percentage of the element's parent's width (same unit as size's X value).
  • Default is 0
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for all entries.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is none (original letter case is retained).
• letterCaseAutoCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for automatic collection entries (all games, favorites and last played) which have their names spelled in lowercase by default.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
  • This property can only be used in the system view and it will take precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
• letterCaseCustomCollections - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case specifically for custom collections entries. Be cautious about using this property as it will override whatever lettercase the user has defined for their custom collection names. This property takes precedence over letterCase if that has also been defined.
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is the same value as letterCase
• lineSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the space between lines. This works a bit different for the textlist element compared to all other elements. In all other instances the line spacing is calculated in relation to the rasterized reference 'S' character. This will however not work for the textlist as there are no guarantees which sizes the rasterized characters may end up as. The nature of font rendering is simply not that static with glyphs being able to have any shape and size and linting/grid alignment being applied during font rasterization. Using the rasterized glyph size would be too imprecise and the spacing would be inconsistent across different display resolutions, possibly leading to a different number of textlist rows. Therefore this specific lineSpacing property is based on the defined font size regardless of what's actually being rasterized. This may seem confusing as some fonts greatly exceed the requested size, but if you simply adjust the spacing until the textlist looks correct it will look almost identical regardless of what display resolution is used.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.5
• indicators - type: STRING
  • Controls the style of the indicators which get displayed when an entry is a favorite, a folder or a folderlink. If set to none it's strongly recommended to enable the corresponding badges as it would otherwise be very confusing for the user as there would be no way to discern this important information about each entry. The symbols value uses Font Awesome graphics to prefix the game name and ascii uses plain ASCII characters instead, as provided by the selected font. The latter sometimes looks better on "lo-fi" themes using pixelated fonts and similar. When using ASCII characters, favorites are marked as * folders as # and folderlinks as >
  • Valid values are none, ascii and symbols
  • Default is symbols
• collectionIndicators - type: STRING
  • Controls the style of the indicators which get displayed when editing a custom collection. This property can't be disabled as it's crucial for getting a visual overview when editing collections. When set to ascii, the indicator is displayed as a !
  • Valid values are ascii and symbols
  • Default is symbols
• systemNameSuffix - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to add the system name in square brackets after the game name when inside a collection system (automatic as well as custom collections).
  • Default is true
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view.
• letterCaseSystemNameSuffix - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for the system name suffix.
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view and only when systemNameSuffix is true
  • Valid values are uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is uppercase
• fadeAbovePrimary - type: BOOLEAN
  • When using fade transitions, all elements in the system view with a zIndex value higher than the textlist are by default still rendered during transitions. If this property is enabled then all such elements will instead be faded out. Note that elements below the textlist will be dimmed to black and elements above the textlist will be faded to transparent.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used in the system view.
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 50

Secondary elements

Elements from this group can occur an unlimited number of times and they take care of displaying the bulk of the theme configuration such as text, images, videos, animations etc.

image

Displays a raster image or a scalable vector graphics (SVG) image.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • If only one axis is specified (and the other is zero), then the other axis will be automatically calculated in accordance with the image's aspect ratio. Setting both axes to 0 is an error and the size will be clamped to 0.001 0.001 in this case. This property takes precedence over maxSize and cropSize if either or both of those have also been defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.001 and maximum value per axis is 3. If specifying a value outside the allowed range then no attempt will be made to preserve the aspect ratio.
• maxSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The image will be resized as large as possible so that it fits within this size while maintaining its aspect ratio. Use this instead of size when you don't know what kind of image you're using so it doesn't get grossly oversized on one axis. This property takes precedence over cropSize if that has also been defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.001 and maximum value per axis is 3
• cropSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The image will be resized and cropped to the exact size defined by this property while maintaining its aspect ratio. The crop is always applied centered.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.001 and maximum value per axis is 3
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the image should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the image will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• flipHorizontal - type: BOOLEAN
  • Flips the image texture horizontally.
  • Default is false
• flipVertical - type: BOOLEAN
  • Flips the image texture vertically.
  • Default is false
• path - type: PATH
  • Explicit path to an image file. Most common extensions are supported (including .jpg, .png, and unanimated .gif). If imageType is also defined then this will take precedence as these two properties are not intended to be used together. If you need a fallback image in case of missing game media, use the default property instead.
• gameOverridePath - type: PATH
  • Defines a directory where per-game overrides for the static image defined by the path property are kept. Supported file extensions are .jpg, .png, .gif (unanimated) and .svg and they are searched for in this precise order. How this works is that the basename of the game file will be used to check for an image file in the defined path in a very similar fashion as to how downloaded media is searched. For example if gameOverridePath has been set to ./imageOverrides a match for the game file ~/ROMs/arcade/aburner.zip would be ./imageOverrides/arcade/aburner.png (or any of the other supported file extensions). In this case the image defined by the path property will be replaced for this specific game. Note that only static images can be overridden, not scraped media.
  • This property can only be used in the gamelist view and only if imageType is undefined.
• default - type: PATH
  • Path to a default image file. This image will be displayed when the selected game does not have an image of the type(s) defined by imageType or if the static image defined by path is not found. It's also applied to any custom collection that does not contain any games when browsing the grouped custom collections system.
• imageType - type: STRING
  • This displays a game image of a certain media type. Multiple types can be defined, in which case the entries should be delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). The media will be searched for in the order that the entries have been defined. If no image is found, then the space will be left blank unless the default property has been set. To use this property from the system view, you will first need to add a gameselector element. Defining duplicate values is considered an error and will result in the property getting ignored.
  • Valid values:
  • image - This will look for a miximage, and if that is not found screenshot is tried next, then titlescreen and finally cover. This is just a convenient shortcut and it's equivalent to explicitly defining miximage, screenshot, titlescreen, cover
  • miximage - This will look for a miximage.
  • marquee - This will look for a marquee (wheel) image.
  • screenshot - This will look for a screenshot image.
  • titlescreen - This will look for a title screen image.
  • cover - This will look for a box front cover image.
  • backcover - This will look for a box back cover image.
  • 3dbox - This will look for a 3D box image.
  • physicalmedia - This will look for a physical media image.
  • fanart - This will look for a fan art image.
• metadataElement - type: BOOLEAN
  • By default game metadata and media are faded out during gamelist fast-scrolling and text metadata fields, ratings and badges are hidden when enabling the Hide metadata fields setting for a game entry. Using this property it's possible to explicitly define additional image elements that should be treated as if they were game media files. This is for example useful for hiding and fading out image elements that are used as indicator icons for the various metadata types like genre, publisher, players etc. It's however not possible to do the opposite, i.e. to disable this functionality for the default game media types as that would break basic application behavior.
  • Default is false
• gameselector - type: STRING
  • If more than one gameselector element has been defined, this property makes it possible to state which one to use. If multiple gameselector elements have been defined and this property is missing then the first entry will be chosen and a warning message will be logged. If only a single gameselector has been defined, this property is ignored. The value of this property must match the name attribute value of the gameselector element. This property is only needed for the system view and only if the imageType property is utilized.
• gameselectorEntry - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • This optional property which is only available in the system view makes it possible to select which gameselector entry to use to populate the imageType property. This assumes that a gameCount property for the gameselector element has been defined with a value higher than 1. By defining multiple image elements with different values for the gameselectorEntry property it's possible to display multiple game entries at the same time, for example listing a couple of games that were last played, or a selection of random games. If the requested entry does not exist (for instance if gameCount has been set to 5 and gameselectorEntry has been set to 4 but the system only contains 3 games), then the overall element will not get rendered. Note that the first entry is defined as 0, the second entry as 1 etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is the value of the gameselector element property gameCount minus 1. If a value outside this range is defined, then it will be automatically clamped to a valid value.
  • Default is 0
• tile - type: BOOLEAN
  • If true, the image will be tiled instead of stretched to fit its size. Useful for backgrounds. Do not combine with the maxSize or cropSize properties, instead always use size when tiling.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used when path has been set.
• tileSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Size of the individual images making up the tile as opposed to the overall size for the element which is defined by the size property. If only one axis is specified (and the other is zero), then the other axis will be automatically calculated in accordance with the image's aspect ratio. Setting both axes to 0 is an error and tiling will be disabled in this case. If this property is omitted, then the size will be set to the actual image dimensions. For SVG images this means whatever canvas size has been defined inside the file.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1.
• tileHorizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • If the images making up the tiled texture do not match precisely with the edges of the overall element, then this property can be used to define the alignment on the horizontal axis.
  • Valid values are left or right
  • Default is left
• tileVerticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • If the images making up the tiled texture do not match precisely with the edges of the overall element, then this property can be used to define the alignment on the vertical axis.
  • Valid values are top or bottom
  • Default is bottom
• interpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating images. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image smoother. This property has limited effect on scalable vector graphics (SVG) images unless rotation is applied.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is nearest if rotation is 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees, otherwise it's linear
• cornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the image. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• color - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the image by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after saturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• colorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as color but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as color
• gradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both color and colorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• scrollFadeIn - type: BOOLEAN
  • If enabled, a short fade-in animation will be applied when scrolling through games in the gamelist view.
  • Default is false
• brightness - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the relative level of brightness. This is intended primarily for fine adjustments, for example if a color shift has been applied which may have lowered the overall brightness of the image.
  • Minimum value is -2 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0 (no brightness adjustments applied)
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• saturation - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of color saturation.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 30

video

Plays a video and provides support for displaying a static image for a defined time period before starting the video player. Although an unlimited number of videos could in theory be defined per view it's recommended to keep it at a single instance as playing videos takes a lot of CPU resources. But if still going for multiple videos, make sure to use the audio property to disable audio on all but one video as ES-DE currently has no audio mixing capabilities so the sound would not play correctly. To use videos in the system view, you either need to set a static video using the path property, or you need to create a gameselector element so game videos can be used.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited (but recommended to keep at a single instance)

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • If only one axis is specified (and the other is zero), then the other axis will be automatically calculated in accordance with the static image's aspect ratio and the video's aspect ratio. Setting both axes to 0 is an error and the size will be clamped to 0.01 0.01 in this case. This property takes precedence over maxSize and cropSize if either or both of those have also been defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value per axis is 2. If specifying a value outside the allowed range then no attempt will be made to preserve the aspect ratio.
• maxSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The static image and video will be resized as large as possible so that they fit within this size while maintaining their aspect ratios. Use this instead of size when you don't know what kind of video you're using so it doesn't get grossly oversized on one axis. This property takes precedence over cropSize if that has also been defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value per axis is 2
• cropSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The static image and video will be resized and cropped to the exact size defined by this property while maintaining their aspect ratios. The crop is always applied centered. Can't be combined with the scanlines property.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value per axis is 2
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the static image and video should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the static image and video will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• path - type: PATH
  • Path to a video file. Setting a value for this property will make the video static, i.e. any imageType, gameselector and default properties will be ignored. This is true even if the property does not point to an existing video file. As well, when defining this for the gamelist view the video will not immediately restart when navigating between games.
• default - type: PATH
  • Path to a default video file. The default video will be played when the selected game does not have a video. This property is also applied to any custom collection that does not contain any games when browsing the grouped custom collections system. Takes precedence over defaultImage.
• defaultImage - type: PATH
  • Path to a default image file. If the imageType property has a value set, then the default image will be displayed if the selected game does not have an image for any of the defined types. If imageType is not defined, then the default image will be shown if there is no video file found and if default has not been set. This property is also applied to any custom collection that does not contain any games when browsing the grouped custom collections system.
• imageType - type: STRING
  • This displays a game image of a certain media type, either before the video starts to play if delay is set to a non-zero value, or if there is no video file found and default has not been defined. Multiple types can be defined, in which case the entries should be delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). The media will be searched for in the order that the entries have been defined. If no image is found, then the space will be left blank unless either the default or defaultImage properties have been set. To use this property from the system view, you will first need to add a gameselector element. If delay is set to zero, then this property has no effect. Defining duplicate values is considered an error and will result in the property getting ignored.
  • Valid values:
  • image - This will look for a miximage, and if that is not found screenshot is tried next, then titlescreen and finally cover. This is just a convenient shortcut and it's equivalent to explicitly defining miximage, screenshot, titlescreen, cover
  • miximage - This will look for a miximage.
  • marquee - This will look for a marquee (wheel) image.
  • screenshot - This will look for a screenshot image.
  • titlescreen - This will look for a title screen image.
  • cover - This will look for a box front cover image.
  • backcover - This will look for a box back cover image.
  • 3dbox - This will look for a 3D box image.
  • physicalmedia - This will look for a physical media image.
  • fanart - This will look for a fan art image.
• metadataElement - type: BOOLEAN
  • By default game metadata and media are faded out during gamelist fast-scrolling and text metadata fields, ratings and badges are hidden when enabling the Hide metadata fields setting for a game entry. Using this property it's possible to explicitly define static video elements that should be treated as if they were game media files. This property is ignored if path is not set.
  • Default is false
• gameselector - type: STRING
  • If more than one gameselector element has been defined, this property makes it possible to state which one to use. If multiple gameselector elements have been defined and this property is missing then the first entry will be chosen and a warning message will be logged. If only a single gameselector has been defined, this property is ignored. The value of this property must match the name attribute value of the gameselector element.
• gameselectorEntry - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • This optional property which is only available in the system view makes it possible to select which gameselector entry to use to populate the imageType property and to use for playing the video stream. This assumes that a gameCount property for the gameselector element has been defined with a value higher than 1. By defining multiple video elements with different values for the gameselectorEntry property it's possible to display multiple game entries at the same time, for example listing a couple of games that were last played, or a selection of random games. If the requested entry does not exist (for instance if gameCount has been set to 5 and gameselectorEntry has been set to 4 but the system only contains 3 games), then the overall element will not get rendered. Note that the first entry is defined as 0, the second entry as 1 etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is the value of the gameselector element property gameCount minus 1. If a value outside this range is defined, then it will be automatically clamped to a valid value.
  • Default is 0
• iterationCount - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Number of times to play the video until next time it's reset. Video resets are triggered by various events like navigation between systems and gamelists, reloading of gamelists, opening of menus etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 0 (infinite amount of times)
• onIterationsDone - type: STRING
  • What to do after playing the video the number of times defined by iterationCount
  • nothing - Render nothing.
  • image - Render the image defined by imageType or defaultImage which means this value can't be used if path has been set
  • Default is nothing
  • This property can only be used when iterationCount has a non-zero value.
• audio - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to enable or disable audio playback for the video. For static videos in the gamelist view it's strongly recommended to set this to false if there is also a separate video element playing game videos.
  • Default is true
• interpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating static images and videos. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image and video smoother.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is nearest if rotation is 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees, otherwise it's linear
• imageCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the static image. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the image size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of image dimensions. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. It means that setting this property sufficiently high will turn a perfectly square image into a perfectly round one.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• videoCornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the video stream. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the video size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of video dimensions. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height. You probably want to disable pillarboxes if using this property.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• color - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to both the static image and video by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image or video with FF0000 applied would become completely red. It's however not recommended to use this property to control opacity as this will not look right for actual videos, instead use the opacity property if you want to render this element as semi-transparent. The color property is applied after saturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• colorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as color but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as color
• gradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both color and colorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• pillarboxes - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to render black pillarboxes (and to a lesses extent letterboxes) for videos with aspect ratios where this is applicable. This is for instance useful for arcade game videos in vertical orientation.
  • Default is true
• pillarboxThreshold - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Normally it doesn't look very good to add really narrow pillarboxes or letterboxes, so by default they are skipped if the actual video size is not reaching a threshold value as compared to the overall defined video area size. By modifying this property it's possible to control that threshold, as for some theme designs it will look better with the consistency of always rendering the pillarboxes/letterboxes even if they are narrow. To clarify, the default X axis value of 0.85 means that if the video width is 85% or less as compared to the X axis defined by the size property, then pillarboxes will be rendered. So setting the pillarboxThreshold value to 1 1 will always apply pillarboxes/letterboxes regardless of the video file dimension.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.2 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.85 0.90
• scanlines - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to use a shader to render scanlines. Can't be combined with the cropSize property.
  • Default is false
• delay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before video will start playing. During the delay period the game image defined via the imageType property will be displayed. If that property is not set, then the delay property will be ignored.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 15
  • Default is 1.5
• fadeInTime - type: FLOAT
  • Time in seconds to fade in the video from pure black. This is completely unrelated to the scrollFadeIn property. Note that if this is set to zero it may seem as if the property doesn't work correctly as many ScreenScraper videos have a fade-in baked into the actual video stream. Setting this property to lower than 0.3 seconds or so is generally a bad idea for videos that don't have a fade-in baked in as transitions from the static image will then look like a bad jump cut.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 8
  • Default is 1
• scrollFadeIn - type: BOOLEAN
  • If enabled, a short fade-in animation will be applied when scrolling through games in the gamelist view.
  • Default is false
• brightness - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the relative level of brightness. This affects both the static image and the video stream. This is intended primarily for fine adjustments, for example if a color shift has been applied which may have lowered the overall brightness of the image/video.
  • Minimum value is -2 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0 (no brightness adjustments applied)
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. This affects both the static image and the video stream. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• saturation - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of color saturation. This affects both the static image and the video stream.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 30

animation

GIF and Lottie (vector graphics) animations. The animation type is automatically selected based on the file extension with .gif for GIF animations and .json for Lottie animations. Note that Lottie animations take a lot of memory and CPU resources if scaled up to large sizes so it's adviced to not add too many of these to the same view and to not make them too large. GIF animations on the other hand are not as demanding except if they're really long and/or of high resolution.

Also be aware that the rlottie library used by ES-DE is not compatible with all Lottie animations out there so you may need to convert them to a format that rlottie can read, or use some other animations altogether.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • If only one axis is specified (and the other is zero), then the other will be automatically calculated in accordance with the animation's aspect ratio. Note that this is sometimes not entirely accurate as some animations contain invalid size information. Setting both axes to 0 is an error and the size will be clamped to 0.01 0.01 in this case. This property takes precedence over maxSize if both properties are defined.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value per axis is 1. If specifying a value outside the allowed range then no attempt will be made to preserve the aspect ratio.
• maxSize - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The animation will be resized as large as possible so that it fits within this size while maintaining its aspect ratio. Note that this is sometimes not entirely accurate as some animations contain invalid size information.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value per axis is 1
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the animation should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the animation will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• metadataElement - type: BOOLEAN
  • By default game metadata and media are faded out during gamelist fast-scrolling and text metadata fields, ratings and badges are hidden when enabling the Hide metadata fields setting for a game entry. Using this property it's possible to explicitly define animation elements that should be treated as if they were game media files. This is for example useful for hiding and fading out animations that are used as indicators for the various metadata types like genre, publisher, players etc.
  • Default is false
• path - type: PATH
  • Path to the animation file. Only .gif and .json extensions are supported.
• speed - type: FLOAT.
  • The relative speed at which to play the animation.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1
• direction - type: STRING
  • The direction that the animation should be played.
  • Valid values are normal (forwards), reverse (backwards), alternate (bouncing forwards/backwards) and alternateReverse (bouncing backwards/forwards, i.e. starting with playing backwards).
  • Default is normal
• iterationCount - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Number of times to play the animation until next time it's reset. Animation resets are triggered by various events like navigation between systems and gamelists, reloading of gamelists, opening of menus etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 0 (infinite amount of times)
• interpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating animations. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the animation smoother. This property has limited effect on Lottie animations unless rotation is applied.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is nearest if rotation is 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees, otherwise it's linear
• cornerRadius - type: FLOAT
  • Setting this property higher than zero applies rounded corners to the animation. The radius is a percentage of the screen width and not directly related to the animation size. This makes it possible to apply identically sized corners regardless of animation dimensions. Note that the maximum allowed value is quite arbitrary as the renderer will in practice limit the maximum roundness so it can never go beyond half the width or height.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.5
  • Default is 0 (corners are not rounded)
• color - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the animation by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white animation with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the animation by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel. This property is applied after saturation so by setting that property to 0 it's possible to colorize rather than color shift.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• colorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as color but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as color
• gradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both color and colorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• brightness - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the relative level of brightness. This is intended primarily for fine adjustments.
  • Minimum value is -2 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0 (no brightness adjustments applied)
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• saturation - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of color saturation.
  • Minimum value is 0 (grayscale) and maximum value is 1 (original file saturation).
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 35

badges

Displays graphical symbols representing a number of metadata fields for the currently selected game. It's strongly recommended to use the same image dimensions for all badges as varying aspect ratios will lead to alignment issues. For the controller images it's recommended to keep to the square canvas size used by the default bundled graphics as otherwise sizing and placement will be inconsistent (unless all controller graphic files are customized of course).

Supported views:

• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Possible combinations:
  • w h - Dimensions of the badges container. The badges will be scaled to fit within these dimensions.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.03 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.15 0.20
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the badges should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the image will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5.
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• horizontalAlignment - type: STRING.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
• direction - type: STRING
  • Controls the primary layout direction (line axis) for the badges. Lines will fill up in the specified direction.
  • Valid values are row or column
  • Default is row
• lines - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • The number of lines available.
  • Default is 3
• itemsPerLine - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Number of badges that fit on a line. When more badges are available a new line will be started.
  • Default is 4
• itemMargin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The horizontal and vertical margins between badges. If one of the axis is set to -1 then the margin of the other axis (in pixels) will be used, which makes it possible to get identical spacing between all items regardless of the screen aspect ratio.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 0.2
  • Default is 0.01 0.01.
• slots - type: STRING
  • The badge types that should be displayed. Specified as a list of strings delimited by commas or by whitespace characters (tabs, spaces or line breaks). The order in which they are defined will be followed when placing badges on screen. Available badges are:
  • collection - Will be shown when editing a custom collection and the current entry is part of that collection.
  • folder - Will be shown when the current entry is a folder. If a folder link has been setup, then a configurable link icon will overlay this badge.
  • favorite - Will be shown when the game is marked as favorite.
  • completed - Will be shown when the game is marked as completed.
  • kidgame - Will be shown when the game is marked as a kids game.
  • broken - Will be shown when the game is marked as broken.
  • controller - Will be shown and overlaid by the corresponding controller icon if a controller type has been selected for the game (using the metadata editor or via scraping).
  • altemulator - Will be shown when an alternative emulator is setup for the game.
  • manual - Will be shown when a PDF manual has been downloaded for the game.
  • all - Including this value will enable all badges. If some badges have been added already they will be shown in the order they were defined and the remaining ones will be added at the end, in the order listed above. Using the all value can be used as a way to future-proof the theme, because if additional badges are added in future ES-DE releases, no theme updates would be needed to accomodate them. Just make sure to include space for a few extra badges in the layout, and increase the lines and itemsPerLine accordingly.
• controllerPos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The position of the controller icon relative to the parent controller badge.
  • Minimum value per axis is -1 and maximum value per axis is 2
  • Default is 0.5 0.5 which centers the controller icon on the badge.
• controllerSize - type: FLOAT
  • The size of the controller icon relative to the parent controller badge.
  • Setting the value to 1 sizes the icon to the same width as the parent badge. The image aspect ratio is always maintained.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 2
  • Default is 0.5
• customBadgeIcon - type: PATH
  • A badge icon override. Specify the badge type in the attribute badge. The available badges are the ones listed above.
• customControllerIcon - type: PATH
  • A controller icon override. Specify the controller type in the attribute controller.
  • These are the available types:
  • gamepad_generic, gamepad_nintendo_nes, gamepad_nintendo_snes, gamepad_nintendo_64, gamepad_nintendo_gamecube, gamepad_playstation, gamepad_sega_master_system, gamepad_sega_md_3_buttons, gamepad_sega_md_6_buttons, gamepad_sega_dreamcast, gamepad_xbox, joystick_generic, joystick_arcade_no_buttons, joystick_arcade_no_buttons_twin, joystick_arcade_1_button, joystick_arcade_2_buttons, joystick_arcade_3_buttons, joystick_arcade_4_buttons, joystick_arcade_5_buttons, joystick_arcade_6_buttons, keyboard_generic, keyboard_and_mouse_generic, mouse_generic, mouse_amiga, lightgun_generic, lightgun_nintendo, steering_wheel_generic, flight_stick_generic, spinner_generic, trackball_generic, wii_remote_nintendo, wii_remote_and_nunchuk_nintendo, joycon_left_or_right_nintendo, joycon_pair_nintendo, xbox_kinect, unknown
• folderLinkPos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • The position of the folder link icon relative to the parent folder badge.
  • Minimum value per axis is -1 and maximum value per axis is 2
  • Default is 0.5 0.5 which centers the folder link icon on the badge.
• folderLinkSize - type: FLOAT
  • The size of the folder link icon relative to the parent folder badge.
  • Setting the value to 1 sizes the icon to the same width as the parent badge. The image aspect ratio is always maintained.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 0.5
• customFolderLinkIcon - type: PATH
  • Folder link icon override.
• badgeIconColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the badge icon by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• badgeIconColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as badgeIconColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as badgeIconColor
• badgeIconGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both badgeIconColor and badgeIconColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• controllerIconColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the controller icon by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• controllerIconColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as controllerIconColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as controllerIconColor
• controllerIconGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both controllerIconColor and controllerIconColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• folderLinkIconColor - type: COLOR
  • Applies a color shift to the folder link icon by multiplying each pixel's color by this color value. For example, an all-white image with FF0000 applied would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of the image by setting the value to for example FFFFFFAA. This keeps all pixels at their normal color and only affects the alpha channel.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF (no color shift applied)
• folderLinkIconColorEnd - type: COLOR
  • Works in the exact same way as folderLinkIconColor but can be set as the end color to apply a color shift gradient.
  • Default is the same value as folderLinkIconColor
• folderLinkIconGradientType - type: STRING
  • The direction to apply the color shift gradient if both folderLinkIconColor and folderLinkIconColorEnd have been defined.
  • Valid values are horizontal or vertical
  • Default is horizontal
• interpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating badge images. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image smoother. This property has limited effect on scalable vector graphics (SVG) images unless rotation is applied.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is nearest if rotation is 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees, otherwise it's linear
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 35

text

Displays text. This can be literal strings or values based on game metadata or system variables, as described below. It's also possible to place text inside a scrollable container which is for example useful for longer texts like game and system descriptions.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Possible combinations:
  • 0 0 - automatically size so text fits on one line (expanding horizontally).
  • w 0 - automatically wrap text so it doesn't go beyond w (expanding vertically).
  • w h - works like a "text box". If h is non-zero and h <= fontSize (implying it should be a single line of text), text that goes beyond w will be truncated with an ellipsis (...)
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the text should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise. Rotation is not possible if the container property has been set to true.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the text will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• text - type: STRING
  • A string literal to display.
• systemdata - type: STRING
  • This translates to some system data including values defined in es_systems.xml as well as some statistics.
  • This property can only be used in the system view and you can only define a single value per element.
  • Valid values:
  • name - Short system name as defined in es_systems.xml.
  • fullname - Full system name as defined in es_systems.xml.
  • gamecount - Number of games available for the system. Number of favorites is printed inside brackets if applicable.
  • gamecountGames - Number of games available for the system. Does not include the favorites count.
  • gamecountGamesNoText - Same as the above but with the text game or games omitted, i.e. only the number is shown.
  • gamecountFavorites - Number of favorite games for the system, may be blank if favorites is not applicable.
  • gamecountFavoritesNoText - Same as the above but with the text favorite or favorites omitted, i.e. only the number is shown.
• metadata - type: STRING
  • This translates to the metadata values that are available for the game. To use this property from the system view, you will first need to add a gameselector element. You can only define a single metadata value per text element.
  • Valid values:
  • name - Game name.
  • description - Game description. Should be combined with the container property in most cases.
  • rating - The numerical representation of the game rating, for example 3 or 4.5
  • developer - Developer.
  • publisher - Publisher.
  • genre - Genre.
  • players - The number of players.
  • favorite - Whether the game is a favorite. Will be printed as either yes or no
  • completed - Whether the game has been completed. Will be printed as either yes or no
  • kidgame - Whether the game is suitable for children. Will be printed as either yes or no
  • broken - Whether the game is broken/not working. Will be printed as either yes or no
  • manual - Whether a PDF manual has been downloaded for the game. Will be printed as either yes or no
  • playcount - How many times the game has been played.
  • controller - The controller for the game. Will be blank if none has been selected.
  • altemulator - The alternative emulator for the game. Will be blank if none has been selected.
  • emulator - The emulator used to launch the game, could as such be a per-game alternative emulator entry, a system wide alternative emulator entry or the system's default emulator. This requires that the command tag in es_systems.xml has a label defined, otherwise this value will be blank. Folders will always have blank values as these can't be launched directly.
  • physicalName - The physical name of the game file or folder, excluding its extension. Note that for folders with dots in their names any text after the last dot will get removed. Although this is not technically correct as folders can't have extensions, it makes the name appear consistent if the directories interpreted as files functionality has been used.
  • physicalNameExtension - The physical name of the game file or folder, including its extension.
  • systemName - The short system name of the game.
  • systemFullname - The full system name of the game.
  • sourceSystemName - The source short system name of the game. For regular systems this value will be identical to systemName but for collections it will show the actual system that the game is located in instead of the collection system name.
  • sourceSystemFullname - The source full system name of the game. For regular systems this value will be identical to systemFullname but for collections it will show the actual system that the game is located in instead of the collection system name.
• defaultValue - type: STRING
  • This property makes it possible to override the default "unknown" text that is displayed if metadata has been set to developer, publisher, genre or players and there is no metadata available for the defined type. Any string can be used but you can't set it to a blank value. If you don't want to display anything when there is no metadata available, then set this property to :space: in which case a blankspace will be used. This property has no effect on the metadata editor where "unknown" will still be shown for blank values.
• systemNameSuffix - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to add the system name in square brackets after the game name when inside a collection system (automatic as well as custom collections). If metadata has been set to description then this property will only apply when inside the root of the grouped custom collections system where a summary of available games for the currently selected collection is displayed.
  • Default is true
  • This property can only be used when metadata has been set to name or description
• letterCaseSystemNameSuffix - type: STRING
  • Sets the letter case for the system name suffix.
  • Valid values are uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is uppercase
  • This property can only be used when systemNameSuffix is true, and if metadata has been set to description then it only applies if letterCase is also set to none
• metadataElement - type: BOOLEAN
  • By default game metadata and media are faded out during gamelist fast-scrolling. They are also hidden when enabling the Hide metadata fields setting in the metadata editor. This includes the text metadata fields (except systemName, systemFullname, sourceSystemName and sourceSystemFullname), ratings and badges. Using this property it's possible to explicitly define additional text elements that should be treated as if they were game metadata entries. This is for example useful for hiding and fading out text labels or icons for the various metadata types like genre, publisher, players etc. Note that it's not possible to disable the metadata hiding functionality for the default metadata fields as that would break basic application behavior. Also note that there is a slight exception to the hiding logic for text containers with the metadata value set to description. In this case the element is by default not hidden when enabling the Hide metadata fields setting. To also hide such containers, set this property to true.
  • Default is false
• gameselector - type: STRING
  • If more than one gameselector element has been defined, then this property makes it possible to state which one to use. If multiple gameselector elements have been defined and this property is missing then the first entry will be chosen and a warning message will be logged. If only a single gameselector has been defined, this property is ignored. The value of this property must match the name attribute value of the gameselector element.
  • This property can only be used in the system view and only when metadata has a value.
• gameselectorEntry - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • This optional property which is only available in the system view makes it possible to select which gameselector entry to use to populate the metadata property. This assumes that a gameCount property for the gameselector element has been defined with a value higher than 1. By defining multiple text elements with different values for the gameselectorEntry property it's possible to display multiple game entries at the same time, for example listing a couple of games that were last played, or a selection of random games. If the requested entry does not exist (for instance if gameCount has been set to 5 and gameselectorEntry has been set to 4 but the system only contains 3 games), then the overall element will not get rendered. Note that the first entry is defined as 0, the second entry as 1 etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is the value of the gameselector element property gameCount minus 1. If a value outside this range is defined, then it will be automatically clamped to a valid value.
  • Default is 0
• container - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether the text should be placed inside a scrollable container.
  • Default is true if metadata is set to description, otherwise false
• containerType - type: STRING
  • If container has been set, then it's possible to select between a vertically or horizontally scrolling type using this property. If selecting the horizontal container then all line breaks in the text will be automatically converted to spaces. If selecting the vertical container then any value defined for rotation will be ignored as this container type can't be rotated.
  • Valid values are vertical or horizontal
  • Default is vertical
  • This property can only be used when container has been explicitly set to true
• containerVerticalSnap - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether the text should be vertically snapped to the font height. With this property enabled the container will have its height reduced as needed so that only complete rows of text are displayed at the start and end positions. This will not affect the "real" size of the container as set by the size property which means that the overall element placement will still be predictable if a vertical origin other than zero is used.
  • Default is true
  • This property can only be used when containerType is vertical
• containerScrollSpeed - type: FLOAT
  • For vertical containers a base speed is automatically calculated based on the container and font sizes, so this property applies relative to the auto-calculated value for that type.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 1
• containerStartDelay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before scrolling starts. Note that for vertical containers the text fade-in animation that plays when resetting from the end position will cause a slight delay even if this property is set to zero.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 10
  • Default is 4.5 for vertical containers and 1.5 for horizontal containers
• containerResetDelay - type: FLOAT
  • Delay in seconds before resetting to the start position after reaching the scrolling end position.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 20
  • Default is 7
  • This property can only be used when containerType is vertical
• containerScrollGap - type: FLOAT
  • As horizontally scrolling text is looped, a second copy is rendered after the first one. This property defines a relative gap value to control the distance between these two text instances.
  • Minimum value is 0.1 and maximum value is 5
  • Default is 1.5
  • This property can only be used when containerType is horizontal
• fontPath - type: PATH
  • Path to a TrueType font (.ttf).
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size. The font is allowed to overflow the height of the element by 100%, i.e. fontSize can be set to twice that of the y axis of the size property. Any value above that will be clamped.
  • Default is 0.045
• horizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the X axis.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is left
• verticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the Y axis.
  • Valid values are top, center or bottom
  • Default is center
  • This property can only be used if container is false
• color - type: COLOR
  • Default is 000000FF
• backgroundColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is 00000000
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is none (original letter case is retained)
• lineSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the space between lines (as a multiple of the font height). Due to the imprecise nature of typefaces where certain glyphs (characters) may exceed the requested font size, it's recommended to keep this value at around 1.1 or higher for multi-line text fields. This way overlapping glyphs or characters being cut off at the top or bottom will be prevented.
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.5
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 40

datetime

Displays a date and time as a text string. The format is ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) by default, but this can be changed using the format property. The text unknown will be shown by default if there is no time stamp available. If the property displayRelative has been set, the text will be shown as never in case of no time stamp.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Possible combinations:
  • 0 0 - automatically size so text fits on one line (expanding horizontally).
  • w 0 - automatically wrap text so it doesn't go beyond w (expanding vertically).
  • w h - works like a "text box". If h is non-zero and h <= fontSize (implying it should be a single line of text), text that goes beyond w will be truncated with an ellipsis (...)
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the text should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the text will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5.
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• metadata - type: STRING
  • This displays the metadata values that are available for the game. If an invalid metadata field is defined, the text "unknown" or "never" will be printed. To use this property from the system view, you will first need to add a gameselector element. You can only define a single metadata value per datetime element.
  • Valid values:
  • releasedate - The release date of the game.
  • lastplayed - The time the game was last played. This will be displayed as a value relative to the current date and time by default, but can be overridden using the displayRelative property.
• defaultValue - type: STRING
  • This property makes it possible to override the default "unknown" text that is displayed if metadata has been set to releasedate or the default "never" text that is displayed if metadata has been set to lastplayed. Any string can be used but you can't set it to a blank value. If you don't want to display anything when there is no metadata available, then set this property to :space: in which case a blankspace will be used. This property has no effect on the metadata editor where "unknown" will still be shown for undefined release date values.
• gameselector - type: STRING
  • If more than one gameselector element has been defined, this property makes it possible to state which one to use. If multiple gameselector elements have been defined and this property is missing then the first entry will be chosen and a warning message will be logged. If only a single gameselector has been defined, this property is ignored. The value of this property must match the name attribute value of the gameselector element. This property is only needed for the system view and only if the metadata property is utilized.
• gameselectorEntry - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • This optional property which is only available in the system view makes it possible to select which gameselector entry to use to populate the metadata property. This assumes that a gameCount property for the gameselector element has been defined with a value higher than 1. By defining multiple datetime elements with different values for the gameselectorEntry property it's possible to display multiple game entries at the same time, for example listing a couple of games that were last played, or a selection of random games. If the requested entry does not exist (for instance if gameCount has been set to 5 and gameselectorEntry has been set to 4 but the system only contains 3 games), then the overall element will not get rendered. Note that the first entry is defined as 0, the second entry as 1 etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is the value of the gameselector element property gameCount minus 1. If a value outside this range is defined, then it will be automatically clamped to a valid value.
  • Default is 0
• fontPath - type: PATH
  • Path to a TrueType font (.ttf).
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size. The font is allowed to overflow the height of the element by 100%, i.e. fontSize can be set to twice that of the y axis of the size property. Any value above that will be clamped.
  • Default is 0.045
• horizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the X axis.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is left
• verticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the Y axis.
  • Valid values are top, center or bottom
  • Default is center
• color - type: COLOR
• backgroundColor - type: COLOR
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Valid values are none, uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is none (original letter case is retained)
• lineSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the space between lines (as a multiple of font height).
  • Minimum value is 0.5 and maximum value is 3
  • Default is 1.5
• format - type: STRING
  • Specifies the date and time format. Has no effect if displayRelative has been set to true.
  • %Y: The year, including the century (1900)
  • %m: The month number [01,12]
  • %d: The day of the month [01,31]
  • %H: The hour (24-hour clock) [00,23]
  • %M: The minute [00,59]
  • %S: The second [00,59]
  • Default is the ISO 8601 standard notation %Y-%m-%d
• displayRelative - type: BOOLEAN.
  • Renders the datetime as a relative string (e.g. 'x days ago').
  • Default is false if metadata has been set to releasedate and true if metadata has been set to lastplayed
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 40

gamelistinfo

Displays the game count (all games as well as favorites), any applied filters, and a folder icon if a folder has been entered. If this text is left aligned or center aligned, the folder icon will be placed to the right of the other information, and if it's right aligned, the folder icon will be placed to the left.

Supported views:

• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Possible combinations:
  • 0 0 - automatically size so text fits on one line (expanding horizontally).
  • w 0 - automatically wrap text so it doesn't go beyond w (expanding vertically).
  • w h - works like a "text box". If h is non-zero and h <= fontSize (implying it should be a single line of text), text that goes beyond w will be truncated with an ellipsis (...)
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the text should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the element will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• fontPath - type: PATH
  • Path to a TrueType font (.ttf).
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • Size of the font as a percentage of screen height for horizontally oriented screens or screen width for vertically oriented screens (e.g. for a value of 0.1, the text's height would be 10% of the screen height). This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size. The font is allowed to overflow the height of the element by 100%, i.e. fontSize can be set to twice that of the y axis of the size property. Any value above that will be clamped.
  • Default is 0.045
• horizontalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the X axis.
  • Valid values are left, center or right
  • Default is left
• verticalAlignment - type: STRING
  • Controls alignment on the Y axis.
  • Valid values are top, center or bottom
  • Default is center
• color - type: COLOR
• backgroundColor - type: COLOR
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 45

rating

Displays a graphical representation of the game rating, from 0 to 5.

To display game ratings in the system view, you first need to create a gameselector element.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
• size - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • These values are mutually exclusive, if an X axis value is defined then the element will be sized based on this, and if an Y axis value is defined then the element will be sized based on that. If both the X and Y axis values are defined then the Y axis value will take precedence and the X axis value will be ignored. This makes sure that the image aspect ratio is always maintained.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0.01 and maximum value for the X axis is 1 and maximum value for the Y axis is 0.5
  • Default is 0 0.06
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen. If the position and size attributes are themeable, origin is implied.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• rotation - type: FLOAT
  • Angle in degrees that the rating should be rotated. Positive values will rotate clockwise, negative values will rotate counterclockwise.
  • Default is 0
• rotationOrigin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Point around which the rating will be rotated.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0.5 0.5
• stationary - type: STRING
  • If using slide transitions, then this property can be set to keep the element stationary during transition animations. This property has no effect when using instant or fade transitions.
  • withinView - Set element as stationary when navigating within the same view, i.e. from system to system or from gamelist to gamelist.
  • betweenViews - Set element as stationary when navigating between views, i.e. from system to gamelist or from gamelist to system.
  • always - Set element as stationary during all transitions.
  • never - Don't set element as stationary during any transitions.
  • Default is never
• gameselector - type: STRING
  • If more than one gameselector element has been defined, this property makes it possible to state which one to use. If multiple gameselector elements have been defined and this property is missing then the first entry will be chosen and a warning message will be logged. If only a single gameselector has been defined, this property is ignored. The value of this property must match the name attribute value of the gameselector element. This property is only needed for the system view.
• gameselectorEntry - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • This optional property which is only available in the system view makes it possible to select which gameselector entry to use to populate the rating value. This assumes that a gameCount property for the gameselector element has been defined with a value higher than 1. By defining multiple rating elements with different values for the gameselectorEntry property it's possible to display multiple game entries at the same time, for example listing a couple of games that were last played, or a selection of random games. If the requested entry does not exist (for instance if gameCount has been set to 5 and gameselectorEntry has been set to 4 but the system only contains 3 games), then the overall element will not get rendered. Note that the first entry is defined as 0, the second entry as 1 etc.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is the value of the gameselector element property gameCount minus 1. If a value outside this range is defined, then it will be automatically clamped to a valid value.
  • Default is 0
• interpolation - type: STRING
  • Interpolation method to use when scaling and rotating rating images. Nearest neighbor (nearest) preserves sharp pixels and linear filtering (linear) makes the image smoother. This property has limited effect on scalable vector graphics (SVG) images unless rotation is applied.
  • Valid values are nearest or linear
  • Default is nearest if rotation is 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees, otherwise it's linear
• color - type: COLOR
  • Multiply each pixel's color by this color. For example, an all-white image with <color>FF0000</color> would become completely red. You can also control the transparency of an image with <color>FFFFFFAA</color> - keeping all the pixels their normal color and only affecting the alpha channel.
  • Default is FFFFFFFF
• filledPath - type: PATH
  • Path to the "filled" rating image. Any aspect ratio is supported. Note that there is no explicit padding property, so to add spaces between each icon simply make the image content smaller on the canvas. The images should always be centered on the canvas or otherwise the filledPath and unfilledPath textures will not align properly for all rating values. Most common file extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• unfilledPath - type: PATH
  • Path to the "unfilled" rating image. Any aspect ratio is supported. Note that there is no explicit padding property, so to add spaces between each icon simply make the image content smaller on the canvas. The images should always be centered on the canvas or otherwise the filledPath and unfilledPath textures will not align properly for all rating values. Most common file extensions are supported (including .svg, .jpg, .png, .webp and unanimated .gif).
• overlay - type: BOOLEAN
  • Whether to overlay the filledPath image on top of the unfilledPath image. If this property is set to false, then the unfilledPath image will only be rendered to the right of the rating value cut position. This property is useful for avoiding image aliasing artifacts that could otherwise occur when combining some rating images. It can also help with avoiding some inconsistent fade-out animations.
  • Default is true
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency. If set to 0 the element will be disabled.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• visible - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to false, the element will be disabled. This is equivalent to setting opacity to 0
  • Default is true
• zIndex - type: FLOAT
  • z-index value for element. Elements will be rendered in order of zIndex value from low to high.
  • Default is 45

Special elements

Elements from this group provide special functionality not covered by the primary and secondary elements.

gameselector

Selects games from the gamelists when navigating the system view. This makes it possible to display game media and game metadata directly from this view. It's possible to make separate gameselector configurations per game system, so that for instance a random game could be displayed for one system and the most recently played game could be displayed for another system. It's also possible to define multiple gameselector elements with different selection criterias per game system which makes it possible to for example set a random fan art background image and at the same time display a box cover image of the most recently played game. The gameselector logic can be used for the image, video, text, datetime and rating elements.

Note that any games that have the metadata option Exclude from game counter set will be excluded by the gameselector. Also note that setting gameCount to a high value may introduce significant lag into the application for large systems, so try to keep this as low as possible and make thorough performance testing with huge game libraries.

Supported views:

• system

Instances per view:

• unlimited

Properties:

• selection - type: STRING
  • This defines the game selection criteria. If set to random, the games are refreshed every time the view is navigated. For the other two values the refresh takes place on gamelist reload, i.e. when launching a game, adding a game as favorite, making changes via the metadata editor and so on.
  • Valid values are random, lastplayed or mostplayed
  • Default is random
• gameCount - type: UNSIGNED_INTEGER
  • Minimum value is 1 and maximum value is 30
  • Default is 1
• allowDuplicates - type: BOOLEAN
  • If set to true then the same game may appear multiple times, i.e. the amount of entries defined by gameCount are always fully populated. This only applies to entries higher than the amount of available games for a system, for example if a system contains 3 games and gameCount has been set to 5, then the first three entries will not contain any duplicate entries, but the last two will.
  • Default is false
  • This property can only be used when selection is random

helpsystem

The helpsystem is a special element that displays a context-sensitive list of actions the user can take at any time. You should try and keep the position constant throughout every screen. Note that this element does not have a zIndex value, instead it's always rendered on top of all other elements.

It's possible to set this element as right-aligned or center-aligned using a combination of the pos and origin properties. For example <pos>1 1</pos> and <origin>1 1</origin> will place it in the lower right corner of the screen.

Keep in mind that the width of this element can vary depending on a number of factors, for example the Toggle favorites and Random system or game buttons can be enabled or disabled via the UI Settings menu. Test extensively with the menu system as well, especially the virtual keyboard which displays a number of helpsystem entries.

Supported views:

• system
• gamelist

Instances per view:

• single

Properties:

• pos - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Default is 0.012 0.9515 for horizontally oriented screens and 0.012 0.975 for vertically oriented screens
• posDimmed - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Position when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Default is the same value as pos
• origin - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Where on the element pos refers to. For example, an origin of 0.5 0.5 and a pos of 0.5 0.5 would place the element exactly in the middle of the screen.
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is 0 0
• originDimmed - type: NORMALIZED_PAIR
  • Origin when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Minimum value per axis is 0 and maximum value per axis is 1
  • Default is the same value as origin
• textColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is 777777FF
• textColorDimmed - type: COLOR
  • Text color when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Default is the same value as textColor
• iconColor - type: COLOR
  • Default is 777777FF
• iconColorDimmed - type: COLOR
  • Icon color when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Default is the same value as iconColor
• fontPath - type: PATH
• fontSize - type: FLOAT
  • This property implicitly sets the icon size and is therefore the means to change the overall size of the helpsystem element. This calculation is based on the reference 'S' character so other glyphs may not fill this area, or they may exceed this area.
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size.
  • Default is 0.035 for horizontally oriented screens and 0.025 for vertically oriented screens
• fontSizeDimmed - type: FLOAT
  • Font size when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Minimum value is 0.001 and maximum value is 1.5. Note that when running at a really low resolution, the minimum value may get clamped to a larger relative size.
  • Default is the same value as fontSize
• entrySpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Spacing between the help element pairs.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.04
  • Default is 0.00833
• entrySpacingDimmed - type: FLOAT
  • Spacing between the help element pairs when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.04
  • Default is the same value as entrySpacing
• iconTextSpacing - type: FLOAT
  • Spacing between the icon and text within a help element pair.
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.04
  • Default is 0.00416
• iconTextSpacingDimmed - type: FLOAT
  • Spacing between the icon and text within a help element pair when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Minimum value is 0 and maximum value is 0.04
  • Default is the same value as iconTextSpacing
• letterCase - type: STRING
  • Valid values are uppercase, lowercase or capitalize
  • Default is uppercase
• opacity - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency.
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is 1
• opacityDimmed - type: FLOAT
  • Controls the level of transparency when a menu is open (background is dimmed).
  • Minimum value is 0.2 and maximum value is 1
  • Default is the same value as opacity
• customButtonIcon - type: PATH
  • A button icon override. Specify the button type in the attribute button.
  • The available buttons are:
    dpad_updown, dpad_leftright, dpad_all, thumbstick_click, button_l, button_r, button_lr, button_lt, button_rt, button_ltrt, button_a_XBOX, button_b_XBOX, button_x_XBOX, button_y_XBOX, button_back_XBOX, button_start_XBOX, button_back_XBOX360, button_start_XBOX360, button_a_PS, button_b_PS, button_x_PS, button_y_PS, button_back_PS123, button_start_PS123, button_back_PS4, button_start_PS4, button_back_PS5, button_start_PS5, button_a_switch, button_b_switch, button_x_switch, button_y_switch, button_back_switch, button_start_switch, button_a_SNES, button_b_SNES, button_x_SNES, button_y_SNES, button_back_SNES, button_start_SNES