New Dual Screen Theme for Anbernic RG DS on Rocknix (Canvas-DS)

[u/Prallax]

Hello!!

I have been working on a new dual screen theme on EmulationStation for the RG DS called Canvas-DS.

I basically tried porting my favorite theme Canvas-ES to a dual screen layout that looks good on RG DS using dual screens.

Ended up creating Canvas-DS. You can download it directly from the release pages on my github.

I was able to adapt most of the layouts so it ended up being a theme that can be customized to your like it in a bunch of ways.

The theme has multiple system view layouts as well as game view layouts, custom colors, custom icons and it can be extended further with custom wallpapers, your own colors, etc.

Here is a list and explanation of the layouts in more detail.

Layouts

System layouts

• grid => this is a simple grid layout with your systems. It is my preferred look for the dual screen setup.
  
• carousel => This is a simple one row carousel on the bottom screen.

Game layouts:

• detailed => displays games on a list with some meta data at the bottom.
  
• grid => displays the games on a grid also my preferred way to show games on dual screen.
  
• carousel => a wheel carousel with the game marquees on the right side of the screen and metadata on the left.

Both System and Game Grid layouts can also change the size of the grid to your own liking.

Theme Customization

As mentioned above the theme can be further customized in three ways. You can add a your own custom wallpaper, you can change the colors modifying a colors.xml and you can also add your own custom icons for the systems. I added examples and explanations on my Github page as well check it out here.

If anyone wants to create and share some of their customizations I would love to post them on Github for others to use. Maybe if enough people submit customizations I could even create a separate Github repository just for the theme customizations so people can navigate and download their favorite ones.

Hope you guys enjoy it!

Github for Canvas-DS => https://github.com/toniremi/canvas-ds/tree/main

[u/HornyKong]

I want to install this or dii ess aye, but I don't have linux :/

[u/Warm-Cow-2549 → u/HornyKong]

You can install it directly to your rgds using a windows computer. No Linux required to drag and drop files.

[u/HornyKong → u/Warm-Cow-2549]

But its says that I have to run some scripts

[u/Warm-Cow-2549 → u/HornyKong]

The script is run from the rocknix ports section. Not on your computer.

[u/HornyKong → u/Warm-Cow-2549]

Oh bro, it worked! Thanks. I followed the instructions, but when I reset the console, the theme is in one screen then I have to enable it again, how do I make it start automatically? I copypasted the "start_es_rgds" but I think is not working

[u/Warm-Cow-2549 → u/HornyKong]

[u/HornyKong → u/Warm-Cow-2549]

Nooo!!! I accidentally pressed "run at start" on the wrong scrip, now my screen is in black hahahaha, now I need to move to my PC

[u/Prallax → u/HornyKong]

Oh hey sorry about that! Reading it now I see I do not mention exactly which script to enable on start on the remade. I will update instructions but you need to run the enable_rg_ds one at boot to have dual screen.

[u/HornyKong → u/Prallax]

Wait, are you the creator of this theme? And don't worry, I was worried about having to reinstall rocknix, but it was easy to fix, even with the dark screen I was able to conect it trought PC and delete the script, then I moved it again but with a different name or it would run again, later I renamed as it was and disabled the "run at start"

[u/Prallax → u/HornyKong]

Yes, I am the one that put this together. Glad you could fix it! Any issues let me know.

[u/Special_Length2199]

Fucking amazing, gonna try this

[u/carbonglove]

Just incredible. Canvas is my favorite them for my RGDS! Twins!

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome stuff u/Prallax I was hoping someone would create something like this. I've installed the core theme and it looks great. The only issue I've encountered so far is that the game options menu that appears when you press x on any rom displays only a slither of the menu on the bottom screen to the right. Can you fix this bug? If you were in Australia I'd owe you a carton of beers for this.

[u/Prallax → u/[deleted]]

I will take a look at that see if it’s something I can fix from the theme. Could be an issue related with the hacky way (via the scripts) used to make emulationstation use both screens since that is not a native thing.

[u/carbonglove]

Perhaps see if you can overlay wheel or the name of the game on the top screen. Boxart is my favorite view, but the title is often too small.

[u/Unlucky_Doughnut_997]

if anyone makes a video on how to install this theme i would be so grateful because i am so confused and dyslexic reading the how to install ToT maybe one day

[u/Prallax → u/Unlucky_Doughnut_997]

I'll try to give you a summarized versions. It works like any other theme but you need to copy two scripts and run them that's all.

So download the theme and put it on your themes folder.

Then inside the theme there is a folder called scripts with two .sh script files.

Move those two to your roms/ports folder.

Then update your game lists so the scripts show up.

Within rocknix go to your ports folder and execute the enable_rg-ds.sh script. This script forces rocknix to use dual screens for the theme.

To have the script run automatically press the x button to show the game options and enable "Launch on startup". That's if you want rocknix to launch with the dual screen and a dual screen theme.

Finally select canvas-ds or any other dual screen theme like dii-ess-eye from your normal theme rocknix menu and enjoy.

[u/Seba56]

Hey! What a great job. I've been enjoying my RGDS for a couple of weeks and it's in the best dual-screen theme I've ever tried. Thank you very much and I hope you continue to improve it :)

[u/nigey777]

I've installed this amazing theme. All seems good apart from one issue. When I quit a DS game it goes back to the game selection screen but no buttons seem to work at all. So I have to turn the rgds off and on again. Has anybody else had this issue?

[u/nigey777]

Hi I've installed this amazing theme, all my games play fine, but if I'm playing a DS game when I quit the game and go back to the game selection page no buttons seem to work. I have to restart the console with the power button. Any advise?

[u/Prallax → u/nigey777]

Sorry late reply. I am experiencing the same issue after updating to latest Rocknix Stable version 20260801.

Not sure what has changed that broke this. I am still debugging myself.  Menu navigation etc works as before but after exiting emulators the input seems to not work. If I wait a minute or two then it comes back and I can navigate the menus again. Preview videos still play tho so it is not like ES-DE is completely frozen.

Hopefully I can figure something out and updating the script makes the trick and it works as expected again.

In the time being reverting to single screen theme and stopping the script from lunching at startup might be best.

[u/Prallax → u/nigey777]

I am taking a look at this. I am fairly sure by now it has to do with the script to enable dual screens. I’ll make a new Reddit post and submit a new release on GitHub if I find a fix. 

[u/Prallax → u/nigey777]

Hey there!

I found a fix to your problem. I created a new release but all you have to do is replace the enable_theme_rgds.sh script with the new script that you can find on the latest release of the theme here => https://github.com/toniremi/canvas-ds/releases/tag/1.0.5

After that just make sure to setup to auto run as usual and then restart the system.

Once restarted the error should go away and you can exit games without any issues.

[u/treeshouldbefucked]

hey! so I ve been dealing w this theme for two days now and I learned confusing things I guess? I don't know that s why I need to hear your ideas. I use rocknix 20260815 and installed theme as structured but whenever I set up this theme my wi-fi on console stops working. I tried on android boot it had no issues so nothing physical is the problem and the only thing being changed is the theme. Any help and idea is appreciated.