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Help with Theme for my Arcade build


pezley

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Hey all, just wrapping up my Arcade build and need a theme built if anyone can help. Hopefully it's not a difficult one, just placement of a video and an image.

The scanlines, CRT shape, glow . Along with the Marquee reflection and glow are built into the PNG of the cabinet so the marquee image and Video placement should just sit behind them (if im understanding correctly)

If anyone can help with this it would be great ! I need it in 4:3 (640x480) but making a 1080P version is also nice if anyone else on the forums wants it

Screenshot of mock up attached

 

 

Capture.PNG

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13 hours ago, Grila said:

I'd be willing to help. I assume by your mock up that you have the artwork assets already made so it would only take a short time to complete.

Thank you!

The arcade cabinet in the file is a PNG so just placement of the video/screenshot and marquee behind it would be perfect. Video would be ideal behind the screen but a screenshot is also fine depending on the work for it to have video there. 

arcade for LB project.rar

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Are all your marquees the same size? If not, do you want the image to stretch to fill the area or keep aspect?

Also, weekends are pretty hectic around here with my kids so I probably won't be able to do it until Monday when I'm back in the office. 

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Just now, Grila said:

Are all your marquees the same size? If not, do you want the image to stretch to fill the area or keep aspect?

Also, weekends are pretty hectic around here with my kids so I probably won't be able to do it until Monday when I'm back in the office. 

Ill be making all the marquees/videos the same size so it's nice and uniform. This isn't for 20,000,000 games like most all in ones have, it's just a select few so wont be too bad :)

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Got it all laid out, should only take me a few minutes on Monday to code it.

Couple of notes for you:

  • I don't have a monitor that goes down to 640x480 so I'll build it and test it at 800x600. It should scale down with no problems.
  • the cabinet artwork was pretty hi rez, but it lost a lot of detail scaling down that much. Most notably the scanlines and shadows on the screen.

capture.thumb.png.8285f16543219d4513eefa0c40d2ed39.png

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On 1/6/2018 at 11:38 PM, Grila said:

Got it all laid out, should only take me a few minutes on Monday to code it.

Couple of notes for you:

  • I don't have a monitor that goes down to 640x480 so I'll build it and test it at 800x600. It should scale down with no problems.
  • the cabinet artwork was pretty hi rez, but it lost a lot of detail scaling down that much. Most notably the scanlines and shadows on the screen.

capture.thumb.png.8285f16543219d4513eefa0c40d2ed39.png

 

Thats really awesome, I'm happy for it to lose detail, it will lose most of it in the transition to CRT anyway.

One thing, when running on the CRT for some reason I get a lot more games on the left selection then running it at 1080p ( see photo attached.) any way to reduce this ? it makes the clear logos difficult to read

 

20180108_153630.jpg

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3 minutes ago, pezley said:

 

Thats really awesome, I'm happy for it to lose detail, it will lose most of it in the transition to CRT anyway.

One thing, when running on the CRT for some reason I get a lot more games on the left selection then running it at 1080p ( see photo attached.) any way to reduce this ? it makes the clear logos difficult to read

 

20180108_153630.jpg

Yes. I'm almost done with the theme so you can test it out and I can make changes accordingly.

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OK, here it is to test out. Let me know if you want/need anything changed. I know you probably won't use the platform screen, but I made it anyway. Also, if you want the text-list game view also just let me know. Hope I did your idea justice :) 

Notes:

  • marquee dimensions = 365px X 98px, so when you are creating them use multiples of those dimensions to avoid stretching
  • video dimensions = 320x240

Video

Screenshots

platform.thumb.png.322bb67275319b740b02b07427aa7b11.pnggame.thumb.png.e421beac90b424c6f0aea1c71f3164e9.pngFile

Pezley.zip

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6 hours ago, Grila said:

OK, here it is to test out. Let me know if you want/need anything changed. I know you probably won't use the platform screen, but I made it anyway. Also, if you want the text-list game view also just let me know. Hope I did your idea justice :) 

Notes:

  • marquee dimensions = 365px X 98px, so when you are creating them use multiples of those dimensions to avoid stretching
  • video dimensions = 320x240

Video

Screenshots

platform.thumb.png.322bb67275319b740b02b07427aa7b11.pnggame.thumb.png.e421beac90b424c6f0aea1c71f3164e9.pngFile

Pezley.zip

Absolutely brilliant work. Thank you. Will get a chance to pop it on the cabinet over the next couple of days. Can't wait !! Reeally appreciate everything 

 

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Someday maybe there will be nice high res photographs of the actual arcade cabinet front view. Now that would really complete the look.  Its always ircked me a bit how the arcade stuff always has to use fake looking cab assets that are the same for every game. At least this has marquees though. I like this look a lot.  If you teamed a real cab overlay for the gameplay vid with the realistic bezels for mame, oh man what a nice combo that would be.

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Great work! @Grila

Would it please be possible to do a 16:9 1080p version of this?

I think this concept has loads of potential. I have been considering commissioning (paying for out of my own pocket)  some of the designers that I work with, so they could create different backdrops for each platform, backdrops that recreate the atmosphere and nostalgia of each platform.

Taking this as inspiration

16_bit_memories_by_intercepto-d2znzre.jp

 

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14 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

Someday maybe there will be nice high res photographs of the actual arcade cabinet front view. Now that would really complete the look.  Its always ircked me a bit how the arcade stuff always has to use fake looking cab assets that are the same for every game. At least this has marquees though. I like this look a lot.  If you teamed a real cab overlay for the gameplay vid with the realistic bezels for mame, oh man what a nice combo that would be.

Hey, I did think about this but I'm not sure if launchbox can have a different theme per game as that is what you would need. Marquee, monitor & CPO sizes change per game. if you had a limited selection of games ( I only want 4 games on my cab ) You could do it by having generic cabs. For instance, Midway cabs (Mortal Kombats, NBA's, Wrestlemania etc) Nintendo Cabs (Donkey Kong, Mario etc) and a more generic cabs like the viewlix and Dynamo's you could do it quite easily around 5 or so common cabinets and that would cover a huge amount of games. 

Another problem is a lot of artwork was scanned years ago and truthfully looks terrible, running on a low res monitor would look OK but on a 1080p / 4K display would stand out terribly. 

I'm actually just starting up an arcade artwork reproduction business so know my way around cabinets and artwork if you wanted someone to work with in achieving this, you certainly aren't the only one thinking it would be better though !

 

 

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For arcade stuff, in particular Hyperspin front ends, does it really annoy any one else when they use the wrong art assets ? like it spins a street fighter 2 logo into place followed by a pic of chun li but chun li from Street Fighter III..... that drives me insane and always puts me off 1,000,000 games in one because it looks like no love was put in. Effort sure but not love.

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It would be the gameplay video sort of like vikings video where it is baked into the Television with super nintendo in front of it.  So I think you could do it for each game's cabinet if the gameplay video was baked into that high res shot.  Certainly an undertaking, but ever since I found the realistic arcade bezels that john merrit and orion's angel has put out i've been wanting better representation.  That sort of "upped the game" so to speak.

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On 1/8/2018 at 4:18 PM, Grila said:

OK, here it is to test out. Let me know if you want/need anything changed. I know you probably won't use the platform screen, but I made it anyway. Also, if you want the text-list game view also just let me know. Hope I did your idea justice :) 

Notes:

  • marquee dimensions = 365px X 98px, so when you are creating them use multiples of those dimensions to avoid stretching
  • video dimensions = 320x240

Video

Screenshots

platform.thumb.png.322bb67275319b740b02b07427aa7b11.pnggame.thumb.png.e421beac90b424c6f0aea1c71f3164e9.pngFile

Pezley.zip

Hey, just tried to drop it onto my launchbox, loaded the theme and it looks identical to the default theme ? Am I going mental or doing something wrong ?

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