Post by: gilles9999 on October 06, 2008, 02:36:00 PM
I started this new topic because the forum members were lost about our discussion in the previous thread, and there wasn't any explanation about the project in the first page of the topic.
I will put here all the must up to date dynamic skins for the future emulators
p.s. you can use the dynamic skins with the old xport emus, but you will have to rename your favorite config
to "settings.ini" and disable one of the dual windows for the dual configs since you can't display dual video/boxart in them (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
1)What is the dynamic skin? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/uhh.gif)
-Well,since we have the dual previews/boxarts and videos at the same in the news emus
(thanks to Nes6502, and now madmab, and for sure differents great coders in the future)
and since each user is different,We had a loooot of differents suggestions about the
best gameselect screen disposition:
alot of users like the videos dual with title screen,
other users want only boxarts since they don't have space for videos
other wants dual videos with boxarts
others want big videos and big boxarts
others want only screenshots
etc...
etc...
etc...
So, with only one skin, lots of users will be disapointed....
That is why we have created the DYNAMIC skin, a skin where you can move manually
the size/position of each of the gameselect elements: video window, preview window,
boxart, rombrowser blade, system logo,buttons, etc... you can even disable them!
You only want screenshots? eh, no problem, simply disable the video window sprite
you want only screenshots but sometimes a video for few games?
all in the same window?ok, set the video size/position in the preview window
i really think we have find a great solution with madmab, rezx and run088 about
this dynamic skin,it will solve a lot of problems, and the sprites render well
better in hd.It would have been a PAIN for the skinner to release 20 differents
versions with subtles differences of the same skin! what a confusion!
a lot of space saved for nothing!
2)You want to change the gameselect screen,How to use the DYNAMIC Skin? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/uhh.gif)
-Well, there is 2 solutions: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
A)The easy solution:
simply go to "configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/select skin configuration"
and choose one of the following pre-made configs if you have a good old standard TV
-SDTV big movies_big boxarts
-SDTV big movies_big previews
-SDTV big previews only
-SDTV boxarts only
-SDTV med movies_med boxarts
-SDTV med movies_med previews
-SDTV med previews only
choose one of the followings if you have a HD TV:
-HDTV big movies_big boxarts
-HDTV big movies_big previews
-HDTV big previews only
-HDTV boxarts only
-HDTV med movies_med boxarts
-HDTV med movies_med previews
-HDTV only med previews
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)The less easy solution:
-None of theses configurations are ok for you?you want to disable the ATARI 7800 logo
or disable the buttons?
ok, you must set the sprites yourself!
go to
"configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/gameselect screen/sprites
settings;here you will be able to move the size/position of each sprites,
replace them(change the number)or disable it(set the sprite number to "0"),
even animate it with the "motion x/y" feature
-the text isn't at your tastes?
ok, go to
"configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/gameselect screen/text settings"
and set the size/position/widht/etc... of the text
-the video preview, the screenshots and the boxarts aren't at the good position?
ok, go to:
"configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/gameselect screen/background settings"
here you will be able to set them (move to the right to see the differents settings)
then, you can save the changes you have made, simply go to:
"configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/save skin configuration as"
to save your settings
3) special thanks to madmab, to make the DYNAMIC skin possible(IMG:style_emoticons/default/pop.gif)
especially the ability to see the differents sprites
(the windows sprites) when you are adjusting the video preview, the screenshots
and the boxarts.AND the ability to be able to choose your favorite skin settings
That's all, the hard part is done, now it will takes me a few hours to release differents
DYNAMIC skins for the other emulators(i have all the photoshop psd files plus a lot of
good quality pictures for the others systems now)
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Oct 6 2008, 09:47 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on October 06, 2008, 03:17:00 PM
Dynamic__LYNX_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008
(IMG:http://img29.picoodle.com/img/img29/3/10/6/f_mainlynxm_c6aba20.jpg)
Dynamic__COLECOVISION_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008
(IMG:http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/10/6/f_maincolecom_72c4719.jpg)
Dynamic_GENESIS_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008
(IMG:http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/3/10/6/f_maingenesism_2256ed8.jpg)
Dynamic_ATARI_7800_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008
(IMG:http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/10/6/f_Mainatari78m_a92c238.jpg)
Dynamic_NES_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008
(IMG:http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/3/10/6/f_mainnesm_aec262b.jpg)
note: now, all the logo in the top left corner are animated
p.s.1:madmab,perheaps you'll have to make some very little change to them, but the hard work is done; if you have other bg music, simply rename it to "bg music.mp3" it's the name of the music in all the skins (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)
p.s.2:madmab, do you think you could add the game synopsis option in your emus?
i have send a "colecovision synopsis letter A.txt" in the previous thread; is the form ok?or must i change something (i'm trough letter F now) i mean, the first line are matching the rzx dat files,then it's the synopsis; like this:
*
2010 (1984) (Coleco)
name :2010 - The Graphic Action Game
Genre: Genre: Action > General
Release Data: 1984 US
Developer: Coleco
This is a game based on the movie, 2010: The Year We Made Contact.
You are an astronaut aboard the Discovery and need to repair its systems before it crashes into Jupiter's moon, Io. Time is limited so do not dawdle or the Discovery will be destroyed.
*
*
Alcazar (1985) (Activision)
name:Alcazar - The Forgotten Fortress
Genre: Action > General
Release Data: 1985 US
Developer: Telegames, Inc.
In this adventure game you control an explorer who's on his way to fortress Alcazar. To reach Alcazar you are travelling through a countryside of fortresses and you need to collect several items that you can find along the way. Once you enter the Alcazar fortress you have to search for the crown.
*
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Oct 6 2008, 10:30 PM
Post by: XTecuterX73 on October 06, 2008, 05:30:00 PM
also like i said to rx i want help make nes movies but how in the hell do i record them??
XT-
This post has been edited by XTecuterX73: Oct 7 2008, 12:43 AM
Post by: madmab on October 06, 2008, 06:15:00 PM
QUOTE(XTecuterX73 @ Oct 6 2008, 07:30 PM) 
excellent work gilles9999! so let me get this straight you can't run dual video and boxart on the emus? What's the point of having both if you cannot do that or maybe i am mistaken. please help me out here, lol
Dual previews and boxart is pretty much an up and coming feature. Which emu will debut it first is unknown (due to it being a work in progress) but there are a few candidates.
Video preview is already available on the Genesis, Nes, Lynx, and TG16 emu's.
These skins are "loadable" in current x-port emu's but the current emu's will still act like they usually do and the ability to select between skin "configurations" is not possible without manual renaming or coying files.
Gilles..
Sorry I didn't answer your question earlier about the "colecovision synopsis letter A.txt". Silly me just noticed it today. It should be doable with some tinkering. But I'm not sure how to get the text to word wrap or how I should determine what font to use, etc. So I'll have to look into the text display functions/routines to see what how they work and what they are capable of.
Like the skins, but anyway to change the Atari logo in the A7800x to silver (like it is on the console)?
As for music. Well that has always been a tough one for some emulators. Atarixlbox was fairly easy. Although I created "atmospheric sound/music" it was all based on the pokey chip. But the 7800 does not have much decent music to talk about. The colecovision, although it has some nice tunes. None of them are long enough to sustain being in a skin. So it's a tough call.
Here is a comment I made in the last thread. On the latest AdamX skin.
QUOTE
Anyways the previews only skins didn't have the movie and box/art screensizes set to 0. Other than that things looked great!
Which brings up a thought. I was thinking of having the movies automatically turn off if the movie screen "size" is 0,0.
Also I think I fixed the "blank previw screen" issue when exiting a game. Although it did create a few headaches for me there. I've "tweaked" that section of code more than I care to admit.
Post by: XTecuterX73 on October 06, 2008, 07:52:00 PM
I'm glad i know that i was not doing something wrong. I was trying to do something that has not even been completely implemented yet i see, lol. So i can use mednafenx-nes v10 to have a video but on the other hand right now dual is not implemented.
Ok well once i can get straight on recording and converting i will start doing some videos.
XT-
Post by: madmab on October 07, 2008, 12:41:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on October 07, 2008, 03:36:00 AM
here is the new atari logo sprite for the DYNAMIC atari 7800 skin, simply put it in sprite folder n°28
madmab, you can thanks my girlfriend Odile, because it was impossible to find good quality atari 7800 logo
So she did it herslef from scratch, and the result is just, the true atari logo, cut from steel
atari 7800 logo to replace the old one
(IMG:http://img01.picoodle.com/img/img01/3/10/7/f_atarilogom_b6345cb.jpg)
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Oct 7 2008, 10:38 AM
Post by: madmab on October 07, 2008, 07:05:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on October 07, 2008, 08:16:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on October 07, 2008, 08:42:00 AM
ATARI 5200 (ATARIXLBOX) DYNAMIC skin release
it was a HEEEEL to find good quality pics for this system (like always)
but it's my pleasure to find good quality pics for thoses emus (even for genesis it was hard to find)or else it isn't funny
Dynamic_ATARI_5200_pm3_by_Gilou9999_07/10/2008
(IMG:http://img03.picoodle.com/img/img03/3/10/7/f_atari5200m_9e2cde8.jpg)
like always: animated logo in the main menu, animated cursor (green light) in the main, 14 differents configs to choose from (for SD tv users and HDTV users), animated controller in the option menu, and animated system in the rombrowser, animated rombrowser blade.
and like always,splash screen with the system in its box (like a true old school museum) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
the emu name with the xport logo, madmab name, and the skinner name (IMG:style_emoticons/default/happy.gif) appear in it (it's a sprite appearing on it)
(IMG:http://img02.picoodle.com/img/img02/3/10/7/f_emuloadbkgm_160709d.jpg)
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Oct 7 2008, 03:45 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on October 07, 2008, 10:15:00 AM
You'd have to start the thread over, but the work would be well worth it when it behaves much more like mine does.
Let me know if you have any more questions about how I set mine up.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: Retroplay on October 07, 2008, 10:36:00 AM
Btw would a PSD be possible?
I'd love to add Amiga, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MSX, SNES themes.
This post has been edited by Retroplay: Oct 7 2008, 05:41 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on October 07, 2008, 10:49:00 AM
In the end, the hope is that anybody at all could make updates to the DYNAMIC skins through their own artwork or configurations. A lot of that functionality still depends on what work can be done to the emu itself to make it possible, but I haven't heard anything yet that it can't be done.
Post by: Retroplay on October 07, 2008, 11:11:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 7 2008, 06:49 PM) 
What's a PSD retroplay?
PSD file for Photoshop.
That way it's easy to add new logos and pictures for other systems such as C64 and Amiga to the skin.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 07, 2008, 11:06:00 AM
QUOTE(Retroplay @ Oct 7 2008, 06:11 PM)
PSD file for Photoshop.
That way it's easy to add new logos and pictures for other systems such as C64 and Amiga to the skin.
Prolly wouldn't need much to add since only the small images are required now to be placed over the background(s). Once you dive in, you'll see how f'ing great this new development is. It revolutionizes how skins will be made in the future.
I look forward to dozens of possibilities for configuring every graphical element of the GUI in the near future when other graphic artists come forward and give even more artwork and configurations.
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 07, 2008, 02:34:00 PM
)I know, lot of guys simply don't like the pm3 theme but personnally i have seen the mario and zelda heads too much
; and we never see the systems themselves in the olds skins, too few people doesn't even remember what the atari 7800, or the lynx look like 
That is the purpose of theses pm3 dynamic skins; show the olds systems in all their greatness;
and the objective is to cover all the systems with the same pm3 environment
that will not take me too much time now (only few hours for a system, the long part is to configure the 14 differents settings)
see: if i cover 20 systems, the dynamics skins will offers you 20*14=280 differents skins
after that i'll release the differents psd files i promise
retroplay and guys here: i need good quality "system pics"(for main menu) and system box(for splash screen) for mednafen pce,msx,amiga
,c64 and atari stp.s.:i'm avoiding the "red" color in the skins, because i know, often the "red" color looks too blurry on the good old standard TV
thx in advance
Post by: Retroplay on October 07, 2008, 04:24:00 PM
Download.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 07, 2008, 05:10:00 PM
I see you love the old systems esthetism too
in wich internet site have you found them? I'm using google search and flicker.com eventually
(neverwill told me he was searching pics on google images-larger ones-)
but it's hard for the 1980-1990 systems
somebody have box scans of thoses systems? (it's for the slash screen)
Post by: Retroplay on October 07, 2008, 05:24:00 PM
However finding good PCE/TG16 and Sharp X68000 images is not easy.
Post by: madmab on October 07, 2008, 06:10:00 PM
See if you can dig up good picks of the following atari systems...
XEG and box. It had the pastel look (on the buttons).
Atari 800xl and box.
My guess would be atari museum....
Post by: gilles9999 on October 08, 2008, 03:47:00 AM
but for the atari xeg i can't find better than this
perhaps someone can send us a better quality pic,or take a good pic if he had the system at home
it's for wich emu madmab?atarixlbox can read atari xeg games?
Post by: madmab on October 08, 2008, 07:32:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 8 2008, 06:23 AM)
for the atari 800xl and box it's ok i have the great quality pics to make thr dynamic skin
but for the atari xeg i can't find better than this
perhaps someone can send us a better quality pic,or take a good pic if he had the system at home
it's for wich emu madmab?atarixlbox can read atari xeg games?
Yeah. That's it. Ugly 'ol thing, aint it?
Nice thing about it, though, is the keyboard is detachable.Yeah the 5200 is pretty much the same as an Atari 400, 800, 800xl, 1200xl, 130xe, 130xeG, 65xe? The main difference was the controllers and it only has 16k of RAM. Why the released so many different machines is beyond me.
But the 800xl is considered by most to be the best to use. The XEG is, I believe, just a 64xe expanded to 128k and has a detachable keyboard.
Anyways yes atarixlbox can play games for all those systems. So I didn't wanna limit the picture selection. Of course it just hit me that AdamX can do the Colecovision Adam as well. I believe the original skin had picks of that. I still need to test the Adam stuff I have. I don't know much about it.
I'll ask around and see if I can find a good pick of the XEG and box.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 08, 2008, 08:42:00 AM
Can't say I've ever seen that one before.
I got my brother looking through boxes in the basement back at my parents house for our old 5200 games. There was one game we bought (at the local gas station of all places) and when we brought it home we were never able to play it because our last working controller went kaput. All I remember about it was the main screen when you started up had the title and credits underneath it and around the perimeter of the screen there were different colored robots marching. If I remember correctly, the cart was actually a gray color, and I think the label was black with yellow lettering. (I could be wrong about the cart, but I'll never forget staring at that start screen trying desperately for hours to get the start button to work on the controller).... F'ing 5200 crap controllers!
If anyone knows what the hell game that is, I'd love to know. I can't seem to find it anywhere, even on AtariAge. If he does manage to find it, I suppose I'll have to figure out how I can back it up.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: SHMUP3R on October 08, 2008, 12:05:00 PM
THe icons dont line up and the music shuts off randomly and dosent even start up after the initial install.
The NES version is Awesome!!!
Post by: gilles9999 on October 08, 2008, 03:20:00 PM
QUOTE(SHMUP3R @ Oct 8 2008, 08:41 PM)
I just wanted to make sure of something.... The Genesis skin is not complete yet write?
THe icons dont line up and the music shuts off randomly and dosent even start up after the initial install.
The NES version is Awesome!!!
can someone confirm this?
strange, i have retryed the dynamic genesis pm3 skin from my first thread, and all is working good, even when i launch it for the first time, good display of all the sprites, the sonic bg music is ok too
have you ftp'd all the sprites in the skin?
pm3 ATARI ST DYNAMIC skin done(with remixed pacmania blocktown bg music from my french friends from grospixels.com
)DYNAMIC ATARI ST pm3 by Gilou9999 08/10/2008
splahscreen:
the "discovery pack box of the atari st" collector
mainmenu
and like always, 14 differents configs, plus a empty atari st box for all the boxscans configs
p.s.: they are "almost" final dynamic skins; but there will be some subtles changes (in the splash screen and in the sprites folder) when madmab will release new dual versions of his emus
the dynamic skins are here because the coders have a lot of work for the coding and i understand they don't really have the time to make skins
p.s.2:madmab, i think for the all in one emus (like neogenesis, atarixlbox etc...)i will simply add differents
sprites in the sprites folder to choose from:
ex: 32x, genesis or segacd banner ;like this, if the user is a 32x hardcore fan
he will be able to put the 32x banner.what is your opinion?or should i make a different skin for 32x, sega cd, as the mainscreen is different?p.s.3:at the end, when all the dynamic skins will be done, i simply add a "sprites extra pack"
so a user will be able to put a "metroid, zelda,shinning force,all sorts of banners"in the gameselect screen and in the options screen
p.s.4:I need the opinion of you guys here,
can you try my dynamic skins with your xports emus and give me your opinion about the bg music?
to my opinion:
-colecovision adamx:"bubblebobble remix" from my french friends from grospixels.com
quite good bg music from my own tastes
-atari 7800,5200:"mission impossible" eh, mission impossible was a great atari 7800 game
good bg music but we should change it
-nes mednafenx nes:"contra remix" from my french friends from grospixels.com
don't touch it it's my personnal favorite bg music
-neogenesis:"escape from the city"from sonic adventure 2:excellent bg music, but perhaps we should change it
-atari st winstonX:"remixed pacmania blocktown" bg music from my french friends from grospixels.com
i think it's a really great remix, what's your opinion?
-atari lynx:"double dragon remix"from my french friends from grospixels.com.I'm not a patriot, but i really think it's the best videogames remix better quality than the remix from overclocked remix; more professional
Post by: SHMUP3R on October 08, 2008, 03:26:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 8 2008, 10:56 PM)
can someone confirm this?
strange, i have retryed the dynamic genesis pm3 skin from my first thread, and all is working good, even when i launch it for the first time, good display of all the sprites, the sonic bg music is ok too
have you ftp'd all the sprites in the skin?
Are you using NeoGenesis v23??
Post by: gilles9999 on October 08, 2008, 03:34:00 PM
ok i see, perhaps neogenesis v23 takes a lot of memory and the xbox run out of memory ,it could explain
the random shut off of the bg music?
the skin can be optimized but i prefer to wait for the madmab opinion and nexts releases
Post by: SHMUP3R on October 08, 2008, 04:01:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 8 2008, 11:10 PM)
v22 no problem
ok i see, perhaps neogenesis v23 takes a lot of memory and the xbox run out of memory ,it could explain
the random shut off of the bg music?
the skin can be optimized but i prefer to wait for the madmab opinion and nexts releases
Oh ok I thought I was doing something wrong.
And on v23 the home screen has 7 options to choose from so thats why the icons dont line up.
It's still the best skin I think anyways. THanks for all the efforts!
Post by: gilles9999 on October 09, 2008, 06:38:00 AM
if you are using my GENESIS DYNAMIC skin with neogenesis,
go to skin settings configuration/main menu/texts settings
and set number of lines per screen to "7"
SHMUP3R is right there is one more line in the neogenesis main screen "launch inserted cd"
Post by: madmab on October 09, 2008, 10:07:00 AM
Post by: madmab on October 10, 2008, 01:23:00 AM
There is a picture of it here. I tried it, but me with my limited paint/photoshop skills it didn't look pretty.
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125398&view=findpost&p=1529493
Post by: gilles9999 on October 10, 2008, 04:08:00 AM
like this?
if it is ok for you, just rename it "emuloadbkg.jpg" and put it in the DYNAMIC skin folder
For the (definitive) final versions of the DYNAMIC skins, i think i will put a folder named "alternate splash screen and main menu" with .jpg background in it
because once again, Xport has well done the skins configuration, and in each Xport emu, you can choose wich background you wish for each screen.
It's the best option since atarixl box , neogenesis are "multi systems emulators"
so, in the DYNAMIC genesis skin, you can use this main menu if you are a 32X Geek
(right click on the pic/save as)
Post by: madmab on October 10, 2008, 08:01:00 AM
I was not sure how hard/easy it would be to somehow integrate the two together.Good work BTW on keeping the look consistent but yet unique. I really like that aspect!
Post by: gilles9999 on October 11, 2008, 04:59:00 PM
Dynamic_ATARI_2600_pm3_by_Gilou9999
and...
DYNAMIC AMIGA released (special dedicace to retroplay)
Dynamic_AMIGA_pm3_by_Gilou9999
p.s. the texts displayed in the splash screen are "beta",
madmab, i need the names of all your future emus
(I know it's soon, but eh! perheaps you already know the name of all of them?ATARIXL BOX GOLD, CRYSTAL, GALAXY, PLATINUM? what else? now the hard stuff is made i 'm going faster to make the dynamic skins)
Post by: gilles9999 on October 11, 2008, 05:19:00 PM
even if it's not really my cup of tea
I don't understand why you love so much thoses "HIGH Score cartridges"?
Post by: madmab on October 11, 2008, 05:30:00 PM
The reason I wanted the HSC cart on the 7800 screen because in some ways it is a first. A7800x is based on an old MESS source of which I made several additions that did not exist. One of which was HSC support, and the other was fixing the two button support. Two features that could/should be added to the MESS official fork. But no one over there seems interested in adding them.
It's just something I consider an achievement. There was/is only one other emulator known to support the HSC cart. So it's kinda a big thing for me. Plus I put alot of research and time into adding that feature. I really appreciate you integrating the two. It's something I wanted to do with the last release but my paint/photoshop skills are limited.
On a historical note. The HSC cart was never "officially" released by Atari. It was actually created several years later and released as a limited distribution by AtariAge. It is also supported by the Cuttle Cart.
Anyway to put a snappy of the 2600 screen up? I was gonna take a look at it when my rapidshare account reached it's limit. I always thought it'd be kinda cool to have on the startup screen the dragon (duck) from adventure come on the screen and eat the "adventure dot" which would be in the form of the dot on top of the letter I somewhere on the screen.
I might try to adapt the current z26x skin over to dual preview (although limited support). Just because I kinda like it. Although the music does tend to drive me crazy!
I'll probably try and redo the atarixlbox skin to dual preview as well (and hopefully fix the stupid transparency issues). Since I put so much work into that skin.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 11, 2008, 05:38:00 PM
QUOTE(madmab @ Oct 12 2008, 01:06 AM)
I might try to adapt the current z26x skin over to dual preview (although limited support). Just because I kinda like it. Although the music does tend to drive me crazy! I'll probably try and redo the atarixlbox skin to dual preview as well (and hopefully fix the stupid transparency issues). Since I put so much work into that skin.
I'll probably try and redo the atarixlbox skin to dual preview as well (and hopefully fix the stupid transparency issues). Since I put so much work into that skin.I was thinking this was making its way to all the emus. At least all the major ones. Am I mistaken in thinking that most of the work you've done on Coleco will be easy to port to other emus?
Post by: madmab on October 11, 2008, 06:10:00 PM
But being that I'm partial to the 2600 and atarixlbox skins (especially since I created the atarixlbox skin myself) I was thinking of modifying them to handle dual preview.
I was just thinking. Is there any reason we need to know the version numbers? Now that I think about it. It's probably not a good idea to have any graphics with the version number so that when it does change we do not have to worry about updating the graphic.
As it is now the version number is part of the main menu text.
But in case your wondering. Here is the format.
If I make major changes to the emu the format is "emuname Main Menu v99 (Madmab ed)".
Any emulator that I recompile for Dual Preview will just be "emuname Main Menu v99".
I've been adding the version number because I got tired of trying to figure out which version I had running on my Xbox's.
The reason I ad (Madmab ed) is to signify that the major changes were done by me. That way people will know to bug me and not X-port if any issues come up. Well that and they can blame me for all the goofups.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 11, 2008, 06:13:00 PM
I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about the emus themselves. I like your Miner 2049'r skin. That was my favorite game on the 5200 back in the day.
Can I assume that 99% of the work and features you've done on Colecovision will be easy to port to other emus then?
~Rx
Post by: madmab on October 11, 2008, 06:58:00 PM
All the other internal changes I made in Atarixlbox are a different story. The biggest thing is. I changed the way the queuing system works (for record/playbacK) so that would have to be tested. Plus the changes affect netplay as well. Althuogh not as important (probably hardly ever used) it would need to be tested as well.
Keypad changes should only require small changes (depends on the available overlays on the internet).
Keyboard changes... If Ireproduced each systems keyboard (like I did with atarixlbox) would take alot of work. That particular section of code is a bigtime hack.
All other changes should have no effect on the emu but would take a little work modifying it so they would compiles.
Here is an animation of the "Adventure" dragon/duck I was referring to. I thought it'd be kinda cool to somehow integrate into the opening screen.
http://imageshack.us
Hmm... seems the speed is a little too fast.
But you'all get the idea..Post by: madmab on October 12, 2008, 12:13:00 AM
See top half of picture.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 12, 2008, 07:09:00 AM
Just time consuming to configure correctly the 14 configs of the skin:
Dynamic_ATARI_800XL_pm3_by_Gilou9999
it's the atari 800xl with a sort of "expantion pack"?(good quality pic)
Post by: Retroplay on October 12, 2008, 09:40:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 12 2008, 01:35 AM)
DYNAMIC AMIGA released (special dedicace to retroplay)
WOW great.
A small request though.
It would be über cool if you could make this skin with the classic Amiga logo.
I can be found here.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 12, 2008, 01:38:00 PM
so here it is:
Dynamic_AMIGA_pm3_by_Gilou9999 with official logo
DYNAMIC PC ENGINE released
(draculaX bg music, 14 configs to choose from,animated system logo and system banner, custom pc-e box for any boxarts settings)
Dynamic_PC_ENGINE_pm3_by_Gilou9999
Post by: ressurectionx on October 12, 2008, 01:59:00 PM
Here's the one I had:
Lovin' your work.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 12, 2008, 02:13:00 PM
there is a looot of differents versions:pc engine, coregraphix, coregraphix II, supergraphix,super cd rom, and even one more version i think
So i had to make a choice: the first one as default
"alternate splash and main menu folder" will come in the future in the root of this DYNAMIC skin
Post by: Retroplay on October 12, 2008, 03:07:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 12 2008, 10:14 PM)
DYNAMIC AMIGA (with official logo) (I thought the first one i put was the good one, but retroplay say it isn't)
The first one is Amiga Inc. official logo.
The one I suggested is the "classic" logo on Amigas from Commodore.
Nice to have a skin with both.
Post by: madmab on October 12, 2008, 11:22:00 PM
Post by: SHMUP3R on October 13, 2008, 12:24:00 AM
Any plans for a 2600???
Post by: gilles9999 on October 13, 2008, 02:33:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on October 13, 2008, 07:04:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Oct 13 2008, 06:58 AM)
Such a demanding public!
Thanks for humoring us man. You got a lot of patience.
QUOTE
I have already released the 2600 DYNAMIC skin on page 3, post 34
Won't it be nice when you can put all that stuff right up at the top man? No more looking up where you posted what. I love it on my thread.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 13, 2008, 11:40:00 AM
real pain to have dynamic skins dispatched all over the topic
Post by: sotu on October 13, 2008, 02:39:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on October 13, 2008, 03:07:00 PM
I don't remember if rezx asked you this,
but in a (near) future i'll need your personnal banner to add them in the DYNAMIC skins,
but they must have a transparent background
The gameselect banner is located in the sprite folder 13 of all the dynamic skins
So all you have to do is to open the sprite number 13 of the desired DYNAMIC skin with photoshop
and modify it (replace it with sonic, metroid, mario banner etc...anything you want)
after that, put the new sprite in a unused sprite folder
Then, if the user want to change the gameselect banner, he will just replace the sprite 13 with your sprite in the skin configuration and...that's all.Really easy to customize
I really need your good work Sotu, since you have a lot of "pm3 style" banners, they will fit really well in the DYNAMIC pm3 skins
oh, and yes,
I have the long awaited Neverwill unreleased zsnexbox skin psd with me,
the one with the snes carts and various snes characters on it
(neverwill allowed me to work on it
)and i have also the original mario, zelda and metroid neverwill psd, so they will have a better dual preview display
for the moment, little pause, because i'm going on hollidays for 7 days in Roma , Italy
see you later xbox pals!
Post by: sotu on October 13, 2008, 07:51:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on October 18, 2008, 03:20:00 PM
so here is the atarixbox skin with a extra sprites folder in it (just choose the sprite you want and replace it)
Dynamic_ATARI_5200_pm3_by_Gilou9999 18-10-08
I've read you have been able to allow the user to modify the sprites names (instead of 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc...) it's excellent, I don't know if the forum members understand what it's mean, but with the next madmab releases it will be very easy for the users to have the total control of the skin aspect (when madmab will release them you'll understand what we mean)
Oh, and i have totally redone the splash screen texts,
now, there is a animated "madmab edition" splash text custom font (i hope you will love the font i have done for "madmab edition"?)
So, for everyone who want to see it:
download the new DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin, choose the skin in your xport emu, then re-launch the skin to see the splash screen animation (use the default "settings.ini")
Can you test it and say if the splash screen/animated text is ok? All the other DYNAMIC skin will have the same/similar splash screen text (bg system box will be different of course)
Post by: ressurectionx on October 18, 2008, 03:47:00 PM
Post by: madmab on October 18, 2008, 05:10:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 18 2008, 05:56 PM) 
I have made the mofifications you suggested madmab,
so here is the atarixbox skin with a extra sprites folder in it (just choose the sprite you want and replace it)
http://rapidshare.com/files/155302966/Dynamic_ATARI_5200_pm3_by_Gilou9999.rar.html
I've read you have been able to allow the user to modify the sprites names (instead of 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc...) it's excellent, I don't know if the forum members understand what it's mean, but with the next madmab releases it will be very easy for the users to have the total control of the skin aspect (when madmab will release them you'll understand what we mean)
Oh, and i have totally redone the splash screen texts,
now, there is a animated "madmab edition" splash text custom font (i hope you will love the font i have done for "madmab edition"?)
So, for everyone who want to see it:
download the new DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin, choose the skin in your xport emu, then re-launch the skin to see the splash screen animation (use the default "settings.ini")
Can you test it and say if the splash screen/animated text is ok? All the other DYNAMIC skin will have the same/similar splash screen text (bg system box will be different of course)
Sure I'll be glad to take a look when I get a chance.
Yeah I had an idea about the "sprites directorys having names" thing the other day. After looking at the skins "settings.ini" I think it will work. I'll have to begin my experiments next time I'm able to sit down and compile.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 18, 2008, 05:11:00 PM
all this work for the only love of god, we won't see this nowaday, only grey buildings...),chapelle sixteen with michelange paints, pantheon,pasta, pizzas, trevi fountain (launch a piece of money and make a wish)if you can go here it's a wonderfull city and romantic
France and Paris are great touristic locations too
Eiffel tower, triumph arc, louvre museum, joconde, french cheese and french wine are still the bests!
yeah i know, off topic but it's trully 2 wonderfull city
madmab have you tryed the new DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin?
edit: next dynamic skins, snes, master system
but the 100% definitive version of each of the dynamic skins will come with the madmab's releases
Post by: ressurectionx on October 18, 2008, 07:00:00 PM
I'm not going to be testing the skins at the moment because I have my hands full with other things. I'm sure you guys can keep cranking the great stuff out. Really looking forward to naming the sprites!
I was going to post this in the other thread, but I can't seem to find it now (did it get buried?)
I uploaded the manuals for Colecovision (or I will be shortly after you read this). Hopefully we can get a good in-game menu option to view these since I figured out a way that only takes about 1 hour per system to convert and rename the manuals. I have manual packs for about 6 of the emus ready now.
Nice looking skin
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on October 18, 2008, 11:46:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 18 2008, 07:47 PM)
Roma is an incredible beautifull city with even incredible monuments: Colyseum, Vatican (HQ of the pope Benedicto 16, church st pierre is the most amazing church in the world
all this work for the only love of god, we won't see this nowaday, only grey buildings...),chapelle sixteen with michelange paints, pantheon,pasta, pizzas, trevi fountain (launch a piece of money and make a wish)if you can go here it's a wonderfull city and romantic
France and Paris are great touristic locations too
Eiffel tower, triumph arc, louvre museum, joconde, french cheese and french wine are still the bests!
yeah i know, off topic but it's trully 2 wonderfull city
madmab have you tryed the new DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin?
edit: next dynamic skins, snes, master system
but the 100% definitive version of each of the dynamic skins will come with the madmab's releases
Sorry, I had not looked at the skin yet. Busy cranking out Colecovision videos for RessX.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 19, 2008, 06:15:00 AM
please use this new one, 24 bugs fixed (2 in each config
)Now the gameselect is way better, because the text appear after 0.5 s(i have adjusted the animation delay in each config);
so, the rombrowser animation appears first, then the text appear
in the previous version, the text appeared first wich is bad
the 14 splash screens are also fixed
i have added an "extra sprites folder" with new sprites and new background in it
Dynamic_ATARI_5200_pm3_by_Gilou9999 19-10-08
1)Madmab, i've read you will release the new atarixlbox soon;
will you put the dynamic atari 5200 skin the default one?
2)Since there is also a DYNAMIC atari800xl skin,will you put the 2 skins in your next release, or do you prefer to put all the sprites and background in only one skin?
Post by: madmab on October 19, 2008, 04:25:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 19 2008, 08:51 AM)
1)Madmab, i've read you will release the new atarixlbox soon;
will you put the dynamic atari 5200 skin the default one?
2)Since there is also a DYNAMIC atari800xl skin,will you put the 2 skins in your next release, or do you prefer to put all the sprites and background in only one skin?
1) Yes the 5200 skin will be default since most people associate atarixlbox with the 5200.
2) I'm not really sure. Have not decided. I just thought it would be nice to have alternates for people who think 800xl when using atarixlbox. Now if only we could find a screeny of the Atari XEG and box..
On a side note I have about 70% of the synopsis code done. Then I need to test it. For some reason the formatting on your synopsis text file was messed up. So I had to go in and add carriage returns and line feeds.
For now I'm gonna display it like a normal dialog box. But I was wondering if you had some special formatting in mind? (for example header font different from the text font, etc). I'm not very good when it comes to visual stuff like that.
Post by: madmab on October 20, 2008, 09:41:00 AM
I was gonna originally wait till I got the synopsis stuff working, but to make it easier to get started renaming for you I'll send you the latest if you wish.
The directory format is follows...
1_sprite name
2_sprite name
etc...
Basically just take the original naming. Add an underscore, and then the sprite name. Make sure that you do NOT use an underscore as part of the sprite name. The code uses underscore as a delimeter.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 20, 2008, 10:06:00 AM
I grew up on the 5200. I even remember my parents playing pac-man and galaxian on it when I was like 3 or 4 although I don't remember them ever once playing games at all really afterwards when I grew up. They went and got a divorce like kids do and went all drama-like and started pretending like they were adults afterwards. Still do to this day..... and at times they're even pretty convincing to the average un-Monk-like-folk like me.
I really do think there must have been something hypnotic in the music for Wizards and Warriors III on NES though. Years later I remember my old man watching me and my younger bros (well.... mostly me) playing that one for quite a while when we rented it one weekend and I don't ever remember him just sitting there watching us playing a game for hours before or after that. But than again I was a dumb kid who thought that it was my fault they got divorced too, so Occam's Razor says it's probably more likely that my mom told him that he couldn't see us on one of our birthdays or some other tit-for-tat crap that women scorned do... prolly just wanted to spend some time with us and chill for a while instead of going to the Museum of Science and Industry or the Planetarium like we all went a lot when we were kids... (It was free back then ya'all).
My parents were good people...... They just really hated the phuck out of each other z'all.
TILT!
Back on topic.... sorry.
I never even saw one of the Atari computers except for one time in my teens when I was at somebody's house, who I can't even remember today. Ugly looking thing, wasn't it?
Still trying to find that 800 conversion to 5200 for Turmoil. If I were to make a top 10 list of 2600 games, I think I would be hard pressed not to choose Turmoil as the number one game on the system. Break neck action which just got faster and faster as you go. No other game on that system ever seemed so intense at the time. All those multi color flash screens between levels and that music that went d... du.... duuu.... duuuuummm..... Dummmmmm....... DDDDUUUUUUMMMMMM.... DUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM until it kind of screamed and went immediately silent in that early-80's-video-game-robot-tone. The machine gun blasts that were sent both ways, and those fucking star things that would start bouncing around the screen faster than anything you'd ever seen in slower times like the early 80's if you didn't catch them before they started moving. Pure fucking awesomness, the likes which maybe only Quinton Tarentino and 2-Pac may have achieved in mainstream culture from 1979 on...... (I thought Whitesnake reached it with "Here I Go Again, until I see how commercial it was.... and then realize the sad thought that I would probalby think the same thing of 2-Pac or Kurt Cobain today if "I Love the 90's" on VH1 were disrespecting their entire works of art by ridiculing them like they were Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer when they're at gigs doing that shit when they're 40 today.... or 60 tomorrow....)
They don't make shit like that anymore, 'cept maybe Castlevania I on Nintendo. Too many "save games" or cheat codes or even passwords were available in years afterwards, letting somebody leave the game behind without that feeling of resentment to whoever tore you away when you were pwning the 20th level of Turmoil. There was no fucking cheating on Turmoil in 1984.
You either had it, or you were owned by it. Period.
Nothing I've ever played quite captured the adrenilne rush of that game and stomping your best friends teeth in at it like Edward Norton curbing a theiving thug in a 2 hour, black and white hate-crime flick.
But anyways.....
Loving this work guys, even on the older systems. I'm one of them, in-between-generation-types that really understands the best of both worlds. It was weird when my half-bro didn't know what an Atari even was, but even stranger when my bosses kid, back in 1999 didn't even know what a Nintendo was. Too busy playing Super Metroid and taking for granted the fact that Samus was a girl without Justin Bailey spilling the beans, I guess.....
I never saw a pong system in "real life", but I did kick the teenagers' asses at Frenzy when I was 4 years old standing on that blue milk carton. (look up "milk carton" on wikipedia kids)
What we have here fucking rocks, and I'm fucking glad to be a part of it. You guys are great and I hope the world someday appreciates what we're doing right now. The people who control all the shit would never do it for us or even themselves. On the shoulders of giants before us we stand, who have lain out the groundwork and made this all possible, and like Bill Gates did when he gave us all Windows (love it or hate it, use it or don't, however stolen it may or may not have been), we're making something so multi-generational-encompassing so plug-and-play for noobs and experts alike, that it's probalby going to piss a lot of people off it it ever became mainstream... (and hopefully it's easily portable to the next system when all of the XBoxes start self destructing in some sad day in our future).
I don't think there are many who could ever appreciate what they really have when the end product comes out..... absolutely free of charge.... with total love for the art that is the video game and what it's meant to all of us, no matter what our first memory of the genre is.
Let's get 'er done before some laws might make it really hard for something so great to be done out in the daylight.
Peace ya'll.....,
~Rx
QUOTE(madmab @ Oct 20 2008, 05:17 PM)
The directory format is follows...
1_sprite name
2_sprite name
etc...
Basically just take the original naming. Add an underscore, and then the sprite name. Make sure that you do NOT use an underscore as part of the sprite name. The code uses underscore as a delimeter.
Nice.......
So we can add whatever the hell we want to add as our name in the future, I take it? That'd be awesome. If the end user wanted to totally re-create things from the ground up at some point, they would be able to do it with just an FTP program and the emulator instead of having to know emu-code.
If so, what? Do we just name the folder whatever we wanted with the 1_ or 2_ etc, behind it?
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 20, 2008, 12:48:00 PM
I have found a (quite) good quality pics for the ultra "vintage" atari XE!
in it's super collector box
the main menu (the system in all it's greatness!
So, the DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin is complete
madmab, contact me for any special touch you want on it?
QUOTE(madmab @ Oct 20 2008, 06:17 PM)
Well I got this done real quick this morning. Turned out easier than I thought it would be.
I was gonna originally wait till I got the synopsis stuff working, but to make it easier to get started renaming for you I'll send you the latest if you wish.
The directory format is follows...
1_sprite name
2_sprite name
etc...
Basically just take the original naming. Add an underscore, and then the sprite name. Make sure that you do NOT use an underscore as part of the sprite name. The code uses underscore as a delimeter.
Ah!! finally you have succeed!excellent!All the users should easilly modify the DYNAMIC skin with their own tastes(the best solution finally)
for the game synopsis, look at the "legend of zelda synopsis pic" of the synopsis thread (1st page)
I think only the full name should be in a bigger font, looks more nice
And, oh, yes i'm waiting your new beta with impatience
Post by: madmab on October 20, 2008, 02:03:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 20 2008, 03:24 PM)
Miracle!
I have found a (quite) good quality pics for the ultra "vintage" atari XE!
in it's super collector box
the main menu (the system in all it's greatness!
So, the DYNAMIC ATARIXL skin is complete
madmab, contact me for any special touch you want on it?
Ah!! finally you have succeed!excellent!All the users should easilly modify the DYNAMIC skin with their own tastes(the best solution finally)
Wow! Way to go! I was beginning to think it'd be impossible. For some reason even the Atari "centric" sites carry very little info about this little piece of equipment.
Yeah the sprite naming is pretty neat. It still keys in on the number, but you can still name it so the user knows what they have selected in the sprite menu. Pretty neat. Backwards compatabile and now with names!!
I finished up (on paper, so to speak) the synopsis code. All I have to do is get it to compile and work.
I don't think it will be too hard, but then the sprite names was just a teensy bit more difficult than I thought. Although it only ended up in about 7-8 line changes. Compared to the many more that I thought it would be.Hey RessX if you want I can point you in the right direction concering Turmoil. Tt was released for the 8-bit systems (as a cart I believe). Which pretty much qualifies it for a RessX Xtra.
Yeah I grew up in the era of the Atari 2600/Odyssey 2 on up. In fact Arcades were pretty common place so I also grew up on the likes of Pac-man, Space Invaders, and Asteroids. The atari 400 was my first "real" computer. Which pretty much explains my fondness for Atari. I kinda skipped the whole NES era, but I did pick back up around the SNES, Genesis and then later on the Dreamcast, N64. So I'm a bit of a nintendo fan (mostly SNES) as well.
Post by: justgoonies on October 21, 2008, 04:32:00 PM
"simply go to "configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/select skin configuration"
and choose one of the following pre-made configs if you have a good old standard TV"
on any of the skins.
So on my 61" tv on neogenesis the screenart looks all squished and in a square instead of a rectangle. When i try to stretch the art out the icon in the game select settings where you stretch is not where it is in the actual game select screen so i pretty much have to guess how big and where it is. Please Help
Post by: SHMUP3R on October 21, 2008, 11:01:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 13 2008, 10:09 AM)
I have already released the 2600 DYNAMIC skin on page 3, post 34
THis is Awesome!!!!! Thanks allot!
Is Mameox an Xport release? That would too insane to have a Dynamic for MameOX..
Post by: madmab on October 22, 2008, 03:16:00 AM
QUOTE(justgoonies @ Oct 21 2008, 07:08 PM)
Hi I cant find
"simply go to "configuration/video-skin configuration/skin configuration/select skin configuration"
and choose one of the following pre-made configs if you have a good old standard TV"
on any of the skins.
So on my 61" tv on neogenesis the screenart looks all squished and in a square instead of a rectangle. When i try to stretch the art out the icon in the game select settings where you stretch is not where it is in the actual game select screen so i pretty much have to guess how big and where it is. Please Help
That option does not exist yet on any "released" emulator yet. But you can go into the skin directory and rename the appropriate skin configuration you wish to use to "settings.ini" and then re-"load" the skin.
Post by: madmab on October 22, 2008, 05:05:00 AM
Now I just need to update my miner2049er skin to dual preview.
I was wondering. Would it be possible to somehow animate the "madmab edition" text? Have the letters wobble back and forth a little. For example the "M" is titled left. Kinda have it alternate between being titled left and normal. Do this for all letters. Maybe add a little blur.
ok. After having to go thru all the trouble to "update" atarixlbox to the latest commonfuncs to see if I could figure out the "filter issue". I got to thinking that when we start releasing these suckers I might as well do the full "madmab changes" treatment.
Really the only two things that need to be checked is record/playback and netplay. The first is fairly easy to do. Upgrading them should only take 2-3 hours each from my experience. Give or take an hour with all the recent movie, dual/preview and media streaming changes. But typically the more I do it the faster I get.
Gilles9999.. As far as the main menu "Title Text" I was thinking of going with something like. "AtariXLBox Main Menu v7 (mm)" or just plain "AtariXLBox Main Menu v7". That should solve any lining up issues.
Oh and now that I've thought about it. I think including all the "sprites" in the sprite directory will be good enough. The alternate emuloadbkg and main can just be renamed differently (for example) "emuloadbkg_XEvgs.jpg" and "main_XEvgs.jpg". For now we can just leave it to the user to decide to change them. I'd rather not overload them with to many configuration.ini files.
Actually I do have an alternative idea. Just have to decide if it is worth trying.
Later guys... got some videos to record, and if I'm up to it some synopsis code to tinker around with.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 23, 2008, 12:39:00 PM
In fact, i was thinking the same thing,the DYNAMIC ATARIXLBOX skin must be.... DYNAMIC!
So, yes, i'll rework one "maxi skin" to put all the "atarixeg,atari5200,atari comp sprites and background" in it
So the user will see the full potential of the dynamic skin,he will be able to change almost all with only one skin
actually, the "madmab edition" text font is animated from right to the left
i just have to create a .png animation, and let the sprite effect on it...
ok, we just have to be agree about the final form of the dynamic skin
especially for a "3 in 1" emu like atarixlbox
p.s.: madmab, i see you prefer to see the controller on the gameselect screen...
that's the liberty of the dynamic skin
my preference, in all dynamic skins is:
-the specific system controller appear in the config menu
-the system itself appear in the gameselect screen, one exception is adamx:controller in the gameconfig, and "system with controller" in the gameselect screen
if possible, i would prefer to see the system itself in the atarixlbox gameselect screen in the default skin
but you are the boss
, and afterall, a user can set the banner he wants in few secondsp.s.2: you will notice, i have worked to have all the sprites in the correct aspect ratio (even new sprites for the hd users), so it is 4/3 for the movies/screenshots, and the specific atari 5200 cart format.
I don't even know if there is only one skin specially designed to display the systems boxarts
I never said it's the most beautifull skin, but the more usefull, certainly yes
later, gilou9999
Post by: ressurectionx on October 23, 2008, 04:00:00 PM
When you get your sprites folders set up on one of your skins (preferably Colecovision), you mind posting a new skin with it? I want to test that emu out with madmab's new fixes including the sprite directories. What I saw looks great so far, but I haven't looked too deeply into it.
Thanks,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 23, 2008, 04:28:00 PM
the work is already done,
we are just giving the "final touch" on the dynamic skins
i listenning your suggestions you and madmab (and the xbox scene members)
since you have generally good ideas
to developp the dynamic skin idea as far as i can
for the moment, i'm testing 100% the new adamx beta with the dynamic colecovision skin
to check any problem
for the moment everything seems ok, even for a newbie, all is possible, without 20 skins in the skins folder
hd user, sdtv user, boxart only, video only, videos with boxarts, big videos with big boxarts
i check and re check all the configs
i'm perfectionist too in fact
all suggestions are welcome about the dynamic adamx and dynamic atarixlbox
Post by: ressurectionx on October 23, 2008, 04:54:00 PM
What do you think about having the ability within the emulator to view the TV commercials for the games within the system Gilles? Madmab?
I was thinking that I should be able to convert the videos to .xml and then we can add them to the "Commercials" folder in the emu. Then there could be a pretty prominent option to view all of the TV Commercials for the console and games/accessories that we can find.
I've already got an idea now to make empty zipfiles for the games in a separate "TV Commercials" folder within the roms that will play the .xml of the commercial when it's highlighted, but the problem there is the emu might bug out if you accidentally press the A button and select an empty rom. Plus, you'd be limited to watching the commercial in the preview window instead of being able to watch it full-screen.
It would be much better if there were an option that would take you to the commercials folder and let you view the commercials there.
Let me know what you think,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 23, 2008, 05:18:00 PM
from here (THE site for gamespots)
http://gameads.gamepressure.com/tv_games_commercials.asp?S=2,3
It is a 200% fun moment when i show the boxart and the commercial video at the same time ex
zelda commercial, street fighter 2 commercial, starfox,donkey kong commercial,
since not all the games have gamespots, i simply replace the in game videos of thoses games with
commercial videos
again,(in my opinion) it's a nice bonus (like in DVD
)perhaps a "commercial videos" folder should be welcome if it's not a big headache more for madmab
if possible, simply display the "in game video first"(as always), then display the "commercial video"(if exists)if madmab says it's too much chaos
, we could propose thoses videos for the users who prefers them(they just have to overwrite the new commercial videos over the old ones)
p.s.:"Super Video Splitter" is the best programm to convert all sorts of videos (and split the long intros sometimes) to wmv8.No bugs, my pc never crash with it, no synchro problems; just choose"convert to wmv8 broadbband ntsc 1400
And i have tested a lot of programs to convert to wmv8 (and be able to split the too longs videos)
Post by: ressurectionx on October 23, 2008, 05:32:00 PM
QUOTE
In fact i have already converted commercial spots for zsnexbox
from here (THE site for gamespots) games ads
from here (THE site for gamespots) games ads
Haha... I should have known man.
QUOTE
It is a 200% fun moment when i show the boxart and the commercial video at the same time ex
zelda commercial, street fighter 2 commercial, starfox,donkey kong commercial,
since not all the games have gamespots, i simply replace the in game videos of thoses games with
commercial videos
again,(in my opinion) it's a nice bonus (like in DVD tongue.gif )
zelda commercial, street fighter 2 commercial, starfox,donkey kong commercial,
since not all the games have gamespots, i simply replace the in game videos of thoses games with
commercial videos
again,(in my opinion) it's a nice bonus (like in DVD tongue.gif )
Yeah, I bet it looks pretty cool. I don't want to remove the action videos myself though. Worst case scenario, I will just make the empty zips with the names of the commercials like I said earlier.
QUOTE
perhaps a "commercial videos" folder should be welcome if it's not a big headache more for madmab pop.gif if possible, simply display the "in game video first"(as always), then display the "commercial video"(if exists)
I never considered the possibility to play the commercial for the game. This idea does generate several other ideas..........
QUOTE
if madmab says it's too much chaos muhaha.gif , we could propose thoses videos for the users who prefers them
(they just have to overwrite the new commercial videos over the old ones)
(they just have to overwrite the new commercial videos over the old ones)
I think I might include a commercial set with the Xtras naming conventions either way, now that I know it works. Too many possibilities with them not to.
QUOTE
p.s.:"Super Video Splitter" is the best programm to convert all sorts of videos (and split the long intros sometimes) to wmv8.No bugs, my pc never crash with it, no synchro problems; just choose"convert to wmv8 broadbband ntsc 1400
And i have tested a lot of programs to convert to wmv8 (and be able to split the too longs videos)
And i have tested a lot of programs to convert to wmv8 (and be able to split the too longs videos)
I'm comfortable with the AVI-to-WMV and the WMV-to-XMV batch files that NES and Horscht provided. That's all the video converting that I want to do myself with my slow computer and impatience when trying to teach myself something that doesn't have detailed and understandable instructions.
Hook me up with AVIs or WMVs and I'm ready to rock n roll.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on October 23, 2008, 07:01:00 PM
Anyways I was thinking maybe we could somehow incorporate it into the synopsis. For example tell the user to press "y" to view any commercials/promo's.
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 23 2008, 07:04 PM)
of course rez,
the work is already done,
we are just giving the "final touch" on the dynamic skins
i listenning your suggestions you and madmab (and the xbox scene members)
since you have generally good ideas
to developp the dynamic skin idea as far as i can
Post by: ressurectionx on October 23, 2008, 07:37:00 PM
That's why I don't know about the synopsis thing. I think it's fine if it's added there, but since there will be a generally small percentage of games with a commercial, it would probably be better if there was an option to run it either from the main menu, or from the "Utilities" section first.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 24, 2008, 02:05:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 24 2008, 04:13 AM)
run it either from the main menu, or from the "Utilities" section first.
yes, but if you are doing this, you wont be able to see the boxart at the same time,
plus there are already too much options in the main menu
i really think my solution is the more simple and easy:
show commercials videos:YES/NO,
if YES it will show the "commercial video" first, then the "in game video" second,easy no?
SECOND THING: THIS TIME i'm really satisfied with my atariXLbox dynamic skin!! (i've worked on it allday)
corrected:
-now the font,used and the font size is the same used in xbox media center pm3 (Trebuchet MS gras)
-all the sprites are named correctly!!
-animations corrected in all 14 settings
-buttons texts use the same font as XBMC project mayehm III
-avoiding the red color (since pure red is blurry on the standard tv)
-all the sprites are setted to avoid the overscan on the standard tv's
-sprites render well in HD, don't forget the XPORT emus skins are always 640*480 background, so i can't make miracles,no true hd background, but my 640*480 bg is optimized
here is my baby,
now all the dynamic skins will be similar to this one
http://rapidshare.com/files/157190971/Dynamic_ATARI_5200_pm3_by_Gilou9999.rar.html
Post by: ressurectionx on October 24, 2008, 02:43:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 24 2008, 09:41 PM)
yes, but if you are doing this, you wont be able to see the boxart at the same time,
plus there are already too much options in the main menu
i really think my solution is the more simple and easy:
show commercials videos:YES/NO,
if YES it will show the "commercial video" first, then the "in game video" second,easy no?
This is of course an option as well. Perhaps both could be done so you could either set it up so you see the game commercial before the game preview, and also view all of the commercials in their own special section in the "Utilities" menu. I really like the idea of being able to go through them separate, and the Utilities menu is hardly used so it would be a good option too.
In the utilities menu, the commercial could be viewed full-screen, instead of in the video preview box, like when you view the screenshots from the utilities menu.
What do you think madmab?
Looking forward to checking out your skins Gilles. I've been so busy working on the Xtras that I really haven't had a chance. The Gameboy/GB Color/GB Advanced is going to be the hardest system I've worked on. Bright side is, all the other systems that still need work should be easy compared to it. I think I have my next month of free time booked up with de-duping, testing and getting the artwork together.
I knew there was a reason that I saved this one and the Master System one for last (as far as the major emus go)
~Rx
Post by: madmab on October 25, 2008, 12:55:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 23 2008, 03:15 PM)
p.s.: madmab, i see you prefer to see the controller on the gameselect screen...
that's the liberty of the dynamic skin
Yeah my thinking is. Your at the game select screen. You select a game to play. It's time to "pick up your controller and play!".
I suppose the flipsside is. Your at the game select screen. You select a game to play. You "plug the cartridge into your console" and play!.
I made a quick survey of that commercial site and here is my tally...
343 - NES
286 - SNES
511 - gba, 103 gbc, 122 gb (735 total for all )
56 - SMS, 42 GG (98 total for all)
140 - Genesis, 32 - sega CD (172 total for all)
6 - Wonderswan
1 - Vectrex
127 - Atari (various systems)
102 - Pc Engine
30 - Intellivision
14 - Colecovision
29 - Commodore (C64?)
3 - Spectrum
Post by: ressurectionx on October 25, 2008, 12:57:00 AM
That's a lot more vids than I've ever found. I'm going to have to clear off some hard drive space. I'm almost running out.
~Rx
Post by: GLiTcH on October 25, 2008, 01:01:00 AM
Post by: madmab on October 25, 2008, 01:08:00 AM
Glitch. When released the new dynamic skins will be HD ready for pretty much everything except the background screen which is still 640x480 (stretched on hd). Gilles9999 managed to get around alot of the problems by making alot of the stuff sprites. He made a special effort to line up the fonts so they look correct in HD.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 25, 2008, 02:05:00 AM
BUT, use the last dynamic atarixl box (the only near 100% finished dynamic skin)
and rename any of the HD settings to "settings.ini" it will work.
Like madmab said, yes the background is upscaled 640*480 ,BECAUSE the xports emus can't display bigger backgrounds. EVEN the neverwill "hd" skins for zsnexbox are upscaled 512*512 backgrounds.
Post by: Knomercy on October 27, 2008, 06:10:00 PM
I'm banging my head trying to figure out how to setup boxart on the game loading window.
I'm using the default ini, not sure what the configuration is with that. The bottom window shows screen shots properly, and i'm not sure what the top window is previewing, as its empty.
So if I want boxart in the top window, how would I modify the ini to do that? What folders and format would I need to save it to?
Thanks in advance, I couldn't find anything in any of the documentation or posts that talk about this.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 28, 2008, 06:54:00 AM
I would be very interested in seeing a third window so Box/Carts could be in one, Title/Action could be in another, and video previews could be in the third. I think we've discussed that possibility before and it can't be done for one reason or another though.
Check out the thread by clicking the signature in my link to download the movies for the video previews on the systems that are complete. As soon as madmab releases the new version for that system, you will be able to preview all artwork in one box and the video previews in the other. Right now though, you can download the videos for SNES and see how the dual previews work with the newest version of ZSnesbox.
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on October 29, 2008, 03:15:00 PM
QUOTE(Knomercy @ Oct 28 2008, 01:46 AM)
Sorry if this is a noob question, but I just starting using these skins so forgive me if i'm missing something simple.
I'm banging my head trying to figure out how to setup boxart on the game loading window.
I apologize for some misunderstanding here
The first objective of the dynamic skins is to handle the dual boxart/videos stuff for the future madmab releases (dual boxarts/videos display is a source of BIG discussion about the best way to display them)
fortunatelly, dynamic skin can display them in amost all possible ways
BUT, if you want to use DYNAMIC skins with old xport's emus (wich is cool):
old XPORTS emus can display only one screenshot on the screen, SO
YOU will have to rename one of the followings settings:
- HDTV(or SDTV) boxarts only
- HDTV(or SDTV) med previews only
- HDTV(or SDTV) big previews only
to settings.ini
ONLY these pre-made settings are directly fully compatibles with old Xport's emus
Post by: gilles9999 on October 30, 2008, 05:30:00 PM
I'm working on a better madmab edition logo at the moment
perheaps with the famous dragon from adventure, coming and eating the dot in the "edition" text
ATARIXLBOX
update (good fonts, bump in the logo, alternate atari logo possible)for:
DYNAMIC ATARIXLBOX 30/10/2008
ADAMX
update : good fonts,one bug in one of the HD settings,logo redone
r~x, could you put them in the new thread?
DYNAMIC ADAMX 30/10/2008
p.s.: madmab, have you succeed finding the very obscure bug that crash the emu if it has more than 25 sprites in the sprites folder,
because i have a lot of bonus sprites, especially for the dynamic atarixlbox
Post by: madmab on October 30, 2008, 07:38:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 30 2008, 08:06 PM)
I'm working on a better madmab edition logo at the moment
perheaps with the famous dragon from adventure, coming and eating the dot in the "edition" text
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 30 2008, 08:06 PM)
p.s.: madmab, have you succeed finding the very obscure bug that crash the emu if it has more than 25 sprites in the sprites folder,
because i have a lot of bonus sprites, especially for the dynamic atarixlbox
Sorry. Not just yet. Busy meeting at work this week. Afterwards I was too braindead to work on anything. Although I did create more AdamX videos and got in a little Guitar Hero World Tour time. Well that and listening to some 2600 demo's to see if I could find some good TIA based music.
But when I get a chance I'm thinking it should be easy to fix.
Post by: gilles9999 on October 31, 2008, 02:59:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Oct 31 2008, 03:14 AM)
But when I get a chance I'm thinking it should be easy to fix.
excellent news so,
be sure to rename the settings.ini to one of the pre-made configs for this 2 dynamic skins (but i'm sure you knew that
)I was just wondering, what will you use for the default "settings.ini" in your future releases?
perheaps the "SDTV med previews only" since most of the users have a good old sdtv, and most of them haven't downloaded the ressurectionXtras yet?
let me know, so the "settings.ini" config will be right in all the dynamic skins
Post by: ressurectionx on October 31, 2008, 10:55:00 AM
I just got a chance to mess around with the Colecovision with the new build and skins. Lots of great stuff there. I'm a little disappointed in the sprite naming thing though. It's not either of your faults. I just misunderstood how the system worked originally. I was hoping that instead of "Configure Sprite 1, Configure Sprite 2, Configure Sprite 3, etc..." it would say something like "Configure Video Box. Configure Artwork Box. Configure Banner. etc...." It's made slightly less confusing now though at least when we can press one of these choices and see the name of the image that is being used in each "Configure Sprite X" spot.
Using AdamX (DualPreview Beta v3b7) and Gilles latest Colecovision skin (with the renamed sprites), here are the bugs and my suggestions:
BUGS:
1) Configure Left-Select Sprite and Configure Right-Select Sprite freezes my XBox (I'm not sure what either of these are supposed to do anyways, but they both freeze up the Box. If they're not needed, could they be removed?)
2) While flipping through different sprites using the "Sprite Graphic" in the "Configure Sprite 1" the XBox froze up on me several times. I'm not sure how stable this is. I didn't have this problem with the older build.
3) In Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings the text and the green button don't match up with the background.
4) When you select "Browse Screenshots" the video shows up as well as you scroll through the folders. This might also be a problem when we add the ability to view the jpgs of the game manuals?
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Can we move "Show Available Memory" to Utilities?
2) Add the ability to view a .txt file in-game to view any gamefaqs.
3) Add "TV Commercial Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
4) Add "Gamefaq Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
5) Add "Game Manual Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
6) Change default for "Show Full Favorites Path" to No. Change default to "Hide Filename Extentions" to Yes.
7) Can we make a preview for the Select Skin? Perhaps just a screenshot of the skin would be sufficient. For example, if skins were packaged with a sample.jpg in the main folder, it would display this picture while scrolling through available skins.
8) Change Offset X to "Move Right/Left" and change Offset Y to "Move Up/Down"
9) Re-order the "Configure Sprite" commands as follows:
Sprite Graphic -
Move Right/Left (Offset X)
Move Up/Down (Offset Y)
Scale
(Then whatever else, because I don't know much about the rest of the options)
Thanks guys, Great work,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on October 31, 2008, 05:36:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 31 2008, 01:31 PM)
Hey guys,
I just got a chance to mess around with the Colecovision with the new build and skins. Lots of great stuff there. I'm a little disappointed in the sprite naming thing though. It's not either of your faults. I just misunderstood how the system worked originally. I was hoping that instead of "Configure Sprite 1, Configure Sprite 2, Configure Sprite 3, etc..." it would say something like "Configure Video Box. Configure Artwork Box. Configure Banner. etc...."
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 31 2008, 01:31 PM)
BUGS:
1) Configure Left-Select Sprite and Configure Right-Select Sprite freezes my XBox (I'm not sure what either of these are supposed to do anyways, but they both freeze up the Box. If they're not needed, could they be removed?)
2) While flipping through different sprites using the "Sprite Graphic" in the "Configure Sprite 1" the XBox froze up on me several times. I'm not sure how stable this is. I didn't have this problem with the older build.
3) In Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings the text and the green button don't match up with the background.
4) When you select "Browse Screenshots" the video shows up as well as you scroll through the folders. This might also be a problem when we add the ability to view the jpgs of the game manuals?
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Didn't realize that. I think technically those two sprites are the last two sprites used. Probably a good chance this is the "-1" bug Gilles was referring too. BTW these are the graphics displayed to the left and right of the current selected line.
2) Yeah giles mentioned this one. For some reason it didn't happen to me when I was testing. But I do know what it is since I was concerned about it happening. I'm wondering if running in debug mode is preventing it from freezing (has happened before).
3) I'd have to look but if it is what I think it is there is nothing I can really do.
4) I touched on this at some point. The display and select directories/files routine is practically used everywhere. I was thinking of modifying it so it could be told when to or not to display movies and screenshots.
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 31 2008, 01:31 PM)
1) Can we move "Show Available Memory" to Utilities?
2) Add the ability to view a .txt file in-game to view any gamefaqs.
3) Add "TV Commercial Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
4) Add "Gamefaq Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
5) Add "Game Manual Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
6) Change default for "Show Full Favorites Path" to No. Change default to "Hide Filename Extentions" to Yes.
7) Can we make a preview for the Select Skin? Perhaps just a screenshot of the skin would be sufficient. For example, if skins were packaged with a sample.jpg in the main folder, it would display this picture while scrolling through available skins.
8) Change Offset X to "Move Right/Left" and change Offset Y to "Move Up/Down"
9) Re-order the "Configure Sprite" commands as follows:
Sprite Graphic -
Move Right/Left (Offset X)
Move Up/Down (Offset Y)
Scale
(Then whatever else, because I don't know much about the rest of the options)
Thanks guys, Great work,
~Rx
2) Not really any buttons available for it. The last button has already been reserved for the synopsis.
3) I have not had a chance to think about what to do about commercials just yet.
4) Gamefaq's huh? All I remember is discussing game documentations, commercials, and synopsis.
5) Well I figured the location of text files (which was originally intended for documentation) would serve the same purpose.
6) That ones a matter of preference. Although I agree with the first I personally usually leave the second at it's default.
7) Hmmmmmmmm......
8) We discussed this before. Although that would describe the result of modifying that number it does not really explain "what" that number is for. The offset and boundary are also tied into each other. Maybe we could change it to "Offset X (left/right)" for those who skipped graphing courses in math class?
9) Wait a minute? Is this what your suggesting changing number 8 too? That might work.
I suppose the Scale option could be bumped up.Post by: ressurectionx on October 31, 2008, 06:35:00 PM
QUOTE
I didn't think of that for some reason. But if I did change it then it would be misleading because then the user would think they are configuring "video box" or "artwork box". "video box" and "artwork box" are the graphic that the sprite just happens to be using. But I do understand what you mean.
Yeah... I wasn't necessarily pointing out a change here. I was just saying that I was a bit disappointed how it was originally set up. I see from using it that there is really no good option here. Even if you made the changes to the names of the "Configure Sprite X", somebody could very well make a Banner out of the "Video Box" easily. Perhaps just have a few that are pre-named that we'd be very likely to use, and then rename the others to something like "Misc Sprite 1, Misc Sprite 2". Your call here.
QUOTE
RessurectionX:
BUGS:
1) Configure Left-Select Sprite and Configure Right-Select Sprite freezes my XBox (I'm not sure what either of these are supposed to do anyways, but they both freeze up the Box. If they're not needed, could they be removed?)
2) While flipping through different sprites using the "Sprite Graphic" in the "Configure Sprite 1" the XBox froze up on me several times. I'm not sure how stable this is. I didn't have this problem with the older build.
3) In Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings the text and the green button don't match up with the background.
4) When you select "Browse Screenshots" the video shows up as well as you scroll through the folders. This might also be a problem when we add the ability to view the jpgs of the game manuals?
BUGS:
1) Configure Left-Select Sprite and Configure Right-Select Sprite freezes my XBox (I'm not sure what either of these are supposed to do anyways, but they both freeze up the Box. If they're not needed, could they be removed?)
2) While flipping through different sprites using the "Sprite Graphic" in the "Configure Sprite 1" the XBox froze up on me several times. I'm not sure how stable this is. I didn't have this problem with the older build.
3) In Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings the text and the green button don't match up with the background.
4) When you select "Browse Screenshots" the video shows up as well as you scroll through the folders. This might also be a problem when we add the ability to view the jpgs of the game manuals?
---
QUOTE
1) Didn't realize that. I think technically those two sprites are the last two sprites used. Probably a good chance this is the "-1" bug Gilles was referring too. BTW these are the graphics displayed to the left and right of the current selected line.
Did it freeze for you or Gilles? Any time I select either one it totally freezes my XBox. If there is no reason for us to have it in there (we can't control anything with it), then I suggest we remove them so our Boxes don't freeze up accidentally.
QUOTE
2) Yeah giles mentioned this one. For some reason it didn't happen to me when I was testing. But I do know what it is since I was concerned about it happening. I'm wondering if running in debug mode is preventing it from freezing (has happened before).
Wish I could tell ya
It's definately happening though. I don't have patience to keep getting up and resetting my XBox, so the DYNAMIC ability is pretty much lost to me until/if we can fix this.... 
QUOTE
3) I'd have to look but if it is what I think it is there is nothing I can really do.
I was assuming that this one is something that Gilles could fix in the skin settings. Maybe I'm wrong....
QUOTE
4) I touched on this at some point. The display and select directories/files routine is practically used everywhere. I was thinking of modifying it so it could be told when to or not to display movies and screenshots.
That would be cool. Not a big deal compared to other bugs here, but it would be nice to have this fixed.
________________________________
QUOTE
RessurectionX:
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Can we move "Show Available Memory" to Utilities?
2) Add the ability to view a .txt file in-game to view any gamefaqs.
3) Add "TV Commercial Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
4) Add "Gamefaq Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
5) Add "Game Manual Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
6) Change default for "Show Full Favorites Path" to No. Change default to "Hide Filename Extentions" to Yes.
7) Can we make a preview for the Select Skin? Perhaps just a screenshot of the skin would be sufficient. For example, if skins were packaged with a sample.jpg in the main folder, it would display this picture while scrolling through available skins.
8) Change Offset X to "Move Right/Left" and change Offset Y to "Move Up/Down"
9) Re-order the "Configure Sprite" commands as follows:
Sprite Graphic -
Move Right/Left (Offset X)
Move Up/Down (Offset Y)
Scale
(Then whatever else, because I don't know much about the rest of the options)
SUGGESTIONS:
1) Can we move "Show Available Memory" to Utilities?
2) Add the ability to view a .txt file in-game to view any gamefaqs.
3) Add "TV Commercial Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
4) Add "Gamefaq Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
5) Add "Game Manual Directory" to "Change Default Directories".
6) Change default for "Show Full Favorites Path" to No. Change default to "Hide Filename Extentions" to Yes.
7) Can we make a preview for the Select Skin? Perhaps just a screenshot of the skin would be sufficient. For example, if skins were packaged with a sample.jpg in the main folder, it would display this picture while scrolling through available skins.
8) Change Offset X to "Move Right/Left" and change Offset Y to "Move Up/Down"
9) Re-order the "Configure Sprite" commands as follows:
Sprite Graphic -
Move Right/Left (Offset X)
Move Up/Down (Offset Y)
Scale
(Then whatever else, because I don't know much about the rest of the options)
---
QUOTE
1) The purpose of that command is so the person creating the skin knows how much memory the graphics are taking up.
Gotcha. That didn't make sense to me to have it there before.
QUOTE
2) Not really any buttons available for it. The last button has already been reserved for the synopsis.
Not a button command here that I'm talking about. I was thinking of doing what NES did to ZSNESXBox and having a menu option for "View Gamefaq" in the In-Game menu.
QUOTE
3) I have not had a chance to think about what to do about commercials just yet.
Sure. I just thought it would probably be a good idea to have this here no matter what we end up doing with commercials. We definately want to have them in a separate folder from the Previews no matter what we end up doing with this.
Post by: ressurectionx on October 31, 2008, 06:51:00 PM
QUOTE
4) Gamefaq's huh? All I remember is discussing game documentations, commercials, and synopsis.
I thought I mentioned this before. Maybe I didn't. Again, just thinking that it was a real cool option that NES put in his emu and it could be done easily by using the view txt file command in-game and renaming it to "View Gamefaq". Also, it would then be nice if it defaulted to the "Gamefaqs" folder you specify in the Configuration Options.
QUOTE
5) Well I figured the location of text files (which was originally intended for documentation) would serve the same purpose.
I don't like having anything in the "D:\" directory, which is where the .txt files default to now. But the game manuals aren't text files anyways. They're very large .JPG scans of the original game manuals that came with the game. This would require an in-game menu for "View Game Manual" which used functionality similar to the "View Screenshots" in the utilities menu. Even better if we could zoom in on the image like in ZSNESXBox since sometimes it can be hard to read when the full image is displayed. I have the manuals in separate folder by game and they could just be dropped into the "D:\Manuals" folder.
Now that I'm reading this over, I think that when we were talking about the manuals before, you thought I meant "Game Documentation" such as text files like you mentioned in #4.
QUOTE
6) That ones a matter of preference. Although I agree with the first I personally usually leave the second at it's default.
Bummer. I hate having to change those two every damn time I get a new emu. I think it looks a lot cleaner with just the romname witout the extention, but this is a small thing I've already learned to live with.
QUOTE
7) Hmmmmmmmm......
Can't tell if you're really thinking about it or if I'm just being annoying here now....
I think a fullscreen preview of the JPG with the skin look would be appropriate here. QUOTE
8) We discussed this before. Although that would describe the result of modifying that number it does not really explain "what" that number is for. The offset and boundary are also tied into each other. Maybe we could change it to "Offset X (left/right)" for those who skipped graphing courses in math class?
9) Wait a minute? Is this what your suggesting changing number 8 too? That might work. I suppose the Scale option could be bumped up.
9) Wait a minute? Is this what your suggesting changing number 8 too? That might work.
I suppose the Scale option could be bumped up.You got it. Keep the Offset X garbage in paranthesis, but dumb it down for guys like me that hate math. I always have to do a trial and error thing on this when I go to make a skin change.
Later,
~Rx
Sorry I had to do this in two posts. I think there is a quote limit that I reached.
Post by: madmab on November 01, 2008, 02:15:00 AM
The view txt file function points to a directory that the user can change in the "change directories" menu. So I was originally thinking that this feature would serve well for viewing documentation, whether it be .jpg's or .txt files. If the user selected a .jpg file it would default to displaying the picture. Otherwise it would assume text.
For example if the user set the default directory to point to "\documentation" and had the following directory structure.
\documentation\
\documentation\pdf\
some game pdf files
\documentation\txt\
some game txt files
\documentation\faq\
some game faq files
Then getting to the needed file should not be too difficult.
There certainly seems to be no need to clutter up the menu with a bunch of different options when one can serve the purpose just fine.
---------------------------------------
Commercials...
I just had not had anytime to digest how to best handle this. Most likely it would be like you said. A seperate menu option that would traverse whatever directory the user specified and display movies when the user selects them. But beyond that I have not given it much thought because I wanted to get bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going. Baby steps..
---------------------------------------
7) Hmmmmmmm...
means the idea crossed my mind but outside of displaying a .jpg file or something I can not think of any other way to convey to the user how the skin will look. Each skin has, what, 4 or 5 different screens with varying animations? Besides I'm still a few steps behind you guys and looking at getting bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going.
Left-select and right-select sprite are used. Like I said it is most likely related to one of the other two lockup bugs so once I fix those it should clear up. I just never bothered when doing my quick test to go into those two menus.
I know what you mean about rebooting. I actually have a button on my controller that turns on/off my xbox but it seems to have stopped working.
So now I have to get up.Post by: gilles9999 on November 01, 2008, 02:59:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 1 2008, 09:51 AM)
I wanted to get bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going. Baby steps..
WAOUH! If you succeed into this,
the emu will become perfect (or so near)!
pdf viewing is a dream here in the xbox scene, I can't remember how much this feature has been requested, but it's really the cherry on the cake!
Besides that, if I replace spritenum=-1 with spritenum=0 in all the settings.ini, it correct the 2 bugs i mentionned.I can easilly rename them all, but perheaps you can say to the emu:
-"hey guy, if spritenum=-1, replace it with spritenum=0 ok?"
-ok boss
rezx have 25 sprites in the sprites folder, that's why it locks the xbox when you loop into the sprites
(i have the same bug)
if the emu doesn't want to do this, i will replace manually all the spritenum=-1 in the settings, let me know
Post by: ressurectionx on November 01, 2008, 03:15:00 AM
Hey Gilles, did you notice that the text and green button don't sync up in the Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings? I was wonderin if you could fix that yourself since madmab can't do anything about it.
I just noticed earlier that I was using the colecovision skin that you had up here before the new one you put up yesterday. It must have 25 sprites in it, huh?
Later guys,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 01, 2008, 04:08:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on November 01, 2008, 04:44:00 AM
we can easilly convert any pdf and read the jpg files like in zsnexbox, the best solution is here
-Good news!!, i was able to fix the annoying little ugly bug when "In Other Menu Settings-> Main Menu Settings the text and the green button don't match up with the background."
I have changed the vertical alignment and redo the font size/line height/position, so it's ok now,it's looking great!
DYNAMIC COLECOVISION 01/11/2008
and ok for atarixlbox too
DYNAMIC ATARIXLBOX 01/11/2008
Oh, and, after lot of testing, the "spritenum=-1" bug is the guilty guy behind the xbox freeze
(but don't worry, i can at least correct this manually, a little boring though)
rez, can you add them in the madmab and gilles thread? thx (only you have the superhero power to edit the first post
)
Post by: ressurectionx on November 01, 2008, 05:30:00 AM
Glad to hear you fixed that main menu bug. Nothing big, but I figured I'd mention it. I thought you'd be the guy to fix that one.
So which XBox freeze does this fix then Gilles? I'm hoping it's the one where you can't have more than 24 sprites.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 01, 2008, 01:18:00 PM
-if you have more than 24 sprites in the sprites folder, the xbox freeze when you are browsing the sprites: 22,23,24,freeze!(instead of sprite 1)
- if one of the sprite is named (in any of the settings) spritenum=-1
The xbox freeze when you will want to configure that sprite
But there is solutions, madmab had encountered more vicious bugs in the past
Post by: ressurectionx on November 01, 2008, 06:41:00 PM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 1 2008, 03:51 AM)
Sorry I didn't get a chance to look into those lock-ups and get out something quicker. Things have been a bit busier at work a little more than usual.
No worries man. I've had things come up recently too. No problems with a little burnout either. Better to take a break than to get sick of it.
QUOTE
The view txt file function points to a directory that the user can change in the "change directories" menu. So I was originally thinking that this feature would serve well for viewing documentation, whether it be .jpg's or .txt files. If the user selected a .jpg file it would default to displaying the picture. Otherwise it would assume text.
For example if the user set the default directory to point to "\documentation" and had the following directory structure.
\documentation\
\documentation\pdf\
some game pdf files
\documentation\txt\
some game txt files
\documentation\faq\
some game faq files
Then getting to the needed file should not be too difficult.
There certainly seems to be no need to clutter up the menu with a bunch of different options when one can serve the purpose just fine.
For example if the user set the default directory to point to "\documentation" and had the following directory structure.
\documentation\
\documentation\pdf\
some game pdf files
\documentation\txt\
some game txt files
\documentation\faq\
some game faq files
Then getting to the needed file should not be too difficult.
There certainly seems to be no need to clutter up the menu with a bunch of different options when one can serve the purpose just fine.
I see where you're coming from, but I think that it would be better for the end user to have different folders for each, if this is something that could then be easily ported from one emu to the next. I think it would be kinda out of place for a perfected emu to have a little glitch of having to navigate to a folder depending on which media you're looking at.
Ideally, way in the future maybe when the next emu-tweaker comes along and we're long done with our work, if you pressed "View Game Manual" in the in-game settings, it would pull up the manual for the game you're playing (if there is one). I know how difficult that might be now, and there's plenty of other things to do before everyone can see how great these new features are, so I think it's still important to have the emu automatically navigate to the "Game Manual" folder instead of a generic "Documentation" folder. I still think the same of the other types of files.
I know that it's not a huge thing, but not taking that shortcut would greatly improve a small feature of your emu. I'm putting a lot of work into the manuals and I'd like to get to some gamefaqs someday and I think they are important enough to warrant their own folders. They could be defaulted to the "Game Manuals", "TV Commercials", "Gamefaqs", and "General Text Files". I doubt anyone would put them anywhere else, so it's even unlikely that they'd ever have to change these options in the menu screen.
QUOTE
---------------------------------------
Commercials...
I just had not had anytime to digest how to best handle this. Most likely it would be like you said. A seperate menu option that would traverse whatever directory the user specified and display movies when the user selects them. But beyond that I have not given it much thought because I wanted to get bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going. Baby steps..
---------------------------------------
Commercials...
I just had not had anytime to digest how to best handle this. Most likely it would be like you said. A seperate menu option that would traverse whatever directory the user specified and display movies when the user selects them. But beyond that I have not given it much thought because I wanted to get bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going. Baby steps..
---------------------------------------
First thing's first man. I know that I don't work my things to do around anyone's schedule usually. There's so much to be done that it's just good to be working on it, knowing that we're working on one piece of the ultimate puzzle.
QUOTE
7) Hmmmmmmm...
means the idea crossed my mind but outside of displaying a .jpg file or something I can not think of any other way to convey to the user how the skin will look. Each skin has, what, 4 or 5 different screens with varying animations? Besides I'm still a few steps behind you guys and looking at getting bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going.
means the idea crossed my mind but outside of displaying a .jpg file or something I can not think of any other way to convey to the user how the skin will look. Each skin has, what, 4 or 5 different screens with varying animations? Besides I'm still a few steps behind you guys and looking at getting bug fixes for sprite naming, synopsis, and pdf viewing going.
Hope we can do something with it. I do see how it's low on the priority list. I figured I'd just throw it out there for an idea when you update your to-do list.
QUOTE
Left-select and right-select sprite are used. Like I said it is most likely related to one of the other two lockup bugs so once I fix those it should clear up. I just never bothered when doing my quick test to go into those two menus.
Hopefully it clears it up. Glad you're on the job, cause I'd be lost. I didn't say that the function wasn't used. I was just saying that if the end-user had no use for it, it could be removed from the menu. I've never used it, but maybe you or Gilles have used it for something before.
QUOTE
I know what you mean about rebooting. I actually have a button on my controller that turns on/off my xbox but it seems to have stopped working. So now I have to get up.
So now I have to get up.Yeah, and I have a cheaper Hitatchi 500 GB hard drive in there, so I always have to wait about 5-10 seconds to power it back on or it will freeze on me. (At least, I assume it's the hard drive's fault)
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 01, 2008, 09:35:00 PM
QUOTE
1) When you have more than 25 sprites in the sprites folder, and browse all the sprites (in the sprite config menu)when you are selecting a new one, the emu freeze...
2) When spritenum=-1 (in any settings.ini) the emu freeze...
i can easilly rename them to 0, it will work,but if a user want to use an old skin, it can be a problem
3) When you are using a sprite effect (any one,shader,etc...) you can select the duration of the effect, but when it is superior to 2.55 seconds, the sprite stop responding (not a big problem, but i report this one)
4) Video and skin configuration at the same time, no.
1) Not sure about this. I added an extra sprite (for a total of 26) and it did not freeze on me. But it may be this way because I fixed problem #2.
2) Should be fixed now. It displays "none" if no sprite is selected. This includes the "configure effect" and "configure left/right sprite" options. I assume the lockups were occuring when trying to enter the above menu's and not elsewhere?
3) I looked at this but I'm lost. Are you referring to the "Lenght X" and "Length Y" options? Is there an example skin I can try to see this?
4) Split up the video and skin configuration stuff. Although I did dups of a couple video options in the skin menu ( screenshot/movie preview settings, game screen size position, and video mode).
5) Changed "offset X" and "offset Y" to "Offset X (left/right)" and "Offset Y (up/down)".
The font size on SDTV in the atari_5200 skin seems to be just a teeny bit too small.
Post by: gilles9999 on November 02, 2008, 05:26:00 AM
The font used in the sdtv settings wasn't good, too bold
So i have used the "standard Trebuchet font" (f###ing hell to find this font
) in all the sdtv settingsand adjust all the texts, the graphic interface looks lot better in SDTV.
I keep the "Trebuchet bold" font in HDTV settings though Trebuchet is by far one of the best looking font (simple,clean, same used in xbmc)
The graphic interface is near perfect now (in my opinion, but i have a big sdtv)
madmab, is the text ok now with sdtv settings, or must i use a bigger size for the gameselect font?
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=OW3BDFQ8
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=VEY2KVFU
Oh! and madmab, my xbox doesn't freeze at all now, 0 freezes!
ressurectionX, is it ok for you too? Can you test my new skin with the new madmab beta?
update needed in mad and i thread rezx
Post by: ressurectionx on November 02, 2008, 06:55:00 AM
Hopefully I can give it a shot sometime this week between work. I'll get the new skins up ASAP.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 03, 2008, 02:22:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 1 2008, 09:17 PM)
I see where you're coming from, but I think that it would be better for the end user to have different folders for each, if this is something that could then be easily ported from one emu to the next. I think it would be kinda out of place for a perfected emu to have a little glitch of having to navigate to a folder depending on which media you're looking at.
Ideally, way in the future maybe when the next emu-tweaker comes along and we're long done with our work, if you pressed "View Game Manual" in the in-game settings, it would pull up the manual for the game you're playing (if there is one). I know how difficult that might be now, and there's plenty of other things to do before everyone can see how great these new features are, so I think it's still important to have the emu automatically navigate to the "Game Manual" folder instead of a generic "Documentation" folder. I still think the same of the other types of files.
I know that it's not a huge thing, but not taking that shortcut would greatly improve a small feature of your emu. I'm putting a lot of work into the manuals and I'd like to get to some gamefaqs someday and I think they are important enough to warrant their own folders. They could be defaulted to the "Game Manuals", "TV Commercials", "Gamefaqs", and "General Text Files". I doubt anyone would put them anywhere else, so it's even unlikely that they'd ever have to change these options in the menu screen.
Later,
~Rx
Well each "user definable" directory I create takes up 500 bytes (I think) worth of space. I'm not much of a memory expert when it comes to the xbox so I don't know if this will make much of a difference on emu's that are tight for memory. But with that, the synopsis.txt, gameshark/genie codes, and predefined configs loaded up. I'm really not sure how much of a memory hit I'm taking. Then of course there are more menu options to add.
Harcoded directory names though is a different story and would be easier and not take up memory like user definable directories.
Then again I could be wrong and memory might not be an issue. I know I had memory difficulties with atarixlbox but that may have been more a "stack" space issue. Unfortunately when it comes to that stuff I don't know much.
I'm just saying that I have no idea what kind of memory hit I'm taking with this stuff and how it will effect some of the other emu's.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 03, 2008, 08:36:00 AM
Hard-coded seems to be the way to go. Why give the user options on where to put this stuff if the emu could suffer from it, right?
I really think that these all deserve their own folders, and it will greatly improve the experience in subtle ways that would annoy people if they weren't done right, so I propose we do the following....
In the emu folder (or D:\) just make the emu point to pre-determined folders you provide that can't be changed as follows:
\Game Manuals\
\Gamefaqs\
\Text Files\ (For the general help, thanks, etc.)
\TV Commercials\
Then we can decide what the best way to access these folders would be from there. Whether you are viewing any one of these from an option outside of the game, or in the "in-game" menu, it will only find files that the user puts into these pre-determined folders. Probably a better option this way anyways because then there would be less clutter in the options and configurations menus. Now that I think of it, there's no reason that the end-user should put these anywhere else except for the folders that come with the emu.
Before, the text files were just in the main emu directory, and that was fine when there really wasn't any, but as long as we can make a separate directory for them and have the emu point to it, I don't see a reason to clutter up the emu folder with text files.
Just have to remember to put a .txt place holder in these folders when you release the emu so they will transfer over to the XBox before the user can add all the Xtras.
~Rx
Hey Gilles,
I got your new links up in your thread.
I didn't even notice that you said that there were 0 freezes before! That's great!
I'll have to give it a shot in the next few days. I don't think I'm doing anything on my days off, so if I don't get to it between work I'll take a look at it by Thursday.
We really got something special here and I can't wait till we get a release or two out there to show everybody what's been done. Even though I want to have a release today, I'm really glad we're taking the time to get it right the first time on madmab's colecovision emu. I know I'm not usually a "team player" (the only sport I did in High School was Wrestling) and that there are others I've worked with on the Box that are even less inclined to be team players, but I think it's great how well we work together and how we're enthused about it and as passionate as we are about it even though we aren't getting paid a cent for all of our work. It's really nice to be a part of this and be able to give back to a community that has already given us all so much.
Buy your extra XBoxes now guys. These things will jump from 85 bucks to 200 bucks on eBay when we're done
I'm not braggin' or nothing. Most of the price increase will be due to the insane inflation that will happen before we're done, after the banks around the world drop the intrest rates to 0% and pump trillions of cash into our economies. I just paid 4 bucks for a loaf of bread after tax today
At least I have my XBox
Take care guys. I'm pooped.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 04, 2008, 12:36:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on November 04, 2008, 08:05:00 AM
I was thinking about the sprites last night and got to thinking that if others started making new images and stuff for alternate looking emulators that this folder would get mighty confusing really quick. I believe this would be a Gilles related fix, and not something madmab would have to do anything in his code for. (Unless, of course, there were any XBox freeze type of memory issues)
I'm just thinking that if we had, say, 100 sprites in the folder, it would kinda be a mess for everyone to go through when making their own skin with the images.
I was wondering if you guys thought it might be a good idea to categorize the sprites in folders for you to select when you were altering your skin.
Something like this:
Skins\Animations\
Skins\Backgrounds\
Skins\Banners\
Skins\Borders\
Skins\Buttons\ (Geez... lots of B's, right?)
Skins\(Whatever we would classify the backdrops to the romlists)\
Skins\Misc\
etc, etc, etc....
Woah.... I just had an amazing idea! What if we were to make one central "Sprites" directory on the E:\ drive? If we separated the sprites into categories like this, there could be one single directory with all the sprites that any particular emu you're playing would point to that would contain all of the artwork, for all of the skins, of all of the emus.
For instance, we could put Gilles, Cospefogo's, Guybird's and Sotu's (and anyone elses) banners in the E:\Skins\Banners\ directory and just scroll through them when we want to control a sprite to display the banner on our emu.
Then we could name them something like this:
E:\Skins\Buttons\
01_A
02_B
03_X
04_Y
05_ABXY Vertical
06_ABXY Horizontal
E:\Skins\Banners\
01_NES - Gilles
02_NES - Gilles (2)
03_NES - Cospefogo
04_NES - Guybird
05_NES - Sotu
21_SNES - Gilles
22_SNES - Gilles (2)
23_SNES - Cospefogo
24_SNES - Guybird
25_SNES - Sotu
(I've got two for you Gilles because I believe you've created more than one. Others may have or may do so in the future too and be handled this way. I also skipped from 05 to 21 between emulators because if we want to have an easy time in the future keeping things organized, we'd want to have empty spaces so maybe we only need to rename a few folders instead of 40 or 200 folders when/if somebody makes new sprites for us in the future. Maybe we should make them 3 or 4 digit numbers (001_NES - Gilles, 002_NES - Gilles (2)) so we don't find ourselves in an unfortunate "Y2K" situation someday?)
This, I think, would be a great way to minimize any waste of space by centralizing sprites that are often used, and also give you an easy way to navigate through system specific sprites as well. It would also give an easy single folder for anyone to add any non system-specific sprites to the collection without having to do it 12 times. (Plus, it has the additional inadvertent function of giving a little plug and thanks to the artists for their personal touch to the emu skins with their names.)
Since we have a sprite system that displays previews of the sprites, I think it's a total win/win.
Let me know what you guys think.
Later,
~Rx
PS.... man..... I just keep thinking of other great things about doing it this way. Say we collect any more artwork you and your girl do Gilles, and anyone elses contributions (which I'm sure will come when the emus start being released), and we want to release an update with all of them neatly arranged to the public. Wouldn't it be great to just be able to zip the entire thing up in one single file on megaupload and tell people just to delete their old E:\Sprites off their Boxes and just put the new one there?
No more making separate folders for sprites on every single emu out there, making us and everyone else update 12 or more emulators with the changes every time we release them.
I love me things that are easy.
PPS....
If you guys like the idea, just let me know and I'll put together the preliminary directory structure on it this weekend. I have full sets of emulator banners from Sotu, Guybird and Cospefogo to add to Gilles skins already. (I don't believe I've asked Cospefogo if it was okay to use his yet, but I will)
If you REALLY like it madmab, you could give me a beta that uses the folder E:\Sprites\ in the next day or so and I can really give you guys one to test.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 04, 2008, 01:07:00 PM
The idea is good, but unfortunatelly, there is a major problem:
-the backward compatibility, actually the cool thing about the futures madmab emuss is it is compatible with the dynamic skin AND the old skins.With your system, the olds skins won't work
Instead i suggest, from my experience with the skin system and manipulation actually:
be able to classify the sprites folder(like before but even without the numbers, the emu could read the directory), ex:
Banner A
Banner B
Banner C
Buttons
Screenshots window A
Screenshots window B
Video window
etc...
INSTEAD OF:
3_Banner C
5_Screenshots window A
9_Screenshots window B
10_Video window
15_Buttons
18_Banner B
21_Banner A
etc...
And the ability to scroll fast through them
With this system, my dynamic skins won't be compatibles with old emus,but it's not really a problem
If the emu would be able to read the sprites folder "even without a number", it will be cool because we will be able to classify alphabetically the sprites folder it will solve this problem
And I don't think we will see more than, say...50 sprites for one skin, because, again, the sprites must be "a little" compatible with the background.That is why, just a alphabetical classification inside the sprites folder will be cool.
So a member will send us a banner, we ftp it in the sprite folder and... Cool It is classify alphabeticaly, i'm viewing this Banner at the letter B!
Post by: ressurectionx on November 04, 2008, 03:43:00 PM
I'm going to make it this weekend for myself. I'll upload it and let you give it a shot. It will be easier for you guys to decide when you can see it in action instead of just read about it here before you decide.
I will be making my skins work this way individually, with the hopes that you guys consider my idea and that we use a central folder for all the skins when the new emus are released.
The system we have now will be way too complex if there is ever 200 sprites per emu to choose from and we will have to add the new sprites in 12 different places when people make additions.
~Rx
EDIT: You mention 50 sprites per skin, but I thought the idea was that we'd only need one skin in the end. This way, it would be easy to bounce from background to background and add elements from different skins to the background. I know that the sprites have to match pretty good to be compatible with a background, but I believe that many more of them will be compatible with each other artistically when we have more to choose from. I don't see any reason why there can't be 500 or more sprites in the central directory one day to choose from if people see the great work we've done here and start making their own sprites to add.
Post by: madmab on November 04, 2008, 04:46:00 PM
QUOTE
Also be aware of memory constraints. Let's say you have a frame of a sprite called 0.png. This picture file is 90 pixels wide and 130 pixels high. This will get rounded up to a 256x256 pixel 32bit picture. This means that it will consume 256x256x4 bytes (256KB) of memory. If your sprite has 10 frames of animation, that's around 2.5MB of memory. Keep this in mind before you make ultra-smooth moving sprites with hundreds of frames of animation.
You can check your available memory by going to Configuration -> Configure Skin -> Show Available Memory
You can check your available memory by going to Configuration -> Configure Skin -> Show Available Memory
As for naming conventions. I'm not really willing to kill backward compatibility just to do it. The emu relies heavily on positional information to keep track of which image a sprite is using. Tracking a sprite by name would slow it down. In fact the engine from what I can tell is capable of tracking more sprites than it actually does but it looks like x-port limited that purposely. Most likely because of performance and/or memory issues.
I would also advise against spacing then numbers out. I'm not really sure how the compiler allocates RAM. But I do know it does not necessarily load things in numeric order. If you have sprites numbered 1-5 and then jump to 10 that's a posible 4 entries that are using memory for no reason at all.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 04, 2008, 05:03:00 PM
I already see some of the problems because I spaced numbers out like 0001_ 0002_ 0101_ 0102_ and you have 100 blank entries in between when scrolling through sprites. (Though the emu isn't running slow or locking up, but that may just be because there are about 100 empty place holders in between that don't take up any significant memory instead of images that would)
I guess I'll just have to be happy with the way it is. This is a major downer for me though. Though everyone will be able to use the end product, the DYNAMIC skin is really only going to be truly editable by people who really know what they're doing and are willing to spend the time to add the sprites to 12 or more emulators. Since we can't have place holders, everytime we add new sprites we'll have to take the time to re-arrange everything or else it will end up being a jumbled mess of shit. (And we'll have to do that for every single emu we make sprites for as well).
Not to mention, that the skins aren't truly dynamic like we thought, since we'll still have to have a folder full of different skins because of the lousy memory constraints and that the only way we can mix and match artwork is if we re-arrange the artwork on our computers for different configurations and then FTP them back to the XBox.
Yay.... I get to go to work on a serious down note.
Extra thought: Backwards skin compatibility is meaningless. If we make any changes that positivley effect the emu while destroying backwards compatibility I say we don't give backwards compatibility any weight to decide against it. Nobody using these new releases would waste their time on old skins that don't take advantage of any of the work that you guys have done on this end and I have done on my end. If somebody wants it bad enough, they'll remake them to fit within the boundaries of the new emulators or they won't be usable.
Post by: madmab on November 04, 2008, 09:28:00 PM
I think the changes done so far have taken the skins alot further from where they were. Sure everything may not be in one nice easy convenient place. But then I'm not interested in doing a total rewrite of something I barely understand. The sprite/skin system encompasses a large amount of code. A good percentage of which I do not even know what it is doing.
As for backward compatiblity. So far nothing I've done affects the functionality of older skins and may in fact encourage people to modify those skins to take advantage of the new features. At least that is what I'm hoping.
The type of system your interested in would probably be better served with some type of generic skin editor, rather than relying on an emulator with memory constraints holding it back.
Post by: Cospefogo on November 05, 2008, 05:51:00 AM
My first words on this awesome job of yours:
FEEL FREE to use ANY of the stuff I have published so far.
I'm glad to be useful to the scene.
And, a question:
Will the skins for the older Xport versions still working fine
on the new MadMab's versions?
FOUND THE ANSWER:
(Sorry, I did miss the paragraph!)
QUOTE
MADMAB:
As for backward compatiblity. So far nothing I've done affects the functionality of older skins and may in fact encourage people to modify those skins to take advantage of the new features. At least that is what I'm hoping.
As for backward compatiblity. So far nothing I've done affects the functionality of older skins and may in fact encourage people to modify those skins to take advantage of the new features. At least that is what I'm hoping.
Keep up the good fight!
Cospefogo.
Post by: madmab on November 05, 2008, 06:46:00 AM
Yeah I dont know if anyone every verified it. But according to Nes6502, when he added movies, running the emu in HD with the fonts a certain size created performance issues. The engine seems to be able to handle more sprites but was deliberately scaled back. So the whole skin engine must already be pushing it's limit. I know when I did atarixlbox that my Miner skin (which has alot of animated sprites) was giving me performance issues when I added the SAP player. In fact I had to cut back on the rewind memory.
So all of that stuff causes hits in performance. If someone completely wrote the skin engine from the ground up it could probably be done. But that is something far outside my skillset.
FWIW RessX I appreciate the suggestions you guys are making. I may not always want to do them, or think I can do them. But I do shuffle them into the back of my mind. Just ask Run088. He wanted streaming media off the network from the get go. He had to wait 4-6 months before I finally realised that it was something that I could do.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 05, 2008, 07:16:00 AM
I just think there are ways that we need to brainstorm the skins thing because I know it can be better even given our constraints. Leaving it the way it is, although it's a vast improvement, is still going to limit us or at least make a lot more work than we should have to do, when we have other people adding things to it. I have several ideas now that I want to test out before going into detail.
One that I can mention already and I think will work is this...
If we aren't able to go to the extremes that I was talking, I think we really need to be able to space out the different types of sprites to leave room to easily add new ones in the future without having to re-number everything to keep them in order. when I tested spacing out the different types (like the buttons from the banners) I used 0100, 0200, 0300 place markers for categories and there didn't seem to be any hits on memory or performance. (it was just annoying as hell to scroll through 94 empty spots to get to the next category of sprites). I'm wondering if there is a way that the emu could automatically notice that there isn't a folder for particular chunks of numbers and would automatically skip to the next number with an actual sprite/folder instead of scrolling through a large group of numbers with no sprite.
For example, if I had the buttons with numbers 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004, 0005 and 0006 and then I didn't start the banners until 0100, 0101, 0102 etc, and then started the borders for the previews at 0300, 0301, 0302, etc. , is there a way we could make the emu skip straight from 0006 to 0100 as we scroll through the choices in the emulator if there isn't any folders/sprites currently for 0007 to 0099?
That's just one idea I have. I've got others, but need to do more testing before I propose them. One thought that I have is that the memory is only used when one of the "Configure Sprites" is set to use a sprite and not just by having the sprite in the folder. I may have misunderstood what you were getting at when you quoted this:
QUOTE
Also be aware of memory constraints. Let's say you have a frame of a sprite called 0.png. This picture file is 90 pixels wide and 130 pixels high. This will get rounded up to a 256x256 pixel 32bit picture. This means that it will consume 256x256x4 bytes (256KB) of memory. If your sprite has 10 frames of animation, that's around 2.5MB of memory. Keep this in mind before you make ultra-smooth moving sprites with hundreds of frames of animation.
You can check your available memory by going to Configuration -> Configure Skin -> Show Available Memory
You can check your available memory by going to Configuration -> Configure Skin -> Show Available Memory
Just from my experience using it so far, I don't believe that memory is used by simply having the sprite in the sprites folder. I think the memory is only used if the sprite is selected in the "Configure Sprite #X" option. Otherwise, I believe that you could have 500 or even 5,000 sprites to choose from in that folder without any memory or performance problems.
I will test that to make sure sometime this weekend and I will give you a sprite setup that has all of Gilles work and the banners from everyone previously mentioned in them as well and see if you can do anything with the whole "skipping unused numbers" thing I mentioned above if you want to give it a shot.
Later,
~Rx
P.S. You're probably right that people would still want to use the old skins, and I'm not knocking them or anything, but I figure that's what the old versions of the emulators are for. I know on the Coleco and some of the Atari systems you're going to revamp other things, but I'm assuming that for emus like the NES, SNES and Genesis, you're basically just porting the revamped menu settings and the DYNAMIC skin configurations and not really messing around much with other tweaks, such as control configurations or anything since they're basically perfect otherwise. That's why I think that if people want to use the old skins they can just use the old emulators for the most part as well.
I really don't think there is any place for Static skins that only have one preview window in our work here given the ability to virtually make your own skin and all of the Xtras I'm providing. The old skins are so...... 20th century. Just my opinion, but I for one will never use one of the old skins.
This coming from a guy who loves the XBox 360 skin on XBMC and used the "Glass" skins that matched the XBox 360 look. I hate not being able to use them now, but I'm hoping somebody, perhaps the original artist, perhaps Gilles, or even somebody else wants to see them too so I can go back to using the XBox 360 skin in XBMC instead of the PM3 skin that I never really cared for. I do like it in Gilles skins, but I just don't like how it is set up and works in XBMC, but it doesn't look as good on a whole to use the 360 XBMC skin with gilles PM3 skins so I'm kinda stuck now with the PM3 skin in XBMC.
Just looking at it from that sacrificial standpoint, I just can't concieve why anybody would want to use the old skins that are so basic and non-user friendly compared to the new DYNAMIC skins. Maybe you'll change your mind when other people make more basic DYNAMIC skin setups and we're not limited to only one choice of decor.
Post by: madmab on November 05, 2008, 07:39:00 AM
Which reminds me I'll have to point Giles to that and see if he thinks he can do something with it.
The problem with numbering the directories like that is the code indexes the sprite by it's number so all those "tween" etnries are pointing God only knows where. Most likely to memory that is in use elsewhere. So there is always the chance of corrupting memory or hitting a bad pointer, etc.
I'm not familar with the MS SDK compiler to know what it does, but from my experience accessing memory that was meant for something else can get, well pretty ugly. So if I modify the engine to load them sequentually well then it's gonna take a performance hit because now it has to search by name and not index. Plus if someone goes and changes around the sequences then all existing skins will be no longer functional and the user would have to go in and manually modify them.
Ultimately any major changes to the skin system pretty much would require a rewrite with optimization in mind. It'd be nice to have someone else on the team with more experience in that area. But for me it's a bit much.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 05, 2008, 08:36:00 AM
Post by: Cospefogo on November 05, 2008, 08:57:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 5 2008, 11:22 AM)
Thanks for the offer cospefogo. I'm sure that will be more useful to gilles999 than me. Where are your skins anyways? At the usual xbox skin sites?
Hey MadMab!
Latest versions here (sort of minimalist):
http://forums.xbox-s...cospefogo skins
Older versions (Real PM3 style) here:
http://kppshngthbttn.../xbox_skins.rar
Hey Giles! Check this. Maybe you can't make use of something!!!
Be my guest!!
http://www.kppshngth...psd_layouts.zip
Matter of fact, I can't even myself keep all my stuff on track.
I did publish things on several posts, places and so on.
Since I have every source file here on my backups I will organize
everything and publish on the upcoming website.
Moreover, I will design the emulators logos in vector/EPS format so anyone
who wants to import them to their own skins, they will work perfectly to any size,
with absolutely 0% of quality loss.
About using the newer dynamic skins - I really don't care about features like
VIDEO PREVIEWS or BOXART for the games, so probably I am one of the
guys who will never use it. (Please don't get me wrong, it's just a matter of
personal taste.)
But as I already said,
Giles, Madmab and Ressurecting-the-X ----> great job!
Don't stop!
C.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 05, 2008, 09:02:00 AM
QUOTE(Cospefogo @ Nov 5 2008, 10:33 AM)
About using the newer dynamic skins - I really don't care about features like
VIDEO PREVIEWS or BOXART for the games, so probably I am one of the
guys who will never use it. (Please don't get me wrong, it's just a matter of
personal taste.)
I can respect that. The great thing is that if you made a DYNAMIC skin with your previous work, it could easily be made so it didn't display any of that if you didn't want it. Even better.... if you gave somebody like Gilles the basic images to make something, I think he would be happy to work with them (I know he's working on a ZSNES skin or two with the artwork that Neverwill gave him.
The DYNAMIC skins can be as basic or extravagant as you want them. Don't hate until you've seen them in action.
Thanks for allowing us to use your work.
~Rx
Post by: Cospefogo on November 05, 2008, 10:42:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 5 2008, 01:38 PM)
I can respect that. The great thing is that if you made a DYNAMIC skin with your previous work, it could easily be made so it didn't display any of that if you didn't want it. Even better.... if you gave somebody like Gilles the basic images to make something, I think he would be happy to work with them (I know he's working on a ZSNES skin or two with the artwork that Neverwill gave him.
The DYNAMIC skins can be as basic or extravagant as you want them. Don't hate until you've seen them in action.
Thanks for allowing us to use your work.
~Rx
Hey guys,
Of course I can provide any assets Giles would need to turn some of my stuff into
the new dynamic fashion, it will be a pleasure, ha ha.
Just because probably I will not make use of all features does not mean that I don't
want to see it get improved!
Need get back to my work now...
See you later fellows.
C.
Post by: madmab on November 05, 2008, 10:49:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on November 05, 2008, 12:07:00 PM
Thx for the psd files, perheaps for a next dynamic skin?
Like i said before, my dynamic pm3 skins aren't the "cup of tea" of everyone, and the perfect skin, loved by everyone is impossible, and will never exists.
They are here to handle the dual video/boxart stuff, with all the multiples possibilities
Even you Cospefogo, if you want to see "only" the screenshot of the game, simply launch my preset "SDTV or HDTV big preview only.ini" .It will work
Personally I prefer to see the boxart and the video preview at the same time and i have a HDTV, that's why i launched my preset "HDTV big preview_big boxart.ini"
So i think the dynamic skins are the best solution actually to solves all these display problems.
Finally the real improvment is :
-The ability to launch a "preset" config
-The ability to see the name of the sprite (euro-us system, SDTV-HDTV boxart ratio, etc...)
-And the old skins are compatibles!
I can garantee it is beter for a skinner to create one skin with 14 presets (and much more if you want to disable/enable the buttons display on the presets)Instead of creating 14 skins
I have tested it with the new madmab beta, no freezes, i test in also on my SDTV,so i switc over all the presets;all is ok, so there isn't major problem now....
Ah perheaps you don't like the pm3 theme
We can't do anything for you Well wait for the users impressions now...
If there is good feedback, we will create differents dynamic skins that's all
Post by: ressurectionx on November 06, 2008, 01:42:00 AM
Hey Gilles & Madmab,
You guys mind taking a look at the datfiles that I'm putting up for Virtual Boy? I'm trying something new here, and I wanted to test it on an emu that only has 28 games.
I've torrentzipped these roms and I want to see if there will be any problems with CRC's for the synopsis when they're torrent zipped. I will leave the old datfile up there until you get back to me and let me know if there are any problems. (Let me know if this could cause any other problems in the future. I don't think there is anything else to worry about though)
Thanks,
~Rx
PS... if you didn't know, torrentzipping ensures that everything about the zipped roms after run through the datfiles is exactly identical. I don't know the intracacies of it, but if they aren't torrent zipped, they may not be identical. This has its practical purposes down the road
Post by: ressurectionx on November 06, 2008, 03:31:00 PM
Datfiles
Datfiles [Torrent-Zipped!]
I really don't know much about what you guys are doing with the synopsis stuff, so I'd like to get your opinion about this and if it's going to effect your synopsis work at all.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 07, 2008, 01:21:00 AM
Never seemed like something worth pursuing. Doesn't the emu run a bit on the slow side?As for the synopsis I was hoping to work on it this week, but it didn't work out. Things may be sketchy the next couple of months. Lots going on between birthdays, christmas, holidays and other stuff.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 07, 2008, 01:58:00 AM
My point here is I'd like the both of you to compare the datfiles and see if there will be any problems with your synopsis after I torrentzip my roms. I figured this is the best emu to test it on since there's only about 25 games.
Let me know when you get to the synopsis stuff.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 07, 2008, 03:38:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on November 07, 2008, 03:55:00 AM
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 07, 2008, 08:07:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on November 07, 2008, 04:26:00 PM
When you're making the default directories, do you think it's a better idea to put them in the E:\ Drive like the screenshots and saves?
E:\Manuals
E:\Videos
E:\TV Commercials
E:\Gamefaqs
etc....
I don't know what you think being the end user of the Xtras, but it would make things easier for me being the grunt work guy if I had all those eggs in a separate basket so I could easily see what I have and have not done yet.
Let me know if you think the dats don't mess anything up. It sounds like they won't, but I'd rather know now before I torrent-zip everything.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: ressurectionx on November 08, 2008, 01:53:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on November 08, 2008, 02:21:00 AM
I am updating the dynamic skins genesis,nes, atari st, master system to be as "top notch" as atarixl and adamx dynamic skins;And i'm adding extra banners in all of them.And the dynamic virtualboy is near finished
After all the systems are covered i'll starting a new theme for the dynamic skins i guess
How are the progress for atarixlbox and adamx? A release coming soon?
And i'm waiting to see how madmab handle the synopsis with adamX (only by matching the crc, rom name?)
Before working on the future synopsis
Post by: madmab on November 08, 2008, 04:24:00 PM
Things get a little busy at home around this time of year. It doesn't help with all the drama at work either.
But I'm slowly hacking away at things.
Post by: gilles9999 on November 15, 2008, 06:40:00 AM
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=UC0JVWDE
Yes, Finally i have solved all the f##king order problem of the sprites
now:
-The "banners" sprites are sorted from 1 to 10
new custom banners (congo bongo, dragon fire,miner 2049er,tarzan,gateway to asphai)
So if you want to choose a different banner go to
"configure skin/skin editor/gameselect menu settings/sprites settings/configure sprite 4"
and press left or right to choose your banner here!
-The colecovision boxart is updated (the old one was pixelisated) now it's a lot more cleaner
-The readme is updated
-Custom ADAM main screen and emuload (if you don't like the colecovision system main screen)
-The "in game" option menu screenshot is now correctly set in all the settings
2)Madmab, ressX, please test it; it's a looot more user friendly for the future users
Post by: ressurectionx on November 15, 2008, 06:24:00 PM
I do like your new skin gilles, but I had a different idea about how to set up the sprite names.
Here's how I had my sprites set up and they worked fine before(God I hate having to retype all of this again):
I think the skin theme stuff and the console stuff should come first, since we've already decided that there will need to be different skins for each theme due to memory constraints. (10 slots devoted to each of those)
01_[PM3] Splash Screen
02_[PM3] Madmab Edition
03_[PM3] Cursor
04_[PM3] Loading Bar
05_[PM3] Rombrowser Blade
06_[PM3] Rombrowser Half-Blade
10_[CONSOLE] Colecovision Logo
11_[CONSOLE] SDTV Boxart Colecovision
12_[CONSOLE] HDTV Boxart Colecovision
Next I gave 20 slots to the buttons, because I think we could have a few more button settings like "4 buttons horizontal" added, plus it gives about 10 more slots if we slightly alter the buttons in some way to have a different button set to choose from.
20_[BUTTONS] - A
21_[BUTTONS] - B
22_[BUTTONS] - X
23_[BUTTONS] - Y
24_[BUTTONS] - ABXY (Two Lines)
25_[BUTTONS] - ABXY (One Line)
After that, I devoted the next 20 to borders, in case we have alternate ideas on that. 10 may be sufficient here though.
40_[BORDER] 4 3 SDTV Grey
41_[BORDER] 4 3 HDTV Grey
42_[BORDER] 4 3 HDTV Black
43_[BORDER] 4 3 SDTV Black
Ideally, the banners would be at the end because they're the most likely to be added to.
60_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Colecovision (System banner)
61_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Colecovision II (Controller banner)
The following I was trying to add now, but everything is hosed up. They include yours and a few from Sotu and Guybird that I was going to add at the end that I will reflect here.
62_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Congo Bongo
63_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Dragonfire
64_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Miner 2049er
65_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Gateway toAsphai
66_[BANNER-Gilou9999] Tarzan
67_[BANNER-Sotu] Colecovision
68_[BANNER - Guybird] Colecovision
As you can see, the names look great this way. Everything is capital letters and real clean looking like my romsets. Plus, there is no question of which sprite type you're in because they're clearly labled before the sprite name.
Plus, there is even less sprite slots used by default this way than on your current one, since we put the stuff least likely to get updated in the Dynamic skins in the beginning and left the room for the stuff most likely to get an update at the end.
Let me know what you think and if you can alter your skin to do this. Before, I only had two problems.
1) lots of empty sprite slots while editing
2) I couldn't figure out how to setup that damn green light cursor for the menus.
Now I can't do anything and I can't set up the skin anymore to share with you guys for testing.
Later guys,
~Rx
EDIT: And nevermind a stupid question I had earlier about putting the Xtras on the E drive by default. I just noticed I'm already running dangerously low on hard drive space on E as it is. I may have to start putting screenshots within the emu directory.
Post by: madmab on November 15, 2008, 11:31:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 15 2008, 09:00 PM)
Well.... it looks like I won't be able to give you my idea. It worked perfect before (besides the having to scroll through a bunch of empty slots), but with the new emu it seems to be broken again. Now it freezes up the Box all the time when I try to change sprites.
I do like your new skin gilles, but I had a different idea about how to set up the sprite names.
Here's how I had my sprites set up and they worked fine before(God I hate having to retype all of this again):
I think the skin theme stuff and the console stuff should come first, since we've already decided that there will need to be different skins for each theme due to memory constraints. (10 slots devoted to each of those)
01_[PM3] Splash Screen
02_[PM3] Madmab Edition
03_[PM3] Cursor
04_[PM3] Loading Bar
05_[PM3] Rombrowser Blade
06_[PM3] Rombrowser Half-Blade
etc, etc, etc.
Now I can't do anything and I can't set up the skin anymore to share with you guys for testing.
Later guys,
Don't give up yet! That why it's called beta! I send it to you guys so you can find these things. I only tested it only Gilles latest colecovision skin and did not have any issues. (unless stupid me sent you all the wrong one again ).
Anyways just send me the skin, whether it is done or not and I'll run it and debug mode and find out what it is that the code does not like. I'm sure it's something simple.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 16, 2008, 12:41:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 16 2008, 01:07 AM)
Don't give up yet! That why it's called beta! I send it to you guys so you can find these things. I only tested it only Gilles latest colecovision skin and did not have any issues. (unless stupid me sent you all the wrong one again ).
Anyways just send me the skin, whether it is done or not and I'll run it and debug mode and find out what it is that the code does not like. I'm sure it's something simple.
My bad
Just frustrating is all. Hope I got how cool it was out there with the post. I was just thinking that I wouldn't get to share it with you guys to see what you think since I couldn't get it working.
I just uploaded it to megaupload now. Here's the http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Z8MRCMUO
Let me know if you guys can figure it out. I think this is the best way to make the skins with any future edits in mind from now on since we can't make a centralized directory.
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 16, 2008, 11:56:00 PM
(did you guess it would be so hard to work with the emus contraints?)
-So i have followed your advices rsX, and worked with subfolders, i just added 2 subfolders, now we have:
[BORDER] 0-9
[BOXART] 10-19
[BUTTONS] 20-29
[LOGO] 30-39
[PM3] 40-59
[TEXT] 60-69
[BANNER]70-
You see RsX how hard and boring it is to re organize all the sprites in all the settings uh?
Banner folder is at the end, since it will be the most used folder
It is alphabetically sorted, we loop the folders like this
[BANNER]-[BORDER]-[BOXART]-[BUTTONS]-[LOGO]-[PM3]-[TEXT]
-I have worked also on the display order, So now, the banner folder is always the "configure sprite 1" in all the settings; the first sprite customizable by the user will be the banner and it's good
-I have set the popup menu with "text size 16" and "line height 20" in each settings, but i don't know your opinion here, is the text tall enough for you?It musn't be too big or else the synopsis is cut of the screen
-here is the new dynamic skin:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=KSWBIXER
Post by: madmab on November 17, 2008, 01:57:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Nov 17 2008, 02:32 AM)
Ok guys,it seems we are quite ok about the final form of the dynamic skin.
(did you guess it would be so hard to work with the emus contraints?)
-So i have followed your advices rsX, and worked with subfolders, i just added 2 subfolders, now we have:
[BORDER] 0-9
[BOXART] 10-19
[BUTTONS] 20-29
[LOGO] 30-39
[PM3] 40-59
[TEXT] 60-69
[BANNER]70-
You see RsX how hard and boring it is to re organize all the sprites in all the settings uh?
Banner folder is at the end, since it will be the most used folder
It is alphabetically sorted, we loop the folders like this
[BANNER]-[BORDER]-[BOXART]-[BUTTONS]-[LOGO]-[PM3]-[TEXT]
-I have worked also on the display order, So now, the banner folder is always the "configure sprite 1" in all the settings; the first sprite customizable by the user will be the banner and it's good
-I have set the popup menu with "text size 16" and "line height 20" in each settings, but i don't know your opinion here, is the text tall enough for you?It musn't be too big or else the synopsis is cut of the screen
-here is the new dynamic skin:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=KSWBIXER
As for the popup menu we have to decide. I can just hard code the numbers to prevent any unexpected issues.
But another idea has been sifting in the back of my mind and that is a totally new "menu" for the synopsis with options to display matching commercials, documentation, FAQ, if any.
This of course would be "seperate" from whatever menu option we create for that stuff. Just an idea floating around out there though. May never even get around to it.
Keep up the hard work, though, we are almost there!!
Post by: ressurectionx on November 17, 2008, 07:56:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Nov 17 2008, 01:32 AM)
Ok guys,it seems we are quite ok about the final form of the dynamic skin.
(did you guess it would be so hard to work with the emus contraints?)
-So i have followed your advices rsX, and worked with subfolders, i just added 2 subfolders, now we have:
[BORDER] 0-9
[BOXART] 10-19
[BUTTONS] 20-29
[LOGO] 30-39
[PM3] 40-59
[TEXT] 60-69
[BANNER]70-
You see RsX how hard and boring it is to re organize all the sprites in all the settings uh?
Banner folder is at the end, since it will be the most used folder
It is alphabetically sorted, we loop the folders like this
[BANNER]-[BORDER]-[BOXART]-[BUTTONS]-[LOGO]-[PM3]-[TEXT]
-I have worked also on the display order, So now, the banner folder is always the "configure sprite 1" in all the settings; the first sprite customizable by the user will be the banner and it's good
-I have set the popup menu with "text size 16" and "line height 20" in each settings, but i don't know your opinion here, is the text tall enough for you?It musn't be too big or else the synopsis is cut of the screen
-here is the new dynamic skin:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=KSWBIXER
Hey Gilles,
Good to see you guys thought it was a good idea to think of options in the future with this one. Having just messed around with renaming things for a few hours I could only imagine what a nightmare that could have been to have to do every time you want to add one sprite and you had to rename 30 different sprites to get it next to its "kin". (Especially when you figure you'd have to re-do 10-15 different previews too!
Being the "Monk" type folk that I am, I can definately appreciate the desire for keeping the stuff in alphabetical order, but I chose instead to put those least likely to be updated first and those most likely to be updated last (on that point, you may have other ideas Gilles, since you've been the one doing all the adding so far). I figured that the way that I had set them up would give us the most versatility in the future while wasting the least amount of free slots at the same time.
I know what a pain it is now to start that from scratch, so I won't bring it up again if you don't feel like re-arranging them how I had them or close to it.
Did you make them all nice and capital letters like I had them? I really think that looks sharp and gives the finished product a much more professional look.
I will re-do my 2 layouts now and would like you to check them out when I'm finished. One of them I'm particularly proud of and would like to see in the end product. Unfortunately, since there doesn't seem to be an easy way to make the emu place the sprites and the previews on different levels, my greatest game preview design doesn't look like it will ever see the light of day. (Here's keeping my fingers crossed on that one)
Oh.... did you keep the Sotu and Guybird banners in the latest release? I hope you did, but I figured I'd mention that they were just examples since I resized them in MS Paint (And I know you said to leave all the future image manipulating to you
)Madmab,
Speaking of the layers, have you thought about my suggestion a while back to add a function to the sprites that would allow you to place the sprite below or above other sprites? I figure if the default was "Layer 0", we could do a range along the lines of -8 to 8 from there and have full control of which stuff we wanted to be on top of other sprites. (On one of my setups, I had put the intro text for the emu centered in the movie preview box that would be covered up by the previews when you scrolled through the game. The only problem....... The pesky "Madmab Edition" sprite would always find its way "behind" the preview boxes after you superimposed it more than about half over the box.)
It looked really sharp, but would have looked even better with the "Madmab Edition" sprite in the middle where it should be.
This, of course, would be freaking awesome if there was some way to make the video and artwork previews recognize which "Layer" they were set to and bury them behind stuff more in the foreground at the time they were displayed. (I know... that's me beating a dead horse)
QUOTE
If you did not know you it is probably easier to load the .ini files for the configurations into a text editor and do a little search and replace. Rather than adjusting them inside the emu.
I actually thought of that, but I didn't really know where to look. Probalby could have figured it out pretty easy if I spent a few minutes familiarizing myself with the document. Which .ini file would we use to manipulate this particular aspect in case I want to do it in the future? That would probably shave hours off the time needed to do this instead of doing it by hand in the emu.
Later guys. Great work!
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 17, 2008, 01:57:00 PM
So for example sprite 1 will always be on top of all the other sprites, etc. (Or do I have that backwards?). After the sprites it's the screenshot, fonts, and then movies. Or is that fonts, screenshots and then movies.
Anyways I was thinking I can probably create a screen that would let the player move sprites around. For example...
Sprite 01 -> object 01
Sprite 02
Sprite 03
Sprite 04 -> object 02
Sprite 05
Sprite 06
Sprite 07 -> object 04
Sprite 08
Sprite 09
Sprite 010 -> object 05
You could say... Select object 1 (which is currently sprite 1) and either bump it up or down (not sure which button to use for that). The screen would then reflect this. Or maybe just swap one object with another. If you bump it into sprite 4 (move it down) it would just move object 02 up to sprite 03.
So at the very least moving sprites around would be possible.
I didn't wanna say anything because I'm a little hazy on the "copying from one C structure to another". I think I may have gotten the hang of it when doing the synopsis.. But not sure.
As for the screenshot and previews and text. Those are different beasts. The preview "object" is created outside of the x-port code when I call the routine to play a movie. So I'm not sure if there is an easy way to control it's location. Text is always displayed last so should have highest priority.
This is all based on the assumption that object priority is based on when it's created. I could be totally off on this. It may be that there is some other way to control this. Direct 3D is something I do not know a whole lot about. Maybe there is some z buffer somewhere I can manipulate. Who knows..
Post by: gilles9999 on November 19, 2008, 02:12:00 PM
and i think only our master jedi XPORT should answer this
second thing, is the final form of the dynamic skin ok for you?
I don't think we can go far for the moment about the "dynamic" experience
(it is for sure, really good as it is now)
As far as i'm concerned the emu is 100% ok for me (perheaps it should be best if the popup menu was centered when i recall a synopsis, like it is in the first page of the synopsis thread (legend of zelda example)
Post by: ressurectionx on November 19, 2008, 11:49:00 PM
1) "Madmab Edition" always goes to the back once you put it on top of another sprite. You can't move it around the screen like you can the other sprites either. (Invisible walls, I guess) Any way to fix this? I would like to use it in the game select screen along with the XPORT sign, on top of the movie preview box and it will be covered by the videos when you scroll through.
2) Whenever I do something like changing the directory location for a movie, screenshots, etc., then you go to load a rom, it doesn't start at the romlist. It starts at whatever directory I chose for the movie, screenshots, etc..... This is also the same reversed. (I have my roms all separated from the emulators instead of putting them in the rom folders inside the emulators, so it's quite a bit of navigating I have to do when I go back and forth between them whenever I change an option) Is there a way to have the emulator save the location of each setting instead of just saving the last location for anything you're doing?
3) Can we please try to figure out a way to directly chose which directory you want to use for movies and get rid of the code that automatically puts the "ADAM" folder there? I'd like my videos folder to read "Videos" within the emus instead of whatever folder that the code is going to make. Instead of copying the way that the emulator does spreadshots directories, we could copy the way that it does the roms directories. Think that would work?
4) Within the "Configure Sprite X" settings it still just says "Offset X and Offset Y". Can we change it to read "Offset X/Move Right-Left" or something along those lines? I thought this had already been done in a previous beta, but that may be somewhere else that it was done.
5)Here was the way that I suggest we do the "layering" of the sprites. Also, a little change in the order of the sprite settings that I know we talked about before:
Configure Sprite X
Sprite Graphic
Offset X (Move Right/Left)
Offset Y (Move Up/Down)
Scale
Layer--------(0 by default. You can scroll through -8,-7,-6,-5,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 to bring graphics to the front or back with ease)
Top Boundary
Bottom Boundary
Left Boundary
Right Boundary
Flip Horizontally
Flip Vertically
Frame Speed
Transparency
Loop Animation?
Motion X
Motion Y
When Hit Wall Rotate
After we make that setting, maybe we can talk to XPORT and see if he has any ideas how we could incorporate that "Layer"number in the movie/artwork preview code that comes afterwards. Maybe there would be a way to assign a "Layer" to the previews themselves that would tuck them away behind a sprite if it's Layer value was less than the sprite that it is superimposed over.
EDIT: 5) I just found out something real cool about XBMC. You are able to view pictures in XBMC that are collected in zip files. I checked this on ZSNESXBox and XPORTS emus and it doesn't seem to work with them. On ZSNESXBox you can't even see the .ZIP file in the "View Images" and when you try to open a zip in the "View Screenshots" in XPORTS emus it says that it can't open it and the file may be corrupt.
Is there any way we could get the ability to read from zips like XBMC in the emu too? That would save tons of space on our hard drives if we use manuals since when I zipped Actraiser I it wen't from 10.5MB to only less than 4MB and still looked perfect in the XBMC image viewer.
---------------------------------------------
I will be editing this post soon with a few other things when I get them finished and uploaded. I capitalized all of the letters for the sprites folders. I also created my own game select preview to add to the emulator. (I just did one setting, since I honestly can't tell a lick of difference on my TV between HD and SD skin configurations)
Also Gilles, I have been collecting wide icons for all systems, genres, XBox games and putting them in a very large package that I will put on the Xtras thread when it's completed. In that set, I have some icons for each system that could be used as banners. I was going to resize them, but since I use paint I know that it will detract from the quality. Would you mind resizing these for me?
Later,
~Rx
EDIT: Geez... I forgot to check out the synopsis code until now. It looks great! I agree with Gilles that if it could be centered that would be awesome, but it really is a cool feature you guys put together there.
HAHA! Who did the "It's Only Rock 'N Roll"?
It's Only Rock 'N Roll
Genre: Textual
Release Data: 1984
Developer: Coleco
A mess of a game done entirely in text. Defies definition,
but the idea is to start up a band and make a million
dollars. Warning: do NOT use this game to turn a friend on
to the ColecoVision. I should also note that fellow editor
Sean Kelly likes this game. But then again Sean likes
Herpes too, so this isn't a terrible shock to us.
Post by: madmab on November 20, 2008, 05:30:00 AM
2) Yeah it's always done that. I suppose I could modify the "change default directory" menu to preserve the former directories when used. The skin configuration code does that as well and it drives me batty.
3) I set it up so if you "point" the movie directory to the "D:" drive it will not add the directory name. Remember?
"D:" = emu directory so the emulator knows if you are using the "D:" drive you are definetly in the emu directory.4) Yeah I did the ole change it in one place not realizing it was in two.
Corrected.5) See number one. That is why I made my earlier proposition. The only way I know of changing the "layering" is to physically change the "slot" that the sprite is using. Unless there is some Direct3D paramater somewhere that determines the display order. If there is I wouldn't know. I do not know a whole alot about it.
Synopsis code.... I used to have it centered but someone requested it to be left->aligned?
Post by: ressurectionx on November 20, 2008, 06:16:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 20 2008, 07:06 AM)
1) I think I explained this earlier the display order of the sprites is determined by the sprite number. Sprite 1 always displays on top of all the rest. The "select" sprites get the lowest priority.
I hate to be argumentative here, but in my experience this is simply not true. Depending on the sprite or any other mysterious variables some may show above others while some show below others. The "Madmab Edition" seems to ALWAYS show up under the other sprites. Try it out and see.
QUOTE
2) Yeah it's always done that. I suppose I could modify the "change default directory" menu to preserve the former directories when used. The skin configuration code does that as well and it drives me batty.
That would be awesome if you fixed that. I know it bothered me before, but I wasn't editing skins and bouncing back and forth all the time so I really only had to deal with it only one time with each emu setup. Crossing fingers that you can get it done.
QUOTE
3) I set it up so if you "point" the movie directory to the "D:" drive it will not add the directory name. Remember? "D:" = emu directory so the emulator knows if you are using the "D:" drive you are definetly in the emu directory.
"D:" = emu directory so the emulator knows if you are using the "D:" drive you are definetly in the emu directory.Yeah. We had that conversation before. I just prefer the way that changing the default directories works for roms and goes exactly to where you point it to. In my opinion it is painful and confusing to do it the way that it is now. If I needed it explained to me before I got it working, I can only imagine how many questions will be asked about this by n00b posters with 3 posts on their record.
EDIT: Reading this even now I'm confused about it. Are you saying that if I were to point to "D:", it would not put the folder ADAM in the emu directory? If that's the case it's not bad. Actually the more I thought about this, the more I was thinking that I may just put all of my movies together in the F:\Movies directory so adding the folder like it does for the screenshots might not be such a bad idea afterall.
I may do the same with the Manuals, TV Commercials and other Xtras as well. I'm also considering moving all of the screenshots from the E: to the F: drive as well because I'm really running out of space now with all the screenshots and if I was to do a bunch of the lesser known systems I'd almost surely max out the E:\ Drive well before I was done.
Would you make the folders that the emu creates match the names that the emus make for the Screenshots then?
QUOTE
4) Yeah I did the ole change it in one place not realizing it was in two. Corrected.
Corrected.Excellent....
QUOTE
5) See number one. That is why I made my earlier proposition. The only way I know of changing the "layering" is to physically change the "slot" that the sprite is using. Unless there is some Direct3D paramater somewhere that determines the display order. If there is I wouldn't know. I do not know a whole alot about it.
Maybe NES or XPORT could answer this question. Like I said above in number one this doesn't work the way that you think it does and I have found many more than one instance where there is exceptions to this rule.
QUOTE
Synopsis code.... I used to have it centered but someone requested it to be left->aligned?
I think we're all crossing wires here. I think what Gilles wants (and what I would like to see too) is the text in the bubble left-aligned, but when there is very minimal text, like in a game like Jumpman, the box will center itself on the screen instead of staying all the way to the left of the screen. Correct me if I'm wrong Gilles.
Later guys,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 20, 2008, 06:44:00 AM
Maybe you need to give me a step by step of what you are doing so I can step thru the same process and see what you are referring too.
2. I just fixed this so it is no longer a headache.
3. Like I said POINT the movies directory to the D: drive and it will not add "ADAM" to the directory name. I thought we already agreed on this. Your words "I'd like my videos folder to read "Videos" within the emus instead of whatever folder that the code is going to make." I assume that means you want your movies directory within the same directory as the emulator. Point the movie directory to the "D:\videos" and it will not add "ADAM" otherwise it will act just like the screenshots and SAVES directory and add "ADAM". After all, we do like to be consistent in how the emu behaves right?
For every person that complains about it adding "ADAM" will be the same amount asking why it doesn't when the screenshots and SAVES directory do.
Synopsis.txt.... OK. Gotchya. I don't think the skin accounts for that kind of configuration.
It just aligns the box around the text.. ok. I think I have a workaround for that. Lemme try my idea and I'll get back to you guys.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 20, 2008, 06:56:00 AM
I would also ask that in the releases we do the same with TV Commercials, Manuals, Gamefaqs and even Screenshots.
I realize that Screenshots going from drive E to drive F is a big change, but when it was originally created for the E drive, I don't think anyone ever thought there would be enough artwork to fill the E drive. It's going to happen though, and we should look to fix that now.
I've now moved all of my Movies to F:\Movies\{screenshot emu name} and I love it that way. No more searching through all the emus to find the movies. I think I developed some of the habits with the way I was storing stuff based on the way ZSNESXBox did it, but I think it's much better to have all similar things put together like the Screenshots and Saves are done in XPORTs emus.
BTW... the saves are fine on the E drive where they are. I don't imagine we'd ever have space issues with that in a million years and the save games all get saved there anyways for XBox games, so they really belong on E.
~Rx
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 20 2008, 08:20 AM)
1. I did. Go load one of Gilles skin configs. Go into the skin editor under, game select menu setting->sprite settings. Notice that sprite #1 (highest priority )is set to one of the "window 4 3" sprites. Sprite #5 is set to the "rombrowser blade". Now change sprite #1 to = "text madmab edition" and then use "offset x" to move it in the same area as the "rombrowser blade". You will notice that it "covers" the rombrowser blade which means it has the highest priority.
Maybe you need to give me a step by step of what you are doing so I can step thru the same process and see what you are referring too.
I will try it again later and give you a step-by-step. I know the last time I tried it, I just made sure that when sprite x was superimposed over sprite y and I could tell that it completely covered the other sprite, I went ahead and changed it to "madmab edition" and it buried itself in the back. I'll have to do it again though to get you exactly which sprites I was using. (So, just to be clear, you are saying that 1 is at the top and 16 is at the bottom then?)
(Still would be awesome to be able to change that manually somehow though)
QUOTE
2. I just fixed this so it is no longer a headache.
AWESOME!!!!!!
QUOTE
3. Like I said POINT the movies directory to the D: drive and it will not add "ADAM" to the directory name. I thought we already agreed on this. Your words "I'd like my videos folder to read "Videos" within the emus instead of whatever folder that the code is going to make." I assume that means you want your movies directory within the same directory as the emulator. Point the movie directory to the "D:\videos" and it will not add "ADAM" otherwise it will act just like the screenshots and SAVES directory and add "ADAM". After all, we do like to be consistent in how the emu behaves right?
For every person that complains about it adding "ADAM" will be the same amount asking why it doesn't when the screenshots and SAVES directory do.
For every person that complains about it adding "ADAM" will be the same amount asking why it doesn't when the screenshots and SAVES directory do.
Moot point man.... sorry. I've done some typing since you started your post. I agree with the way that you're doing it. I'm going to be storing my videos from now on in F:\Movies\{screenshot emuname} from now on. Vastly superior to buring them in the emu folders. Wish I had done it sooner, cause it would have saved me from a lot of BS during my Xtras work.
QUOTE
Synopsis.txt.... I don't think the skin accounts for that kind of configuration. It just aligns the box around the text.. ok. I think I have a workaround for that. Lemme try my idea and I'll get back to you guys.
It just aligns the box around the text.. ok. I think I have a workaround for that. Lemme try my idea and I'll get back to you guys.Hope you get it figured out. Not a big deal to me if you don't, I just agree with Gilles that it would look nicer. It's awesome that we can even do it now though, so don't kill yourself trying to perfect that if it's a real bear.
Post by: madmab on November 20, 2008, 07:35:00 AM
http://imageshack.us
http://g.imageshack.us/img175/synopsis1es7.jpg/1/
http://imageshack.us
http://g.imageshack.us/img175/synopsis2pq1.jpg/1/
Post by: ressurectionx on November 20, 2008, 07:47:00 AM
Post by: madmab on November 20, 2008, 07:55:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 20 2008, 09:32 AM)
(So, just to be clear, you are saying that 1 is at the top and 16 is at the bottom then?)
(Still would be awesome to be able to change that manually somehow though)
Yeah I moved my movies to the F drive a while ago. Thing is I cannot access the F drive in debug mode so that was motivation to allow movies/screenshots to be streamed across the network.
So now I have movies on my PC for streaming while doing debug testing.Only odd thing is, and I think Run088 pointed this out. Samba seems to stop after a period of time, requiring the user to exit/reload the emu. (I'm not sure why).
Sprites.. Yeah that's how it's supposed to work. That was the reason for my proposal. Although an odd set-up it would allow the user to "change" the sprite slots being used by a sprite hence "changing it's display priority). The display would change realtime to reflect the changes.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 20, 2008, 08:07:00 AM
QUOTE
Sprites.. Yeah that's how it's supposed to work. That was the reason for my proposal. Although an odd set-up it would allow the user to "change" the sprite slots being used by a sprite hence "changing it's display priority). The display would change realtime to reflect the changes.
Couldn't you, with your coding wizardry, make the emu do that while calling it "Layer" in the sprite options? Whatever you're thinking about doing to make this changable by the user, couldn't it just be controlled by a "Sprite Layer" command like I was talking about in the end?
What do you think about moving the Screenshots to F:\Screenshots and changing the emu to take screen shots in that directory instead?
I know it could end up being a lot of work, but seriously, I only have about 700 MB left on the E drive with XBMC on there, the saves, TDATA, UDATA and Screenshots. Moving the screenshots to the F: drive freed up almost 2GB worth of space (and any new artwork I do). Even if my artwork in the future didn't completely fill it up (there is a chance that it won't since most of the systems that still need artwork don't have any available box/cart scans) we have to remember that the E: drive is the only place to put XBox saves for those of us who want to play XBox games still.
Post by: madmab on November 20, 2008, 01:16:00 PM
Can't default to F: cause not every BIOS supports that drive or not all will be partitioned in such a manner (like my son's). That is what the customizable directories or for. I know it's a pain to go in there once and change it. But I have to take all users into consideration.
Post by: gilles9999 on November 20, 2008, 01:25:00 PM
yeah you got it guys!
Centered like that, the synopsis is perfect (background centered, text to the left, excellent)
Have you dl the latest colecovision dynamic skin? (whith the top banner used as sprite 1 each time?)
later~Gilou
Post by: ressurectionx on November 20, 2008, 06:30:00 PM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 20 2008, 02:52 PM)
I would think that the user would be a little confused if they went in to edit "sprite #1" only to find out that they are now editing sprite #5.
It wouldn't be confusing at all if you don't mention that to them. The switching of the sprites would be all behind the scenes and as far as the end user was concerned they would be using "sprite #1" even if they truly were using "sprite #5". The end user doesn't have to know what is really going on.
Granted, I don't think this would be an easy problem to solve, but there has to be a way to take the difficulty out of it for the end user while getting things done behind the scenes the way they need to be. I still have to try to get that Madmab Edition sprite to the front. I still haven't been able to get it done. Maybe when I understand that a little clearer I'll have more ideas.
Plus, I really don't understand at all the way that you're saying you'd need to do it to get it to work. Maybe if I had a clearer picture of what you're talking about I could come up with a better suggestion.
QUOTE
Can't default to F: cause not every BIOS supports that drive or not all will be partitioned in such a manner (like my son's). That is what the customizable directories or for. I know it's a pain to go in there once and change it. But I have to take all users into consideration.
That's kind of a problem here than madmab. I'm not kidding when I say we're going to encounter some serious problems with full E drives. I understand the issue you're talking about though with the hard drives with no drive F:. I don't think that the BIOS would be a problem though because the only way that ZSNESBox takes screenshots is to place them in the D:\Artwork directory. I've never once heard anyone complain that when they took screenshots while their emu was on the F:\ drive that the screenshots didn't work. I haven't read every post on this board though, so I could be wrong about that.
If we set the screenshots directory to the F drive, does the emu put the screenshots in the F drive then as well? If it does, no real biggie I guess. I didn't even think to move them to the F drive until yesterday when I saw that I had less than .75GB left on E.
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 21, 2008, 12:48:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 20 2008, 09:06 PM)
If we set the screenshots directory to the F drive, does the emu put the screenshots in the F drive then as well? If it does, no real biggie I guess. I didn't even think to move them to the F drive until yesterday when I saw that I had less than .75GB left on E.
Yes it does. It'll put the screenshots wherever you point them unless you point to a cd or a networked directory.
Gilles I can't remember if I have yer latest AdamX. I think I got the one before that (where you first introduced the multiple game specific banners.
Post by: gilles9999 on November 21, 2008, 12:17:00 PM
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=KSWBIXER
Post by: ressurectionx on November 21, 2008, 11:07:00 PM
I meant to get it done already, but I keep getting side tracked. I'm about halfway done with the PSX Boxart and I'm trying to find screenshots and CD images for PSX. I've also been testing games so I can zip up the ones that don't work with v19 and back them up to DVD for the future and get more space on my hard drives. I'll be sure to take a time out though so I can make sure everything is right with that stuff before I upload it to ya.
Great work on the fixes madmab. Might not be everything I was hoping for, but pretty damn close so far. We've taken this thing so much further than it was before.
Hey Gilles... those synopsis are great. Are you currently doing more for other systems, or planning on doing them in the future?
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 21, 2008, 11:33:00 PM
Ive been working on a synopsis for atarixlbox.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 21, 2008, 11:39:00 PM
I'll put them back on when we have 50 GB hard drives and an emu that plays them as well as what we have for most of the systems we've been working on.
Glad to see that the interest is there for synopsis after Coleco. I think that's a great feature. One of my friends was pretty impressed by the last one.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 22, 2008, 02:32:00 AM
but now i'm working at one thing at a time
I'm working on the updated atarixlbox dynamic skin and atari7800X since they are your next releases madmab
2) And madmab, i'll work on the atari 7800 synopsis if you are ok
3) p.s.: there is a little bug in the colecovision synopsis.txt
*
c575a831
2010 - The Graphic Action Game
3
Genre: Genre: Action > General
Release Data: 1984 US
Developer: Coleco
It must be
*
c575a831
2010 - The Graphic Action Game
3
Genre: Action > General
Release Data: 1984 US
Developer: Coleco
If you can correct this bug (the smallest bug of all time
)
Post by: madmab on November 22, 2008, 06:04:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Nov 22 2008, 05:08 AM)
1) Yeah ressX, i'm continuing the work,
but now i'm working at one thing at a time
I'm working on the updated atarixlbox dynamic skin and atari7800X since they are your next releases madmab
2) And madmab, i'll work on the atari 7800 synopsis if you are ok
3) p.s.: there is a little bug in the colecovision synopsis.txt
2) Sure, it's all yours!
3) Done and done. That double entry was in a couple of places.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 22, 2008, 08:17:00 AM
Here's the edited skin.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MYB0W9VF
Just capitalized the Sprites, added the "grey" boxes back in since they were missing from the last one, and also put a banner by Guybird and Sotu in there too. (The size on the banners needs to be changed, but I don't have a program that does it good Gilles. My paint program screws it up like it did the banner you made for my thread
)Also, my game select screen configuration can be found in there too.
Let me know if there are any problems with it. If you wouldn't mind doing the sprite folders like this in the future Gilles I think it looks a lot more polished this way.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: dexx20 on November 22, 2008, 04:01:00 PM
Thanks
Post by: gilles9999 on November 23, 2008, 12:16:00 PM
Please don't put the guybird or sotu banner in my skin (it's not i don't like them, they are 2 good guys
)But i want to give "my personal skin" with the emu;
THEN we will release a "pack" with all the extra banners from the contributors
Second thing, i re-up the dynamic snes skin, because i have numerous pm about this one,
here it is, with extra "F-zero, secret of mana, super metroid, super mariokart, super mario all stars banners"
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=WNFF0P57
and "custom" megaman X bg music, from my french friends of grospixels web site
Post by: ressurectionx on November 24, 2008, 10:16:00 AM
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 24, 2008, 11:22:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Nov 24 2008, 06:52 PM)
I think it's a great idea to capitalize the words
Ah ok, i haven't noticed that,
I understand, and it is a "sort" of big title for the banners like this, when we are in the skin configuration
Not a big problem, madmab will just have to capitalize the letters in the last adamX sprites folder
Post by: ressurectionx on November 24, 2008, 06:07:00 PM
Did you try my configuration for the game select screen yet?
Post by: gilles9999 on November 30, 2008, 02:33:00 PM
Madmab, be sure to use these skins because this time there is "legal" music in each one (videogames remix by my french friends from grospixels.com) And all the sprites are capitallized (like Rx suggested).
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=99QGRREE
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=V6WTZ14D
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=HQ02GRZ0
p.s.: madmab, there is a little bug in the latest adamX beta, it's impossible to change the main menu logo, i don't know why, but it's bad because the user can choose between differents logos in each DYNAMIC skin
See you later guys
Post by: ressurectionx on November 30, 2008, 05:38:00 PM
I'll get those posted at the top of the thread.
Got any time to make a PSX one Gilles? madmab is putting out a beta for PSX testing sometime this week.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on November 30, 2008, 07:05:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Nov 30 2008, 05:09 PM)
p.s.: madmab, there is a little bug in the latest adamX beta, it's impossible to change the main menu logo, i don't know why, but it's bad because the user can choose between differents logos in each DYNAMIC skin
See you later guys
Thanks for pointing that out.
Post by: madmab on November 30, 2008, 07:33:00 PM
BTW I had the sprite priority order backwards. Actually the higher the sprite number the higher the priority. So sprite 3 will always be above sprite 1-2, etc.
I was getting em mixed up because x-port reserves the first two sprites for the select sprites and they have the lowest priority so all other sprites get displayed above them.
Post by: ressurectionx on December 01, 2008, 07:21:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Nov 30 2008, 09:09 PM)
RessX did you ever finish up that alternative game select menu you were working on.
Refresh my memory. I've been all over the place and I don't know what you mean.
QUOTE
BTW I had the sprite priority order backwards. Actually the higher the sprite number the higher the priority. So sprite 3 will always be above sprite 1-2, etc.
I was getting em mixed up because x-port reserves the first two sprites for the select sprites and they have the lowest priority so all other sprites get displayed above them.
I was getting em mixed up because x-port reserves the first two sprites for the select sprites and they have the lowest priority so all other sprites get displayed above them.
I could see that being the case. It sure didn't seem to be working for me the other way around, but I haven't really looked at it at all since we last spoke about it.
Post by: gilles9999 on December 03, 2008, 12:01:00 PM
Eh, here it is
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=R4Y9C7YJ
It has a remixed bg music of crash bandicoot and 15 differents banners you can choose from
Here is 2 examples of the banner choice:
castlevania banner and suikoden 2 banner have been choosen in this example
Post by: madmab on December 03, 2008, 03:07:00 PM
Post by: nate1579 on December 04, 2008, 11:23:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on December 05, 2008, 12:52:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on December 07, 2008, 12:48:00 PM
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=J3Z730GY
Before asking: "Why Xboyadvance doesn't display dual boxart/videos, read the "readme" thanks
,Wait the next madmab releases; or use it with one boxart display it will work fine
Post by: madmab on December 07, 2008, 04:42:00 PM
Given that the size of PSX and GBA boxes is different.
Post by: gilles9999 on December 12, 2008, 02:34:00 PM
new:
- Totally redone the splash screen, now madman has a logo with the legendary dragon and the dot from "adventure", try it madmab!
- The borders are totally redone, now the shadow of the border is a lot cleaner, and... it has the true nes ratio 256*224 for displaying screenshots or movies (Cospefogo will understand me for sure here). But you can choose a wider border in the sprites select if you want.
- Sprites are named correctly
- 20 nes banners (bayou billy,contra, mario, megaman, maniac mansion, metroid, zelda,etc...)
without the "by gilou9999" in their name (it's my skin, so you know i have made them
)Grab it here:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=YW8Z56PU
Post by: Mega Man (?) on December 12, 2008, 04:24:00 PM
Thank you
Post by: ressurectionx on December 12, 2008, 05:44:00 PM
EDIT:
Hey Gilles,
As always, the skin looks beautful man. Love the game banners too.
I don't think I communicated myself right about the sprites though. These sprite names don't fix the problem we have with configurations not being compatible with other skins.
Here's a list of the problem folder names and my suggestions. Hopefully I get the point across better this time.
1)
10_[BOXART] Missing NES boxart HDTV
11_[BOXART] Missing NES boxart SDTV
We need to remove the NES here. We already know it's NES since it's in the NES skin so that's okay.
It should just read "10_[BOXART] Missing boxart HDTV" to work.
This way all skin configurations will automatically use the right artwork when you dump it in a new skin. If I were to dump the NES configuration into ADAM with the folders we have now, it would be looking for the NES folders in the ADAM skin. If we give the folders in both the same generic name in blue above, with the same # slot, they will be perfectly compatible with each other.
2)
30_[LOGO] Nintendo
31_[LOGO] Nintendo with fader
Nintendo should be replaced with "Console". Like with the other one, we already know which console this is because of what skin we're in.
3)
40_[SKIN_PM3] Cursor main menu
41_[SKIN_PM3] Loading
50_[SKIN_PM3] Rombrowser blade
51_[SKIN_PM3] Rombrowser half blade
All of these need the _PM3 removed.
40_[SKIN] Cursor main menu
41_[SKIN] Loading
50_[SKIN] Rombrowser blade
51_[SKIN] Rombrowser half blade
We already know it's the PM3 skin because the main folder says it's PM3. This way, when we make an XBox 360 skin and call the folders like I renamed them in blue we can just dump our configuration into the new skin and it will automatically use the right sprites for the new skin.
4)
70_[BANNER] 1st Nes system..... (All Banner names)
We need to make all the banners generic too. This one isn't such an easy trade off because we actually do have different game names for different systems, but when we're making a new skin or editing the skin within the emulator we can see which banner we are currently using and that will be good enough.
The problem with the way that they're named now is that if I am using the Bayou Billy banner for NES, and then I save a configuration that I've made and want to copy it to Atari 7800, it will be looking for Bayou Billy when there is no Bayou Billy banner in the Atari skin.
To fix this, I propose we name the folders EXACTLY as I have them below:
70_[BANNER] Console 01 (Keep 5 generic spots for consoles.)
71_[BANNER] Console 02 (We're not using a specific console name here.)
72_[BANNER] Console 03
73_[BANNER] Console 04
74_[BANNER] Console 05
75_[BANNER] Controller 01 (Keep 5 generic spots for controllers)
76_[BANNER] Controller 02 (We're not using a specific controller name here.)
77_[BANNER] Controller 03
78_[BANNER] Controller 04
79_[BANNER] Controller 05
80_[BANNER] Game 01 (Keep 5,10,15,20,? generic spots for games)
81_[BANNER] Game 02 (We're not using a specific game name here.)
82_[BANNER] Game 03
83_[BANNER] Game 04
84_[BANNER] Game 05
So in this example,
"70_[BANNER] 1st Nes system" would be changed to "70_[BANNER] Console 01"
"71_[BANNER] 1st Nes controller" would be changed to "75_[BANNER] Controller 01"
"72_[BANNER] Bayou Billy" would be changed to "80_[BANNER] Game 01"
"73_[BANNER] Bionic commando" would be changed to "81_[BANNER] Game 02"
"74_[BANNER] Dragon quest" would be changed to "82_[BANNER] Game 03"
ETC....
If we rename everything so there is a standard name and number for every sprite function, any configuration we save can be dropped into any other skin and work automatically without having to fix anything.
I hope that clears it up better and that you now understand why I'm suggesting it should be done this way.
~Rx
EDIT: Okay.... I took the liberty of renaming the folders myself and zipped them up. I also included a separate zip with the emu-specific sprite folders emptied out so you could put in the ADAM specific sprites in them and see what I'm talking about now with saving one config and it working on another emu.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EED1XYXQ
Once you fix the NES skin now with the new names, you can just copy those configurations right over to ADAM and they will work perfectly without any tinkering.
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on December 14, 2008, 04:16:00 PM
);- Because i have spend time to order them alphabetically
; they are well classified actually and i prefer to see the banner name (ex: maniac mansion) instead of game 07, 08 etc...- One problem, is if you have too many sprites (70 or more) the xbox freeze, sadly;
actually the dynamic skins are using ~40 sprites; that's why if someone is offering us a config with new sprites, i highly suggest to delete all the old sprites first then put the new sprites in the sprites folder.
It freeze more often when i'm using a "skin transition effect" like cube, turn etc...; the simple fade is using less memory i think that's why i'm using it.
Any dynamic skin is a good base for the future skiners. They handle perfectly the dual boxart/videos stuff in all it's forms and that's great. (dark background provides a good contrast with the boxarts)
Oh, good news, the dynamic skin for the unlikely virtualboy (nintendo can't always win eh!)
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=8AUGWCI3
I have also updated the adamX, ATARIXLBOX and MEDNAFENX nes with the new splashscreen, sprites names
and there was also too many lines in the "ingame option menu", so that it cut the screenshot (bad) now it's fine.
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=BFJQMQTV
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=A5GFLRTO
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=ICTUVVAQ
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=UAZ95RWW
p.s.: RzX can you update my thread with "only" the 4 in 1 picture for each system? One 4 in 1 picture for each skin is well enough
Post by: ressurectionx on December 14, 2008, 05:09:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Dec 14 2008, 05:52 PM)
Okay for me ressurectionX, I have renamed my sprites like you said except the banners... (don't kick me
);- Because i have spend time to order them alphabetically
; they are well classified actually and i prefer to see the banner name (ex: maniac mansion) instead of game 07, 08 etc...I hope you reconsider. We really need to have them named genericly. This doesn't work if they aren't.
QUOTE
- One problem, is if you have too many sprites (70 or more) the xbox freeze, sadly;
actually the dynamic skins are using ~40 sprites; that's why if someone is offering us a config with new sprites, i highly suggest to delete all the old sprites first then put the new sprites in the sprites folder.
It freeze more often when i'm using a "skin transition effect" like cube, turn etc...; the simple fade is using less memory i think that's why i'm using it.
Any dynamic skin is a good base for the future skiners. They handle perfectly the dual boxart/videos stuff in all it's forms and that's great. (dark background provides a good contrast with the boxarts)
actually the dynamic skins are using ~40 sprites; that's why if someone is offering us a config with new sprites, i highly suggest to delete all the old sprites first then put the new sprites in the sprites folder.
It freeze more often when i'm using a "skin transition effect" like cube, turn etc...; the simple fade is using less memory i think that's why i'm using it.
Any dynamic skin is a good base for the future skiners. They handle perfectly the dual boxart/videos stuff in all it's forms and that's great. (dark background provides a good contrast with the boxarts)
Yes... we would never use the entire 90 sprites, but spacing them the way I have done gives us flexibility in how many sprites we can use in each category for each skin. It also makes a standard for numbers for the types of categories, so we need to have the sprites (even the banners) named with the numbers I used.
QUOTE
p.s.: RzX can you update my thread with "only" the 4 in 1 picture for each system? One 4 in 1 picture for each skin is well enough
Sure
Post by: Mega Man (?) on December 14, 2008, 06:35:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Dec 14 2008, 03:52 PM)
Beautiful!, Gilles, All these skins really make me want to sit down and play these systems. Maybe I will some day
Post by: gilles9999 on December 15, 2008, 12:23:00 AM
Warioland is a good game it's a little eh... red and black but it's original
Post by: madmab on December 15, 2008, 02:51:00 AM
Things have been kinda slow on the homefront as far as any work goes. Maybe I'll have a little time to do somethings but I have a one week trip coming up that I have to prepare for. Then I'll be on hiatious next week.
Post by: nate1579 on December 18, 2008, 10:25:00 AM
is a surreal skin out of the question?
about the xboyadvance could you make one for each of the game boys like
gameboy
gameboy color
gameboy advance
I have my roms separated
If you dont mind it would be great
Post by: gilles9999 on December 20, 2008, 03:36:00 PM
For surreal, eh... i think this one will be hard, but it's in the program...
Good news (especially for RezX and madmab):
RezX: You have convinced me about the sprites naming convention; i have renamed the banners like
80_[BANNER] Game 01,80_[BANNER] Game 02 etc...
There are so much newbie (will there be a ps2 emu for the xbox? yeah...), they will just have to "copy/paste" the new additionnal sprites in the sprites folder in the future.
Madmab: I have finished (totally) the splash screen like you wanted, now the dragon is animated (he is angry) and the poor "dot" is affraid!; Like always, the "madmab edition" logo coming from the right to the left.
Plus minor changes in the screenshots settings (one movie wasn't centered in one of the settings).
(It's better to see it in action, so download one of them:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=21O2K64I
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=5S9RM6WE
p.s.: Making skins with paint is like make chirurgy with a chainsaw
Post by: ressurectionx on December 20, 2008, 05:46:00 PM
That dragon looks great, btw Gilles. Heh... the dot is afraid. I like it.
I'll try em out tomorrow after work.
Later,
~Rx
EDIT: I haven't had a chance too look at it on the Box yet cause the TV's being used, but I see the files match between both of the skins now and that's going to work great!
Only thing I can suggest at this point is to capitalize all the words. For instance, "51_[SKIN] Rombrowser half blade" would be "51_[SKIN] Rombrowser Half Blade". I just think it looks better that way.
The other question I had is what happened to the Gray borders? I still have them, so I added them back into both skins. They are sprites:
05_[BORDER] Letter Box HDTV Gray
06_[BORDER] Letter Box SDTV Gray
07_[BORDER] Wide Screen HDTV Gray
08_[BORDER] Wide Screen SDTV Gray
Other than that..... Perfection! Great work Gilles. I can't wait until I get my hands on the TV so I can make save a configuration, drop it into the other emulator and load it right up there.
Thanks Gilles,
~Rx
EDIT 2: Hey Gilles,
Finally got to check it out. Animated Dragon looks freakin awesome man. This really looks great. You can tell how long you've been working on this.
BTW.... THANKS for going to the generic sprite format. I saved my skin configuration from the NES emu and copied it into the ADAM emu and it worked PERFECT! That's what we've been waiting for.
Maybe someday we can just centralize the configuration files for all XPort emulators and just have the emulator point to the configuration of our choice. That would eliminate even more work in the future.
Nice work man... I can't wait to see madmab's new beta with it. I kinda didn't get it.....
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on December 27, 2008, 07:31:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Dec 20 2008, 08:22 PM)
Nice work man... I can't wait to see madmab's new beta with it. I kinda didn't get it.....
I was in such a hurry to get it to you guys I forgot to CC ya! Sorry bout that. But I see gilles took care of you.
Post by: ressurectionx on December 27, 2008, 10:27:00 PM
QUOTE(madmab @ Dec 27 2008, 09:07 PM)
I was in such a hurry to get it to you guys I forgot to CC ya! Sorry bout that. But I see gilles took care of you.
Nah.... ya did man. I just had a little "ahem" PM archiving problem
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 01, 2009, 05:42:00 PM
Do you like any of these as optional spirits in your skins? http://www.mightymo.net/Downloads/Misc/Gaming%20Icons%20Pack.zip
From: http://www.mightymo.net/downloads.html
I just wanted to show them to you.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 03, 2009, 10:02:00 AM
I'm just starting to master photoshop
Post by: gilles9999 on January 03, 2009, 01:35:00 PM
- correct sprites names
- "in game option screen" is now fixed in all the hd settings
- rombrowser blade size and shadow is fixed in all the "big settings"
- 20 new banners, including x-men, star wars, street fighter 2, sonic and his friends
- the fantastic "escape from the city bg music" (i don't know why but i really love this one)
- text is now "really" centered in all the big settings
I forgot to mention, the difference between the SDTV and HDTV settings:
- The "missing boxart" and preview/video borders are less wide in the hdtv settings, because the image is automatically stretched , so these sprites appear at the correct aspect ratio in all the settings
- The font (MS trebuchet) is "bold" in HDTV settings and "thin" in the sdtv settings, or else the font would be too big in the sdtv settings.
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=LET5WNUQ
Post by: madmab on January 03, 2009, 04:46:00 PM
Renamed 2.png to 3.png
Copied 1.png to 2.png so I have to copies (1 & 2) of picture 1.
Changed the frame speed to 100.
Loop Animation? No
In fact it might not hurt to make a 3rd copy of the 1st frame. But that should give you an idea of what I'm going for.
Again, thanks for the great skins!
Post by: gilles9999 on January 04, 2009, 06:20:00 AM
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=QLEO4LW9
Madmab, all is ok here, and your new mekaX beta is perfect: dual boxart/videos, synopsis ok, no lockups!cool!
BUT, can you modify yourself the madmab edition logo frame speed/number of sprites and send it to me, like this i will just have to overwrite the settings in the dynamic neogenesis and nes skins.
P.S.: RezX, can you upload these 2 skins in our thread? We are progressing
Post by: Kampfar on January 04, 2009, 07:26:00 AM
I got a problem with my neogenesis v23 emulator.
If I use "Dynamic_GENESIS_pm3_by_Gilou9999_06/10/2008" the skin works but the menu is placed quite wrong. If I use "Dynamic NeoGenesis by Gilou9999 03/101/2009" almost everything is black. only the banner and some other things shows. Its strange because Ive tested your psx, gba and nes skins and they work great!
Post by: ressurectionx on January 04, 2009, 08:11:00 AM
Let me get situated and I'll get them up there. Expect them sometime today. I have the next few days off to work on this stuff.
Any chance you can get a Gameboy skin whipped up in that time so I can use it while I'm testing the games? That will be something I've only been able to do with Coleco so far while we were doing a lot of these changes, so it would be pretty cool to test out two whole systems (GBC and GBA) with the new skins and emus.
Thanks,
~Rx
Hey Kampfar,
Glad to see people getting enjoyment out of our work.
That skin you have probably won't work with the new configs well at all. Gilles didn't update that one with the newest changes yet (or he did and I haven't posted it on his thread yet). Tons of changes have been made since the 6th of October. Check this thread out to get the newest releases of Gilles' skins as they're released:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=664573
I'm thinking thought that it may be possible that we have made enough changes to these skins that they will not work without the new emulators when they are released. I'm not sure about that, Gilles would have to fill you in on that. Please let us know Gilles, thanks.....
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on January 04, 2009, 08:47:00 AM
The dynamic skins are working with all the emus except that neogenesis v23, and i know why
Nes6502 has done an excellent work with this emu (as always) but neogenesis v23 is a big memory eater;
In fact the xbox is running out of memory,
try to delete all the banners except your favorite and it should work, note, in the new madmab neogenesis beta with dual boxarts/video preview, the dynamic skin is working fine, madmab has optimized the memory i think or removed some stuff.
The new DYNAMIC XBOYADVANCE is here especially for you reZX:
It comes with the correct sprites names, latests texts and previews fix,gba and gameboy main and splash screen, gba and classic gameBoy missing boxarts; so you can easilly build your gameboy skin in 10 sec.
Oh and like always 20 differents gba game banners.
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=0Z1QHPS2
p.s.: these servers problems are becoming hyper boring
Post by: madmab on January 04, 2009, 10:46:00 AM
What I added in that regard was pretty similar code wise.
There is a small possibility I made some change to the sprite loading function that made it more tolerable but I highly doubt it. Who knows.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 04, 2009, 11:14:00 AM
delete your "E:/cache", delete your old neogenesis save and say us if it works, if no try to delete some banners sprites
Let us know kampfar, neogenesis is the only emu with wich i had some problem; i don't know why, but with the last madmab neogenesis beta, the dynamic skin doesn't have any problem
Post by: Kampfar on January 04, 2009, 03:49:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 4 2009, 07:50 PM)
Kampfar, set the random effect in the skins (cube, split, etc... to "simple fade")
delete your "E:/cache", delete your old neogenesis save and say us if it works, if no try to delete some banners sprites
Im sorry but I cant find the settings for the random effects but Ive tried deleting my save and in my E/cache I dont have any emulator chace files. I did the same thing when updating xboyadvance with the latest skin version above and that worked just great.
I got another question. I cant find any load skin settings in the configure skin options which you mention in the readme. Im thinking of adding boxarts etc. Have I udnerstood it correctly, this is soething you will add later on? for now on I can only use screenshot as preview?
Post by: gilles9999 on January 04, 2009, 09:28:00 PM
The dynamic skins are a graphical interface "WIP" wich is designed to work with them.
Read the "how to use the dynamic skin with a old xport emu in the readme
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 05, 2009, 11:44:00 PM
. On a more serious note, I love the look of the new skins
.I noticed while messing with mednafen-nes, that some spirits would disappear and reappear, just doing various things. Once when I loaded an "sdtv big box art and video preview", the background went black on me. Another is the "Nintendo" not showing up in the front page. I have also had numerous freezes within the emu. (I am sure madmab is well aware of this.) I don't know if that could be contributed by the skin? but I just wanted to contribute my experience thus far with "the goods"
.Thanks
Post by: madmab on January 06, 2009, 01:35:00 AM
But the most recent one is pretty ok but it can get quirky if you go from the "view screenshots" back to the "select a game" option. Silly me assumed I had it setup correctly when glancing over it. I have fixed this problem but have not sent it out yet.
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 06, 2009, 02:40:00 AM
Yeah, those are some of things I was experiencing, but never the one with game locking almost every time.
I knew this was just something that you had to tweak.
Post by: ressurectionx on January 07, 2009, 10:04:00 AM
Post by: FrankMorris on January 07, 2009, 03:58:00 PM
I have been working XPort skin called Black few days. It's sad 'cause no one tell me the DYNAMIC skins!
I have done 10 versions of one skin for 3 emulators. It's 7 too much!
I want make DYNAMIC skins. How do I get involved? Or have to I just wait the emu release?
Btw there's my project. (It will never challenge gilles9999 or anyone else 'cause it's more like a training project though.)
http://www.consoleforums.net/showthread.php?p=55336
Post by: madmab on January 07, 2009, 06:42:00 PM
A few things that come to my mind...
Help will eventually be a seperate screen and the top line will say "Press start for help", to which it will display that help screen. So your little help graphic could be replaced by one of the other screens.
The new set-up allows for multiple skin "configurations" so you can have several different "setups" within one skin without having to make multiple skins.
Gilles converted most of the graphics to sprites so they scale properly between SDTV and HDTV.
Post by: nate1579 on January 07, 2009, 11:05:00 PM
sorry if its a bother
Post by: ressurectionx on January 08, 2009, 07:48:00 AM
QUOTE(FrankMorris @ Jan 7 2009, 05:34 PM)
Great work! Keep the scene alive!!
I have been working XPort skin called Black few days. It's sad 'cause no one tell me the DYNAMIC skins!
I have done 10 versions of one skin for 3 emulators. It's 7 too much!
I want make DYNAMIC skins. How do I get involved? Or have to I just wait the emu release?
Btw there's my project. (It will never challenge gilles9999 or anyone else 'cause it's more like a training project though.)
http://www.consoleforums.net/showthread.php?p=55336
Hey FM,
Great to see this post. I really think that when these emus are finally released and people can see what we've been talking about with these dynamic skins that we'll have more offers like this, but it's really cool to see one before the public has had a chance to see what can be done.
I'll let Gilles fill you in on the general idea of the skin. (Perhaps you and I should get together on a short tutorial designed to give specifics as to procedures and sizes of images and image name formats and stuff aimed at higher knowledge graphic artist type folk interested in helping Gilles?)
In the mean time, when Gilles is done guiding you, I'll fill in any blanks. Gilles has a MUCH better grasp on the whole procedure. I'm just the tester and fixer and polisher-up'er. I just work like a slave on the grunt work that nobody else would do so I got great things to add in my own way and the coding genius and the artist take me seriously when I have good ideas to bring to the table. Good team here, and happy to have you on board if you're game.
Later,
~Rx
PS... about your images (duh!). They look great. I love that font and how it looks retro like you're booting all this shit up on DOS 6.0. You won't need the controller help screen there (like madmab said) but hey, it's not a bad choice to offer if somebody wants it always showing up instead of pulling up a full screen graphic of it. (That's the beauty of the Dynamic Skins)
You'll have just a blank background, and then you can create "boarders" for movies, screenshots, romlists, etc., using artwork that you provide in the sprite folders. You can simply make that controller a sprite that the user can lay over the top of the background image and resize and fit wherever they want to see it. You could add a few emu configurations while placing sprites in folders named to the conventions and people could switch from your configuration to anyone elses and back without any glitches. It's really freakin awesome.
Here's hoping you bring your talent to the table and some more fresh ideas. Never can have too many of those.......
That's what this is all about man.
Post by: FrankMorris on January 08, 2009, 03:27:00 PM
Of course I still have many questions. In fact I'm so confused, that it's hard to write anything...
Is it Ok if I start the "I born yesterday" questions?
You ressurectionx are something like "I do everything" guy. Correct? (I noticed your Xtras project. No need to say it's been hell lotta work. And will be...)
madmab are coder, who is making this all possible. ("The Coding Genius" like you said.) Correct?
gilles9999 are skinner. ("The Artist" like you said.) Correct?
This is the post where is the latest updates of Dynamic skins created by gilles9999. Correct?
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=664573&view=findpost&p=4363706
Where is the option "Launch Inserted CD" in NeoGenesis main menu? V23 have it.
Next few questions I can't explain with letters, so I draw them.
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/355/fmquestionswp4.png [1148x814 478kb]
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 8 2009, 05:24 PM)
Perhaps you and I should get together on a short tutorial designed to give specifics as to procedures and sizes of images and image name formats and stuff aimed at higher knowledge graphic artist type folk interested in helping Gilles?
I'm here to help anywhere possible. When I get some things straight about dynamic skins building I will sure contact you.
I must start reading X-S messages by your three since oct 6. that I get up-to-date.
Btw. I really believe that the Xbox emulation scene was dead.
Thanks again.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 09, 2009, 12:25:00 PM
QUOTE(FrankMorris @ Jan 9 2009, 12:03 AM)
Where is the option "Launch Inserted CD" in NeoGenesis main menu? V23 have it.
Normal, i have limited the main menu number of lines to 6 lines, because of the skin itself.(the main menu text blade)
In fact the option is always here, but you have to scroll 1 line down to see all the options in some emus.
You know the dynamic skins are more a graphic interface than a artistic task (i just think the pm3 theme is perfect and provides a good contrast with the colorfull boxarts/videos).
I have spent more time settings the position/size of each of the 20 sprites in all of the 14 pre-made configs and the size/position of the texts and screenshots/previews in all these settings THAN skinning.
There is so much Xports emus, i like to have the same graphic interface for all of them, because i am a big XBMC (and pm3) fan.
Good thing you want to help, i think the best thing for you would be to start from one dynamic skin (anyone);
because in the future we will use the same conventions for all the sprites names/sprites numbers/pre-made configs/background names etc...
Ask rezX how hard it is to have a sort of "universal skin" ready to go for all the users and ready to go for the ressurectionXtras stuff.
For now though, even better to wait for a near future madmab beta fully compatible with the dynamic skins.
For sure always good to see more dynamic skins with another theme (360 glass skin?)
To answer your questions FrankMorris:
- No it's not a snes9x-nes emu, i just always use the same romnames
(oops magical photoshop copy/paste trick), i believed noone would check this - The flashy words are always here, you can disable them with hex-editing, the "rainbow effect can be disabled, but the words are always here
- It seems this will be the "Official" madmab logo, but madmab said me he will change (really a little) the sprite time animation
Post by: FrankMorris on January 09, 2009, 07:09:00 PM
Will madmab update ALL XPort emulators!? You have at least 15 skins under construction.
I started to make one universal skin to all XPort emulators called: Universal Dynamic Black
(Downloaded some of your skins for models, and I will ask you, if and when I encounter problems.)
It's gonna be huge size skin with all sprites and settings
I will post screens when I get something ready.
P.S. I was thinking, that could it be nice, if we had option to set sprites OVER the screenshots/box art and video previews? That's how we get little more size in the 640x480 screen and almost infinite possibilities. I see Pacman eating the screenshot bit by bit, turnpage effects, bullet holes and various shaders/masks over the box art etc. Or even the old school scanlines over the video previews. Is that too hifi/stupid/impossible? Madmab?
Apologies if there were language mistakes..
Post by: madmab on January 09, 2009, 07:35:00 PM
I don't really know if there is anyway in Direct3D to change the "priority" of images other than the order they are drawn in.
Post by: ressurectionx on January 10, 2009, 07:33:00 AM
[quote name='FrankMorris' post='4411952' date='Jan 8 2009, 05:03 PM']
Thanks a lot for your answers and info![/quote]
Glad to help FM. I'm real excited to see what you can bring. Now that we have the Dynamic Skin capabilities I'd love to see more people making them so there are many different options to choose from. Gilles work has been amazing so far and really sets the bar high for the expectations of new skins coming out in the future. The only thing is, I kinda miss some of the old skins like the GBA and NES skins with their cool moving graphics and character themes. But it is really cool to have all of the emus using the same interface as well (I even ditched the 360 look to XBMC to do the PM3 and it really is sweet to see everything look uniform like it all is one huge program).
Quote
Of course I still have many questions. In fact I'm so confused, that it's hard to write anything...
Is it Ok if I start the "I born yesterday" questions?
Hey man... don't worry about it. I myself have been working on the Xtras for about 3 years (about 2 1/2 of them I didn't even know I'd be sharing them with anyone and doing all of this). As a team, we've been discussing this stuff for almost a year and working on it together for about 6 months now. If you stick around long enough, you'll see that we're tweaking things here and there and inventing completely new features and better ways of doing old things every week. I think it's a good idea to read up on the thread if you're really interested and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Hopefully we can put together a good Dynamic Skin Creation Guide for everyone and make it as painless as possible for someone with the artistic skills to add their own personal touch to the emus.
Quote
You ressurectionx are something like "I do everything" guy. Correct? (I noticed your Xtras project. No need to say it's been hell lotta work. And will be...)
madmab are coder, who is making this all possible. ("The Coding Genius" like you said.) Correct?
gilles9999 are skinner. ("The Artist" like you said.) Correct?
Yep... I'm pretty much the "do all the crap that no-one else wants to do" guy. Organization has been my thing since I was cataloging my baseball cards and comic books when I was a kid (It doesn't mean that I'm like Adrian Monk though, since I'm sitting at my computer now with 5 empty beer cans around it from 3 nights ago and a basket of Buffalo Wing bones from who knows when
) I swear... I was clean before I started this project... it's just hard to keep everyting else as clean as I did before when I work 42 hours a week and do this about 50 hours a week.
I can't do artwork at all though, and that's why it's great having Gilles around to work with. He and his girlfriend are really talented and his dedication to the project means a lot. I've tried my hand at coding before on MAME, and although I was able to do some cool things with it, I knew it would take at least 5 years of my life to learn how to code well enough to do what I wanted to do and I'm not willing to do that so it's just amazing having madmab around to make my emu-dreams from the last decade come to life.
We've bounced so many ideas off one another in the last year or so and more than 90% of them have made it into the emulator so far, I'd say. It's really been a great trip so far....
Quote
This is the post where is the latest updates of Dynamic skins created by gilles9999. Correct?
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=664573&view=findpost&p=4363706
Yep... that's the one.
Quote
Btw. I really believe that the Xbox emulation scene was dead.
Let me be the first to tell you that I hope this is the beginning of a rebirth of XBox emulation..... or a ressurection, if you will.....
Gilles...
Quote
I have spent more time settings the position/size of each of the 20 sprites in all of the 14 pre-made configs and the size/position of the texts and screenshots/previews in all these settings THAN skinning.
After just messing around with creating my own configuration on your skins for several emulators, and the mess that was made trying out new sprite folder names on your older versions before we tweaked that, I think I can say that it truly must have been a bitch to do before man. I'm sure it's not a childlike task now even, but ain't it cool to be able to configure just one skin and then port that configuration to all the new ones now?
Quote
Ask rezX how hard it is to have a sort of "universal skin" ready to go for all the users and ready to go for the ressurectionXtras stuff.
True... true....
Where we are at now is months of work together tweaking this system. It's probably 100 times easier now in terms of porting configurations to other emus as they are made, and we're still tweaking it. These ain't your grandpa's emu-skins... we've created an entirely new breed of emu-GUI here that will be pretty much 100% customizable for the end user, even if they are severely deficient in artistic DNA.
Lucky you came on board now after so many of the kinks have already been worked out FM.
Quote
For now though, even better to wait for a near future madmab beta fully compatible with the dynamic skins.
Nah.... let's get him involved now man..... He seems hungry now. I know from experience on my own project that people come and go and those who are really interested get burned out or drawn away real easily. Sure... we're going to make more advancements, but if he's willing to put in the time, I for one am happy to have him on board now.
Quote
For sure always good to see more dynamic skins with another theme (360 glass skin?)
Hell's yeah! That's the one I personally can't wait to see. Although it's going to have to be pretty f-ing stellar for me to replace any of your skins with. I mean like it has to look exactly like XBox 360 and has every personal tweak available to us like yours does.
FM.... again..... LOL
Quote
P.S. I was thinking, that could it be nice, if we had option to set sprites OVER the screenshots/box art and video previews? That's how we get little more size in the 640x480 screen and almost infinite possibilities. I see Pacman eating the screenshot bit by bit, turnpage effects, bullet holes and various shaders/masks over the box art etc. Or even the old school scanlines over the video previews. Is that too hifi/stupid/impossible? Madmab?
Haha! 2 days on the project guys, and he's already pointed out 1 of the 2 things I've wanted to see that haven't actually made it or have at least been confirmed to be a part of the finished project now.
I was just talking about the ability to make it look great when you have the boxart slightly covering the movie. (I know there is a few examples of what I mean in one of these threads somethere), but you're talking about all kinds of cool animated shit that I would never have been able to concieve.
Oldschool scanlines over video previews... now that's a cool idea too. Don't have a clue if it's possible though.
Nope. I don't think you're questions are stupid at all. Maybe a bit impossible, but not stupid. We'll see.....
2 months ago my idea for a multi-language emulator was shot down in a day but here madmab is now saying that he's taught himself enough to probably make it happen. You never know....
Quote
I think ressX has asked that same question before and at the moment the answer is no. The objects are displayed in the order they are drawn. So although you have control over the order that sprites are, since the screenshots, box/cart art, and movies are drawn last they will always be on top.
I don't really know if there is anyway in Direct3D to change the "priority" of images other than the order they are drawn in.
At the moment.....
Methinks madmab is gaining more confidence in his abilities. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one.
Later guys,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on January 10, 2009, 07:59:00 AM
Me for doing the coding and little odds and ends.
RessX for pushing the dual skins idea and badgering me now and then.
The ressurectionXtra's, on the other hand, are like a total different beast. I'd probably be pulling my hair out by now if I was doing all that work. Gilles9999 and girlfriend for stepping in and creating all the skins (of which this would not be possible without).
And all the people who pass thru and contribute here and there like cospefogo, megaman(?), and a couple other people. (Hey I'm lucky to remember my own name).
It's still aways to go. There may be lots of changes and not every idea may necessarily make it in there. But we are trying!
Post by: madmab on January 10, 2009, 06:24:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 4 2009, 08:56 AM)
Madmab, all is ok here, and your new mekaX beta is perfect: dual boxart/videos, synopsis ok, no lockups!cool!
BUT, can you modify yourself the madmab edition logo frame speed/number of sprites and send it to me, like this i will just have to overwrite the settings in the dynamic neogenesis and nes skins.
P.S.: RezX, can you upload these 2 skins in our thread? We are progressing
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BTV8EL19
Here is a snippet of the .ini code that gets changed.. You can easily change these in a text editor. Framespeed and loop_once are the only parameters that I changed.
CODE
[LOADING_MENU_sprite2]
spritenum=60
offsetx=490
offsety=71
framespeed=100
flip_horiz=0
flip_vert=0
transparency=255
size=10.000000
loop_once=1
motion_x=4294967198
motion_y=0
rotate=0
rect_t=0
rect_b=480
rect_l=0
rect_r=639
spritenum=60
offsetx=490
offsety=71
framespeed=100
flip_horiz=0
flip_vert=0
transparency=255
size=10.000000
loop_once=1
motion_x=4294967198
motion_y=0
rotate=0
rect_t=0
rect_b=480
rect_l=0
rect_r=639
Post by: FrankMorris on January 10, 2009, 06:51:00 PM
Hoping, that no more bringing up things which are already discussed...
Some more questions about skins and everything: (still bothering you
)QUOTE(madmab @ Jan 8 2009, 04:18 AM)
Help will eventually be a seperate screen and the top line will say "Press start for help", to which it will display that help screen. So your little help graphic could be replaced by one of the other screens.
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 8 2009, 05:24 PM)
You won't need the controller help screen there (like madmab said) but hey, it's not a bad choice to offer if somebody wants it always showing up instead of pulling up a full screen graphic of it. (That's the beauty of the Dynamic Skins)
That is very nice enchantment. Makes me wonder if can we even place sprites on the help screen?Game synopsis is also a huge improvement. Does it use same image than normal popup menu?
QUOTE(madmab @ Jan 10 2009, 05:11 AM)
I think ressX has asked that same question before and at the moment the answer is no. The objects are displayed in the order they are drawn. So although you have control over the order that sprites are, since the screenshots, box/cart art, and movies are drawn last they will always be on top.I don't really know if there is anyway in Direct3D to change the "priority" of images other than the order they are drawn in.
I think I get the point. However, I made some research, and noticed that normal sprites are reverse order. And yes, madmab I have read this post: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=662980&view=findpost&p=4377461
Order is:
Text (with select bar and menu arrows)
Screenshot
Sprite 18
...
Sprite 1
Right select sprite
Left select sprite
Base image (duh!)
Tested with MednafenX-NES v10 game select screen with static sprites and no effects. Sprite folders were named 0-19.
Not sure in dual modes where will be the other image/video settle?
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 10 2009, 05:09 PM)
Nah.... let's get him involved now man..... He seems hungry now. I know from experience on my own project that people come and go and those who are really interested get burned out or drawn away real easily. Sure... we're going to make more advancements, but if he's willing to put in the time, I for one am happy to have him on board now.
I'm hungry, but in any case, not begging the beta. I'm not the guy who give up something. I will finish of my skin no matter if I get the beta or not. I just have to ask everything (You does not need to answer my problems if you don't want.)QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 10 2009, 05:09 PM)
2 months ago my idea for a multi-language emulator was shot down in a day but here madmab is now saying that he's taught himself enough to probably make it happen. You never know....
At the moment.....
Methinks madmab is gaining more confidence in his abilities. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one.
Me too. Let's try to push madmab over his limits! At the moment.....
Methinks madmab is gaining more confidence in his abilities. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one.
...
When I get something to show I should start new topic for my own skin project, instead of muddling here. (Need to contact head moderator and ask for permission to edit my topic like you can do.)
See you soon..
Post by: gilles9999 on January 11, 2009, 09:39:00 AM
They just have the updated "madmab edition splash screen" animation wanted by Madmab; the correct sprites names, new banners for each emus, and the "readme" is a little bit updated, that's all.
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=UPFY7HLD
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=BY0XVZ1W
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=TIMJNZAT
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=X6J7KYL4
Post by: madmab on January 11, 2009, 03:10:00 PM
It took a bit of head banging but I finally got the synopsis code where it will work with other skins!! The only catch is the user needs to set-up the skin to properly work with the synopsis. The way to do this is to adjust the following in the "Pop-up menu".
Set the border width to match the largest of the vertical or horizontal border size that you want. For example the border on both of the current GBA and NES emulators is larger at the top. So you would pick the number of pixels from that.
Which brings me to a question for Gilles9999. I noticed that the popup graphic you used has a little white space around the right and bottom. The white space causes the text not to line up properly with my new code. Is there any particular reason that space is there?
I probably should have said this earlier, but I didn't because I could not figure out how to get the synopsis code to center the text based on the font size and the max text width set in the skin.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 11, 2009, 04:24:00 PM
Here is the popupbkg without the empty space:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=CSB89T9A
Try it and see if it works?
I have tryed it with the last beta, and the right is a little cut of (logic, because the original popupbkg has an empty additional right border)
Post by: ressurectionx on January 11, 2009, 07:34:00 PM
I can't find any bugs to bring to attention. The sprite folders are still un-capitalized, but maybe you like it that way. When we're all done with the PM3 skins for sure I can just capitalize them.
Can't wait to see them for the other systems too.
I'll update your thread with these now.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on January 11, 2009, 07:45:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 11 2009, 07:00 PM)
No particular reason for that empty space;
Here is the popupbkg without the empty space:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=CSB89T9A
Try it and see if it works?
I have tryed it with the last beta, and the right is a little cut of (logic, because the original popupbkg has an empty additional right border)
Oh ok. Well I'll give it a go. It may not be affecting things as much as I thought. I put a little "tweak" in there. It just seems that if the borderwidth is set to less than 30 the then the window does not seem to center properly. So I've had to accomodate for that.
Post by: madmab on January 13, 2009, 02:12:00 AM
I did absolutely nothing but play around with emulators on the Wii. Just kicked back and enjoyed a bit of old school fun!
Post by: gilles9999 on January 13, 2009, 11:28:00 AM
Playing WII?, everyone know xbox is the best beast to play old games in perfect conditions ( with a good rgb cable)!The pfff.... WII... don't have any screenshot, boxart, videos, rumbles, cheats, synopsis, faqs,
and plus, the european wii emulators are running games in 50 HZ, youhou! bwaaarrrgh
, give me an xbox with us roms in 60hz!!Come back to work madmab
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 13, 2009, 03:03:00 PM
And so thanks to madmab, I am so into it, that I am quitting work here, forever...
Thanks madmab!
PS. JK
Post by: gilles9999 on January 13, 2009, 04:38:00 PM
The dynamic skins are working very good with every emu, except neogenesis:
the guilty is: The new Folder "60_[TEXT] Madmab edition" with 4 sprites in it!
So i have deleted it for the moment, and all is working right, with the 17 new banners:
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=3MY26ZJN
You will see, if you ad the folder "60_[TEXT] Madmab edition" in the sprites folder; the emu will freeze often.
If there isn't any solution, i have redrawn "one pic" with the madmab edition logo in it, but without the animation.
Don't paid attention, the background is darker, because i take attention of the future users! Yes a tv monitor is a lot brighter than a pc monitor; on your tv it will look good.Copy/paste this pic if there isn't solution (too much memory used, eh, neogenesis is a 3 in one emu)
Post by: madmab on January 14, 2009, 12:13:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on January 14, 2009, 11:24:00 AM
Post by: madmab on January 14, 2009, 01:58:00 PM
Try renaming the madmab_ed pictures from zero. 000.png, 001.png, etc. (I doubt this will work).
Turn off rewind if it is turned on. Rewind uses ALOT of ram and is also a fairly new feature, so that may explain the lockups. See if the problem goes away with rewind turned off.
Post by: Kampfar on January 14, 2009, 03:44:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 14 2009, 01:14 AM)
Ah! I have finally put my hands on the nasty bug in the Dynamic neogenesis skin!!
Ive tested it and it works better now. It starts right but if I enter a game and quit the bug comes back :/
Post by: gilles9999 on January 14, 2009, 03:59:00 PM
Delete all the banners, keep only your favorites (2 or 3) and see if it works.
Post by: FrankMorris on January 15, 2009, 11:40:00 AM
I'm pretty sure, that the main problem is memory usage of next sprites: (like you Gilles said.)
60_[TEXT] Madmab edition
61_[TEXT] Splash screen
Them contains three 640x480 pix images. That's about ~3.7MB mem!
The problem can be easily fixed by converting the splash screen in four images like this:
.::::.
.::::.
.::::.
The are right starting places for first two sprites:
[LOADING_MENU_sprite1]
spritenum=61
offsetx=201
offsety=102
framespeed=3
flip_horiz=0
flip_vert=0
transparency=255
size=10.000000
loop_once=1
motion_x=0
motion_y=0
rotate=0
rect_t=0
rect_b=450
rect_l=0
rect_r=640
[LOADING_MENU_sprite2]
spritenum=62
offsetx=223
offsety=339
framespeed=3
flip_horiz=0
flip_vert=0
transparency=255
size=10.000000
loop_once=1
motion_x=0
motion_y=0
rotate=0
rect_t=0
rect_b=450
rect_l=0
rect_r=640
Btw. Sorry, if I act like a wiseguy, but you can almost HALVE the whole skin mem usage, if you remove the unnecessary transparent areas from ALL sprites. Of course you need edit the setting.ini file too, that the sprites "starts" in the right place.
Straight XPort quote: (some old emu readme file, but fits for all emus.)
QUOTE
Also be aware of memory constraints. Let's say you have a frame of a sprite
called 0.png. This picture file is 90 pixels wide and 130 pixels high.
This will get rounded up to a 256x256 pixel 32bit picture. This means
that it will consume 256x256x4 bytes (256KB) of memory. If your sprite has
10 frames of animation, that's around 2.5MB of memory. Keep this in mind
before you make ultra-smooth moving sprites with hundreds of frames of
animation.
called 0.png. This picture file is 90 pixels wide and 130 pixels high.
This will get rounded up to a 256x256 pixel 32bit picture. This means
that it will consume 256x256x4 bytes (256KB) of memory. If your sprite has
10 frames of animation, that's around 2.5MB of memory. Keep this in mind
before you make ultra-smooth moving sprites with hundreds of frames of
animation.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 15, 2009, 04:54:00 PM
For the moment i only had problems with neogenesis, it's the only skin i will have to modify
Post by: madmab on January 15, 2009, 09:07:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on January 16, 2009, 12:17:00 AM
Ok problem solved, i'll modify the ini settings, you will have to overwrite the new ini files and the new sprites folder i'll send you; all have the same naming conventions, you''l just have to copy/paste it
Post by: ressurectionx on January 16, 2009, 09:40:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on January 16, 2009, 12:53:00 PM
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 16, 2009, 02:48:00 PM
I have heard you say that before. I actually edited your zsnexbox skin for myself with some added images with " MS Paint"
(a while back). It was tedious (to say the least). I never wanted to show anyone what I did . I have never used photo shop and I wish I had it, to learn. Why growing up in America have I never heard that word "chirurgy" before Gilles said it? Of course, I assumed what it meant and also looked it up, learning that it is synonymous with "surgery". Is it a french word? or, am I just that iganant?
keep up the good work guys!
Post by: madmab on January 16, 2009, 05:21:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 16 2009, 03:29 PM)
Using paint for skinning is like using a chainsaw for chirurgy
/me revs up the chainsaw..... Vrooom, vrooom....
Post by: gilles9999 on January 17, 2009, 05:43:00 AM
Ok i have finished to free up memory in my dynamic skins, they use more memory than a classic skin, but now it's optimized, now crash in neogenesis now, all is working like a charm; thanks to FranckMorris.
Fixed:
-Splash ccreen sprites are now a lot smaller (memory gain)
-the video preview was smaller than screenshots in some settings, so there was a little "extra bar of pixels in the top of the video when you auto advance screenshots, now it's ok
-the med preview/med video settings are re-done
- the main screen "top left ellipse" had a little pixel glitch now it's ok
-all the 14 settings arefixed to suit that
Dynamic MEDNAFENX NES PM by Gilou9999 17/01/2009
(http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=MS407I68)
Dynamic NEOGENESIS PM3 by Gilou9999 17/01/2009
(http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=E1K9KFUI)
You will have to work from these skins franckmorris if you keep the madmab logo
Post by: madmab on January 17, 2009, 06:46:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on January 17, 2009, 10:12:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 17 2009, 07:19 AM)
Using paint for skinning is like using a chainsaw for a chirurgical act (like doctor ross in "urgence" with a chainsaw you see)
Haha! Dont' feel bad MM?. Gilles nearly had a stroke when he saw i resized the banner for my sig and thread with paint back in the day. I didn't notice it was worse quality, but it was like I pissed in his cereal.
No offence Gilles. I'm glad you got the eye for that. I don't. I'm sure a bunch of other people do too and that's why you're the graphics guy.
You mind shrinking the size of the other emus in case they need more memory with one of our additons someday?
Post by: guybird on January 17, 2009, 03:38:00 PM
Post by: FrankMorris on January 17, 2009, 03:49:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 17 2009, 03:19 PM)
Using paint for skinning is like using a chainsaw for a chirurgical act (like doctor ross in "urgence" with a chainsaw you see)
Agree that. But... Played with chainsaw yesterday. This is what I accomplished:
First ANSI-art Xbox logo in the world wide web. (Until somebody shows up, and say: I did that year 2002 already.)
Real massacre. eh?
http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=frankmorris2009wx8.png
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3482/frankmorris2009wx8.png
If somebody cares how I did it:
Used TundraDraw ANSI editor to draw the profile. Colored it with Photoshop.
Not easy task, cause you can't just convert the logo ANSI-art. I needed draw/color every "block" one by one. It still need some fixing I quess.
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 17 2009, 03:19 PM)
You will have to work from these skins franckmorris if you keep the madmab logo
Haha! Not stealing your logo man! I thought it was something like "official logo" made by Madmab (like XPort had his own...) I can make my own logo, if I need it.
___________________________________________
Question goes to Madmab:
Any changes to have skin-based help screens?
- Using the old-gen skins where does not have help screen could show the default help screens made by Gilles. (Which is included on your build as far as I know.)
- Using the new-gen skins could show them own help screens. (Or default help screens, if them don't have own.)
Nothing against Gilles enhanced help screen, but you know, circle won't fit on square and the other way round.
Maybe a whole new "section" to settings.ini file?
[HELP_SCREEN1_bkg]
[HELP_SCREEN1_text]
[HELP_SCREEN1_sprite1]
...
[HELP_SCREEN1_effect1]
...
Is this even possible?
___________________________________________
Question goes to Gilles:
Is there some specific reason to use JPG in your skins? I vote for PNG. It doesn't shuffle your colors, and the files are actually about same sizes. (Ok, you know it already.)
___________________________________________
Question goes to RessX:
Been fighting for edit access couple of days. How the hell did you get that on your Xtras thread? XanTium gave it to you? He have disabled personal message system and not answering an email. Any advice?
FrankMorris
Post by: FrankMorris on January 17, 2009, 04:19:00 PM
QUOTE(guybird @ Jan 18 2009, 01:14 AM)
A little off topic, but I made a http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=674075&view=getnewpost. Considering how much incredible stuff you guys are doing with the emulators, I definitely feel that a dedicated website (with its own downloads) would be ideal for your situation. I'm not making any promises, but I'm looking to see if any generous hosts pop up offering a site (as hargle did with the prior sites). If that doesn't pan out, I will definitely look into paying for something, although I really have no idea where to start. Just wondering what you guy's thoughts are.
All that sounds very good in my opinion. (except your server malfunction and other in your thread )RessurectionX really needs some place to store the goods. We need something better than megaupload to start the new resurrection. Of course I'm also interested all Xmugen stuff. I'd say go for it.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 17, 2009, 05:43:00 PM
videos, boxarts, screenshots, dats, rumbles, skins, synopsis, etc... hell yeah!
answer 1: I'm using jpg because .png is double sizing the stuuf; ex my main screen is 180kb in jpg but 300kb in png, so with all the 640*480 pics plus all the sprites, it results various emu freeze...
For a "classic skin" without all the sprites, i would say, yeah, use png, but in my case there is really small difference between my jpg main screen/gameselect screen and the same thing in jpg;plus the gameselect screen has already big screenshots/boxarts/banners in png, so the colour quality is okay.
Be sure to wait tomorrow, the dynamic skins are using a lot of memory; tomorrow i'll release a complete dynamic skins pack with all of them updated and optimized (free up memory); i have cut off all the "dead space" on some sprites to free up memory.
You know that, there is a looot of contraints when you are doing a skin for an xport emu:
-each tv is different, some tv are doing "overscan"
-there is sdtv but also hdtv users, wich means the aspect ratio of the screenshots/boxarts/videos will be different.
-the "red colour" on the sdtv is often badly displayed, that's why i am avoiding it
-the new ability to display video and boxarts at the same time means:lot of problem, each user is different, some of them want to show only boxarts, another one it's boxart/video at the same time, another one it's only screenshot, etc...
-You must pay attention of the size of each background and each sprite, or else the skin will use too much memory, and your xbox will randomly freeze (that's why i have optimized all of them today, franckmorris said me how much useless memory was used by some sprites; now it's ok)
-In xports emus it's 640*480 backgrounds! You'll never see the 720p backgrounds like in XBMC
Post by: ressurectionx on January 17, 2009, 06:07:00 PM
Probably didn't matter much for the emulators that weren't having problems like Genesis was, but it will be great for Dosbox and PSX I'm thinkin. Plus, you never know (at least I don't) how much memory all these other Xtras takes up like the synopsis and stuff. So whenever we can cut out memory hogs and not lose anything by doing it it's great.
Looking forward to seeing them. I got 3 days off to mess around with them starting tomorrow.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on January 17, 2009, 06:09:00 PM
QUOTE(FrankMorris @ Jan 17 2009, 06:25 PM)
Haha! Not stealing your logo man!
I thought it was something like "official logo" made by Madmab (like XPort had his own...) I can make my own logo, if I need it.
QUOTE(FrankMorris @ Jan 17 2009, 06:25 PM)
Question goes to Madmab: Any changes to have skin-based help screens?
Nothing against Gilles enhanced help screen, but you know, circle won't fit on square and the other way round.
Post by: FrankMorris on January 18, 2009, 04:40:00 AM
QUOTE(madmab @ Jan 18 2009, 03:45 AM)
Well a help screen isn't exactly interactive. I was just gonna have the help screens in a directory named "Help". I figure if a skin creator wants to make their own versions they could tell the user to overwrite the files in the "D:\help" directory with their own.
Ok. That clear things. I thought it was combined to xbe, like keyboard.png
Post by: madmab on January 18, 2009, 06:25:00 AM
Anyways.... No I'm not gonna combine them to the .xbe. That would just waste much needed memory. Post by: gilles9999 on January 18, 2009, 02:23:00 PM
ADAMX,ATARI7800X,ATARIXLBOX,BLUEMSXBOX,MEDNAFENX LYNX,MEDNAFENX NES,MEDNAFENX PCE,MEKAX,NEOGENESIS,PCSXBOX,SNES9XBOX,VIRTUALBOYX,WINUAEX,WINSTONX and Z26X.
It's just longer than i expected, i have to change all the ini's because the sprites are smaller and haven't the same size.
I have optimized all the skins size to ~35% without quality loss to free up the always needed memory
Post by: madmab on January 18, 2009, 05:33:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on January 18, 2009, 09:56:00 PM
Bummer you have to re-do the ini's though. Is that something you just have to do for one of them and can copy to all the others, or do you have to redo it for every emu? Is there a way you can set it up so you only have to do it once?
Post by: gilles9999 on January 19, 2009, 12:27:00 AM
it's ok when i'm doing the sprites at the same dimensions, but for gba, pce, psx,lynx, snes, the missing boxart is a special dimension.I always want to be able to display the boxart in the correct aspect ratio.
Post by: ressurectionx on January 19, 2009, 12:58:00 AM
It's a shame, since you spent time and effort doing this. I'm not saying you shouldn't do the work. That's really on you, and if the Xtras fade away and aren't available someday it will be valuable. I'm just sayin that I'll never actually see the missing boxart artwork you did after I'm done testing all the systems. (They look great now though
.Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on January 19, 2009, 11:49:00 AM
Post by: madmab on January 19, 2009, 12:15:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on January 20, 2009, 02:04:00 PM
I can't push the skins higher; Here are the 16 DYNAMIC skins, all of them are updated, correct sprites name/size/15 banners in each (except neogenesis has 10 banners for free up memory);
All of them have the system controller in the option menu, splash screen with the emu name and the madmab logo. Be aware it's a 85 meg download!
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=HK77GOZQ
That's why i release a "banner pack" with 116 banners inside!! No excuse, you will find a banner to your tastes!
WARNING!!!! Don't put more than 15 banners in a dynamic skin (10 for neogenesis)or else you should encounter some freeze (xbox running out of memory)
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=3ZI1ES7O
Dynamic skin isn't "just" a name, in a dynamic skin you can change almost everything!That's the idea, offering as most liberty as possible to the user to set the graphic interface.
p.s.: huge favour rezX, can you upload all the new updated dynamic skins in our thread? And test them with your games and extras? With my 2 tv (sdtv and hdtv), all is setting right.
Post by: ressurectionx on January 20, 2009, 02:16:00 PM
Testing as I go along won't be a problem, but uploading all 16 of them probably won't happen overnight.
I think I noticed a bug.... I'm hoping these skins take care of it. I have some GBA games freezing on me. Primarily the Videos (Like Cartoon Network Episodes). I know I used to be able to watch these on here, but now the XBox freezes when I try any of them (I haven't tried all of them, but every one so far makes me have to get up and reset the Box). There were also a few games that froze the box too...
Post by: gilles9999 on January 20, 2009, 02:34:00 PM
With all my roms, (from~2005) i don't have any freeze with xboyadvance now,
but be sure to use these new skins
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=HK77GOZQ
a simple test, try your roms with the default skin before judging the dynamic skins
They are all working with all my roms and all my systems now, there is absolutely no reason to have some bugs caused by my skins now. The only emu wich gave me some problems was neogenesis, and xboyadvance.
Now all is looking ok, don't put more than 15 banners in your sprites folder
Post by: FrankMorris on January 20, 2009, 02:55:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 18 2009, 11:59 PM)
I have optimized all the skins size to ~35% without quality loss to free up the always needed memory
That is something you can call an Optimize.QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 19 2009, 09:25 PM)
Exactly resX, when you have boxarts for each rom (highly recommanded now!!) youwon't see the "missing boxart" often, that's why i have decreased it's quality( the missing boxarts were really too bigs and ate too much memory) i prefer to save as much memory as i can, especially if mad' is adding some new cool stuff (like a 640*480 background to display synopsis/txt)
Well.. There is a one way, how you can keep full-size no-quality-loss "missing boxart" images with 0 bytes of memory used. (If somehow you are STILL running with low memory )Join "missing boxart" to gameselect screen.
You need to do more gameselect screens for various aspect ratios and lay-outs.
The boxart appears above the "missing boxart" like before, but now totally free of mem, cause there are no sprites. (more optimize)
After that, you have more files on you skin.rar, but the file won't get much bigger, cause your JPG images now have more white data and that affects on file size.
I think it's going to be worth it..
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 20, 2009, 03:01:00 PM
You seem to have some great info to add here. I am glad to see more "helpful minds", working towards this project.
Welcome aboard!
Great work guys.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 20, 2009, 03:24:00 PM
QUOTE(FrankMorris @ Jan 20 2009, 11:31 PM)
Well.. There is a one way, how you can keep full-size no-quality-loss "missing boxart" images with 0 bytes of memory used. (If somehow you are STILL running with low memory
)Join "missing boxart" to gameselect screen.
You need to do more gameselect screens for various aspect ratios and lay-outs.
The boxart appears above the "missing boxart" like before, but now totally free of mem, cause there are no sprites. (more optimize)
After that, you have more files on you skin.rar, but the file won't get much bigger, cause your JPG images now have more white data and that affects on file size.
I think it's going to be worth it..
No
That means i'll have to do 14 differents "gameselect.jpg"
useless and painfull
The way i have done it is better, with only two "missing boxart" (sdtv and hdtv) sprites,
it's better for the user, that way he can set the size/position to display the boxart exactly where he want, he can even disable the missing boxart if he wants!
It's garantee 100% you won't have freezes caused by the skin itself with these new dynamic skins.
No quality loss with the "missing boxarts" pics finally, they have their original quality,
The only thing i repeat it now, and for the future users: Don't put more than 15 sprites in the sprites folder (10 for neogenesis for safety)
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=HK77GOZQ
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=3ZI1ES7O
p.s.: don't forget to download the 116 banners pack it has a Barack OBAMA banner and a SARKOZY banner inside
Post by: FrankMorris on January 20, 2009, 03:49:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 21 2009, 01:00 AM)
No
That means i'll have to do 14 differents "gameselect.jpg"
useless and painfull
The way i have done it is better, with only two "missing boxart" (sdtv and hdtv) sprites,
it's better for the user, that way he can set the size/position to display the boxart exactly where he want, he can even disable the missing boxart if he wants!
It's garantee 100% you won't have freezes caused by the skin itself with these new dynamic skins.
No quality loss with the "missing boxarts" pics finally, they have their original quality
Ah, you are right. Didn't remember ability to move boxart freely. (disabling the missing boxart won't be a problem.)
Anyway, glad to hear that your skins are working perfect now!
QUOTE(Mega Man (?) @ Jan 21 2009, 12:37 AM)
Hey Frank,
You seem to have some great info to add here. I am glad to see more "helpful minds", working towards this project.
Welcome aboard!
Thank you, but just writing what I'm thinking at the moment, and I can be wrong. (piece of evidence above. ^)
Post by: ressurectionx on January 20, 2009, 05:29:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 20 2009, 05:00 PM)
p.s.: don't forget to download the 116 banners pack it has a Barack OBAMA banner and a SARKOZY banner inside
AAAAAHHHHHHHH! I hate politicians!
Hopefully that is the end of any talk of those people in here.
Post by: gilles9999 on January 21, 2009, 12:14:00 AM
p.s.: for the moment i'm playing with the "cats" banner because i love cats
Don't worry 90% of the 116 banners is "emulation related"
Post by: madmab on January 21, 2009, 02:11:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on January 21, 2009, 03:32:00 AM
And that's about all I have to say about that.
I've got your skins, but I haven't really had a chance to check them out this weekend. I've been a madman about cleaning up the Gameboy/GBC/GBA stuff. Right now, there are over 1,700 videos and every game with a video now also has boxart, titleshots and actionshots with matching names (The only exception being the small amount of games that I can't find boxart for). Some of them have carts as well.
I'm hoping by next weekend I can wrap it up. I still have quite a few games to test and collect artwork for. It may be another few weekends unless it goes faster than I think it will.
I think I'll post your link for all the emus at the top of your thread for now until they're tested. We know how often we've made changes to the skins and have to reupload them. I'm just afraid that after such a large change that something may make it necessary for another change. Once we're certain that they are exactly how we want them, we'll get the individual ones up there for people who aren't interested in downloading all of them together.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: ultimate509 on January 22, 2009, 03:12:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Jan 20 2009, 02:10 PM)
I have really spent a lot of time to free up as much memory as i can,
With all my roms, (from~2005) i don't have any freeze with xboyadvance now,
but be sure to use these new skins
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=HK77GOZQ
a simple test, try your roms with the default skin before judging the dynamic skins
They are all working with all my roms and all my systems now, there is absolutely no reason to have some bugs caused by my skins now. The only emu wich gave me some problems was neogenesis, and xboyadvance.
Now all is looking ok, don't put more than 15 banners in your sprites folder
thanks quick ?
Dynamic SNES9XBOX pm3 by Gilou9999
Should I use this with Zsnexbox or are you gonna make one for it later on?
Post by: ressurectionx on January 22, 2009, 04:51:00 AM
For now, the dynamic skins are just for XPORT emus. There are several dual preview skins up in my thread for it though, made by Sotu and Gilles.
Post by: Kampfar on January 22, 2009, 08:12:00 AM
thank you for your great work!
Post by: gilles9999 on January 22, 2009, 02:23:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 22 2009, 01:27 PM)
The ZSNESXBox is a different beast entirely. I'd love to see this skin ported over to it (since it's my personal favorite SNES emu), but I don't know how easy it would be since pretty much everything about it is different (in my layman's opinion.... Gilles is the expert on that). I think he'd have to start from scratch, and I'm not sure if it's even possible to set them up the same way for the end-user.
For now, the dynamic skins are just for XPORT emus. There are several dual preview skins up in my thread for it though, made by Sotu and Gilles.
Exactly;
A skin for zsnexbox is a loooot more easy to do. But are really less flexibles than the xports emus (only 2 sprites; no ability to launch custom settings, 512*512 pixels backgrounds, no sprites for the main menu cursor, can't align the main menu text to the left, etc...). You know i love the nes6502 work too,, zsnexbox is fantastic and is better than a lot of xbox emus
I have 2 pm3 skins for zsnexbox:
- dual boxart/video display for SDTV
- dual boxart/video display for HDTV
The interesting thing about my zsnexbox skins is they will launch your games at the original corect snes pixel ratio (the pixel ratio is setted up by the skin)
I will post the link this week if you really want it (to have a uniform Project Mayehm 3 emus collection i suppose?)
Post by: ressurectionx on January 22, 2009, 04:13:00 PM
I know you got a hold of Neverwill's artwork. Did you ever do anything about making dual previews with them?
Post by: ressurectionx on January 26, 2009, 08:54:00 AM
I was wondering if you could do me a favor. It's not that I don't like it, but I'd rather not have any songs where people are singing on the emus as the default song. I know you have one for the Genesis. If you have any others I was hoping you could replace them temporarily until we have the ability to randomize skin songs.
Thanks man,
~Rx
Post by: ultimate509 on January 27, 2009, 04:25:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 26 2009, 08:30 AM)
Hey Gilles,
I was wondering if you could do me a favor. It's not that I don't like it, but I'd rather not have any songs where people are singing on the emus as the default song. I know you have one for the Genesis. If you have any others I was hoping you could replace them temporarily until we have the ability to randomize skin songs.
Thanks man,
~Rx
I asked Gilles about this but I think his pm box might of been full or something...
So Ill ask here Gilles can you post that site you posted earlier awhile back with those mp3s, the Site where you get the background music for the Dynamic Skins, that site had plenty of different mp3 files to choose from, what I want to do is get a couple and add more to the dynamic skins instead of having a default one, mainly I want to change the Genesis cause I cant stand that one ....but again I think Id be better to have various background songs in your skins as long as it had something to do with the emu selected.......
Post by: ressurectionx on January 27, 2009, 06:26:00 AM
Full Tilt is my favorite. Maximizes both the Movie Preview view as well as the boxart/screenshot view.
BigArt was created for PSX in mind. Makes the most out of available space to display the Boxart.
BigVid was kind of a preliminary attempt at the "Enhanced Favorites". It doesn't work exactly right because of the limitations of the options, but you can get a feel for what I'm talking about for full screen video view for enhanced favorites. (Imagine the text in the middle.... centered, with a great font, possibly some artwork floating behind it like fire or a stone plaque.)
Post by: gilles9999 on January 28, 2009, 12:29:00 PM
Well, all my mp3 (video games remix; with the exception of neogenesis wich has the sonic adventure 2 song)
are coming from www.grospixels.com in "goodies";it's totally free music from my french friends (really good site with crazy guys like us)
Post by: ultimate509 on January 28, 2009, 01:26:00 PM
Post by: Mega Man (?) on January 28, 2009, 02:53:00 PM
Post by: FrankMorris on January 28, 2009, 04:16:00 PM
I don't like that ^^^^ "up" arrow.
I'm wondering, does any rom file use this character: ^? Maybe RessX can clarify this??
If not, I could edit it looking like just like A (without horizontal line)
FATX does support character: ^, so it could be possible, that some rom uses it..
...
Also, same time when doing that I could delete hunreds of useless characters like this:
http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=33388681oo2.jpg
It saves little space and memory, but would be axe for multilanguage menu.
Anything to say about these cheap tricks?
Post by: ressurectionx on January 28, 2009, 04:38:00 PM
Post by: FrankMorris on January 28, 2009, 04:55:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 29 2009, 02:14 AM)
I know that I can say 100% that I don't use the ^ character at all in my roms. I don't know what's causing this (actually, I've never noticed it) Do you have a screenshot?
Sure.http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=demozg3.png
Those arrows are normal chars. Them are jumping up and down very fast.
Configuration/General Settings Page 2/Show Menu Arrows? is enabled.
Post by: ressurectionx on January 29, 2009, 07:54:00 AM
Nope... I don't use them at all in my romnames if that helps. It's probably easier to just shut the arrows off than do anything else if there is an option for it. I guess they never bothered me enough to really notice them. They do serve a purpose, I think, but they're not really necessary and I could do without them. I wouldn't be opposed to having them off by default, but you'd have to see what other people think about it.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: FrankMorris on January 29, 2009, 11:03:00 AM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Jan 29 2009, 05:30 PM)
They do serve a purpose.
Exactly. So there's no need to discard them I think.
Only that ^ up arrow was a problem. Fixed it in my fonts. Now both arrows all 100% symmetric.
http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gameselectpv8.png
Just think that those arrows are jumping. (Haven't enough strength to do gif animation
) Post by: ressurectionx on January 30, 2009, 08:51:00 AM
Post by: FrankMorris on January 30, 2009, 02:08:00 PM
I hope that now you can see the difference.
I do not touched that down arrow, because it's normal character. (V as Virtual)
EDIT: Yeah, it's very minor trick, but I like it.
P.S. I'm really hoping that you can keep your job, man.
Post by: gilles9999 on February 01, 2009, 03:38:00 PM
(it's just to have "the complete" pm3 theme for all our emus and our favorite dashboard: XBMC!
They are the badguys, i need to create "special trimmed" skin for them, but the idea is to have a splash screen without animation, it should do the trick.
p.s.: with these "3 memory eaters" emus, the franck project black skin should be a good solution; keep the good work franck
Post by: osmorphyus on February 24, 2009, 05:40:00 AM
love the bkg music of contra, is that the minibosses by the way playing it?
moving on - my upper logo, where it should have the nintendo logo, doenst show up. i have the image in the sprites folder where it should be, named 0(.png?), in any case i never messed with anything. i downloaded the skin and dragged/dropped it into the emuskins folder.
id really like to know how i can correct it to have it lookin how it should. thanks for any help!
this is the first time ive tried a new skin for the xport nes emulator, and so far, its bad ass.
love the bkg music of contra, is that the minibosses by the way playing it?
moving on - my upper logo, where it should have the nintendo logo, doenst show up. i have the image in the sprites folder where it should be, named 0(.png?), in any case i never messed with anything. i downloaded the skin and dragged/dropped it into the emuskins folder.
id really like to know how i can correct it to have it lookin how it should. thanks for any help!
[ edit ]
p.s.
the skin in se is 'dynamic_nes_pm3by_gilou9999'
Post by: gilles9999 on February 24, 2009, 12:23:00 PM
It works well with my mednafen x nes beta, wich mednafenx nes are you using?
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=664573&st=0
2)What setting are you using?default.ini?
3) you are speaking about the official nintendo logo that appears on the main menu?Or in the gameselect menu?
If you want to change the gameselect menu banner/sprites, all is explained in the readme
let us know,
later, Gilkou9999
Post by: ressurectionx on March 01, 2009, 11:54:00 PM
Except for the few that need to have things cut out for memory issues.
I'll let you know if anything comes up. So far Atari 5200/800, 2600 and 7800 seem to work perfect.
Later,
~Rx
Isn't there a zipfile somewhere with all of the newest synopsis' and the newest synopsis backgrounds?
PS....
Could I ask you to make a skin for the following emus Gilles?
A TurboGrafx 16 alternate to the PCE since nobody in the US knows what a PCE is?
Also...
Intellivision
Pokemon Mini
Bandai Wonderswan
Neo Geo Pocket
Odyssey II
Apple II
Amiga
Commodore 64
Thanks for the great stuff man,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on March 02, 2009, 03:19:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Mar 2 2009, 08:30 AM)
I'm using your new skins now and I can't think of anything else they need now Gilles. I don't think it's possible to tweak them anymore, do you?
Except for the few that need to have things cut out for memory issues.
I'll let you know if anything comes up. So far Atari 5200/800, 2600 and 7800 seem to work perfect.
Later,
~Rx
Isn't there a zipfile somewhere with all of the newest synopsis' and the newest synopsis backgrounds?
PS....
Could I ask you to make a skin for the following emus Gilles?
A TurboGrafx 16 alternate to the PCE since nobody in the US knows what a PCE is?
Also...
Intellivision
Pokemon Mini
Bandai Wonderswan
Neo Geo Pocket
Odyssey II
Apple II
Amiga
Commodore 64
Thanks for the great stuff man,
~Rx
I always put my latests dynamic skins into the atariAge forum, here, in post #2
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=137342
It has also the WINUAEX skin for amiga, and all the skins here have their synopsis 640*480 backgrounds
Post by: snoopy12533 on March 06, 2009, 01:44:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on March 06, 2009, 02:18:00 PM
for now, all is well explained in the "readme" that comes with each dynamic skins.
Chapter #4:
4) You want to use the DYNAMIC skin with an old XPORT emu?
Post by: ressurectionx on March 24, 2009, 02:38:00 PM
Have you done any more tinkering or work on the skins you've released so far?
I was going to tweak a few things like getting all the mp3's normailzed so they were the same volume and re-upload them. I don't want to go to this trouble right now though if you have updates of your own still to post.
Thanks,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on March 24, 2009, 05:31:00 PM
I can make any update you want if you or madmab notice something strange (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
I have just noticed a little bug:
When you are selecting a save state, the "in game screenshot" isn't display at the correct place (it should be displayed at the same place as the "in game option screenshot"
Second thing (but i don't want to put too much work to madmab, he has already too much things to do, so,it's only if he has a little time):
For the users without big hard drives, is it possible to display a boxart AND a screenshot at the same time?
(like they are doing in a lot of pc frontends in fact) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
I m working on the genesis synopsis 32x, A, B, C done so far (big letters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/muhaha.gif) )
I m working on some backgrounds too for the "background" folder I will show them on sunday if i can.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Mar 25 2009, 12:37 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on March 24, 2009, 05:18:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Mar 24 2009, 06:31 PM)
No resX, no skins updates for the moment, they are 100% functiunnal
I can make any update you want if you or madmab notice something strange
Nothing strange.... Just want to normalize all the MP3s so they're the exact same volume. I'm going to do this to all the Static Skins I have too.
I'm also capitalizing the Sprite Folder Names because they look better that way.
Nothing that would change the overall workings of the skin that would require any intervention on your part. I would also like to include a Skin Config of my own with them because I hate having to manually add it every time I update a skin on my Box.
QUOTE
I have just noticed a little bug:
When you are selecting a save state, the "in game screenshot" isn't display at the correct place (it should be displayed at the same place as the "in game option screenshot"
When you are selecting a save state, the "in game screenshot" isn't display at the correct place (it should be displayed at the same place as the "in game option screenshot"
Not sure what you mean here. I see it displayed at the bottom middle and it looks good to me. Is this something you wanted to change and can change within the skin?
QUOTE
Second thing (but i don't want to put too much work to madmab, he has already too much things to do, so,it's only if he has a little time):
For the users without big hard drives, is it possible to display a boxart AND a screenshot at the same time?
(like they are doing in a lot of pc frontends in fact)
For the users without big hard drives, is it possible to display a boxart AND a screenshot at the same time?
(like they are doing in a lot of pc frontends in fact)
That's why I'm saving the Boxart as 0001, Title 0002, Action 0003, Cart 0004. I figure if all the artwork is saved correctly, this should be easy coding for madmab.
QUOTE
I m working on the genesis synopsis 32x, A, B, C done so far (big letters )
I m working on some backgrounds too for the "background" folder I will show them on sunday if i can.
)I m working on some backgrounds too for the "background" folder I will show them on sunday if i can.
Cool man. Looking forward to seeing your stuff.
Later,
~Rx
Oh yeah... madmab... have we put the synopsis & help backgrounds and any other skin specific pics within the skins themselves now? I believe I read that you updated the emus to have that feature now (the ability to check the skin for these pics first before defaulting to the one in the D:\ folder).
Just want to make sure what pics I should put in the skins before re-uploading them. Let me know what folder to have these pics in.
Gilles, could you get me the correct pics for all the help screens and synopsis screens for the emus you've done so far? I can't remember if you prefer JPGs or PNGs and I believe in some cases I have both.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on March 25, 2009, 03:41:00 AM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Mar 24 2009, 07:31 PM)
I have just noticed a little bug:
When you are selecting a save state, the "in game screenshot" isn't display at the correct place (it should be displayed at the same place as the "in game option screenshot"
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Mar 24 2009, 07:31 PM)
Second thing (but i don't want to put too much work to madmab, he has already too much things to do, so,it's only if he has a little time):
For the users without big hard drives, is it possible to display a boxart AND a screenshot at the same time?
(like they are doing in a lot of pc frontends in fact) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif)
QUOTE
Oh yeah... madmab... have we put the synopsis & help backgrounds and any other skin specific pics within the skins themselves now? I believe I read that you updated the emus to have that feature now (the ability to check the skin for these pics first before defaulting to the one in the D:\ folder).
Yep. Coded, just not compiled yet.Post by: ressurectionx on March 25, 2009, 08:57:00 AM
Which folders do the help and synopsis files have to be in and what names do they have to have to work (Which folder in the skin itself, and is the backup still the same with synopsis.jpg in the emu root and the help image in the "Help" folder within the emu root?)
Gilles, are we using .png images or .jpg images or both? I need to have a pack uploaded with all the help/synopsis images you've got in the format you want to see in the final releases.
This was one of the major things I wanted to take care of before re-packing the skins.
Thanks guys,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on February 03, 2020, 05:35:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Mar 25 2009, 10:57 AM)
Since they do have specific names, how come 0001, 0002 doesn't work, if every Boxart is assigned 0001, every title shot is 0002 etc? I've made sure this is the case on Gameboy and the re-releases of artwork packs so far.
Not everyone uses that specification and if (for example) someone added a new game and then decided to take snapshots from within the emu they would end up have screenshots being displayed in the wrong place.
It would be far easier (and less confusing for the end user) to either set a filename specification. Something like scr0001.png, scr0002.png, crt0001.png, crt0002.png, box0001.png, box0002.png.
Either that or have different directories (which personally I think would be messier).
I told gilles that I had a batch file around somewhere that I used for these type of things. Could probably be easily modified to our needs and someone could probably just run it against the resurrection xtra's. I think the only problem is it didn't like the & and the + character in file names.
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Mar 25 2009, 10:57 AM)
Which folders do the help and synopsis files have to be in and what names do they have to have to work (Which folder in the skin itself, and is the backup still the same with synopsis.jpg in the emu root and the help image in the "Help" folder within the emu root?)
Thanks guys,
~Rx
Post by: ressurectionx on February 03, 2020, 06:07:00 PM
Have you guys decided on PNG or JPG images for these yet?
I understand your concern for making this as accessable to everyone as possible, but I think the way you want to name the files makes everything much more confusing than it's worth. I have the things named perfectly and at this point I'm thinking that even if people don't have room for videos, we should start figuring that anyone who has one of your emulator updates has the Xtras artwork. This stuff is backed up in about 5 places now and isn't going anywhere. Why anyone would put the emus on their box and not use the Xtras I couldn't give you a reason. Just put it somewhere in the instructions that you need to put the Xtras on there for the stuff to work right and tell them to name the artwork for a new game 0001, 0002 etc for whatever file it is.
It sounds like you could make it work using the 0001, 0002 stuff like I was saying. I say we just do it and see where it goes.
~Rx
EDIT: We should just include the artwork with the emulator download on XBins. If they are too large and it's not possible, we should include a file that gives multiple addresses to download the specific artwork sets. Really.... nobody should be using your updates unless they have the artwork packs at the very least.
This post has been edited by ressurectionx: Today, 02:09 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 05, 2009, 12:03:00 PM
0002.png should be title screenshot and 0003. should be action screenshot. 0005.png and up are for any other misc shots/alternate box/cart art.
Post by: paper on April 09, 2009, 09:46:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 09, 2009, 09:52:00 AM
Post by: madmab on April 10, 2009, 05:12:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 11, 2009, 02:17:00 PM
Good games on this system too like the snk vs capcom match of the millenium or samourai shodown
Dynamic NeopoX pm3 by Gilou9999 04.11.09
Post by: madmab on April 11, 2009, 03:21:00 PM
Post by: crash1235 on April 11, 2009, 09:49:00 PM
001 - Boxart
002 - Title screen/start menu
003 - Live action shot of gameplay
004 - Alt art/ cartridge
I also have some that are 006 - Mega Drive Boxart
One more thing I have the skin set on big movies big boxart and the boxart still appears to try to scroll through the other images but instead of actually doing that it just goes blank and shows the default skin image until it has finished cycling through.
BTW It looks amazing with all the artwork and movies thanks a lot everyone for all the hard work you've put in to making it look so awesome.
Post by: crash1235 on April 12, 2009, 04:15:00 AM
After looking at the new beta I was wondering are all the synopsis entries going to be aligned to the centre or is that the only option we have so that the missing roms thing doesn't shoot out to the left. Also some of the entries I've found are still not formatting properly and the box they are in is expanding to outside the width of the screen e.g. Might Morphen Power Rangers - Movie.
One last thing apostrophes, extra spaces and some other extra characters are showing up as little square boxes.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 12, 2009, 07:57:00 AM
QUOTE(crash1235 @ Apr 11 2009, 11:25 PM)
BTW It looks amazing with all the artwork and movies thanks a lot everyone for all the hard work you've put in to making it look so awesome.
No problem man. Thanks for all the work you're putting into the synopsis. Glad somebody shared the beta with you so you can actually see what you've done to help us out.
Hope to see you around some more. Never short on work around here... only help.
Bummer about the text going outside of the screen. I thought that was fixed. At least it's 1000% better than it was when we first started. Can you go in and change that text to fit so it doesn't? Maybe we just need to alter the synopsis a bit to get it to look good on the few games this happens with? Would it look good on one screen resolution though and look terrible with another? That's the real question.
Post by: crash1235 on April 12, 2009, 12:17:00 PM
Good to know about the alignment thing in my one it is centred to the centre
.I wouldn't know about how to change the text so that it doesn't go outside the screen i'll have a look in the morning (or afternoon) when I get up and have a shower to stop smelling like Jager and smoke
.Post by: madmab on April 12, 2009, 03:50:00 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 12, 2009, 04:17:00 PM
I've try the "classic" x68000X dynamic skin (animated splash screen, 15 banners) and... emu freeze when i clicked the right thumbstick.
Now with the trimmed version, all is fluid/fast and The emu is running well.
You can start your tests with these latests skins madmab.
RessX will update individually each skins with the changes he has done on them
They will be perfect for what they are supposed to do:
- handle all the dual boxarts/videos (and all the ressurectionXtras stuff)
- fully customizable (you can change almost everything in the rombrowser)
- You see the systems themselves in the main menu
- They all have a "backgrounds" folder in them, so the user will appreciate directly the enhanced help screen, and THE SYNOPSIS in the synopsis background!
The dynamic skins are really in theyr final form now,
Just hope ressX has solved the "mp3 bg music volume" problem (sure he will
)- perheaps add the abiliuty to show the skin preview when you are choosing a skin (like in zsnexbox)
I say that, because i have put a "skin preview.jpg" in each dynamic skin
Post by: ressurectionx on April 12, 2009, 04:18:00 PM
I was going to take the new images you had and integrate them. And go from there.
I'll tell you what..... I'll do my best to ingegrate these now. When I get one or two which I deem as perfect as I can make them at this point, I'll upload them for you to see and tell me what else needs to be done with the skins to match what you've recently done. I just can't give up the 20-30 hours work I've put into testing and putting the professional polish on them.
I totally agree about the previews for the skins. I'd also like to see previews for the configurations as well. I'm sure madmab could do it if you provided him with snapshots to preview. We probably just need a folder in each skin labled "Previews". Skin.jpg could be the preview it shows when scrolling through skins, and the rest of the previews could be named exactly the same as the Config files. (Maybe the "Skin" image should be in the main skin directory instead?)
The great thing about the configs now having the same folders and being interchangable is that we only need one image made for each config that will work for every emulator, so we could just dump this folder into each skin when they're made instead of making one for every config for every system. (You may want to go all out on the skin preview though if I know you Gilles).
EDIT: Uggggghhhhh.... This is going to be rough. I wish we had communicated better so we weren't both updating the skins at the same time lol..... Good thing I have a little program called FolderMatch. Hopefully it does the trick.
EDIT 2: I see you already have great skin preview images with the 4-in-1 pics in the background folders. Nice!
EDIT 3: Exactly which sprite folders are going to be different across the emus Gilles? I've got like 1,000 folders I have to merge now.
EDIT 4: What is the "View Text File Control" image? Is it implemented in any of the emus yet? What does it mean?
EDIT 5: It's like we both worked on exact opposite stuff so it's the absolute hardest it could possibly be to merge our work together. Though there isn't much change visible to the end user, our skin folders look completely different as far as directory structure and naming conventions. I'm really thinking hard about what is the best way to attack this problem.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 12, 2009, 06:15:00 PM
EDIT: The more I mess with it, I see it's not so bad. I might need you to go back over config files though after I'm done and make sure everything in the configs match up to your standards Gilles.
EDIT 2: Aside from a few fixes that still need to be made (Like we still need US Genesis Console Banner images), These two issues should be the only things I will need to know exactly what you did to sync our stuff.
- Corrected some "pre-made" configs, in some of them the top banner didn't appear, and in some of them there was an extra line of pixels on the boxarts.
- Corrected the bug in the adamX skin where the "colecovision" logo didn't appear on the main screen.
The rest I got...
Post by: ressurectionx on April 13, 2009, 08:16:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 13, 2009, 10:29:00 AM
We could sacrifice our life for some emus updates!
No seriously, i think the perfect emu experience (Xport's emus - madmab edition -) hasn't been so near now.
We can't go back now when so much work has been done, keep up the good work, all the team.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 13, 2009, 12:47:00 PM
I'll send the skin that is the most complete and has an emu beta that shows all the help/synopsis stuff right.
I didn't change much with the configs...
I just changed it so it looks for sprite 30 instead of 31 for the console flashing banner (you started that one at 31 for some reason, so I fixed it). I renamed the configs so they're all alphabetical and all the first letters are capitalized.
I haven't seen any banner problems you spoke of, but that's probably because I took the config from a good emu and copied them over to all the other systems. All the configs are exactly the same for each system.
I haven't gotten to Colecovision and that broken flashing logo yet. I'll let you know if I have any problems with that one.
Check out the testing thread. There are still quite a few missing images (mainly 4-in-1 images and the black and white synopsis images that madmab and MM and I like) and the Genesis and TG-16 need console specific banners for the US versions.
Later,
~Rx
This post has been edited by ressurectionx: Apr 13 2009, 07:51 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 13, 2009, 02:39:00 PM
The 30 instead of 31 is a "i don't know why" bug (The bug was certainly caused by too much vodka)
Yep i have seen yesterday i have forget to put the new "genesis system itself" banner and the tg16 banner; i'll send them to you.
Lol i know all the team prefer the black and white synopsis backgrounds
; you can put them in the backgrounds folder as "synopsis 2.jpg". But please, let the first "synopsis.jpg" a chance 
; it has a "little" colors on it. And some colors is always welcome (the pm3 theme is a majority of grey and black itself).We will see, but anyhow, the objective of the dynamic skins is to be "customizables", so we will just put 2 differents synopsis backgrounds for each skin, that's all.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 13, 2009, 02:45:00 PM
Looking forward to getting these wrapped up. Not too much missing from them overall now.
Thanks man,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on April 15, 2009, 03:51:00 PM
I have finished the Vice64X dynamic skin (commodore 64)
Never tryed this emu, is there really good games on this one?
Dynamic VICE64X pm3 by Gilou9999 04.15.09
So you'll have to add your additions work on it ressX
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Apr 15 2009, 10:53 PM
Post by: Retroplay on April 15, 2009, 04:30:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Apr 16 2009, 12:27 AM)
I have finished the Vice64X dynamic skin (commodore 64)
Never tryed this emu, is there really good games on this one?
We're talking about THE games machine of the 80's to mid 90's here.
There's loads of great games.
Have a look here for just a handful of good games.
Thanks for another excellent skin.
Post by: gilles9999 on April 15, 2009, 04:46:00 PM
Like you know, they will be 300% better with the (really near) future madmab edition emus (dual videos/boxarts and much more) and with the ressurectionXtras.
(I forget the damn good zack mac kracken
)Have you tryed the updated versions of the 22 dynamic skins i have posted some 2-3 days ago?
(new version (with good quality pics of the system in the main screen) for WinuaeX and WinstonX?
Post by: ressurectionx on April 15, 2009, 04:52:00 PM
Cool... one more skin down. I'll fix it up this weekend when I'm done with work. I'll also finish what I never got around to on the CRC's for the 5200 while I'm at work. I think I'll start the 2600 synopsis if I have time too.
The cool thing about the C64 is that it was the last system besides arcades that I have pre-made videos for. There are over 200 of them already done.
Nice job,
~Rx
Post by: madmab on April 15, 2009, 05:17:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Apr 15 2009, 07:28 PM) 
The cool thing about the C64 is that it was the last system besides arcades that I have pre-made videos for. There are over 200 of them already done.
Nice job,
~Rx
I honestly could not say about the quality of the C64 games. I've always been kinda partial to the 5200.
But the top 100 list sounds like a good place to start. I usually like the Atari 8-bit version better whenever there is crossover.I have the Gamebase for the 64, but there is just so many titles to muck thru sometimes it can be hard to find the good stuff.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 15, 2009, 06:10:00 PM
Here's two updated skins Gilles. Unfortunately the emus haven't been updated for them, but the skins themselves are among the most "complete", so those are the ones I've sent. It's NES and Gameboy. (Funny.... it seems that the emus that have the "Backgrounds" folder for the images in beta now are among the ones you're missing images for. I wasn't able to find a single skin/emu combination at this point that had everything up-to date in tandem).
All of the skins are identical to this one now as far as directory structure goes. Let me know what you think.....
GBoy & NES updated skins
Post by: Retroplay on April 16, 2009, 12:25:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Apr 16 2009, 01:22 AM)
Have you tryed the updated versions of the 22 dynamic skins i have posted some 2-3 days ago?
(new version (with good quality pics of the system in the main screen) for WinuaeX and WinstonX?
(new version (with good quality pics of the system in the main screen) for WinuaeX and WinstonX?
Nope not yet, as a matter of fact I didn't know they were updated.
Will do asap.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 17, 2009, 07:28:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 17, 2009, 08:52:00 AM
- All the names conventions are respected/capitalized
- added "full tilts" in the pre-made configs
- sprites folders are correctly named/capitalized
- The "in game option screenshot' is now set at the correct pixel ratio in all the 16/9 and 4/3 configs
New BlissX dynamic skin (Intellevision)
Dynamic BLISSX pm3 by Gilou9999 04.17.09
Updated WinstonX dynamic skin
Dynamic WINSTONX pm3 by Gilou9999 04.17.09
New neogenesis us dynamic skin (with corrected genesis banner, requested by RX), our work is merged
Dynamic GENESIS US pm3 by Gilou9999 04.17.09
New mednafenX pce dynamic skin (tg16 version, with correct banner requested by rX)
Dynamic TG16 pm3 by Gilou9999 04.17.09
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Apr 17 2009, 03:56 PM
Post by: gilles9999 on April 17, 2009, 09:24:00 AM
Dynamic WINUEAX pm3 by Gilou9999 04.17.09
You... can update our thread rezX
This post has been edited by gilles9999: Apr 17 2009, 04:25 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 17, 2009, 09:32:00 AM
I'll put them all up this weekend and if you want to make changes you could add them from there.
Hope that's okay with you, but I want to make sure that my 70+ hours of testing and tweaking all make it in there.
If you wanted to make new images that are still missing, I totally won't stand in your way though...
This post has been edited by ressurectionx: Apr 17 2009, 04:38 PM
Post by: Retroplay on April 17, 2009, 10:42:00 AM
Awesome work.
Post by: madmab on April 18, 2009, 02:33:00 AM
The lib file for xmv movies is pretty big and x-port already removed mp3 playback and is using virtual memory for the cheat code system. I'm toying with the idea of making a "special edition" that although more limited may allow more flexibility on the "dual preview" side.
Post by: gilles9999 on April 18, 2009, 06:18:00 AM
I have uploaded the old versions of the dynamic skins yesterday (silly me)
They don't display the logo in the main screen because the logo is still named 31 (instead of 30); RX understand what i mean. And the sprites folders aren't all capitalized;
I will upload the "right" versions today.
WinuaeX, WinstonX, MednafenX nes, neogenesis, dosxbox, bluemsxbox, atari7800x/xl/z26 dynamic skins, they all have the same pre-made configs because the boxart is set at the same dimensions for each one (but visually different of course). I'll upload them all today
That's why ressX i need you to give me the "snes9xbox, mednafenx pce, virtualboyX, pcsxbox, andsoftvmux skins , like this i will be able to merge our work (i want to test these settings on my hdtv to be sure all is okay)
Post by: ressurectionx on April 18, 2009, 07:15:00 AM
I can't give up the work that I've done on these, and the countless hours of testing and tweaking, so if you're going to just use yours now, I'm just going to keep mine and add your new artwork to them as you release them. I'll put mine up and let you make that decision.
(REALLLLLLLLY wish we hadn't both been working on this at the same time.... grumble grumble....)
Post by: ressurectionx on April 18, 2009, 07:43:00 AM
So I just have to copy the configs over and everything else I have is okay then?
That's actually not too bad. It shouldn't take me more than a few minutes if I did just that.
I really thought you were uploading different skins completely after you told me to merge our work and I spent another 30 plus hours on that
Should I just copy those configs over every emulator, or just the few you mentioned?
Post by: gilles9999 on April 18, 2009, 12:51:00 PM
ressX, exactly, all you have to do is overwrite these 16 pre-made configs onto the emulators skins i have mentioned (mednafenX nes/winuaex/winstonX/MekaX/Atari7800X/atariXlbox/z26/dosxbox/vice64X/blissX/adamX and bluemsxbox) Because the "missing boxarts" are "same size" sprites.
Overwrite them, upload them, and you will see all will be perfect
.Be aware, you can't overwrite these configs on snes9xbox/mednafenx pce/pcsxbox/neopopx/vmux/virtualboyadvance and xboyadvance, because the boxarts for these systems aren't at the same dimensions. For these systems, you can only overwrite the configs "without" boxarts on them.
Just one thing, let my synopsis.jpg in the first place
. i know, I know, a lot of guys still prefer the b/w synopsis II.jpg. But i haven't created the missing backgrounds for a lot of emus. And i prefer the choice of a "clean" background to see "clearly" the synopsis. Consider this ressX, i have always followed your advices and good suggestions, to make the dynamic skins as they are today, so "Let my Synopsis.jpg in the first place and rename the black and white synopsis bg as "synopsis II.jpg" You can start by upload the "mednafenX nes/winuaex/winstonX/MekaX/Atari7800X/atariXlbox/z26/dosxbox/vice64X/blissX/adamX and bluemsxbox dynamic skins" with our merged work it will be really fine.
p.s: don't upload the atari7800X (i have changed some little pixels in the main.jpg bkg)
Post by: Mega Man (?) on April 18, 2009, 01:18:00 PM
Working with the synopsis background for the first time. I like your preference synopsis background, just fine.
Of course, it is nice to have the 2 options.
Post by: madmab on April 18, 2009, 08:00:00 PM
Anyways I'm trying to sift thru all these options and see if I can find a way to squeeze more space.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 18, 2009, 10:25:00 PM
I'll switch the synopsis backgrounds around too for ya, even though I defineately prefer the other ones personally. I was even thinking about messing with "tinting" them too. I was going to try a very slight blue, red, green and purple tint and see how I like them that way.... going back to what you said about them missing color on a skin that's already very limited on color. (Don't worry.... I wouldn't use Paint and put a chainsaw to your work
)You will make the B/W synopsis background for the ones missing it though, right?
Which emus did you add new artwork to in the last few days? I want to make sure I don't miss anything.
Later,
~Rx
EDIT: Oh yeah... did you have any last-minute artwork you wanted to get in there before I start uploading so you don't have to download the skin, put them in, and re-upload them?
EDIT 2: You do realize Gilles that now updating the configs if we need to from this point forward will be double the work, right? Is there a way you could make the artwork on the emus like SNES the same dimensions, or was this because of different box sizes? If we can't, we can't... but the idea of being able to use the same config from one emu to the next is broke now. Just figured I'd bring that up.
Post by: gilles9999 on April 19, 2009, 09:30:00 AM
Like you've suggested rX, it's better for the users to have 3 skins directly "launchable" for each atari system emulated by AtariXlbox (like neogenesis). I will make the same thing for xboyadvance (1 skin for gb and one for gba)? Better like this? What do you think reZ and the others?
- one for the Atari 5200
- One for the Atari 800Xl
- One for the Atari XE system
Each skin has it's own splash, main and synopsis background and theyr own controller and systems banners.
I (Highly
) suggest you Madmab to put the 3 skins in the skin folder with your future AtariXLbox releaseDynamic ATARIXLBOX Pm3 (XE) by Gilou9999 04.19.09
Dynamic ATARIXLBOX pm3 (A5200) by Gilou9999 04.19.09
Dynamic ATARIXLBOX pm3 (800XL) by Gilou9999 04.19.09
And... last but not least, the Atari 2600 skin with the 4 in 1 pic! (long requested)
Dynamic Z26X pm3 by Gilou9999 04.19.09
p.s.: most for rX, the modified Atari7800X skin with the (really little) altered main bkg
Dynamic ATARI7800X pm3 by Gilou9999 04.19.09
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 09:52:00 AM
EDIT: BTW.... I was messing around with the B/W synopsis files in Adobe CS using the "Color Balance" adjustment. Right now I have a Blue tint to the NES B/W photo and it looks awesome and very easy to read. I'm going to check out the Green, Red and Purple Backgrounds. (Too bad we don't have a "switcher" in the emu)
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 10:05:00 AM
I think at this point, I'm just keeping my edits to your skins to myself and I'll just add your changes to them. That way I'm not stepping on your toes and I'm not frustrating myself anymore by working against you on this.
For example, I used your alternate configs on NES and now it shows the FDS controller on the top of the game select screen instead of the NES controller. Just one of a thousand things that could break when we're working against each other...
Also, the 16 configs that you uploaded are named differently now than the 16 that I was using. They're all capitalized now, but where mine said "Artwork", yours now say "Screenshot" (or some subtle change in wording). All I had done here was capitalize the names you used. You now changed the wording on at least 1/3rd of the configs, so they don't match.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 10:33:00 AM
QUOTE
For example, I used your alternate configs on NES and now it shows the FDS controller on the top of the game select screen instead of the NES controller. Just one of a thousand things that could break when we're working against each other...
Also, the 16 configs that you uploaded are named differently now than the 16 that I was using. They're all capitalized now, but where mine said "Artwork", yours now say "Screenshot" (or some subtle change in wording). All I had done here was capitalize the names you used. You now changed the wording on at least 1/3rd of the configs, so they don't match.
Also, the 16 configs that you uploaded are named differently now than the 16 that I was using. They're all capitalized now, but where mine said "Artwork", yours now say "Screenshot" (or some subtle change in wording). All I had done here was capitalize the names you used. You now changed the wording on at least 1/3rd of the configs, so they don't match.
There's just too many variables and every new skin that comes out is that much more work. At least one more hour will have to go into merging and testing for every one you've put out since I finished my work. (Right now, that looks like nearly 10 more hours of working on this for me at this point)
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 10:54:00 AM
I'm just going to go back to making my Wide Icon pack for now. I'm way to frustrated with this to get any real work done. I've done almost nothing in the last 24 hours with this and it's taken up about 90% of my brain power during that time.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 11:27:00 AM
My whole point of this was to get us both on the same track and then for you to make updates from there. You never gave me time to get the stuff up and now too much has changed. I'm not going to spend 3 weekends in a row merging this.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 12:24:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 01:30:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 19, 2009, 04:43:00 PM
You've essentially spit on my last two weeks of work.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 24, 2009, 08:16:00 AM
We're buds... don't want to scare anyone off who might want to help out, right G.
Hey Retroplay,
I didn't have those problems in my skins, but that's just because I was adding Gilles' updates to the skins that already worked on my Box. I'm sure he'll get it all ironed out. These things are really looking amazing, huh?
Here's hoping someday Gilles decides to give all of XPORT's emus the GDS treatment.
.... and that Madmab does the same with the XPME. (I already saw him hint at that intention in another thread, but keep that between you and me
)Everything's eventual....
It will be killer when it's all done.
~Rx
Post by: sotu on April 25, 2009, 01:32:00 PM
Anyway, just thought you'd like to know.... as if you need me to remind you. lol.
Looking good as always.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 25, 2009, 06:06:00 PM
Are you going to do 4-in-1 pics for the ones still missing them?
Post by: gilles9999 on April 26, 2009, 06:13:00 AM
With the high score carts in the splash screen (requested by Madmab)
All the uptodates fixes
Dynamic ATARI7800X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Post by: ressurectionx on April 26, 2009, 07:29:00 AM
- I hace fixed all the "main menu logo disappearing" problems
Cool... didn't have that in many on my Box, but I fixed them as well.
- Fixed the famous "in game option menu screenshots" in all of them
Which problem was this? I'm not following...
- Fixed console banners for mednafenx nes and atarixlbox
Great! Did you manage to fix them for Genesis and TG-16 as well (we needed US versions for the alternate skins)
- removed the "thumbs.db" (system files)
Good man!
I'll have to try to get your updates on my box soon and update the testing thread and also update your thread with the newest versions and any new 4-in-1 pics.
Question: What do you think about making previews of the game select screens in each of the configurations so we can see what they look like as we scroll through the choices. I don't think I asked madmab about this yet, but it shouldn't be too hard to do if the images are in the same folder as the configs and they have the same file names as the config they represent. (It would be cool to have configs for each emu that acutally displayed how a particular game looked, like Super Mario for NES, Sonic for Genesis, and Bonk for TG-16 but I know that would be a ton of work on your part. If you'd prefer, I'm sure config shots that are blank without any vid/art previews at all would convey the style of the config just as well. That way we could just dump the 16 images in every skin folder for every emu and be done with it).
Post by: gilles9999 on April 26, 2009, 09:32:00 AM
Dynamic WINSTONX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic WINUEAX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Post by: gilles9999 on April 26, 2009, 10:42:00 AM
Dynamic BLUEMSXBOX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic DOSXBOX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic VICE64X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic X68000X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic Z26X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Post by: gilles9999 on April 26, 2009, 11:50:00 AM
Dynamic MEKAX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic NEOGENESIS (Eu) pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic NEOGENESIS (US) pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
It's up to you RessX to edit the first post
Post by: ressurectionx on April 26, 2009, 03:35:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Apr 26 2009, 08:56 AM)
About the fixed "in game option menu screenshots", it is simply the screenshot displayed when you click the right thumbstick while playing a game. Now it is correctly displayed for each 4/3 and 16/9 config (without pixels distortion). In the old Xports emus skins, this "in game option menu screenshots" was always badly displayed, and all looked "unfinished"
What did you have to change to get this to work? Is this in the config files then?
Post by: gilles9999 on April 26, 2009, 04:10:00 PM
I imagine "how a coder is thinking"
Ideally the pre-made configs previews should be placed in the backgrounds folder of each skin and should be named "4-3 - Big Movie & Big Boxart.jpg" or "16-9 - Big Boxart.jpg" for example with a 320*240 pixels size.
I will provide you pre-made configs previews tomorrow to simply test it.
Post by: ressurectionx on April 26, 2009, 04:10:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on April 27, 2009, 11:18:00 AM
Too bad about the screenshot preview though.
If I have stuff configured to the UI mappings on my setup, they'll still be there, right Madmab?
Post by: ressurectionx on April 27, 2009, 11:43:00 AM
I was thinking the config preview would look best full screen if possible. That's what I meant.
~Rx
Post by: ressurectionx on April 28, 2009, 02:19:00 PM
Are you going to make system specific preview images, or just default ones that we can toss into all the preveiw folders?
Post by: infidelity on April 28, 2009, 04:28:00 PM
Thank you for your time
Post by: madmab on May 08, 2009, 01:43:00 AM
Moving on. I didn't know if you were looking for a good image of the TI-99 but this page seemed to have some good clean pictures.
Post by: gilles9999 on May 08, 2009, 10:26:00 AM
The final package of the mednafenX nes skin:
All the previews are working for the pre made configs and the skins itself!
I have modified all the previews, so they match exactly the configs, good quality, and romnames alphabetically ordered!
I have modified also a little the settings for the 16/9 tv's (my tests are finished) it's likelly the final settings.
Grab it here Madmab - be sure to use THIS skin - and get ready for the release?
Dynamic MEDNAFENX NES by Gilou9999 8 may 09
In the last beta you sent me madmab, all is working like a charm, exept i have noticed a little bug:
the "game reset" option don't work; and the boxart don't appear when you exit a game (in the previous betas, the boxart appeared, even if you exited a game
Post by: madmab on May 08, 2009, 02:13:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ May 8 2009, 11:18 AM)
FINALLY!!
The final package of the mednafenX nes skin:
All the previews are working for the pre made configs and the skins itself!
I have modified all the previews, so they match exactly the configs, good quality, and romnames alphabetically ordered!
I have modified also a little the settings for the 16/9 tv's (my tests are finished) it's likelly the final settings.
Grab it here Madmab - be sure to use THIS skin - and get ready for the release?
Dynamic MEDNAFENX NES by Gilou9999 8 may 09
In the last beta you sent me madmab, all is working like a charm, exept i have noticed a little bug:
the "game reset" option don't work; and the boxart don't appear when you exit a game (in the previous betas, the boxart appeared, even if you exited a game
Don't worry about the little boxart issue. That is because it had slightly modified code that I did. I'll fix all that up when I implement the new directory/file structure for screenshots.
Post by: ressurectionx on May 09, 2009, 07:06:00 AM
EDIT: For some reason Gilles, I was thinking the other day that there would be a need to modify your skins once more because of something I was doing or madmab was doing, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was now. I'll be sure to tell you about it if I can think of it. My mind is usually doing 1,000 things at once with this stuff and half the time I'm pretty toasty, so if I didn't write it down it may be lost for a while. I'm sure it will come back to me.
I'll eventually get your thread updated. I just haven't found the time to do more skin testing or devote much time to this thread. I guaranty it will be ready when we finally get a public beta out. Thanks for your patience.
~Rx
Post by: deathmetal on May 09, 2009, 02:08:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on May 19, 2009, 07:02:00 PM
1) I think you missed this when I put it in the other thread... I was hoping you could change "(Use the RessurectionXtras to fully enjoy the skin)" to simply "RessurectionXtra Compatible" and put it in a green box that looks like "XPORT - Mednafenx PCE" logo. I think it would look better and still get the point across that they're missing something if they don't have these.
What do you think?
2) Why "up" the time by a second and a half by adding to how long the splash screen shows up? Am I missing something here? It already takes 15 seconds to load up a game because of the long loading times when entering the emulator manually and not using .CUT files.
Post by: gilles9999 on May 20, 2009, 01:08:00 AM
about the 4s splash screen, i think it's good, there's a loooot of infos on the splash screen (xport, mednafenx nes, Madmab edition, graphics by gilou9999,Use the RessurectionXtras to fully enjoy the skin) it's hard to put all this!!
But it's okay, i'll change the "RessurectionXtra Compatible" thing
p.s.: manually, it takes me 6s to enter the rombrowser (i checked the option startscreen= gameselect)
Post by: ressurectionx on May 20, 2009, 01:29:00 AM
I was thinking a green box (or it could be yellow too) that looks just like the yellow box on top that says "XPORT - Mendafenx NES"
It could be a bit larger to fit two lines. One giving you credit for the skins and another saying "RessurectionXtra Compatible"
I think it would balance out the pics better. What do you think?
I still don't get adding time to the loading though, just for people to read it longer. Maybe if we could get the splash screen to load up earlier in the loading process, that would be perfect, but I really have reservations about making it take even longer to load the emus than it already does, just to read the splash screen.
Post by: ressurectionx on May 20, 2009, 01:59:00 AM
I don't think it's a bad idea for the splash screen to display longer, I just don't like the idea of adding load time to do it.
Post by: ressurectionx on May 20, 2009, 03:21:00 AM
I'll leave the artwork in your capable hands. Maybe you could post it up here before you include it.
Post by: eviltim on May 20, 2009, 11:41:00 AM
Sorry if this already got covered,
Post by: ressurectionx on May 20, 2009, 12:26:00 PM
QUOTE(ThE MaSTeR 3 @ May 20 2009, 10:47 AM)
Hopefully we can choose to have a normal loading screen without credits.
Sure... when you load from .CUT files straight from XBMC. There's no loading screen and it takes only about 8 seconds to load a game.
Otherwise, don't hold your breath, cause they're not going anywhere.
Post by: Mega Man (?) on May 20, 2009, 01:49:00 PM
QUOTE(ThE MaSTeR 3 @ May 20 2009, 08:47 AM)
Hopefully we can choose to have a normal loading screen without credits.
Kinda on the funny side...what you are saying...
You know it is only for the intro loading screen, not like it is there whenever something has to load.QUOTE
Hmm, stupid question, but where about would i place boxart on my Xbox, for say NeoGenesis, so that it shows up in the game selection list? also what format would i use?
Make an artwork folder, then have a "Genesis" folder within that. put your ".PNG" format images in the "Genesis" folder. make sure you point your directory to the "artwork" folder and it will read the Genesis folder.
If you don't, it will create another Genesis folder and read that, but nothing will be in it.
A little confusing, I know... I think this is how you do it, but the new betas (which aren't out yet) will probably be different and easier.
Rx,
It is really time to make an "Xport" emulator setup tutorial for the front page.
Post by: gilles9999 on May 20, 2009, 04:43:00 PM
QUOTE(ThE MaSTeR 3 @ May 20 2009, 05:47 PM)
Hopefully we can choose to have a normal loading screen without credits.
Big lol when i read this theMaster3
; no it's not an "Abnormal/Crazy/Hyper space and totally strange" splash screenIt's just a splash screen like in some old Xport's skins where you simply credit the authors; and please never say me to forget the authors!! you shouldn't play the fantastics emus you have now without them!
So like i say before, it's JUST a splash screen it stand 4sec (eventually, i will decrease it to 3.5s),
and THAT's ALL! No need to discuss hours about a splash screen. The actual splash screen is fine. I can't make the texts too much "spicy" or else it is hard to read them (never forget the Xport's emus skins are 640*480 bg - no hd here - so (especially the texts) it have to be "clear")
I will just fix the minor change requested by RessX
RessX, you prefer:
"RessurectionXtra Compatible"
or "RessurectionXtras Compatible" (with a "s")?
thx
Post by: ThE MaSTeR 3 on May 21, 2009, 12:16:00 AM
Not a big deal just annoying that I will need to edit this with all the emus.
Post by: ThE MaSTeR 3 on May 21, 2009, 01:34:00 AM
Post by: Mega Man (?) on May 21, 2009, 01:39:00 AM
LMAOEdit whatever you like. sorry if that is an inconvenience to your personal tastes.
I just love how you state things. The audacity makes me laugh, so.
and they all react...
madmab-
Gilles-----
Rx:--------
and me:-
Post by: gilles9999 on May 21, 2009, 01:44:00 AM
Anf if you don't like the splash screen: Don't use my skin!
My skin is like that (i've spend time on this "famous" splash screen), after it's all a matter of personnal taste
Please stop to boring me for just a 3.5 sec splash screen
Post by: madmab on May 21, 2009, 06:54:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on May 21, 2009, 07:37:00 AM
QUOTE(Mega Man (?) @ May 20 2009, 01:41 PM)
Rx,
It is really time to make an "Xport" emulator setup tutorial for the front page.
Almost.......
I still am not entirely sure how that process will go myself yet.
QUOTE
Gilles9999: RessX, you prefer:
"RessurectionXtra Compatible"
or "RessurectionXtras Compatible" (with a "s")?
thx
"RessurectionXtra Compatible"
or "RessurectionXtras Compatible" (with a "s")?
thx
Ummmmm.... not sure. Probably would go better with the "s", now that you mention it.
QUOTE
Gilles9999: I can't make the texts too much "spicy" or else it is hard to read them (never forget the Xport's emus skins are 640*480 bg - no hd here - so (especially the texts) it have to be "clear")
You could just make them like the "XPORT - MendafenX_NES" logo you have at the top of the page. Not too fancy, already tested to look fine in SD and HD.... (would REALLY like to see that happen, instead of the white lettering).
QUOTE
Mega_Man_(?): Rx:--------
Yeah.... I kinda got a short temper with certain people here, and usually end up feeling bad about it later. What TM3 hasn't realized yet is that all the other people making suggestions in this circle now have put in hundreds or thousands of hours of personal time into their part of the project.
This isn't some exclusive club man, and everyone is welcome. Just don't expect anybody to cater to your desires when you haven't contributed one video or game synopsis to the project. Particularly when 80% of your posts since August have come off as mildly insulting to "audacious" like MM said.
I'm not a jerk, but you're acting like one.... again.
Seriously... If you don't like the splash screen, just wait until the NES beta comes out and you can load games straight from XBMC with only an 8 second loading time (about half of what it was before madmab worked on it and got rid of any graphics or music cropping up before the game loads).
All I have to do now is find somebody who codes XBMC that can make XBMC return to the folder you launched the .CUT file from when you exit the game instead of going back to the main menu.
Post by: ressurectionx on May 21, 2009, 10:14:00 AM
Put your credits in it too. Kinda like it looked before, but more streamlined and professional. You did a great job on the XPORT border. I'm sure you can do this.
Post by: Mega Man (?) on May 21, 2009, 01:24:00 PM
Hell, I like seeing the splash. It honors the creators, but also since there is a nice image of the system and sort in the background, it gets me inspired to play.
I think that image is very important to put you in the reminiscent mind set and put you in the realm of the system you select. And like I said, it all looks good with the text as a nice intro.QUOTE
extravagant animation that people must watch thousands of times before they play some classic games.
I wouldn't say it is over extravagant at all, but, if you really want to get past all that extravagant nonsense, forget about the useless video's and artwork too.You can load up good old nester and select from your plain list of roms.
come think of it, back in the day I don't know why they had to make me plug in the power, plug in the controller, plug in everything else, grab a game, put in a game, and turn it on, just to play a game...!? In fact... why do I even have to move buttons... or use my brain...? ahh...forget it...
Post by: gilles9999 on May 21, 2009, 05:12:00 PM
Have you tried the new "famous" splash screen?
Do you prefer the new one or the old one? You are the boss,
Personally i prefer the new one, yeah i like the big green text! (it's the greenish/yellowish Xbox color from the official logo) If you wondering why the splash screen text is greenish/yellowish
Post by: ressurectionx on May 21, 2009, 06:09:00 PM
Great work man.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: sotu on June 01, 2009, 08:37:00 AM
I also appreciate seeing the Madmab/Gilles9999 splash screen when I load up a .Cut. As MegaMan said, it's a nice tribute to the creators and those who have put in the work to make it all happen. Although I can see both points of view I'm happy to have it just the same. Kind of a little commercial advert to let you know who's responsible for the bad ass experience you're about to have.
But in the end I know that things are always a work in progress with our crew which is BIG! Especially since our boxes have been "Dead" for some years now.
Way to go fellas.
I continue to set up my museum with custom box art as I try to track down the Highest def images I can and photoshop them to correct the levels etc. It's time intensive and it's definitely taking a toll but who on earth has my setup... no one.
I'll share it eventually when it's all done.... lol if that day ever comes. Seems like as soon as I think I'm getting close to done I find another hundred or so new games on some "Best Of" list. Which is how I try to determine whats worth .Cutting and what's not since at this point I'm honoring games I've never played but apparently others appreciate.
Post by: ressurectionx on June 01, 2009, 09:16:00 AM
There's so much that could be done with XBMC and the emulation experience, it's a shame we don't know a coder to implement them. I hope one day we see a favorites list within XBMC that would allow the user to view "Best Of" lists for multiple systems, instead of the individual favorites lists we will be limited to within the emulators themselves. I would like to see a top notch sort/filter feature for it to where you could search for any text string and then narrow it down by category if you'd like.
In lieu of that, making .CUT directories with the lists in them would be the way to go. Is that what you're doing now?
Hey Gilles,
Thanks for the links. I'm glad I didn't do anything with the old 4-in-1 images yet. Thanks for getting the update out there so quick so I didn't do double work.
I'll eventually get your new "Credits" sprite in all of the skins I have on my end and update the testing thread as I'm integrating the new stuff.
This is the way we should do it from now on until we know we're complete. Full packs of the changed or new images like these. I suggest we forget about uploading skin updates now until we know we're not adding anything else. Then you and I can upload our versions of all of the skins, and see if we want to change them at all, and possibly finally get our work merged together after it got off course.
It's much easier just downloading the new images for me, so if you could continue doing it this way, you'll save me a few weekends of merging work.
Any new skins, we'll put right up on the main page, but the ones we have out there are great as-is (unless at some point you feel the need to update them because of a new feature madmab added).
Later,
~Rx
EDIT: Nevermind Gilles. I didn't know it was the newest NES skin. I thought it was a pack of all the 4-in-1 images with the updated splash screen. It would be cool though if you kept them together and uploaded the pack when you were done.
Post by: ressurectionx on June 01, 2009, 09:28:00 AM
Are we able to control the SFX volume yet, or do we plan to in the future? We should probably have that on the helpscreen as well. I think we should also have the control for in-game music as well. Maybe we should put a "(in-game)" tag at the end of it to specify this control only works when the game is being played.
Just want to figure that out now since I'm integrating images into all of the skins for my testing. I don't want to put this image in all of them if it's not the final image. (It looks great by the way Gilles)
Also..... looking WAY into the future here, perhaps we should make a separate image which has a note on it saying that the controls may not all work if the system is locked down. I see four things now at least that may not work depending on what level of system lockdown is enabled (Music Control Menu, Move to Garbage, Delete All Saves, Add-Delete Favorites).
Post by: madmab on June 01, 2009, 11:44:00 PM
Looks like all I need to do is run thru the cheat database code and clean up a few issues with the in game screenshot and some non centering (sounds like an old issue) text.
With all the delays caused by my sending the wrong pre beta beta, being out of town, and xbox-scene being down I may just release the pre beta once I run thru those little quirks and worry about the favorites list later.
I still need to discuss some stuff that came up with you guys that I realized in light of the recent suggestions (letting the user set the order).
Gilles... as far as splitting up the rumble codes I'm not sure how easy that will be, but maybe I can do something where if the user presses something (back maybe?) in the game list screen that it will alternate between listing codes with/without rumbles..?
Post by: ressurectionx on June 02, 2009, 07:04:00 AM
Am I wrong about what SFX is?
Post by: madmab on June 02, 2009, 04:33:00 PM
ResX... SFX is the emulator volume. I put it ingame because it is easier for the user to see how the change affected the volume of the currently played game. There is no volume control for the menu sounds.
Post by: Shadow_Dog on June 28, 2009, 07:47:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on June 28, 2009, 09:02:00 PM
They don't work on any released version of XPORT's SNES yet. Only screenshots/artwork for now.
It will be updated though.
Tons of work needs to be done first.
~Rx
Post by: Shadow_Dog on July 03, 2009, 07:50:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on July 04, 2009, 07:49:00 AM
I could put the link in the top thread.
Sorry everyone, but I haven't been keeping up on this with all the stuff changing all the time. Truth be told I'd probably have a hard time figuring out what was new at this point myself.
What do you think?
Post by: madmab on July 26, 2009, 04:18:00 AM
Plus if you want for my stuff you can link my "New Releases Thread, Updates and notes on emus and skins..." thread as well. I'm almost always updating that as a central location and then I usually post whatever I was doing to whatever thread it applies to over here. Well at least the stuff I do that I don't mind being public.
Post by: westcoastloc on October 21, 2009, 12:08:00 AM
Post by: ressurectionx on October 21, 2009, 12:56:00 PM
Your screenshots should be either in "E:\Screenshots\NES" or "F:\Screenshots\NES".
But you need to just point to the screenshots folder. It automatically adds the emu folder name itself. It's necessary for the original folder setup since most people wouldn't have the folder there in the first place, but it can be confusing at times. If you point to "X:\Screenshots\NES", then the artwork directory will look at ""X:\Screenshots\NES\NES" and nothing obviously will be there. Just point to the "Screenshots" directory on E or F.
If you're using NES and the new Enhanced Artwork, just point the screenshots to "X:\Media\NES\Artwork and you're good to go.
Hope that helps,
~Rx
Post by: ressurectionx on October 25, 2009, 08:30:00 AM
Post by: cbagy on October 25, 2009, 06:17:00 PM
QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Oct 25 2009, 02:30 PM)
I like the PM3 man. You do plenty to make it console specific. It's just a sleek professional looking skin and it will be the only skin I think that will ever cover every single XPORT emu.
If you dont count replacing branding banners, of which theres a lot. Its still a rather short sighted comment. There are still other skins that are generic for all other Xport emulators. Im hearing on the jungle drums there will be others too. This isnt the only one capable of cross platform use. Try some others and you will see. Ive heard there is a new one in the pipeline for the NeoGenesis emulator and again this one is Generic for Xport emulators.
Post by: cbagy on October 25, 2009, 11:39:00 PM
Which skin are you using ?
Is it one youve made yourself and are testing ?
Did you download the official ResXtras packs ?
And to double check, are the directories for the artwork correct ?
Post by: westcoastloc on October 25, 2009, 11:57:00 PM
As for mednafenxnesv10 I have my videos in the mednafenxfolder/videos and they play correctly. I goto change default directories and set the screenshots to g/media/nes/artwork (and all my enhanced folders are in there) But below the video preview is the blank nintendo box with the seal of quality.
I dont get it? Why isnt there a boxart directory selection feature within the emu that you can point to your boxart?
(I took my own screenshot of a game and it showed up in the same window as the video preview. Am I confusing screenshots with boxart? I dont want screenshots just the boxart below the preview video!?
Post by: cbagy on October 26, 2009, 01:44:00 AM
Im leaving the house as we speak so if you cant sort it out ill be back to help in about 5 -6 hours. In the meantime check this site for info on the Madmab Editions of the emulators.
Post by: Likklebaer on October 26, 2009, 04:14:00 AM
Post by: cbagy on October 26, 2009, 05:43:00 PM
Post by: Excalibur007 on October 30, 2009, 11:58:00 PM
I tinkered around a bit with the camera today and did a couple of pics. These are NOT what I said I would upload -- I still plan to upload a good pack of several systems for you guys. These are just some things I was messing with. I do not have a very good camera and I did not have good lighting. I'm not satisfied yet with these pictures, but I thought I'd share them because I still like them better than the older ones.
----
For the Atari 7800 I have a main menu pic and an emuload pic. The emuload pic is of my 7800 cartridge collection.
----
For the 2600 I have a shot of the 2600 Jr that I've had all my life. That was my very first game system. My younger brother engraved some scribble into the aluminum strip shortly after we got it (we were really young), but we never took the protective plastic off so I was able to buff out most of the scribble. It's not even noticeable with the camera I have anyway. Also, there's a more artistic pic that I found on the web of the all black classic 2600.
----
Again, these are NOT final images. I still plan to upload a heap of console pics soon. Also, I just remembered I have a neighbor who's into photography, so maybe -- just maybe -- I can convince her to help take some professional quality pics of my systems. I also still have skin stuff to upload when I get the chance.
Post by: Excalibur007 on October 31, 2009, 04:03:00 PM
QUOTE(gilles9999 @ Oct 31 2009, 02:28 AM)
Where do you get the psd file of my main menu? I planned on releasing the psd when all the skins would be finished
I made my own. :-) I think yours is desaturated which is fine, but I left the original PM3 blue/green hue in mine. I made the blank title oval as well because I didn't know where to get a pre-made blank one.I just took a pic of my Master System and Genesis. I really don't care for my Genesis one, but let me know what you think. Also let me know if you'd like me to keep sharing these works-in-progress.
I didn't mind the Master System and Genesis backgrounds in the skins you guys did, but I figured I'd see what I could come up with while playing around with the camera. I still have terrible lighting. There's not much sunlight today and my indoor lighting just isn't enough to compensate. I hung a sheet over the ceiling lights to at least avoid having major glare like in that 7800 pic I uploaded yesterday.
I have pics like these for many of the emus but I'm not satisfied yet. As I said in my last post, I'll try to get some good quality pics of the systems to upload. Also, I'll upload pics like this and the skin work I've done. I did some sprite banners for a couple of systems, such as the Odyssey (and I don't remember what else off hand). I scanned several of my game boxes and also made a couple of console sprite banners. Those things will be in the skin stuff when I upload it.
Post by: Excalibur007 on October 31, 2009, 06:33:00 PM
Anyway, I may have misspoke about that oval in my previous post. That one may be yours and not one I made. I've made several of different sizes for use in my customizations of the XBMC PM3 skin and it's hard to tell the smaller ones apart from the ones in these emu skins. Just wanted to clarify so I didn't step on any toes in case that's not one that I made.
Also, I redid the Genesis pic and I'd like to replace the one in the previous post with this one. If a moderator can edit the previous post to include this as an "edit" and replace the link to the Genesis pic that would be good.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 01, 2009, 02:18:00 AM
Nice looking images on there man. It's cool seeing images that are derived from somebody's personal collection.
I used to have a very large collection of systems and games, but after I left home my youngest bro sold all of our shared video game stuff to gamestop when he didn't have a job and for a few years there he had whatever new game he wanted, until all he had left was a PSP and one game from our whole collection.
I'd probably be mad without the Box. I wouldn't want any of those systems now anymore with what we've got here personally (Except the 7800 to play Xenophobe since it won't work on the Box yet). I got rid of all of my DVD's and gave them to my other brother when I figured out about DIVX movies. It would take 3 or 4 DVD shelves to house my movie collection that is on one harddrive now. My bro will walk into his first house with his new wife sometime next year with two foot lockers full of DVDs.
It's amazing what you can do with a PC and an XBox.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: gilles9999 on November 01, 2009, 05:48:00 AM
for the 10000 time: my dynamic skins are just created to fully support all the possible dual stuff
OF COURSE!My skins are inspired by the original chokemaniac work... because i like the pm3 theme!!
95% of my work on them is:
- configuring all these settings (4/3, 16/9, one boxart display, screenshot only, screenshot and boxart at the same time), settings all the movie/screenshot/boxart size/position. it is LOOOOONG!!! (plus usually boxarts are different from one system to another)I have even set the rombrowser and main menu cursor to match as much as i can the animation of the original xbmc pmIII
- create system specific previews (when i can)
- find good quality pics for the systems and controllers (one for the main menu, one for the emuload, one for the banners and one other for the synopsis) it is a lot harder than you think
I HAVE ALWAYS SAID my work was inspired by the XBMC PMIII theme!!
And I NEVER SAID I WAS the original author of the pmIII theme pfffff....
Post by: gilles9999 on November 01, 2009, 06:31:00 AM
Its is a loong and vast project
things must be clear for everyone
Post by: ressurectionx on November 01, 2009, 08:41:00 AM
I know you've spent tons of hours of free time without pay making nearly 20 different versions of your skins for different emulators so far. Some people just can't see the truly huge scope of all of our work and tend to focus only on their little niche. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they're willing to contribute like the rest to the greater cause. It would be nice if certain individuals would keep the negative comments to a minimum since they're starting to effect the morale of the team too.
No offence to anyone else, but your skins are my favorite, and I'm looking forward to having a complete set of them on my box. (That's why I made the blank skins for you to fill out when you made the artwork on the last 12 or so that are needed!!!)
This could be cool to have some alternate takes on pics from somebody else. It's not as if he's going to do one for every system like you're doing. You'll be the first who ever did that. Nobody has even come as close as you are now.
Thanks for your hard work man. Wish I had a paycheck to give you for it.
~Rx
Post by: Mega Man (?) on November 01, 2009, 09:50:00 PM
And ex007 can offer some awesome unique pics!
The master system one looks perfect as is...
It would be tremendous if you could get a great collection of custom HQ images of all the systems for Gilles to work with!
Nice man...
Post by: ressurectionx on November 02, 2009, 06:57:00 AM
I know for a fact how polished his skins are to this point since anytime he made changes and stuff I was going through with changes I had made too with a program called foldermatch and got the naming conventions for everything including all the sprites to be identical across the board.
Truth be told, with this setup on his skins now, it would be possible to have only one configuration for every XBox emu when his skins are done. I know madmab has no interest in coding that, and it's really not practical when different users will be using different skins, especially since 99% of any type of skin that comes out will not have coverage across the entire spectrum like Gilles is close to doing.
What I've seen otherwise, is most people who are venturing into Dynamic Skins at this point are really making skins that are more accurately called "Dual Preview" skins.
Even to artsists who decided they don't like the PMIII artwork, and I do admit that it took a while to grow on me since I used to have the XBox 360 skin on my box before, I would urge them to really take a look at the files and file system in his skins and play around with the skin configurations and see just how great it works.
For example... I LOVE likklebears skins in the other thread, but I'm really disappointed that I'll never be able to play around with all the combination of images and all of the other cool things that having it set up like Gilles has allows for.
I'll have to try to take a video and upload it somehow, but you guys really have to see what I did to his SNES skin on the game select screen using Franks spinning dragon. Now the little Madmab dragon just kind of floats back and forth while spinning across the NINTENDO banner in the bottom right corner which was wasted space since the SNES artwork is wider than it is tall. I toned down the transparancy too, so it kinda looks like a green Big Boo haunting the screen.
And that's the greatest part about TRUE dynamic skins here guys. When Gilles is done, all it takes is somebody with a little artistic talent to build off of them and change tiny aspects and make
)I'd even go so far as to say you could basically just take the directory structiure of Gilles' skins and replace his background images and some of his sprites and have a dynamic skin of your own in much less time than it took to concieve them and bring them all up to code today. That's exactly what I did for him on the remaining 12 or so skins. I just put black images as placeholders in all the places he'd need to do artwork so when he finishes the 8-10 or so images that differentiate a skin he could just drop them in there and he'd be done.
Try it out cbagy... Take some of your images and put them in place of Gilles' stuff and see what you can come up with. After putting Frank's spinning dragon in there and then having a reason to find out how to control animation was a very fulfilling experience for me. I'd like to see what you and Frank and others come up with when you've become as accoustomed to all the old and improved abilities the XPORT emus have come to give us when it comes to pimping out the dash.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: ressurectionx on November 03, 2009, 01:56:00 PM
This was a process that probably took a month of going back and forth before we perfected it. It was actually quite huge to pull off. This is why recently I made the 12 blank skins for Gilles to dump artwork in. Occasionally when he'd make a new skin, the images would be slightly out of order or with a different name than the previously established standards. I figured instead of having to edit them and send them back in the future, I'd just set every one up perfectly with the other ones so he could just make the artwork and dump them in.
Also, there is the deal of the professionalism that went into these skins that you can see when editing the sprite settings. First, everything is capitalized and there are zero typos, which you can see very easily in the end. Also, all sprites have been categorized into type, there has been room left in each category to have more images put in for that category without putting things out of order or having to go through the massive effort of renaming a ton of folders in every emu to make them match and keep them organized, and then in turn redoing the
We had madmab add the feature to skip number placeholders that were empty to make this practical. Before, if you skipped numbers there would be a lot of blank spots while you were scrolling through the folders, making this pointless.
I wasn't saying anything about style man. I was just suggesting you to check under the hood of a 100% professional job all the way around. Given Gilles blessing, I would not see any problem with borrowing those folders either, since I pretty much was the one that put that part together. They're already set up pretty much perfect for any setup. You could add or remove folders as you use placeholders and even rename them to suit your own personal presentation. The whole point is, that you could have all of these folders empty from the start as you create a new skin and it would help keep the images in the proper order for you between all of the emus you're building one for. You could easily move the images you currently use into the folders right now and test it out for yourself. This is basically a feature that has been created for the skin that you just have to put the effort of working with to see the rewards. If Gilles is cool with it, I think I'll package up a generic skin setup which is completely empty with all of our folder names in it and put it up on the front page with some instructions on how to use them.
Gilles is the creator and has the artistic genius. I went in and turned his skin into a sleek high performance vehicle under that hood. The reason somebody probably wouldn't really notice or appreciate how the sprite system is in Gilles' skin is because it works so good.
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Post by: ressurectionx on November 04, 2009, 06:42:00 AM
Post by: madmab on November 15, 2009, 10:40:00 AM
Post by: gilles9999 on November 15, 2009, 11:30:00 AM
yeah thanks madmab it to the trick, now i can add all my rumbles for a lot of genesis games:
the street of rage series, golden axe series, the sonics, strider, shinobi's etc... will now have rumbles!!
i'm working onto adding a lot of rumbles
lucky the future users of the next neogenesis: they will have all the dual stuff support, HQ boxarts, HQ videos from cba.gy (your vids are really great cba.gy, i now use them) synopsis for all their games, rumbles for a lot of games, etc...
and for mekax and xboyadvance (systems where the boxarts have a different size than the cart) i will look at it next week
Post by: cbagy on November 15, 2009, 04:13:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on November 15, 2009, 04:13:00 PM
I've got about 4 or 5 new betas from Madmab that need to be tested as well.
I got extremely wrapped up in upgrading boxart for about 5 different systems using what I had from TCP and the HypereSpin stuff. I've also probably spent at least 6 hours this weekend touching up Atari 2600 and NES boxart that didn't have high quality polished images available.
Oh... and I wrapped up the NeoGeo Pocket testing/artwork/synopsis this weekend too. You can check out the NGPC synopsis in the hot potato thread now.
Keep em coming Gilles. Don't slow down on account of me. I hope to get the testing for anything you and Madmab have done this weekend. (Wednesday is the start of my weekends).
Well... did a great job this weekend. Now it's time for me to go back to work.
Post by: Mega Man (?) on November 20, 2009, 01:17:00 AM
JKThis should do the trick: (hope this is ok with you: Gilles)
Remember... the new "Madmab Ed SMS" emu is not out yet.
DYNAMIC mednafenx nes PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC snes9xbox (snes) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC snes9xbox (snin) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC xboyadvance PM3 (27 september 09)
Dynamic VIRTUALBOYX pm3 by Gilou9999 15/02/09
DYNAMIC neogenesis (genesis) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC neogenesis (megadrive) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC mekax PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC mednafenx pce PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC mednafenx pce (tg16) PM3 (27 september 09)
-DOWNLOAD-Dynamic Z26X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
DYNAMIC atarixlbox (a5200) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC atarixlbox (800xl) PM3 (27 september 09)
DYNAMIC atarixlbox (XE) PM3 (27 september 2009)
DYNAMIC atari7800x PM3 (24 october 2009)
-DOWNLOAD- Dynamic MEDNAFENX LYNX 15/02/09
-DOWNLOAD- Dynamic ADAMX pm3 by Gilou9999 25 April 09
DYNAMIC pcsxbox PM3 (27 september 09)
-DOWNLOAD- Dynamic NeopoX pm3 by Gilou9999 04.11.09
-DOWNLOAD-Dynamic BLISSX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
-DOWNLOAD- Dynamic VMUX PM3 by Gilou9999 04/08/2009
DYNAMIC winstonx PM3 (27 september 09)
-DOWNLOAD-Dynamic VICE64X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
DYNAMIC winuaex PM3 (27 september 09)
Dynamic BLUEMSXBOX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic DOSXBOX pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Dynamic X68000X pm3 by Gilou9999 26 April 09
Post by: illtww on November 24, 2009, 12:07:00 AM
I am having a problem getting the SNES and SMS DYNAMIC skins working.
I have followed the readme and I have renamed the 4-3 bigbox etc.ini to Settings.ini.
No love.
I am running mekkav2 and snes9xv1 from xbins.
(these versions do not have an option to select the prefered skin.ini from the hd..)
**** do I not have the correct versions of these emus????? *******
NOTE:
All rom sets were filtered with the Resextras .dat files
My madmab v12b is running great.
I selected the one .ini that i wanted and put the artwork/preview files in the directory where the needed to be.
(Resxtras is the BOMB!!)
HELP!?
Post by: tristanx on December 08, 2009, 09:48:00 PM
Post by: ressurectionx on December 09, 2009, 07:26:00 AM
I know Excalibur is putting together a collection of awesome shots of systems he personally has, so I think this could be an opportunity to have multiple variations on these skins.
Hey Gilles...... Maybe you'd like to see a specific system look a certain way? I bet if you asked Ex to display it the way you wanted it for the skin he would be happy to do it for you.
Later,
~Rx
Post by: tristanx on December 09, 2009, 04:10:00 PM
QUOTE(cbagy @ Dec 9 2009, 04:26 AM)
Probably not. lol. Wouldn't using the PSD mean modding the original ?
Just make your own mate, these emu's are straight forward.
need not worry... i always give credit to the one who made the original. when allxboxskins.com was around i made a neogenesis skin that was very popular and kept j-reds name on the start page all i did was revision his work.
i would upload my skins somewhere but do not have a place to but them.
Post by: Mega Man (?) on December 11, 2009, 07:38:00 PM
QUOTE
i would upload my skins somewhere but do not have a place to but them.
hmm.. what do you mean...?
You could use an upload site like "megaupload.com" and just make your own thread to host them.
Post by: tristanx on December 13, 2009, 01:50:00 PM
QUOTE(Mega Man (?) @ Dec 11 2009, 06:38 PM)
hmm.. what do you mean...?
You could use an upload site like "megaupload.com" and just make your own thread to host them.
I'm also lazy...
Post by: bigby on February 21, 2012, 06:24:00 AM
Post by: bigby on July 06, 2012, 06:33:00 AM
Post by: bigby on July 13, 2012, 06:07:00 AM
Post by: Mega Man (?) on August 06, 2012, 01:43:00 PM
huh Bigby...?
Post by: bigby on August 06, 2012, 02:29:00 PM
Whatever happened to that madmab guy?
Post by: ruta69 on March 21, 2023, 02:55:24 PM