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libretro / retroarch-assets

Assets needed for RetroArch - e.g. menu drivers, etc. Also contains the official branding.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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Removed Retired Themes #476

Closed baxysquare closed 2 months ago

baxysquare commented 2 months ago

The Neoactive and Retroactive themes have been retired. Therefore it is time to remove them from the repo. The files are archived over on baxy-retroarch-themes.

fpscan commented 2 months ago

Hi, is there any reason this retired?

baxysquare commented 2 months ago

The primary reason is because Retroactive and FlatUI were merged into a new theme called "FlatUX" and it is intended to replace both themes. Additionally, Retrosystem is so similar to Retroactive, I don't feel that end users aren't really losing out by having Retroactive retired.

The next step would be to retire FlatUI, but that may be controversial. Many people have worked on FlatUI and it's one of the "pioneer" themes of the project, along with Monochrome. I'm happy to setup the retirement PRs here and on the main repo, but that decision should be for the admins and the community to consider. I feel FlatUI and FlatUX are both so similar, I don’t see much point in keeping them both. To me, FlatUX completes issue #17 and FlatUI should be retired. But if there's interest in keeping both themes and making both available, I don't want to stand in the way of those efforts.

As for Neoactive, it's no secret that this theme is based on Retroactive, and I was never really happy with the art style and I feel it's the weakest theme in the repo. While it could still be based on FlatUX, I don't really have it in me to support a theme that I don't really like, and doesn't seem very popular with most users.

As themes get larger and require more icons are required, I feel like I can realistically only support 3 themes at this time. @Jaffacakelover has been maintaining Monochrome, while I take care of FlatUX, Systematic and Automatic. I'd really like for @lipebello to add the Retrorama theme to the repo, since @gouchi added to Lakka and it's a very strong XMB theme. I don't really know where we stand on the Daite, Dot-art, Pixel and Retrosystem themes. It would be up to their contributor(s) to update and keep pace with the default Monochrome set. We have talked about requiring SVGs for all themes, but that would require more themes to be retired.

I think this gives us a strong set of XMB themes for the present and the future. The next big milestone would be to get Ozone to support themes! I'm planning on asking for this on the main repo as a feature request.

One more thing to keep in mind... If users really want to have them "come out of retirement", that is a possibility. They are archived over on baxy-retroarch-themes. For now, I figured anyone who wants them back could download them and install them as a custom theme. If someone wants to take over development for Retroactive or Neoactive, they're welcome to fork the repo and start contributing, and are encouraged to do so.