Basic HyperSpin Widescreen Conversion Principles

[Avar]

 

This is a groundwork tutorial as a lead in to some more in depth ones I'm working on regarding widescreen theme conversion.

 

In the description, I've included a download link that has all 648 of the officially minted Atari 2600 games' themes converted to 16:9 (from roadrunner's set, so all credit goes to him). I don't use these themes personally so please let me know if there's any issue and I'll ammend, just thought it'd be nice for widescreen users to have the option again.

 

Hope some of you find this useful, or will at least find my subsequent more advanced tutorials useful.

 

 

 

[CarloCGC]

Thanks for the tut and bringing those themes to my attention i'll be sure to like and sub later when i'm home

[Styphelus]

I used to do this but stopped. Why?

 

1. Your wheel art is also used for hypersearch and hyperpause. It will look good on the main menu but not in anything else that uses your wheel art. Same goes for Box art and carts. They won't look good in hyperpause.

 

3. If they ever come up with a 1920x1080 version of hyperspin, you better have all your artwork backup in it's original size because you have now shrunk it and it will no longer be usable.

 

2. Doing this for every theme is insane. Too time consuming. I only do it for the main menus.

 

3. James baker has a lot of talent, but sometimes his artwork choices are not to my personal taste. It would be nice if he didn't incorporate the artwork right into his background so we could change it. Oh well. I'll keep using the Unified Theme.

[Metalzoic]

I don't use these themes personally so please let me know if there's any issue and I'll ammend, just thought it'd be nice for widescreen users to have the option again.

You don't use themes? Do you just run HS as a text list or something?

I can't really see the point in even using it if you don't use themes/art etc...

[Avar]

I used to do this but stopped. Why?

 

1. Your wheel art is also used for hypersearch and hyperpause. It will look good on the main menu but not in anything else that uses your wheel art. Same goes for Box art and carts. They won't look good in hyperpause.

 

3. If they ever come up with a 1920x1080 version of hyperspin, you better have all your artwork backup in it's original size because you have now shrunk it and it will no longer be usable.

 

2. Doing this for every theme is insane. Too time consuming. I only do it for the main menus.

 

3. James baker has a lot of talent, but sometimes his artwork choices are not to my personal taste. It would be nice if he didn't incorporate the artwork right into his background so we could change it. Oh well. I'll keep using the Unified Theme.

 

1. That is wrong. RocketLauncher media is separate from HyperSpin media, unless someone's manually copied things from HS media folders to RL media folders, which, why would anyone ever do that? RocketLauncher artwork packs include 2D Box Front/Side/Back as well as 3D, carts, adverts, controls, and any snaps or additional artwork. RocketLauncher natively supports 16:9, which is why even if someone has a fugly stetched out HS setup, all RL related screens still show art in the correct aspect ratio, including all fade, loading, and pause screens, including the Pause screen artwork and videos. Fixing your HS artwork has zero impact on RocketLauncher whatsoever.

 

3. (2???) a. All artwork is already provided to us in its original size, and it would take very little time to revert back. If you were overly concerned, it doesn't take much space to make a backup of the originals, which I do anyways in the event that someone ever asks me for 4:3 stuff.

 

     b. If someone was bandwidth cheap it would also takle very little time to batch revert all your pngs to 133% of their resized width, with no humanly discernly loss of fidelity while using appropriate screen resolutions and wheel sizes

 

     c. If HyperSpin ever does release native 16:9 support no existing themes will work anyways because every single theme we have is based around 4:3 and there is no simple way to convert themes to widescreen automatically without either distorting them displaying them awkwardly as 4:3 on a 16:9 display. This is why when we convert themes they need to be done individually, since it requires re-sizing of the individual elements, repositioning the elements to maintain the desired aesthetic, and sometimes completely redrawing or replacing the existing background, backgrounds are 4:3 and simply resizing them isn't enough unless it's an extremely plain background (ie. colour or simple pattern only). Bottom line, native HyperSpin 16:9 support = every theme we have breaks instantly and needs to be redone essentially the exact same way as I'm converting artwork except the only needed fixes are that the backgrounds would need to be updated and artwork placement would need to be changed. The reason that RocketLauncher isn't affected by this is because of its straightforward XBMC-esque display. This is the same as why GameEx or RetroFE isn't affected by this problem. HyperSpin's greatest strength, it's unique themes and artistic customizability, is also currently a limitation. Ideally, HS would support 4:3, 16:9, and 16:10, and all artwork would be uploaded as such. We're not there yet.

 

2 (3?) Then wait for me to do it for you. The only challenging themes are the ones with detailed backgrounds (ie. TouHou Project) which require redraw/improvisation/replacement depending on how true to the original artist you want to be. Simpler themes, once you get the hang of it, have a very quick workflow. It will take me slightly longer to do MAME themes than it did Atari 2600 since I know way more people will actually use them and they are natively much cleaner looking, but it's certainly not so daunting a task that it's reasonable for us to still have virtually no widescreen theme support after so many years. By the end of the 2016 (likely much sooner than that), I'll have every theme converted to 16:9.

[Avar]

You don't use themes? Do you just run HS as a text list or something?

I can't really see the point in even using it if you don't use themes/art etc...

Read it again:

 

In the description, I've included a download link that has all 648 of the officially minted Atari 2600 games' themes converted to 16:9 (from roadrunner's set, so all credit goes to him). I don't use these themes personally so please let me know if there's any issue and I'll ammend, just thought it'd be nice for widescreen users to have the option again.

 

 

Ie. I don't use roadrunner's Atari 2600 themes. Int he description I elaborated that "I personally use the Atari 2600 default theme with the newer high quality box art so I don't look at these as often as I do my other conversions." I resized roadrunners because having just finished resizing TouHou for my setup, it was a complete walk in the park. Even though I wasn't using it myself I still wanted the community to have it. I'll release the AAE themes (the ones you see in the video) at a later date, as while filming I noticed one flaw that existed in an original theme that I need to redraw slightly to fix, and one flaw due to something I need to redraw to look just as good in 16:9 as it does in 4:3.

 

(Specifically, in the original theme the top right corner of Space Fury's alien's white outline is visibly cutoff when it pans left/right. In the 16:9 Star Trek theme I positioned the Enterprise such that the phaser array's beam come to a visible end, which doesn't sit right with me compared to the original.)

[JSinn]

Very nice, thanks for this.

[Avar]

Very nice, thanks for this.

 

You're welcome and thank you. If you do use the Atari 2600 themes ever, please let me know if you see anything unsightly. I knew roadrunner didn't have nearly as clean artwork to go off of when he made the set back in 2013 and I did do three full visual passes of the set to make sure it was passable but I also turned a blind eye to a few minor imperfections. Figured most people these days go with default + box/cart art thanks to the lovely new sets.

 

Note: I also didn't convert the assets to .swf on these.

[Styphelus]

Rocketluncher media is not totally separate. When you go into Hyperpause, it takes the wheel art from the Hyperspin folder and displays it in the top left corner. It also looks through your hyperspin media folders (by default) and displays your box art and carts. 

 

Also, a lot of the artwork is no longer available so re-downloading it is not an option. I have loads of stuff from way back in the day from users who ended up deleting their work from the FTP.

 

The ideal way to deal with the existing themes is to add a permanent wheel on the side and have the existing themes stay at 4:3. This was talked about back in the days of Hyperspin 2.0 and it's what Coin-Ops does. 

 

[Avar]

Rocketluncher media is not totally separate. When you go into Hyperpause, it takes the wheel art from the Hyperspin folder and displays it in the top left corner. It also looks through your hyperspin media folders (by default) and displays your box art and carts. 

 

Also, a lot of the artwork is no longer available so re-downloading it is not an option. I have loads of stuff from way back in the day from users who ended up deleting their work from the FTP.

 

The ideal way to deal with the existing themes is to add a permanent wheel on the side and have the existing themes stay at 4:3. This was talked about back in the days of Hyperspin 2.0 and it's what Coin-Ops does. 

 

 

There is no more HyperPause, just Pause. RocketLauncher is completely independent of HyperSpin and can be used with pretty much any frontend now, which is another reason it has its own independent media packs at EmuMovies which preclude having non-fugly 16:9 HS from being an issue.

 

Displaying a 4:3 image with a 540x1080 pixel "dead space" on the side of a 1080p display with the wheels on it isn't in any way ideal. It would be the easiest and laziest way, yes, but it basically defeats the purpose of HS' customizability, and it's how pretty much every other frontend does it to a degree. HS has never been about quick fixes or low standards. One could also run HS windowed with a bezel, really, but that's not widescreen, it's not the point, and it's not why people are already designing "future-proof" 1080p .swf'd game themes.

 

Resizing themes is not a particularly daunting or arduous task, especially not if using the the existing png -> swf scripts which both resize and improve the quality of the images. Hell, even doing them manually, without the scripts, 2600's only took a few hours. I appreciate if you don't personally have the time or want to do it but to say 4:3 themes are ever ideal on a 16:9 display is ludicrous.

 

I'm not telling people they need to do it themselves or should, as there are already people who care working on this sort of thing and who share it regardless. I'm just explaining how it's done for people who do care or who want to care but don't know how.

[ninja2bceen]

How do you add that permanent wheel?

Tapatalk signature

[Styphelus]

"Displaying a 4:3 image with a 540x1080 pixel "dead space" on the side of a 1080p display with the wheels on it isn't in any way ideal. I"

 

Yes it is! I hate fading and disappearing wheels. I like having a wheel on at all times. Making it fade away slows down the browsing process and is very clunky. I like seeing what game comes next rather than just having a quick glimpse. It's not lazy either. it's the way it should be!

 

 

Ninja2bceen - You can't add a wheel like that in Hyperspin. It was supposed to be a feature of hyperspin.2.0.  What Coin-ops does is record a video of the theme just like Jamebaker does with his cinematic themes and it uses that video as the theme and they set the hyperspin wheel to be on at all times. This is how I would want my Hyperspin. I hate full screen themes.

[Avar]

"Displaying a 4:3 image with a 540x1080 pixel "dead space" on the side of a 1080p display with the wheels on it isn't in any way ideal. I"

 

Yes it is! I hate fading and disappearing wheels. I like having a wheel on at all times. Making it fade away slows down the browsing process and is very clunky. I like seeing what game comes next rather than just having a quick glimpse. It's not lazy either. it's the way it should be!

 

I'm not saying you're wrong or lazy, especially if that's what's ideal for you. I'm just saying not everyone has the same tastes in HS and ideally we'd have both 4:3 and 16:9 so people can choose, which is why we're seeing more and more 16:9. Personally, I'm happy for 4:3 enthusiasts right now as it makes for a simpler setup lol. Yes it would be nice to have the option to run it like HyperVision does so people would have the choice, but I would also hate it and feel it went against the nature of HyperSpin if that was the -only- choice.

[Iggy]

This sounds like tutorial material!!!!  You mind if I post your video in tutorials section?

[Avar]

This sounds like tutorial material!!!!  You mind if I post your video in tutorials section?

Not at all. Can post it anywhere you like.

[xALPHAxOMEGAx]

Rocketluncher media is not totally separate. When you go into Hyperpause, it takes the wheel art from the Hyperspin folder and displays it in the top left corner. It also looks through your hyperspin media folders (by default) and displays your box art and carts. 

 

Also, a lot of the artwork is no longer available so re-downloading it is not an option. I have loads of stuff from way back in the day from users who ended up deleting their work from the FTP.

 

The ideal way to deal with the existing themes is to add a permanent wheel on the side and have the existing themes stay at 4:3. This was talked about back in the days of Hyperspin 2.0 and it's what Coin-Ops does. 

 

 

crafty work around

[damageinc86]

I would have loved to have HS 1920x1080 right out of the gate.  It doesn't make sense that it doesn't have both options.  But in all honestly, I wouldn't mind running hyperspin windowed with a bezel at all.  If your monitor is rather large, then the window of hyperspin is also pretty big.  As long as the Bezel program can keep hyperspin centered no matter what, then i'd totally rock it.  So far a lot of PC games  place hyperspin all over the screen when it's windowed.  The HSBezel program that someone made, doesn't really work well either.  A new one would be welcomed by me anyways. 

 

But this would just basically be a substitute for a true widescreen HS.  For the 4:3 themes going on right now I wouldn't mind if there was just some extension of the background image to go underneath the wheel in order to fill the right side of the widescreen up.  I'm just worried about when it does finally go to widescreen, if those months and months spent on the Mamu icon wheel set will have been a complete waste.  Or if there will be some fancy macros I can run to reposition them on a 16:9 wheel.