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Hey everyone, Yeah… it’s been a while. What was supposed to be a few quick weeks of patching turned into a full-blown overhaul of how we handle media, assets, and everything in between. Thanks for sticking with us through the chaos — let’s dive in. Media Migration & Folder Structure When you launch HyperHQ for the first time after updating, it will automatically attempt to migrate your existing media to the new structure. That said, this update is a massive shift in how media is organized and referenced. We strongly recommend starting fresh — delete your existing media and redownload it using the new system. You’ll thank yourself later. All media now lives under a unified data\Media directory, and we’ve standardized folder names across the board — Overrides for example: [system name]/Backgrounds - Game/ [system name]/Backgrounds - System/ [system name]/Boxes - 2.5D/ [system name]/Boxes - 2D/ [system name]/Boxes - 3D/ [system name]/Boxes - Back/ [system name]/Boxes - Texture/ [system name]/Game Media - 2D/ [system name]/Game Media - 3D/ There is an additional _hsm folder in the media directory. This is HyperSpin managed media and will be managed through HQ. Everything is cleaner, easier to browse, and fully compatible with future updates. ThemeBuilder Gets a Major Upgrade ThemeBuilder also got a serious glow-up. You’ll notice: More asset types supported (backgrounds, alternate wheels, overlays, marquees, and more) Media Previews right inside the editor Smarter editing tools — autosave, multi-undo, improved drag-and-drop, and faster imports Better performance with smoother playback, real-time updates, and 4K-ready scaling Building and testing your themes now feels modern, fast, and fun — exactly how it should. New timeline with live scrubbing: 2025-08-16 20-06-26.mp4 Grid system (Thanks @yaron ) 2025-08-13_10-04-26.mp4 Alignment locking: 2025-08-13_09-05-06.mp4 Handle settings: 2025-08-04_15-40-56.mp4 More grids!: 2025-08-04_20-15-16.mp4 Themebuilder now supports video previews! @rondar and @baddeolv vid-previews.mp4 HyperHQ Updates v2.0.76 – July 15, 2025 Added “Import ROMs Only” option to MAME Wizard Faster, lighter download engine Fixed blank screen and import issues v2.0.78 – August 2, 2025 Added support for systems without emulators Integrated latest MAME builds Added loading animations for reauthorization Fixed import logic issues v2.0.81 – August 11, 2025 Huge performance boost for ROM browsing Fixed Windows startup and crash issues Improved inter-process communication v2.0.82 – August 15, 2025 Added drag-and-drop system import Virtual scrolling for smoother large lists Refined ROM details layout Added UAC elevation support v2.0.84–85 – August 21, 2025 Enhanced search + new media audit tools Added EXIF metadata support Fixed Windows shortcut detection Build patch (thanks @thatman84!) v2.0.86 – August 26, 2025 Complete media page makeover with glass-morphism UI Fixed MAME game detection Fixed login and auto-auth issues Faster animations and smoother loading v2.0.89 – September 2, 2025 Added game version tracking AutoHotkey syntax highlighting Enhanced process monitoring UI cleanup and bug fixes v2.0.91 – September 25, 2025 Complete Media Folder Migration! All media now lives under data\Media New folder naming (e.g. “Boxes - 2D”, “Logos - Game”) Automatic migration with progress screen Added custom wheel positioning Faster startup + better progress tracking v2.0.93 – October 6, 2025 Smarter background authentication Safer file ops (copy → verify → delete) Faster refresh and startup Fixed label, icon, and authentication issues v2.0.94–97 – October 7, 2025 Fixed missing media and sound issues Added game music toggles in downloads Fixed plugin reinstall/visibility issues Folder naming fixes (spaces now supported when launching from HQ) HyperSpin Updates v2.0.45 – July 24, 2025 Fixed theme loading issue Refactored media playback logic Fixed wheel images not loading Updated theme player to support new features v2.0.46 – July 30, 2025 Themes now only reload when changed (no unnecessary restarts) Snappier and smoother overall performance v2.0.47 – August 11, 2025 Fixed race conditions when scrolling quickly through the wheel Refactored animation service for smoother wheel behavior Enhanced MAME and emulator detection Added hidden theme layers + improved attract mode Expanded plugin event hooks Optimized memory and animation cleanup v2.0.48 – September 26, 2025 Introduced Dynamic Wheel System (curved, straight, horizontal, vertical) New Display Settings menu + advanced aspect ratio controls Fixed animation and stability issues Visual polish: grayscale filters, Z-index fixes, smoother transitions General performance cleanup v2.0.49 – October 6, 2025 Enhanced CRT and retro display effects Integrated theme background layering Fixed animation, attract mode, and pointer behavior Added metadata support for new media types Core API and performance updates v2.0.50–51 – October 7, 2025 Fixed wheel sound and startup music issues HyperTheme & ThemeBuilder Updates This is where the biggest creative changes happened. ThemeBuilder has become faster, smarter, and more capable than ever — a real evolution for anyone building themes. July–August 2025 Added Pinball FX as a new supported system Smoother flipbook playback (and fixed reversed animations) Added pivot points, rotation, and easing-based animation curves Grid alignment and aspect ratio scaling improvements Live property updates (real-time sprite transform editing) Zoom controls, axis locking, and full SVG rendering at 4K One-click screenshot capture Added new “Background” metadata type Major UI/UX performance boost and cleanup Fall 2025 Enhancements More Asset Types Supported: alternate wheels, marquees, dynamic overlays, background layers HQ Media Previews — now live inside ThemeBuilder and HQ (watermarked 480p streaming for speed and safety) Faster Imports — up to 10× improvement on large sets Import Stats & Audit Tools — instant feedback and collapsible reports Improved Drag-and-Drop Media Management Autosave + Multi-Undo System — safer, smarter editing Lightweight Project Format — faster loads and smaller project files Content & Media Updates Huge thanks to @Circo and the EmuMovies crew for all the work behind the scenes. Here’s just a glimpse of what’s been refreshed: MAME HD Video Snaps – full set redone Xbox 360 – 1,144 new retail videos Atari 5200 – 74 new videos added Thanks again to everyone who’s tested, broken, and rebuilt things alongside us. The cache bugs, the folder debates, the sleepless nights — it all led to this point. The foundation we’ve built now will carry HyperSpin into its next era. You’ve all been patient, hilarious, and brutally honest — exactly what we needed. — fr0stbyt3 & The HyperSpin Team

Update:

After Dark This theme was a huge pain in the butt, but the end result looks pretty cool. I used the flipbook feature in HyperTheme (HT) to take individual images and create an animation. With traditional game sprites this would be a relatively simple operation, but - since I'm a glutton for punishment - I took in-game snapshots of the opening video sequence as the werewolf was running. This gave me 17 images like this to cut and clean up: I used "remove background" in Photoshop to get started. Then I cleaned up each image and filled in gaps as necessary. I centered each image on the canvas and saved them as transparent png's in numerical order. This gave me this: werewolf frames.mp4 To get a smooth animation loop for the ground layer, I created two horizontal rock surfaces from the screenshots and used tiling to scroll the images in the theme. The foreground image is blurred and scrolls faster for added depth. And the backdrop of the animation is an oversized moon background that moves slowly to the right. And the final result:

ok one more... gradient on this was hell to replicate... not 100 but close

here we go again... same rules as before... only usa and liberties will be taken... also i may do some japanese ones just not a priority and these take time so am aiming for usa ones. all games will be done... including homebrew and unlicense ones like the double dragon one here

Starting a thread to let you know what I am currently working on mostly game themes for the new Beta hs2

Wacky Races Fun theme featuring Muttley laughing animation. I redrew the character and split up the pieces so I could stack them and animate them.

Arctic Thunder & Ultimate Arctic Thunder I redrew the logo in parts so I could animate them separately: I isolated the snow so I could make it an animation layer that looked like the snow was moving. The vid below isn't quite the final, but it was pretty close. Arctic-Thunder-Preview.mp4 For the Ultimate version, I just recolored it based on the title screen coloring.

Wartran Troopers I wanted to use the mech/tank thing from this flyer (because it was the clearest image I found), but the leg was covered. I tried AI first, but it did weird things... I ended up copying the right leg and distorting the dimensions to match the approximate perspective. To give a little movement to the theme, I chopped off the left arm (filled in the gap mostly by cloning) and created a little blast pattern by painting overlapping red, orange and yellow blotches. I added a little blur and then overlapped a motion blur layer. Voila! Finished product: wartran troopers.mp4

slow times

I agree. I think by saying "there is no use because...it would be a lot of work to update xyz"...that you're already deciding for someone else. There are many that don't agree with the direction that HS2 is going and has frankly killed the spirit of what this community was. I have only been paying a bit more attention to HS2 again because I have hit performance roadblocks with Launchbox and there are frankly many annoyances with Launchbox that I just cannot look past and they are ALSO refusing/incapable of fixing or are starting to implement paywalls for things. HS2 is incredibly underdeveloped...and removes the control of individual assets to more of a hivemind type ideology. I'm sure it's great if you're on the control side of the fence, but If i just wish to remain an occasional contributor and build my own system and have it work the way i want it to, this is more of a raping and pillaging of an already established community that was never prepared for such a thing. I'm caught in the middle of both of these enhanced platform and have frankly ended up with a mess, to the point where i can't game or use either platform at all.... I'm deep into converting from HS1 to launchbox and the way it wants to do things and HS2 is under developed and ALSO working in ways that do not facilitate a place for an individual to make their own setup. The direction of this seems to be wanting to just streamline incompleteness. It only seems logical that if there is a group of people that want to take HS2 in a different direction and it's not what a lot of people in the existing community want, then HS1 should be allowed to be reverse engineered so that the community can successfully split from here, because it already isn't what a lot of people want. Many have turned to these communities to satisfy some void that can't be fulfilled in their day-to-day job it seems that the current drivers are just capitalizing on that which violates the very thing that most people are trying to get away from. This was an escape, and now the current drivers have turned it into the same prison that already existed in our day-to-day lives. It starts with the cold hard fact that none of ya'll holding the keys aren't listening when people are telling you 'HEY THIS IS NOT A GOOD DIRECTION, YA MISSED SOME SHIT' A few big ones is not making HS2 100% portable and enforcing a cache file to exist in the app data folder. another one, renaming of artwork assets into a incoherint database entry instead of leaving the file name as-is and focusing on complete packs based on region....launchbox kinda screws the pooch on this as well because they seem to think that NES and famicom are the same thing....they are not. Or Nintendo Game & Watch and Tiger electronics are the same thing...they are not. It's those little nuances that seem to start the destruction of both of these platforms.

And not only was his artwork amazing - he was so fricken fast too! These logos have still been quite impressive though. So don’t discredit yourself. (We could use some of this talent building themes for HS2…)

Update: The test build is getting better but not yet ready for public beta testing. They are patching the bugs that the dev team have been reporting, which take time, but they have been working at a fast pace and are going through the patches daily with New updated versions. However the new features are super awesome and media is being linked in by the truckloads! While still not 100% on every category, you can get stoked for new additions that weren't present in previous versions. I have been working on the teknoparrot Media as well as adding the missing games that are supported by the emulator, into the hyperlist so they are recognized as you add them to your HQ, it's a slow process but I'm making sure that I am adding all the metadata for each game correctly, but that means I have to manually Google each game one by one. I'm also grabbing the correct arcade flyer and background images that I am finding as I search for information in able to turn over to the project leads so they can link and store on the server for syncing support. All the while staying updated on high def wheel logos and creating a theme or two here and there that our resident artwork wizard @rondar is fine tuning and animating for all of us to enjoy. That is all I have for you guys for the day but I will check back again in a few days. -baddie

They’re working through some kinks right now that we found in initial testing.

Adding this to the sync tomorrow

been sick and in the hospital.. so the kof2003 got finally finished lol while at the hospital i finished the very first one i started with for neo geo lol... it was such a pain that i set to the side for laters... and what better time while at the fun hospital lol... anyways theres a pretty good one out there but is not perfect and i do me.. no plagearism policy lol.. liberties where taken as always but here more than most? cant tell for sure tho xD

Namco System 357 Default System Theme Theme by: Unknown Preview Description Namco System 357 Default System Theme by baddeolv Details Type: System Theme System: Namco System 357 Tags: Namco System 357,System Theme Created: Nov 01, 2025 Download View on HyperTheme Credits baddeolv (Artist)

choices lol

Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5DX Plus Pretty simple theme this time. Just upscaled the art and made a custom video frame to match the coloring of the logo.

small fix on the R oops

Here's a quick video. add-metadata-images.mp4

Its _hsm I dont think you're supposed to know what is what... which is the whole point of having automatic downloads as theyre trying to unify a standardized set of media as per a set of wheels for everybody. In a way... you shouldnt really be tampering with this... and they've made it as complicated as possible to deter people from messing with it. However with that said... the media as is.... is breaking the entire setup. So if you're going to implement something like this... make sure you verify exactly what people are downloading. Because right now.... its a mess... (As mentioned... I removed the folders after looking in them that I didnt want to use... and my entire setup started working again... there's definitely some media in there thats breaking the display system and freezing everything up) For instance... I downloaded hucards in one of the folders I deleted.... I didnt setup any of the NEC systems... why am i downloading hucards? I like a lot of the main system themes, game themes look killer... I like a lot of main wheel logos as they're nicely displayed with super HD resolutions.... And maybe some of the game logos. System themes will be essential... Pointers too.. What is that... 6 things... Concentrate on these... its going to be the core of whats needed to create something great. Everything else is junk... I dont need the videos although some people will def utilize them however getting them to match with their rom sets is gonna be a problem... the only standardized ones are probably mame, atari 2600 and a few others.. ... (Mame themes are nice though), I dont need spines, no manuals, no cabinet images, no pdfs... ... I dont need game box backs... I dont need 3 or 4 sets of snaps in different resolutions... especially when theyre displayed in a smaller box. I dont need game music etc... Its all extra bandwidth for zero benefit... media that nobody is gonna use in the building of their themes. This isnt launchbox. 2D Boxes/3D Boxes/Marquees/Bezels/Carts and CDs will also be useful... but worry about that later... get everything else working first... Like leave the folders open in overrides... but remove all media for the time being and reintroduce these sets later once theres an official public release.

Mortal Kombat - mk (WIP) Still needs a little bit of work and some redrawing and composition

just read the last line....you sumbitch, i cant even argue with you. however i was over the triple digits on creating theme layouts and was losing steam lol

Don't you worry. Vector mask was applied after the wand tool and final edges were plenty clean. (And this was blotches, not like the clean lines of an anime character for example)

hmm...An old dude once told me that the magic wand tool should never be used for cutting out artwork because of the self named "jaggies" it produces. He also made a point to give examples, side by side, and zoomed, to show me the undeniable difference in quality achieved by using the pen tool to cut razor sharp, clean edges. He's probably in the old folks home now though because this happened about 10 years ago and he was an old dude then already. Plus he was already a little blue in the face... I think i have a picture from my last visit actually

Crazy Speed Arcade Simple theme created by cleaning up and modifying in-game screenshots. The background overlay and video make nice use of the reveal shaders. Crazy Speed Arcade-revised.mp4 One of the most challenging parts was cleaning up the title with the tire tracks and all the other markings. The previous transparent logo was far from clear. I started by maxing out the contrast and brightness of a title screenshot. Then I selected the black sections with the magic wand tool, right-clicked and chose "Make Work Path". Then I could use that path to create a vector mask and modify that path to my liking. (There were a ton of other steps to make it what you see now, but that was the start.)

Storm Rider.mp4