What happened to all the themes?

[SylentEcho]

Hi, all

Is there a reason most themes have been removed and the very few that are left (on YouTube) are stuck behind pay-walls?

I've been searching all over for well over a week, for a PS2 theme for my Desktop Attract Mode and have had no luck whatsoever. What happened to the good, old days of the internet? 

If possible and if it's allowed here, could someone please HMU with a good PS2 theme which supports box-art?

[bundangdon]

My thoughts exactly. The frontend itself, AttractMode, has made a lot of decent progress in recent days and continues to do so. However, the themes/layouts have become almost non-existent or are hidden in scattered places throughout the internet. There really needs to be an actual "Download" page for themes where they can be acquired easily instead of a forum page with a bunch of links, most of which don't work anymore.

[JJTheKing]

ive made a few just been busy with life https://free-3980544.webador.com/ im working on some more when i get free time

[zpaolo11x]

My thoughts exactly. The frontend itself, AttractMode, has made a lot of decent progress in recent days and continues to do so. However, the themes/layouts have become almost non-existent or are hidden in scattered places throughout the internet. There really needs to be an actual "Download" page for themes where they can be acquired easily instead of a forum page with a bunch of links, most of which don't work anymore.

There is a layout showcase channel on Attract Mode Discord server, but it's pretty new so it has only a handful of them. There was a plan (more an idea actually) to implement a layout showcase website or be able to download/update layouts from within Attract Mode, but this is going slow...

[dmmarti]

I haven't really made themes in a long time. But all of my older ones are still on my Github.  I wasn't the best theme programmer back then, but they seemed to work okay.

https://github.com/dmmarti?tab=repositories

I use Attract Mode in a nested menu (so I have Main Menu > Sub Menu > Systems Menu).

Main Menu and Sub Menu would use the same theme.

Main Menu => Computers, Consoles, Arcades, etc
Sub Menu => (would list all systems of the same type, ie: Atari 2600, NES, Megadrive, etc for Consoles)
System Menu => for viewing individual system's games

My naming convention on my GitHub let's you know which one that theme is for.

I have AM themes, ES themes, as well as system media PNGs on my Github.

For the AM themes, here's the naming convention (and you'll see _menu or _systems in it's name if needed, otherwise, it's a global use theme).

am-theme-XXXXXX

I also made RetroPie ES themes that are included in the RetroPie theme downloader script.

Then there's a bunch of repos for system media files (wheels, flyers, backgrounds, etc.) that could be used in all sorts of ways.

[bundangdon]

While the responses here were certainly appreciated, it still doesn't really solve the main issue that the OP brought up. In my opinion, there needs to be a dedicated page (non-forum) with AttractMode themes/layouts to download. I know it's probably more difficult than it sounds to set up, but it would certainly make AttractMode a more 'friendly to use' frontend with resources that are open to the public and easy to find. Nearly every other frontend out there have fairly simple methods to go about getting new and different layouts and themes, a feature that AttractMode is clearly lacking. Basically, AM is a fantastic piece of software but the lack of themes and a convenient way to acquire them is probably its biggest flaw of all.

[dmmarti]

A few years back, when I was actively toying around with RetroPie, I wrote an AM Themes installer for it.  It works very much like the RetroPie ES theme installer does.  It requires themes to be on Github though and at that time, nobody was really putting them online like I did.

I wish I knew how to program in a Windows environment.  If I did, I'd write it for Windows.

https://github.com/dmmarti/AMThemes