Maximus arcade theme editor help , tutorials ?

[The Lumberjackass]

howdy ,

seeing as im a relative newcomer to maximus arcade, im looking for all the help i can get to make my cab truly custom.

that is, i'd like to change the theme of MA to something that is more to my taste.
so im basically looking for a tutorial video or a step by step on how to make my own theme, as the editor with MA isnt
exactly straight forward. well, it isnt when your new to it.

what ive been doing most of the day, is downloading theme's , and seeing how they look.
and im not exactly blown away by them . the only good one is delusionals blue lightning theme , but that wont blend
in well with the theme of my cab .

anyways, i did try playing with the editor and it made no sense to me . so i tried cheating
i basically extracted the zip file ( eg - maximus arcadius ) , and changed some of the images within the folder. i then re-compressed the folder when finished .
i then renamed it to " modified theme " , so i could identify it in the prefrences . my problem now, is that the " modified theme " doesnt show in the selection bar at all.

i'd prefer if someone knows of a good step by step video , or even a write up , but something tells me people who know how to use it dont want to show
others how it is done. as i just cant find anything on youtube at all, and most results just show people " demonstrating " their intro vids or modified themes
which is absolutely no help at all 

but what is worse is the fact that the doc's on the MA website for it are just plain lazy 
any help is much appreciated.

[Comtek]

load one of the default MA ones into the editor and start clicking around it's just something your gonna need to play with

[The Lumberjackass]

thanks for the replies guys.

i was kinda thinking that i may have to go it alone and button mash , which at times is the only way to learn i suppose .
however, it would have been nice to avoid the frustration and time loss . oh well , i cant have everything

[shateredsoul]

I'm not too good with the theme editor but here are some basics. I'm assuming you know how to use the move, scale and rotate options.

I always load up the default Maximus theme, and work off of that

1. Under Interface you need to pick what you want to edit first
-logo = maximus arcade logo
-emulator selection - image and labels that appearwhen chooosing system
-game selection = game list
-loading screen = loading screen (appears if you have it on)

2. Set Resolution to match your Monitor

3. When you are editing emulator selection and game selection you can change systems by clicking on the appropriate system under the "emulator" option

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Inserting Images or Videos into Theme

click on an image, press "ctrl+I" and choose an image you want to use to replace that  image

You can insert a video that's in ".swf" (flash) format the same way.  This is how some people were able to get videos in their background.  I tried doing this sort of thing to replace system images with the system intro videos but never got to finish this (it does work though).
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Other things

-changing images in emulator selection changes the images for ALL systems.  Pretty lame.
-use the sprite menu to select the image you want to choose when you can't get to it by clicking (this helps in the emulator seleciton page)

[shateredsoul]

how to insert videos guide (this is how spacegoogie was able to get animated characters into his theme)



sample of what you can do, a bit noisy and distracting if you ask me but it gives an idea

[The Lumberjackass]

thank you for this shateredsoul , this helps me a fair bit alright.

im sure i'll get the hang of it at some stage , but as of now , im still a little bit dazzled by it all lol.
if the guy who made these vids could just make another one it'd be great. as it just needs to be something simple
and straight forward ( ie - : show the editor launching > adding theme > editing theme > producing theme for use > thanks for watching > the end )
and with audio, it would be a welcome touch hehe 

what im hoping to do, rather than messing with batch files , is adding 2 versions of mame to ma ( you already know i want to do this ) , but my
idea is to use msx 1.0 and msx 2.0 to launch mame and mame32 . i.e - instead of configuring mame under the mame launcher, i want ma to launch msx 1 and 2 , except
it'll be mame ver1 and mame ver2 in the excutables
the only thing i really need to change is the picture on the ma navigation screen from msx1 and msx2 to mame 1 and mame 2.
it avoids all the bs of having to mess with modifying a batch file or another exe. as the user when navigating through ma, wont have a clue if its for msx or not , as the
image will be changed to mame. only the owner would ever know which exe in ma config, is launching the mame versions.