"Polygon" Widescreen Theme Development (HTPC / UNIVERSAL) [W.I.P] (UPDATED 08/20)

[dark13]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9j4w7rxoyk67kjl/Autoreading%20mp4%20BG.7z?d

 

cinematicvideos folder goes in the HS folder (where HyperSpin.exe is). The swf can be used ONLY inside HS media folders as artwork or background layer, it search for /Media and /Image in the filepath name to get portability (you can have HS installed on any HD drive letter, it will work) SO AVOID MEDIA AND IMAGES FOLDER BEFORE YOUR HS PATH (es C:\Media\Frontend\Hyperspin\... MUST be avoided) .

 

cinematicvideos folder must copy the structure of HyperSpin folders, so you'll have Main Menu folder with arcade games.mp4 and other main menu BG, a Sega Genesis folder with roms.mp4 and so on.

...\cinematicvideos\Main Menu\Arcade Games.mp4

...\cinematicvideos\Sega Genesis\3 Ninja Strikes Back.mp4

 

Consider the autoreading code part released under CC attribution non-commercial.

This file can be used in any HS project, you just need to create the folders with the .mp4 and name the swf with the same name of the .mp4

[tcmt]

ah thank you SO much dark. it finally works with your and the the help of agent47.

 

i think part of the confusion for me was, that i didn't test your code from hyperspin itself last time; as the .swf works when run through hyperspin but doesn't "seem" to work when i just run the .swf from windows directly (or through adobe flash player rather).

 

thank you again for your help!

[xALPHAxOMEGAx]

keep up the good work dude.  looking very cool

[FrankyRizzo]

Theme is coming together very nice.  

[tcmt]

to anyone who is interested in how the "Polygon BasePak" (that was released yesterday) looks in hyperspin itself, i did a quick screen capture.

(NOTE: for some reason the audio is glitching out in the recording, doesn't happen in hyperspin. also the image quality is way nicer than seen on the recording. sorry for that)

 

 

 

if someone has a recommendation for a screen capture software that works well with hyperspin, let me know please.

 

thank you everyone!

tim 

[dark13]

tcmt some suggestions: re-render the videos without the bar and include bar's .png directly in the .swf (create a new layer and add the image on it), it will stay on screen while changing theme. Also it would be a good idea to remove also the text and add it directly in flash, this way you should be able to reduce the size of .mp4 (text needs a really good quality). If you want it would be possible to add autoscrolling text to the theme.

[tcmt]

you're right. that would probably the best thing to do. i thought about the same thing. especially doing the texts in flash, cause it would make things so much easier (like updating descriptions etc.). The thing is i just can't get my head around flash. it is a very confusing and unintuitive program for me.

i'm fairly new to adobe after effects (which i use to make these themes) as well but for now, i have a much better understanding of that software than flash. again obviously you are totally right with your suggestions, but i have yet to learn the basics of adobe flash to make that happen.

 

for now the theme works, even if it is a bit complicated. the bar stays on screen with the help of my override transitions, the text looks alright rendered out etc. But yeah - in the end i would like to improve the system using flash.

[FrankyRizzo]

It it possible for people using the theme to make minor changes on the main menus?  Or will that not be possible at this point?  

 

you're right. that would probably the best thing to do. i thought about the same thing. especially doing the texts in flash, cause it would make things so much easier (like updating descriptions etc.). The thing is i just can't get my head around flash. it is a very confusing and unintuitive program for me.

i'm fairly new to adobe after effects (which i use to make these themes) as well but for now, i have a much better understanding of that software than flash. again obviously you are totally right with your suggestions, but i have yet to learn the basics of adobe flash to make that happen.

 

for now the theme works, even if it is a bit complicated. the bar stays on screen with the help of my override transitions, the text looks alright rendered out etc. But yeah - in the end i would like to improve the system using flash.

[tcmt]

earlier in this thread i talked about releasing my after effects project files for everyone to use and edit as they like. that is still my plan but i have to clean up a lot of the project first (naming, excess/unneeded footage etc) so others understand what is going on (i'm a really messy person when it comes to such projects).

 

so until i have a proper template project file ready to upload, i'm afraid you can't change anything at the moment. if you have a particular request however, let me know and i see what i can do in the meantime.

 

cheers

tim

[FrankyRizzo]

I don't want to slow down your project because of my OCD haha.  I can wait until you release a template.  I just think the grey bar with the system logos would look better it it was up higher.  Almost right underneath the the video.

 

 

earlier in this thread i talked about releasing my after effects project files for everyone to use and edit as they like. that is still my plan but i have to clean up a lot of the project first (naming, excess/unneeded footage etc) so others understand what is going on (i'm a really messy person when it comes to such projects).

 

so until i have a proper template project file ready to upload, i'm afraid you can't change anything at the moment. if you have a particular request however, let me know and i see what i can do in the meantime.

 

cheers

tim

[tcmt]

i updated the release thread to include ready made packages for both "swf-style" and "mp4-style" integration of the theme videos. also wrote some further instructions. 

for your convenience they should include everything you need to just drag the contents into your hyperspin folder (MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!!). after that you just need to configure the wheel positioning and style (my main menu.ini is linked in the release thread to help with that).

 

Link to the "Release-Thread": http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/topic/27257-polygon-widescreen-theme-htpc-universal-basepak-released/

 

Let me know if somethings broken or i did something horribly wrong.

 

Thank you all for being awesome!

 

Cheers

Tim

[Darkniu]

I cant wait for the template...

and by the way i would like to see some portable consoles...

 

(sorry for my bad english) 

[tcmt]

aloha,

 

i need some feedback from you guys if possible since i can't decide what design i want to render out. i'm working on game themes at the moment and i have two different version: one with screenshot galleries and one with  video clips from the games for the theme background.

 

i did a few themes for each style to compare, take a look:

 

screenshot gallery style:

 

 

video background style:

 

 

 

here is another comparison between the mp4s itself:

 

screenshot gallery style:

 

 

video background style:

 

 

 

eventually i want to do both. but since rendering these out will take quite some time, i decided to ask for some feedback first (currently it would take 80+ hours for the screenshot gallery style and 160+ hours for the video-style; and that is ONLY the snes library, which i want to do first)

 

what do guys think? do you prefer one style over the other? how do like the look in general? do i need to change anything before i start my marathon render session?

 

would be great to hear from some of you !

 

thank you all for your time and you all have a great one!

 

cheers

tim

[Henderson33]

These look great, personally i prefer the video version

[thatman84]

Great work and unfortunately for your workload I prefer the video style!!

[FrankyRizzo]

The video version looks best. It's too bad you cant use as3 to use the videos from your video folder for each game. So you don't need to render the video for each game.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tcmt]

the thing i worry about the most is readability of the text over video. does someone want to try this on some big ass tv and tell me how it looks? especially if you can still comfortably read the text from some distance? i only got my crappy 24' monitor for my pc and can't test this in a tv situation.

 

The video version looks best. It's too bad you cant use as3 to use the videos from your video folder for each game. So you don't need to render the video for each game. 

 

that probably possible, but i don't really know how. as3 is a big mystery to me and i can't find any good resources for stupid people like me. so it's the hard, convoluted, messy way that might lead to nothing but frustration in the end for now .

[imdavid555]

I prefer the video version as well, but they both look nice! 

 

Looking at the video on my 40' inch vizio HDTV. I think the black text pops out very nicely over the white in the background. In all the videos the text was perfectly readable either closeup or from a distance.

[bundangdon]

Both look great! I think the screenshot version is certainly more simple but less cpu-draining and that would be more practical for people with not-so powerful computers. And I agree with FrankyRizzo that it's too bad you can't use the videos from your video folder, as that would make it much easier for you to develop and also easier for the average hyperspin user since they could customize the theme with their own preferred videos and be able to add more games into the list easily in the future

[dark13]

the thing i worry about the most is readability of the text over video. does someone want to try this on some big ass tv and tell me how it looks? especially if you can still comfortably read the text from some distance? i only got my crappy 24' monitor for my pc and can't test this in a tv situation.

 

 

that probably possible, but i don't really know how. as3 is a big mystery to me and i can't find any good resources for stupid people like me. so it's the hard, convoluted, messy way that might lead to nothing but frustration in the end for now .

 

If you send me a .fla with the bar positioned I can add the code to show info and play a .mp4 from non-HS folder, so you can use HS video for roms adding a simple video BG. Embedd the font you want to use in the .fla or send me the font, it needs to be embedd

[tcmt]

If you send me a .fla with the bar positioned I can add the code to show info and play a .mp4 from non-HS folder, so you can use HS video for roms adding a simple video BG. Embedd the font you want to use in the .fla or send me the font, it needs to be embedd

 

 

hey dark thanks for offering your help. the background video in my theme lies underneath a gradient with different levels of transparency to make the text for readable though. it is basically a white solid that gets more transparent on the right side of the screen, where the background video plays. also the video itself gets colour corrected to filter out some of the blacks, again to make the text more visible. do you think the same thing is possible in flash? 

 

also what exactly do you mean by "with the bar positioned"? do you want a .fla that only includes the wheelbar? so without any of the metadata, video and texts?

[tcmt]

just experimented a bit more in flash. i got background video working under my original transparent solid (just exported that solid from after effects as png). i added a flvplayback2.5 component in flash and added a variation of your code you have send me earlier. that works.

 

the only thing i need to figure out now is, how to animate the texts in flash in a similar way i did in after effects. also since i have to work in 1024x768 i need to figure out how to apply the smoothing to every layer and component. 

for the other artwork in my original video (like the genre icons or the cartart), i can probably just export the png sequence for that and import it back into flash. or animate it in flash directly. i just don't know how.

[tcmt]

k quick update. i figured out ALOT of things the last couple of days. i broke up my original system theme into single compartments (similar to dark13's suggestion but not quite), so i now have the background and bar separate from all the text and data for example, same goes for the controller info at the bottom. nevertheless this will reduce the render and production time immensely. and the new version works even more stable (no audio glitches, no memory leaks, smoother overall performance).

 

thank you for everyone who gave me feedback. it was pretty clear that gameplay video is preferred so i will start with that.

 

hope i'll have news for you soon.

 

till then have a good one

cheers

tim

[dark13]

Are you using netstream now? It seems a better method than flvplayer, here's the code I'm testing (luxman suggested me some tweaks for looping, still need to test). 

var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();
nc.connect(null);

var ns:NetStream = new NetStream(nc);
ns.addEventListener(AsyncErrorEvent.ASYNC_ERROR, asyncErrorHandler);
ns.play(HSpath + "/Media/" + SystemName + "/Video/" + RomName + ".mp4");
function asyncErrorHandler(event:AsyncErrorEvent):void
{
    // ignore error
}

 ns.addEventListener(NetStatusEvent.NET_STATUS, loop);
function loop(event:NetStatusEvent):void{
    switch (event.info.code){
    case "NetStream.Buffer.Empty":
ns.seek(0);
}};
var vid:Video = new Video();
vid.attachNetStream(ns);
addChildAt(vid, 0);
vid.y = 0;
vid.x = 0;
vid.width = 1024;
vid.height = 768;
//vid.smoothing = true;

var videoVolumeTransform:SoundTransform = new SoundTransform();

videoVolumeTransform.volume = 0;

ns.soundTransform = videoVolumeTransform;

Trying to find a decent method to load and parse hyperspin's settings.ini to automatically set keys to close listeners and streams. I know how I can do with only .split but that would be a freaking coding nightmare, I'm searching for a better solution...

[tcmt]

no still using flvplayback2.5, but that might be worth taking a look! thanks!

 

btw have you read about stagevideo in flash/AS3 ( http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/stage_video.html )? stagevideo is supposed to render video gpu-accererated and is said to greatly improve playback performance. i personally don't really know how i would implement it but maybe you and luxmen want to take a look.