CriticalCid Posted April 30, 2016 Author Share Posted April 30, 2016 @Jason mentioned in his last developer seasons video that he can be convinced by passionate requests to add new features. So I thought why not just show how awesome it could look like if one of my most anticipated features request gets implemented. Now it seems to be the perfect time to make some promotion for it as well because he also said that he wants to work on BigBox next week. Especially that he wants to add more views and my request falls kinda in the same category :) Some big feature I would really like to see in BigBox is videos for platforms + a view for 16:9 HyperSpin system themes. So we all know that BigBox doesn’t support HS themes but a pretty awesome guy named JamesBaker has a little project called “HyperSpin Cinematic Themes”. Basically he creates HS themes in 1080p with his video editing software and offers them as .mp4 video files too. So BigBox could play his themes theoretically without any problems. Today I created a little test video of how it could look like in BigBox. But first I have to admit that I know nothing about video editing so I just recorded BigBox, copied that video 3 times within my video editing software, added the theme and rearranged/resized the 3 BigBox videos until everything was in place. Because I didn’t know how to cut out specific parts of a video it has some problems with too small text and too much/little space between the different menu items. Especially the positions of the platform banner and notes aren’t optimal at all. I left the background blank because I would have broke it with my drag and drop video editing method. I also had some ideas which I wasn’t able to do in the video. For example could the problem with the too small covers for the “recent” and “favorite” games be solved if only one of the 2 would be shown and the user can switch between them by pressing up or down if he is on a game. I also got inspired by the Xbox frontend “HyperVision” which tries to bring the look and feel of HyperSpin to the original Xbox. HyperVision doesn’t support the flash themes for HyperSpin either but they solved the problem by basically just recording the themes and play them as videos. So I did the same for the normal 16:9 SNES theme and it worked really well too. With the same method we could easily bring all the game themes to BigBox as well. And now I present you my little experiment: https://youtu.be/uP6FoltqE2s Further links: James Bakers YouTube Channel (download links for his themes are in the descriptions of his videos): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxNgRrtLSth94xOHNUHqUfw HyperVision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Jn6zujFY4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney Posted April 30, 2016 Share Posted April 30, 2016 Awesome idea...I am really looking forward to the system videos and you got some really great ideas there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ALIE Posted April 30, 2016 Share Posted April 30, 2016 very cool have you opened a feature request ? i will vote for it. question do Hyperspin not have some rights on this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CriticalCid Posted April 30, 2016 Author Share Posted April 30, 2016 No. HyperSpin doesn’t have any rights to this. Most of the themes and artwork is created by their community. Especially James Baker (the creator of the PSP and NES theme I used) would love to see his project in other Front Ends. There isn’t exactly a ticket for it on BitBucket. It’s more a mix of the system video ticket and a more specific request for the additional views ticket: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/313/add-videos-for-platforms https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/336/big-box-additional-views But if Jason or Brad thinks that it would need its own ticket I can create one for it. Glad you guys like the idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 1, 2016 Share Posted May 1, 2016 Very cool @CriticalCid. That's actually genius, the concept of using videos as themes...hmm. Thanks a million for that feedback. That's probably the most genius feedback I've gotten this year. Let me ask you guys this...what if, for themes, we offered video backgrounds that could be customized per platform (or per list). Then we could allow other simple tweaks like the locations of the lists and details, etc., but it seems like it would make the incredibly daunting theming task much, much simpler. Any thoughts? I've got goosebumps, Cid. Seriously, thanks for this. Platform videos are definitely a great idea as well and planned; not sure if they'll be a focus for 6.0 yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CriticalCid Posted May 1, 2016 Author Share Posted May 1, 2016 @Jason Awesome to hear that you like the idea. Then was all the work I have put in the video well spent :) And regarding to the themes: Something similar like this was actually already requested on BitBucket https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/531/rearranging-of-big-box-elements That would be the absolute best improvement to BigBox for me. But keep in mind that most of the HyperSpin themes are in 4:3 with a resolution of 1024x768 and converting them to 16:9 is very time-consuming and they won't be in HD after that either. So I guess a forced full screen background video wouldn’t be optimal (Except for a handful of themes with different approaches like the Cinematic themes by James Baker or Retro956). It’s more predestined to be used like I did in my video -> the theme in a corner and game details, game list, cover, etc around it so that the theme won’t be stretched. And in the best case all elements could be rearranged by the user like it was suggested in the linked ticket. But the method HyperVision uses (stretched 4:3 theme to fill the whole height of the screen on the right, Logos/List on the left to get a 16:9 aspect ratio) would work really well too. Maybe the upper half of the left side could be used for the game list/logos and the lower half for game info/metadata. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CriticalCid Posted May 2, 2016 Author Share Posted May 2, 2016 Hey @Jason since you were so excited about HS Themes as videos I recorded some MAME game themes in their original resolution and 60fps for you. I hope you will find it useful to test around :) It took quite a while and a lot of testing until I figured out a good way to convert the themes to a very good quality/file size ratio. Some feedback about that would be appreciated. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_6XLOBnGwlUN3dUN2h5UWN1VUE&usp=sharing Greetings, Cid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 4, 2016 Share Posted May 4, 2016 Cool, Cid. Thanks for that. I'll be jumping on some additional view options shortly, but it will probably be a while before I'm able to jump on video backgrounds and platform videos and such. The videos look great but not sure if it's possible to record them in 1080p (or even widescreen). That'll be one challenge with using background videos, different aspect ratios. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CriticalCid Posted May 4, 2016 Author Share Posted May 4, 2016 It would be possible to record them in 1080p. But like I said is the original resolution of HyperSpin themes only 1024x768. So the themes would look stretched and sometimes pixelated. Basically it would look the same if you open the videos in full screen and stretch them to 16:9. If I would record them that way it would only lead to videos with a bigger file size and a stretched image in the wrong aspect ratio. But the result would be exactly the same in the end if you stretch the video with the player or having an already stretched video. That’s why I said that full screen video backgrounds wouldn’t probably be the best way of how to integrate the themes in BigBox and suggested some different approaches (I also don't like the stretched themes in HyperSpin itself on a 16:9 display either). Of course there are ways to convert the 4:3 themes to 16:9 with a resolution of 1366x768 but there aren’t many game themes already converted because it’s extremely time intensive. Especially if you have to deal with more momplex backgrounds. I could record all the existing widescreen game themes if you want but I’m not sure if it’s worth to integrate this feature for just a handful of games. As far as I know there’s only a complete conversion for mabye 100 to 200 games and most of the Platforms/Systems themes. EDIT: This video shows pretty good the difference between the original theme and the stretched version if HyperSpin runs in 16:9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bzZ8eEQJ-Y Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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