Themes?

[M8harry]

Hi All

apologies if this is in the wrong section of the forum, but I have to ask about themes.

What exactly do they do and what is the difference between the different types of themes??

Im currently setting up Hyperspin on a widescreen monitor and while im waiting for programs to audit stuff i thought I would ask for a bit of help.

I currently have no art or anything only a bare bones install of hyperspin and the base media pack for Rocket Launcher.

On youtube there are some amazingly kitted out hyperspin setups with all the movies and box art showing for games and all that good stuff and I wanna get into all that but I need to  understand themes a bit more and how they relate to each other.

Many thanks in advance.

Harry

[RLBradders26]

Hi Harry,

There are 3 types of Themes:

Main Menu - You have your main menu wheel with all your systems. Each system will have its own Theme in the Hyperspin/Media/Main Menu/Themes folder.

Default - Inside each system you will need to have a default theme thats used for all games that dont have their own individual theme. This is placed is Hyperspin/Media/SystemName/Themes and has to called Default.

Game - Instead of using the system default you can use an individual game theme. This also needs to be in Hyperspin/Media/SystemName/Themes and the name needs to match the name of the game within your Database.

 

Themes come in 2 sizes 4:3 and 16:9. If you have a 16:9 monitor you can use 4:3 and 16:9 themes however the 4:3 themes will be stretched.

 

Hopefully explained what you needed, any further questions let us know

 

[M8harry]

Hey @RLBradders26 thanks for the info, its appreciated. I got my head around your words just fine.

So I think im having a theme related issue, and I would love some help if possible.

 

When I go to my SNES wheel, some games have themes, some dont. (I used Hypersync to get all the movie snaps and themes) For the games that do have themes everything is 100% there.

For the ones that dont, i believe i get the default theme up but the video clip of ingame footage doesnt load at all. (the folder for SNES videos has just about every game in it)

I realise an over the internet diagnosis is sketchy at best so If I was to ask for help in getting the games with out themes to use the default theme but play video snap footage what screenshots should I provide so people can see what my system is or is not doing?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Honosuseri]

I'll give you a known working Default .zip to try as a replacement for the SNES. If it still  doesn't work, report back

Default.zip

[RLBradders26]

My first guess would be your default theme doesn't have the video attribute saved into the xml. As @honosuseri suggested, try using his Default theme. If the videos show up the issue is your default theme, I personally have never been a fan of hypersync, everything on there is outdated. The downloads section here is much better.

[Honosuseri]

8 minutes ago, RLBradders26 said:

My first guess would be your default theme doesn't have the video attribute saved into the xml. As @honosuseri suggested, try using his Default theme. If the videos show up the issue is your default theme, I personally have never been a fan of hypersync, everything on there is outdated. The downloads section here is much better.

I apologise for jumping in and answering the question posed to you. I agree with your best guess and advice though.

It's not actually my theme. I didn't make it, it's just a generic one that I know works. The one I actually use has the SNES console and the cartridge artwork lowers down into the console, then the video plays...looks pretty schwifty

[RLBradders26]

@Honosuseri No worries at all im glad you did. Its all about helping each other and thats what makes this community great.

That theme sounds cool, mind sharing a screenshot?

[Honosuseri]

2 minutes ago, RLBradders26 said:

@Honosuseri No worries at all im glad you did. Its all about helping each other and thats what makes this community great.

That theme sounds cool, mind sharing a screenshot?

I can do better than that, I have a video of my Shield TV Hyperspin setup on Youtube. It's quite an old video, much has changed and been added since then. It should play from SNES, if not time stamp is 17:28

 

[RLBradders26]

Thats awesome, SNES theme looks great. I love seeing these full system videos, I wish more people would do them. Ive been meaning to do one of my own system, maybe one day I will get round to it.

[Honosuseri]

3 minutes ago, RLBradders26 said:

Thats awesome, SNES theme looks great. I love seeing these full system videos, I wish more people would do them. Ive been meaning to do one of my own system, maybe one day I will get round to it.

Yes I should redo it but they take a while to do, think that last one is nearly 30 minutes long. I now have 100 wheels or so to spin through. I'm nearly done with it now as I've nigh on filled the 1TB of storage. Once I've finished overhauling the Commodore Amiga, I'll do a new showcase video

[diegoleon]

Hola soy nuevo en esto  no me abre el programa de hyperspin. En el pc no se como instalar alguien me puede ayudar

 

[DomusdelCapo]

Puedes usar temas por defecto  para todos los que te falten y si te faltaran vídeos y cuentas con capturas (Snaps) también la puedes usar hasta que mas adelante encuentres los vídeos y mucha creatividad.

[DomusdelCapo]

18 minutes ago, diegoleon said:

Hola soy nuevo en esto no me abre el programa de hiperspin. En el PC no se puede instalar alguien me puede ayudar

  

Cierra el proceso desde administrador de tareas si es que esta abierto verifica tu exclusión en tu antivirus de toda la raiz de tu carpeta HS. Restablecer de tu baul de virus los archivos dll o exe y excluyelo son (FALSOS POSITIVOS) porque si no el antivirus lo bloqueara. este tipo de problemas es muy común no debería ser de esta manera uso HS por mucho tiempo a diferencia de las opiniones siempre debes usar un buen antivirus para protegerte, Si usas W10 no te podría ayudar mucho en referencia a las nuevas actualizaciones y conflictos porque uso w7 y no tengo problema alguno.

[thatman84]

On 11/13/2018 at 11:50 AM, M8harry said:

Hi All

apologies if this is in the wrong section of the forum, but I have to ask about themes.

What exactly do they do and what is the difference between the different types of themes??

Im currently setting up Hyperspin on a widescreen monitor and while im waiting for programs to audit stuff i thought I would ask for a bit of help.

I currently have no art or anything only a bare bones install of hyperspin and the base media pack for Rocket Launcher.

On youtube there are some amazingly kitted out hyperspin setups with all the movies and box art showing for games and all that good stuff and I wanna get into all that but I need to  understand themes a bit more and how they relate to each other.

Many thanks in advance.

Harry

Heres a few other notable things about themes......You will find thousands in the download section!

HyperTheme - the default program to edit and create themes. (It has some bugs and a learning curve but many people do use it)

A standard theme comprises of png image files and an xml config file. The timing and animation effects are set in the xml file usually created by hypertheme. So if you want to speed up the timings of artwork coming onto the screen its sometimes quicker to open the xml with a text editor and  change it there.

The themes are made up of layers. I forget the order now but Artwork 1 is behind Artwork 2 and 2 behind 3 etc

The video slots in ontop of Artwork 1 iirc then theres background images and Video borders. 

Next up there are themes made of swf image/animation files.

By design these are flash animated images to be used in a theme. So maybe Mario waving his hand. Thats made by someone as an swf animation and included in the theme as an Artwork layer.

BUT

As swf files can be used to maintain the aspect ratio of 16:9 images in Hyperspin, there has been a massive push over the years to convert png to swf to stop the artwork being stretched by Hyperspin. This means theres plenty of themes ready for 16:9 monitors.

ANOTHER

Cinematic Theme- basically a full screen video file that is used as a theme. Gives creators some easier ways to create their themes. Theres plenty in the DL section but many are found in the Platinum section also.

Good example here 

Pushing on then it gets more into style than technical differences. There are common styles like Unified. Aorin had a great project making themes also many others.

Unified use the same central video border and console/controller/character image layout

https://hyperspin-fe.com/files/category/1955-unified-style/

Similar thing with Aorins

https://hyperspin-fe.com/files/category/1954-aorin-style/

Universal themes give a cohesive look across your whole setup. BUT if you need something custom its sometimes hard to make yourself. Theres a few great skins out there like Dark13's 

Or this one in the works

 

 

[Bungles]

I threw another Universal option into the mix with my Retro Cafe theme.

Though its not for everyone.. might be too purple.

 

[Honosuseri]

6 hours ago, Bungles said:

I threw another Universal option into the mix with my Retro Cafe theme.

Though its not for everyone.. might be too purple.

 

I love purple and even I admit that's a bit much for me BUT I'm adopting that Metal Gear Solid game over quit screen! 

Don't know why I didn't think of that. The codec beep is my message tone on my phone and snake eater is my ringtone

[M8harry]

22 hours ago, Honosuseri said:

I'll give you a known working Default .zip to try as a replacement for the SNES. If it still  doesn't work, report back

Default.zip

I replaced the theme but I have no video playback on anything using the default theme

[M8harry]

Thanks everyone for all the info,

when i get some spare time ill be going over this full on.

I like the idea of the unified themes, thats something i might play around with later on once i get all my systems set up and running as intended.

[M8harry]

Ok after a bit of ratting through settings (stuffed if i know why i didnt look here first!) Hyperspin was looking in a totally foreign place for the videos.

Issue resolved. Thanks all for the info. Now onto tweaking and trying new themes and all that good stuff.......once i finish installing all the other systems .

[TokyoWolf]

Hey guys, I have a simple question but is pretty much on the topic of what you guys are discussing so thought I'd avoid starting a new thread.

Where do I put my Game Theme .zip files?

Cheers!

[Bungles]

In the themes folder for that specific system.


Hyperspin\Media\System\Themes\

 

[Honosuseri]

2 hours ago, Bungles said:

In the themes folder for that specific system.

Hyperspin\Media\System\Themes\

As Bradders already kindly pointed out in post #2. Long before the question was even asked 

[TokyoWolf]

Thanks for pointing this out Honosuseri, I had missed that in Bradders excellent explanation of themes (this actually helped clear this up in my head a lot!). Sorry for the noob mistake, I'm new here and to Hyperspin.

Love the showcase video Honosuseri, very clean and respectful of the original source material! This is almost exactly what I am looking to create, system themes, animated game themes, original wheel art etc... but I am coming to realise that I am quite under skilled to achieve this tho!!

Would you guys be able to suggest a base image or theme that I could use to get me started? (no Roms required) Mostly interested in using hyperpie 2 for arcade games only (I use retropie for my console builds). 

[Honosuseri]

Funnily enough I disabled comments on that video because I grew tired of people asking "Where's the download link?". 

To answer your question. I think Gigapig made a base pack available to premium members on the Hyperspin FTP. There's one done by Thatman84 in the android section of the forum to download, not the FTP. There is plenty of free content to grab from here in the downloads section too if you look. 

There's a French forum called Hyper free spin (HFS). They have a HFS 15K pack for members to download. I have used some of their unique themes and media. I retained their HFS main menu pointer, because I like it but also as a "tip of the hat" to them. 

HD video snaps come from emumovies.com for premium members, you can download the SD videos for free though. Ninja2bceen has added a lot of cool stuff to the Emumovies FTP. His YouTube channel is "Planet Geekdom", it has plenty of Hyperspin related content and tutorials.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to achieve. Hyper Pie is Attract Mode NOT Hyperspin! 

I don't do anything with RPIs anymore. I grew tired of people demanding SD images of my Attract mode setup to download. It's also woefully underpowered really, the Shield TV is MUCH better and easier to work with.

I'm basically done with my STV setup now. I've returned to my PC Hyperspin setup to add more content to that (Sega Ring Edge, Ring Wide Arcade boards etc.). 

All the best with your setup. 

[TokyoWolf]

I think a lot of people like myself gravitate towards the RPI as a low cost entry in to stand alone retro emulation. And if this bring more people in to the community, then I'm all for it. I do hear you on the limit of its powers though, a Shield TV would be awesome, but not in my budget range at present 

Hadn't realised that Hyper Pie was not part of Hyperspin!

I have done a bunch of console build, taking the original cases and sticking in a RPI with a custom theme and rom pack for that system (Mega Drive, NES SNES). I feel like this keeps my retro gaming true to my nostalgia for the original system, I CAN play most systems on my RPI NES build but it doesn't FEEL right!

So, I'm now looking at building an Arcade only image to go in to a Custom built Arcade controller with RPI3B+ (cos thats what I've got at present!). This is my test project before jumping in to building a full size cabinet. I can use retropie and it runs well, I just think the look of the wheel art and animated game themes showcase the art of the original Cabs so much better.

As far as I am aware the only way to achieve this on a RPI is by using Attract Mode with Hyper Pie 2 (please correct me if I'm wrong as it could save me a bunch of time!), which as you pointed out is not Hyperspin. I have been advised by the guys at Hyperpie that the Hyperspin layouts and themes can be used in Hyperpie?