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Riffman81

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Posts posted by Riffman81

    LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

    in Features

    Posted

    Just now, Jason Carr said:

    Thank you @kmoney, great to hear. Yes, you've nailed that CoverFlow issue. To fix it we'll just need to make CoverFlow loop properly, and I can do that before the official release. :)

    @Riffman81, thanks for adding that ticket. I'm thinking shelling would probably be better done by a third-party app, just because I'm afraid of the support tickets we'd get if we integrated it. "Oh noes! I can't access my computer anymores!" ;)

    Yeah, I didn't think of that. I'd imagine it would be more trouble then it's worth. As I said though, bestshell.exe seems to do the trick and I'm quite happy sticking with that.

    • Like 1

    LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

    in Features

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

    Hi @Riffman81, sadly we still need a feature to reset play counts and stuff. It's obviously accessible directly in the XML, but I imagine it'd be a royal pain to reset them all manually. Not sure if we have a ticket for that but we should definitely add one if not.

    Hi @Jason Carr I Added a ticket for this :)

    • Like 1

    LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

    in Features

    Posted

    9 hours ago, Mute64 said:

    You still want to here the way i do it? Its pretty much the " manual " way compared to the programe lordmonkus suggested.

     

    By the way @Jason Carr the new attract mode is awsome! ... ive had one crash so far when watching attract mode with VLC... and im testing now with WMP, so far no crash.

    @lordmonkus Best shell works great on Windows 10! Just set to BigBox.exe, restart and bam! Easy as cake :P I recommend it for anyone looking for a quick and easy way to boot straight into BigBox and hide Windows. @Mute64 I'd still be interested in learning to do this manually though if you wouldn't mind sharing. Simply because Windows update sometimes tends to mess with things like this and should I ever need to do it manually, I'll know how. I don't update my cab to often and for the most part, it's only connected to the net to update frontend related stuff. @Jason Carr would it be possible to have a shell feature built straight into BigBox? I'd imagine it wouldn't be to hard to implement, but I'm no programmer so what do I know :) Thanks guys, this makes my cab experience with BigBox a whole lot better!

    • Like 2

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted

    2 hours ago, kmoney said:

    I just deleted my old SNES video with the black bars and re uploaded the new one without the black bars.

    @Riffman81 I am not sure what the community thinks on this aspect as it would be a huge undertaking to get all the game videos recorded in HD but it does sound awesome. I would definitely like to get the platform videos get the HD treatmaent at least and I will be doing some more when I get some spare time. Personally hard drive space has nevered bothered me as it is not that expensive these days.

    I get that hard drives are cheap these days, was just thinking about the long term and what we're looking at in terms of space with possibly doing EVERY system. Yes, a huge undertaking and I certainly wont be doing it alone (I hope) Hell, I'd be doing videos for the next 10 years :P

    • Like 3

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted · Edited by Riffman81

    31 minutes ago, kmoney said:

    I think with all my future platform videos I am going to create them without the bezels and I will redo the Sega Genesis one without the bezel also. I have found a solution to removing the black bars also. Basically what I do is record them at 1920 x 1080P at there correct 4:3 ratio in retroarch with the shaders applied and then once I am done splicing all the videos together and happy with that I run the file through Hankbrake which is an awesome free open source tool and very easy to use.

    What I do in Handbrake is crop the black bars off and then it recodes the video so basically what you end up with is a 1440 x 1080P video because it has the black bars removed. It now has a perfect 4:3 ratio and no loss of quality at all from what I can tell. Another nice thing about this by removing the black bars is it cuts the file size down almost in half and also if someone wants to use these videos with the smaller video boxes in BB they are in a 4:3 ratio and the video box is sized correctly without the black bars or a bezel on both sides. 

    If you are like me sometimes I like to change views to sometimes fullscreen videos and sometimes other views that has the smaller video boxes and it will be nice to be able to use the same videos in all views and the aspect be correct.

    I think that it is the best option especially since @Jason Carr said he can add bezels in a theming engine later. The only issue right now is when using the fullscreen video view within BB, it is force stretching the video to fill the whole screen since I removed the black bars but he said he can come up with a solution for that.

     

    I agree @kmoney it would be better doing them this way... that way they would be universal for different views in BB. @Jason Carr scratch what I said above in my previous post. I'll do them without bezels. Now if I can just get Circo on board with doing the game video snaps in HD :P Let me ask you guys something; the file size on a complete set of, let's say SNES video snaps in HD are going to be HUGE! Well up into the 10+GB range (that's a rough estimate of course) is there enough of a demand? Is that something most of you would want to see? I guess what I'm wondering is if the average user is interested in dedicating that much HDD space to just the video snaps. What do you guys think? Do you think these classic 4:3 consoles deserve the HD treatment?

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted · Edited by Riffman81

    43 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

    @Riffman81 That is killer, looks great. All sounds awesome. The only thing we should probably think about is how best to handle the bezel situation. Since these will all be best used as background videos in Big Box, it might not look the best with the bezel on the left underneath the wheel, at least for the wheel views.

    If we record the videos without a bezel, it's easy enough to add bezels with the theming engine later, so I'm almost thinking it would be best to record them in the original aspect ratio of the game (though 1080p vertical resolution of course), without the bezel. Then with a theme we could either put a bezel on both sides, or just play the video to the right of the wheel. It would give us a lot more flexibility. Thoughts?

    We do have some options @Jason Carr:

    1.) If bezels are used in the videos, I could do them all in black/grey, like with the Sega Genesis bezel in @kmoney 's video in the first post. That way, it wouldn't clash to much with the wheel art. 

    2.) As you said, record without using a bezel and come up with a theme to accommodate overlay/bezel.

    3.) I could simply leave the left side of the bezel black, or be creative and come up with a design that wouldn't clash with the wheel. Then use the other side of the bezel for some artwork pertaining to that respected system. You could even throw in some details on that side such as a description of the system, notable games, or other info. Or simply just use some artwork with a system logo in the top right corner, and a LB logo in the bottom right corner. What do you think? I kind of like this idea, and still allows us to have true 1080p videos without any fancy cropping, etc. What are your thoughts? I'm going to work on a design tonight illustrating what I said above and post a video. This will give you an idea of what I'm going for.

     

    • Like 1

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

    Yes, we could add scanlines over top of the existing EmuMovies videos, but I'm doubtful that the quality would be anywhere near what @kmoney is producing. I'm also not sure how to add filters to VLC in Big Box at this point, but it might be worth some experimentation. That said, all of that increases the CPU time it takes to render, so I'm still thinking @kmoney's solution is the best.

    Agreed! The videos need to be recorded in HD or else the quality will suffer greatly. I think the RetroArch filters look great and capture how the games looked on our old CRT televisions back in the day. Here is a sample video snap I made using one of nosh's overlays. I'm probably going to start making platform videos first, and maybe do game snaps once I see how these turn out. @Jason Carr how would you feel about the idea of using a custom bezel with these videos using system logo, and a Launchbox logo as well... To kind of brand them to this frontend? I could get to work on designing the bezels for each platform if you'd be interested. Here's the sample snap I made earlier for NES:

     

    • Like 2

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted

    I've contacted nosh about using his RetroArch bezels/overlays I found on Git for some new platform videos I'm working on. If I like the way they turn out, I'll see if Circo will make them official on EmuMovies. Nosh has made some awesome overlays and I'm not sure if he's a member here but as I said, I have contacted him over on EmuMovies about using them. I've been using his overlays for a few years now and still haven't found a better set! I could always post the videos here as well if @kmoney would be cool with that. I don't want to go stepping on anyone's toes, but having variety is a good thing!

    • Like 2

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted · Edited by Riffman81

    So what I'm hearing right now from @circo is that the new Wii and PSP video snaps are being recorded in HD. From what I understand, the file sizes are quite large. Not sure what the plan will be going forward with the older systems but I also brought up the idea of doing something exclusive for LaunchBox/BigBox. Not sure exactly what we can come up with, but I was thinking if we had a certain theme style that no other frontend could reproduce in any way, we might be able to do something neat with the videos that would be exclusive to LB. The videos for the most part are universal and can be used with any FE out there. I know we have some Game EX Database videos and they're exclusive to that frontend, so I'm thinking along those lines. But for now, we have two new HD sets to look forward to. While we're on the subject of videos, @Jason Carr are there currently any plans to implement the option to have a startup video in BigBox for us cab users? Also, EmuMovies has a ton of old video game TV adverts archived and it would be cool if we could give the option for users to view them within the game details in BigBox, like viewing the manuals, art, etc. Could store them in the video directory under advert/system name. If you guys have any idea's for videos or something exclusive for LB, put them out there :)

    • Like 4

    1080P Platform Videos w/Shaders Project

    in Game Media

    Posted · Edited by Riffman81

    Circo has mentioned to me just recently that he's either working on 1080p videos, or wants to start soon... It came up briefly during one of our conversations. I'll send him a PM and see where he stands on this as I think it's a great idea as some of the video sets are in desperate need of an "upgrade" anyhow. If we can come together and get some sort of established guideline for proper recording/encoding for quality control (like what we have now for the current video snaps) I'd be more then happy to start working on pumping these out! I think the bezel\overlay idea is fantastic for systems that are native 4:3. For widescreen systems, (PSP, Wii, etc) I don't see the need for a bezel but we could instead place a small system logo in the lower left or right corner. If we wanted to use bezels/overlays for those systems as well, there certainly are some great ones floating around out there provided we can get permission to use them. I personally would like to see them used for the handheld systems and they add more of a "nostalgic" vibe!

     

    EDIT: I want to point out that I'm not just talking about platform videos, but general video snaps as well.

    • Like 2

    System Intro for Wii U and 3DS

    in Game Media

    Posted

    Always glad to help :) I'll post here when I'm able to put together a system intro for Wii U. As I said, the emulation is great on some games, not so great on others, so it may not be anything special but at the very least it'll be a place holder until I'm able to do better. I may experiment with recording straight from my Wii U console and see how that goes as my screen capture programs don't really play nice with CemU 

    • Like 1

    System Intro for Wii U and 3DS

    in Game Media

    Posted

    I've been working on stuff for the Wii U over at EmuMovies. The emulator is still early on in development and emulation for both of these systems can be touch and go (although emulation on CemU seems to be progressing at a faster and more stable rate then with Citra). I'll see what I can do about putting together a Wii U system video though. In the mean time, checkout the HyperSpin Cinematic project over on the HyperSpin forums. I believe you have to be a platinum member, but James Baker has done some amazing work there and I use all of his video themes in LaunchBox and he's made one for Wii U :)

    • Like 1

    Castlevania 2 - Simons Quest Revamped Game Media (PC) (Fan-Made)

    in Game Media

    Posted

    Castlevania 2 - Simons Quest Revamped Game Media (PC) (Fan-Made)

    View File

    Media Pack for Castlevania II: Simon's Quest Revamped for PC! Inside the archive you'll find:

    Box Art (2D)

    Clear Logo

    Still Snapshots (Game Play and Title)

    Standard Video Snap (MP4)

    All artwork made/modified by or compiled by Riffman81 (unless otherwise noted here). Enjoy!

     

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