New Unified Megatheme

[Styphelus]

Well...I'm a bit tired of themes but sure, count me in - however you have to set rules like resolution to scale the work to so me and Unknown don't create different sets again.

A nice set of instructions that anyone can follow would be nice so everything can be uniform.

[KlopjerO]

Well...I'm a bit tired of themes but sure, count me in - however you have to set rules like resolution to scale the work to so me and Unknown don't create different sets again.

A nice set of instructions that anyone can follow would be nice so everything can be uniform.

I agree, been sort of free wheeling and reverse engineerings gibbas themes.. lets make it more tangible

[Unknown50862]

Well...I'm a bit tired of themes but sure, count me in - however you have to set rules like resolution to scale the work to so me and Unknown don't create different sets again.

A nice set of instructions that anyone can follow would be nice so everything can be uniform.

Agreed. Basically what happened was that Styphelus and I were using different resolutions when saving the pieces of art in Photoshop (this is before the Flash part of things). The weird part being, that Styphelus' method looked better for him and mine looked better for me (this is testing on both a monitor and TV). We ended up redoing a lot of each others themes, because of it. If others could compare them and let us know what they see, it'd be a step in the right direction.

[gibbawho]

Agreed. Basically what happened was that Styphelus and I were using different resolutions when saving the pieces of art in Photoshop (this is before the Flash part of things). The weird part being, that Styphelus' method looked better for him and mine looked better for me (this is testing on both a monitor and TV). We ended up redoing a lot of each others themes, because of it. If others could compare them and let us know what they see, it'd be a step in the right direction.

Yeah I'll be putting up PSD's soon. They'll all be proper resolution as I output them. These PSD's are also much better organized with grouping and labeling to keep everything straight.

You guys have been and continue to be a major help to this project. Thank you both for the effort in helping me making this thing a reality... and for expanding on it.

[gibbawho]

I'll come up with an instruction set and post it here when i put up the first batch of PSD's. They'll be open for discussion if anyone see's any glaring problems with the method or if you might have a better/faster way.

[andyco40]

cant wait for the rest of the 4x3 ones there brill mate.

[gerardogelizondo]

I cant wait either

[Agrajag]

Bearing in mind I have no idea how to use Photoshop, or how much effort this would require, a thought just occurred to me...

Is there any way that the techniques used to create these new HD themes could be retroactively applied to existing 4:3 themes for individual MAME games etc, so that the TV can be left in full 16:9 widescreen mode all the time and the 4:3 themes are shown at the correct aspect ratio with black bars on either side instead of being stretched horizontally?

If everything could be unzipped, resized and rezipped using a batch process, we could run it on all our themes and produce a "complete" 16:9 compatible set. The end result wouldn't look as sharp as the ones you are making from scratch in HD, but it would give a much more pleasing overall look to HyperSpin while we wait, possibly in vain, for native 16:9 support (and for all the existing themes to be remade in 16:9).

I suspect it's more complicated than just resizing from 1024x768 to 1440x1080, as the black bars would need to be included in the background to pad it out to 1920 wide, but perhaps it's possible. Any thoughts?

[Styphelus]

Bearing in mind I have no idea how to use Photoshop, or how much effort this would require, a thought just occurred to me...

Is there any way that the techniques used to create these new HD themes could be retroactively applied to existing 4:3 themes for individual MAME games etc, so that the TV can be left in full 16:9mode all the time and the 4:3 themes are shown at the correct aspect ratio with black bars on either side instead of being stretched horizontally?

If everything could be unzipped, resized and rezipped using a batch process, we could run it on all our themes and produce a "complete" 16:9 compatible set. The end result wouldn't look as sharp as the ones you are making from scratch in HD, but it would give a much more pleasing overall look to HyperSpin while we wait, possibly in vain, for native 16:9 support (and for all the existing themes to be remade in 16:9).

I suspect it's more complicated than just resizing from 1024x768 to 1440x1080, as the black bars would need to be included in the background to pad it out to 1920 wide, but perhaps it's possible. Any thoughts?

That can be done, but why would you want to do that? Unfortunately you would have to edit each theme individually and black bars look ugly. What should be happening is the theme creators should be providing their work in PSD format in 16:9. It's easy to convert down to 4:3 after. Don't think it will happen. The "elite" of this board seems focused on their 4:3 arcade cabinets, but if you want to go ahead and do it, by all means.

Maybe we should start our own Hyperspin project focused on 16:9 format for those of us who like sitting down in our living rooms instead of standing by an arcade cabinet.

[gibbawho]

Yeah I'm afraid it would involve quite a bit more than that.

Any artwork assets that are bitmaps (like a png, as opposed to a vector) wouldn't resize up. You need higher res source images. Upsizing a small image just gives you a big blurry image. The backgrounds would have to be basically completely redone to account for widescreen as well... as Styph just mentioned.

Maybe eventually ... but it'd be a huge project. It'd take 50 people 6 months to do it.

[gibbawho]

Maybe we should start our own Hyperspin project focused on 16:9 format for those of us who like sitting down in our living rooms instead of standing by an arcade cabinet.

HS2 is supposed to have native 16:9 support. BBB's been pretty silent the last year on where he's at with development of HS2 though and threads asking about it tend to get closed quickly. I don't think anyone even has any real idea as to when it will be out. I'm guessing at least another year.

If anyone has any direct knowledge of this, please chime in.

[Agrajag]

Fair enough, it was only an idea. I'm working on the assumption that HS2 may never appear, so it might be worth doing whatever is possible to make the best of modern hardware. A lot of people seem to be putting large widescreen monitors / TVs in their cabinets these days and stretching HyperSpin to fill the screen. As far as I'm concerned, black bars are not as ugly as a 4:3 picture stretched to fit a 16:9 screen, which looks terrible. I watch all sorts of old TV programmes and films in their original aspect ratio on my widescreen TV with black bars to either side, or above and below, so would like to do the same with HyperSpin so that the 4:3 themes are displayed correctly but I also get to make use of the HD themes in all their glory.

If I'm using only 4:3 themes and set my TV or monitor to 4:3 mode, it will of course upscale automatically from 1024x768 to 1440x1080 and look OK, so I don't see why resizing the themes as I described would make them look particularly worse. I'm not talking about redesigning the theme to make the background fill the 16:9 screen, just adding "burned in" black bars on either side to make it end up at the correct 4:3 aspect ratio when stretched to 16:9. I know it won't look as good as a theme that is actually created in full HD, but it would be good enough as an alternative to ugly stretching.

[OneBadVeggie]

Hey guys, was there a PSD for the genesis/megadrive? I've been doing some custom wheels for myself and was using aspects of the PSD for it and can't seem to find it.

Edit: Just finished getting all of the 16:9 set, and noticed my box and cart art isn't showing up. It used to on the 4:3 set, just wondering if there was a reason.

[jaZz_KCS]

I've seen that besides the work done by all ppl involved is to be found in their individual download folders - also a general "Unified Mega Theme"-folder popped out in the general Upload Here-section.

Does that meant that somebody from now on is collecting all the work done by the individuals and putting them together in one folder for easy access and easy updatin from now on? Because That would be great!

[Unknown50862]

Just finished getting all of the 16:9 set, and noticed my box and cart art isn't showing up. It used to on the 4:3 set, just wondering if there was a reason.

The themes determine what artwork folder is used and where the art is placed. In this case, the system themes currently don't have this setup since I don't have access to sample art to work with. You'll have to open the themes up in HyperTheme to add your artwork folder to it. At some point, I might go back and put placeholders approximately where the art should go, but that will likely still requiring tweaking.

I've seen that besides the work done by all ppl involved is to be found in their individual download folders - also a general "Unified Mega Theme"-folder popped out in the general Upload Here-section.

Does that meant that somebody from now on is collecting all the work done by the individuals and putting them together in one folder for easy access and easy updatin from now on? Because That would be great!

Pretty much, though it is more of a collective effort. It's everyone's responsibility to put their related work in that folder, there isn't one person who is collecting it.

[KlopjerO]

Once I'm happy with the theme's i'm working on for UMT I wil add them to the submitted category on the ftp

[jaZz_KCS]

Yeah would be wonderful If anyone who is getting more done could put those themes into the "upload here/unified mega theme/themes/submissions" folder, not only for checking through and sorting in but for being able to see quickly if theres anyhting new already done.

[KlopjerO]

Yeah would be wonderful If anyone who is getting more done could put those themes into the "upload here/unified mega theme/themes/submissions" folder, not only for checking through and sorting in but for being able to see quickly if theres anyhting new already done.

Yes that would be great wouldn't it

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Styphelus]

There's a resolution issue with the themes I created and the ones Unkown50862 created. We both reversed engineered Biggawhoo's themes in different ways. For this reason I never uploaded my system themes and re-sized artwork to go along with them like I did for the 4:3 set.

Unkown50862 is super-fast at this stuff and completed everything within weeks so by the time I was done with my set, I didn't see the point of uploading it.

I didn't see any re-sized artwork. I'm assuming everyone is doing that themselves as they see fit. it's a bit tricky because each system has to be tweaked individually as the artwork varies from system to system.

The next round of themes should all be standardized and we can replace the current themes.

[KrillCaz]

Where can I find the background which all of these themes use? I'm making a custom fade, and those would come in handy.

[Unknown50862]

Where can I find the background which all of these themes use? I'm making a custom fade, and those would come in handy.

Check my folder this evening. While working on the static themes, I made sure to save a separate background file for that very purpose. I had planned on uploading them, but it fell through the cracks.

EDIT:

Their uploading now, check the source folder under each system.

[gibbawho]

Just checking in to let everyone know i haven't disappeared or anything. Almost done with the PSD's for the Atari systems. These are the last of the first batch. I'll be starting to build out this weekend.

Should have all cartridge based consoles done in the mega/hd style in ... maybe 2 weeks?

We'll see how much time Unknown and Steph have to help* me build out.

[jaZz_KCS]

Just went through the System Wheels in the Unified main folder in root.

Some of the System Wheels look broken/cut off. Examples: Atari 2600/Sega Saturn.

Just a heads up, I would correct them quickly, albeit leaving home now. Back tomorrow.

[jaZz_KCS]

The static 16:9 themes do not have cart/boxart layers 3 and 4 set. I guess this is intentional as the Delux version does have the layers set correctly. So there will be a static version with wheel on the right and another version for outfading wheel and box/cartart displayed instead like in the 4:3 versions from gib?

Yeah let me rephrase that:

Its good that you didn't include the artwork layers in the Static HD set. Because there will be as many ppl wanting to use it without art at all so that the wheel can stay fully visible. And the other half of the ppl who do want to use artworks will probably end up in using many different sets with diff. sizes and such so it wouldnt make sense to pre-set it. You did a good job because now everybody can choose how to use the "extra space" provided with 16:9 themselves.

[Styphelus]

Jazz_KCs - I started uploading the system themes and box art to my folders but only got as far as 2 Atari systems. Sorry, but I haven't had a whole lot of free time lately. I'll upload a few more systems and re-sized box art this weekend. I should have already done it but got lazy.