Hyperspin 16:9 Artwork and Themes (Converted from 4:3)

[BakerMan]

Great work Bakerman!

I already converted all the Daphne themes to widescreen, Check them out before wasting time redoing them (they are in my FTP folder).

We should all have a common place to upload converted themes so we don't overlap, a folder on the FTP or maybe a Dropbox or something like that.

Well, the Flash scripts I have will make it easy to convert the regular artwork in no time, but remember brother... The Backgrounds in your themes needed to be converted. That Space Ace theme I just posted is "completely" converted. Please don't think of me as an a-hole.

Plus, I've come up with some basic principles to follow by in order to be fully satisfied with what I'm doing.

*Every piece of artwork within a theme must be converted to 16:9, including the backgrounds.

*Every piece of artwork is smoothed and converted to SWF.

*If the theme permits, I resize any video frames to fit a 640x480 video. example: if you look back at the NES main menu theme I did, you'll see that the video frame is much larger than the original. It's to properly fit and display the video's dimensions. I am also trying to do the same with games that have a longer screen.

[BakerMan]

add all these converted themes to your ftp folder bakerman ill gladly use them

Have you been able to try any of the themes yet?

I've uploaded quite a bit.

[BakerMan]

Lovin' every second of this...

Hyperspin 720 Widescreen Game Theme (Atari Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin All Points Bulletin Widescreen Game Theme (Atari Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Earthbound Widescreen Game Theme (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

And this next one is the underdog of all themes. Pretty fuckin awesome in my book...

Hyperspin Weaponlord Widescreen Game Theme (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)

In case if you haven't noticed yet; Everything I post from here on out "has been" and "will continue," to be uploaded to my FTP.

[relic]

k thx baker man and yeah ive tried a few looks nice and sharp

[BakerMan]

Hyperspin Area 51 Widescreen Game Theme (Atari Classics (MAME))

[zillion23]

I was reading in your first post that you had resized some boxart for 16:9 and was wondering if you had any advice or pointers as the best way to to this as I was looking to convert all my boxart to a 16:9 format since it currently looks so stretched out?

[SIMPLYAUSTIN]

I am currently making my way through every system to not only resize my box art, but to make sure it matches a widescreen theme and is resized to 16:9. This is also done for cart art and wheels too.

All this is being released in my vids if your interested

[BakerMan]

I was reading in your first post that you had resized some boxart for 16:9 and was wondering if you had any advice or pointers as the best way to to this as I was looking to convert all my boxart to a 16:9 format since it currently looks so stretched out?

Well, the brains of the operation is Dark13, seeming I use his actionscripts with adobe flash.

You'll find download links to his scripts under his username. They are intended to be used in flash. You open the script in adobe flash and point it to the your boxart directory. From there it automatically converts everything to 16:9 and converts all .png's to swf's. SWF's attempt to smooth every image, givin it a more polished look.

Look up Dark13's scripts and I'll help you from there.

[BakerMan]

Hyperspin 19XX - The War Against Destiny Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin Black Tiger Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin Burgertime Widescreen Game Theme (Data East Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Cliff Hanger - Edward Randy Widescreen Game Theme (Data East Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Super Street Fighter II - The New Challengers Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin Us vs Them Widescreen Game Theme (Daphne)

The Street Fighter one was another one done by Bad Boy Bill. In fact, I think he did all of the Street Fighter Theme set. That particular one up above was VERY tedious. The background.swf animation consisted of A LOT of bricks. They all had to be resized and "moved" to their proper positioning within Flash. Very tedious, but I nailed it.

You guys have to admit that these widescreen themes are well, excuse my French, but pretty fucking awesome.

[BakerMan]

Let's keep things going....

Hyperspin Mortal Kombat Widescreen Game Theme (Midway Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Mortal Kombat 3 Widescreen Game Theme (Midway Classics (MAME))

[zillion23]

I am currently making my way through every system to not only resize my box art, but to make sure it matches a widescreen theme and is resized to 16:9. This is also done for cart art and wheels too.

All this is being released in my vids if your interested

Sounds very cool...I will def look forward to that,Thanks!

[zillion23]

Well, the brains of the operation is Dark13, seeming I use his actionscripts with adobe flash.

You'll find download links to his scripts under his username. They are intended to be used in flash. You open the script in adobe flash and point it to the your boxart directory. From there it automatically converts everything to 16:9 and converts all .png's to swf's. SWF's attempt to smooth every image, givin it a more polished look.

Look up Dark13's scripts and I'll help you from there.

Thanks for letting me know,I will check out his scripts!

[BakerMan]

Hyperspin Dig Dug Widescreen Game Theme (Namco Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Dig Dug II Widescreen Game Theme (Namco Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Kung Fu Widescreen Game Theme (Nintendo Arcade Systems (MAME))

Hyperspin Midway Classics Widescreen Main Menu Theme (Midway Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Namco Classics Widescreen Main Menu Theme (Namco Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Resident Evil Widescreen Game Theme (Sony Playstation)

Hyperspin S.P.Y. - Special Project Y Widescreen Game Theme (Konami Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Time Crisis Widescreen Game Theme (Namco Classics (MAME))

[BakerMan]

Hyperspin Astron Belt Widescreen Game Theme (Daphne) ... Cant remember if I showed this 1 already. Too lazy to go back and look. Either way it wasn't uploaded to my FTP yet, but now it is...

Hyperspin Bega's Battle Widescreen Game Theme (Daphne)

Hyperspin Esh's Aurunmilla Widescreen Game Theme (Daphne)

And 1 of the things I love most about converting these themes to widescreen - A lot of them has artwork that hangs off the screen. Extending the canvas allows some of this artwork to be seen. This next 1 use to have Link and Mario hanging off the screen, now you see both of them completely.

Hyperspin Nintendo Game Boy Advance Widescreen Main Menu Theme (Nintendo Game Boy Advance)

[SIMPLYAUSTIN]

Great work.... Love the MAME stuff and main themes

[BakerMan]

I've had the day off today, so I've been trying to deal with the more difficult themes.

For some reason I've had a bad time coming up with something satisfactory for the Game Boy...

Until now...

I finally got something that I know I'm gonna use for my widescreen setup.

Hopefully all of you will to... It's all around a great theme...

BAM!!!

Hyperspin Nintendo Game Boy Widescreen Main Menu Theme (Nintendo Game Boy)

I've also had a hard time deciding on anything for MAME. Mainly because I've dwindled a lot of it down. In the end I will still have a MAME category, so I might as well and try to come up with something ... right?

"Just remember to keep it simple and it'll come to me..."

Here we go...

BADA BING BADA BOOM!!

Hyperspin MAME Widescreen Main Menu Theme (MAME)

I'm eventually gonna remake the MAME intro vid. Seeming none of the games featured in that video are in my MAME category anymore.

And here's another 1 that didn't give me too much to work with, but in the end. I really like this 1.

Hyperspin Sega Classics Main Menu Theme (Sega Classics (MAME))

[BakerMan]

Oh yeah baby...

It continues...

Hyperspin 1941 - Counter Attack Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin 1942 Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin Avengers Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

Hyperspin Caveman Ninja Game Theme (Data East Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Karate Champ Widescreen Game Theme (Data East Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Psycho-Nics Oscar Widescreen Game Theme (Data East Classics (MAME))

Hyperspin Three Wonders Widescreen Game Theme (Capcom Play System (MAME))

These themes shall and will continue to keep rolling in...

Until Next Time...

[Blackened15]

Click on any system you have setup within hyperspin and under the wheel tab you will see a couple of boxes with numbers in it. The top 1 is for setting the width of your selected wheel art. The bottom 1 is for how big you want all of the other artwork to be. I recommend setting it all to these dimensions...

For example. I like to use wheel templates because they all have the same width and height. Most wheels created with Auto Kustom are 400x175 or 400x150. If I convert a set of 400x175's to 16:9, then they become 296x175. I set the top box in HyperHQ to 296 and the bottom box to 175.

Trust me, this little adjustment worked wonders on my setup. Scrolling through games has become a breeze and extremely seamless. Lovin' it.

I'm wondering how you end up with a 296 pixel width for 16x9 converted wheel, are you just squashing them down without resizing the canvas afterward? Also you said that you set the bottom box to 175 which is for the unselected wheel, its it just a coincidence it happens to be the same size as the wheel height? If not, what is the relation here?

Also, you said you use wheel templates so your wheels all have the same width and height, but I personally like the default minted set with just the game logo, but these vary in height a lot. Would just resizing the canvas of those to a common size provide the same effect as using a template?

Edit: And after rethinking this a bit, I still dont get the 296 pixel. If you just squashed a 400 pixel picture into a format that will look proper when stretched to 16x9, shouldn't the size be 300? (16x9 is 1/3 wider then 4/3 so essentially 16x9's width is 4/3 of the regular image, thus should be squashed down to 3/4, so 400 x 3 divided by 4 = 300 ) Maybe my math is wrong, I had to think hard to come to that, lol.... Obviously in this case, its only a difference of 4 pixel and doesn't really matter. I'm just wondering if you used a different formula or maybe mine is wrong.

And if my math isn't wrong, for modifying a whole bunch of art like you showed in your first tutorial (Which I thank you for, otherwise I wouldn't even have attempted to modify stuff to 16x9), instead of increasing canvas size and then resizing the image, wouldn't a resize of 75% on width do the same, without the need of making the canvas much bigger (in some case) then the original image?

And I can't wait till you upload more of your stuff on the ftp, while I am resizing static images for myself (wheel, letters, box, pointer etc...), theme are another beast that I don't think I have the patience for

[BakerMan]

I'm wondering how you end up with a 296 pixel width for 16x9 converted wheel, are you just squashing them down without resizing the canvas afterward? Also you said that you set the bottom box to 175 which is for the unselected wheel, its it just a coincidence it happens to be the same size as the wheel height? If not, what is the relation here?

Also, you said you use wheel templates so your wheels all have the same width and height, but I personally like the default minted set with just the game logo, but these vary in height a lot. Would just resizing the canvas of those to a common size provide the same effect as using a template?

Yes, the wheel is placed on a 16:9 canvas and squashed to 1024x768. Afterwards I trim the remaining pixels.

And no it's not coincidental that I set the bottom to 175. I know it sounds weird, but give it a try. You'll notice more fluency with your wheel.

I tried many ways to use the default minted wheel sets, but to no avail. No you can not set the Default sets to a common resolution without experiencing some sort of lag, but then again a fast graphics card and upgraded ram might fix that. I'm giving tips based off of a little better than average computer. I dont have a high end graphics card and my setup works great.

Hope I answered your questions good enough.

[Blackened15]

I just edited a whole bunch of stuff in my last post, while you posted this. In case you miss it

edit: Guess the 4 pixel difference is from you trimming them (hopefully not manually... god that's a lot of work)

And if using template does make a big difference in lag, then I guess transparency is the culprit, since transparency is minimal in "templated" wheels compared to default ones

[BakerMan]

I'm wondering how you end up with a 296 pixel width for 16x9 converted wheel, are you just squashing them down without resizing the canvas afterward? Also you said that you set the bottom box to 175 which is for the unselected wheel, its it just a coincidence it happens to be the same size as the wheel height? If not, what is the relation here?

Also, you said you use wheel templates so your wheels all have the same width and height, but I personally like the default minted set with just the game logo, but these vary in height a lot. Would just resizing the canvas of those to a common size provide the same effect as using a template?

Edit: And after rethinking this a bit, I still dont get the 296 pixel. If you just squashed a 400 pixel picture into a format that will look proper when stretched to 16x9, shouldn't the size be 300? (16x9 is 1/3 wider then 4/3 so essentially 16x9's width is 4/3 of the regular image, thus should be squashed down to 3/4, so 400 x 3 divided by 4 = 300 ) Maybe my math is wrong, I had to think hard to come to that, lol.... Obviously in this case, its only a difference of 4 pixel and doesn't really matter. I'm just wondering if you used a different formula or maybe mine is wrong.

And if my math isn't wrong, for modifying a whole bunch of art like you showed in your first tutorial (Which I thank you for, otherwise I wouldn't even have attempted to modify stuff to 16x9), instead of increasing canvas size and then resizing the image, wouldn't a resize of 75% on width do the same, without the need of making the canvas much bigger (in some case) then the original image?

And I can't wait till you upload more of your stuff on the ftp, while I am resizing static images for myself (wheel, letters, box, pointer etc...), theme are another beast that I don't think I have the patience for

Yes, dont worry. Your math is correct. The initial wheel size of 400x175 with the little bit of pixels cut off is 394x171. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

You are also correct about using 75% for the width. That's actually how I've been doing it for sometime now. Also remember, I use automated scripts in flash and photoshop that does everything for me. I just point them to a folder and BAM... It converts everything within that folder in just a couple of minutes.

Yeah, I've dealt with converting these themes so much to the point that I'm cranking them out like a machine. It's a difficult task, but like I said... It's gotten to a point to where it's basically no problem for me.

Also, tonight I will be showing a list of themes I messed up on. Nothing to be alarmed about, but some of my video resolutions are wrong. Your typical video resolution from emumovies is 640x480. So I set the xml to 480x480. (Squashed ratio) Since that is the common res to use, I accidentally put in 480 for the height on your longer screen games. 1941 for example: Is 480x640. (The other way around) So the squashed resolution should be 360x640. I accidentally put in 360x480 producing a shorter screen. If you go back and look you should be able to spot what I'm talking about. Not a big deal, but will be changed and updated tonight. Goin to work in a bit.

Thanks for the encouragement and NEVER hesitate to ask more questions.

Seriously dude, this project has been a breath of fresh air and am loving it to da max. lol

[Rick74]

I'd like to see all the system themes converted... Great job, BTW...

[Blackened15]

Guess I just learned something again, don't resize Disc picture if you intend on using a Spin animation on them, they will look like an egg rotating. Using regular picture still don't look perfectly right, but much better then an egg. Is there any solution to this that you know about?

And just for talking... One thing I dont like about this process is the fact that by squashing picture to have it re-stretch (instead of having inherent 16x9 support) is that we effectively lose 1/4 of the picture's quality, which is somewhat going against what we're trying to achieve.

[BakerMan]

Guess I just learned something again, don't resize Disc picture if you intend on using a Spin animation on them, they will look like an egg rotating. Using regular picture still don't look perfectly right, but much better then an egg. Is there any solution to this that you know about?

And just for talking... One thing I dont like about this process is the fact that by squashing picture to have it re-stretch (instead of having inherent 16x9 support) is that we effectively lose 1/4 of the picture's quality, which is somewhat going against what we're trying to achieve.

Check out Dark13's tutorials and threads about "png's to swf."

Swf's are regular pics processed through Adobe Flash. Basically they make all of your images shine. It's an unbelievably awesome process and changes the sheer dynamics of all your artwork. It really is that cool. I've converted all of my box art, cart art, and themes to swf. Seriously amazing. In fact, the images are better than the originals. Even after they've been compressed for widescreen.

[BakerMan]

Okay, here's some corrected themes. I'm not done yet, but I've already overwritten the files on my FTP, so if you've tried out these themes please redownload them from my FTP.

CORRECTED THEMES

Remember, I had to correct the video dimensions within these themes. Hopefully you guys like these better.