In deed you did give me a beta to work with, and it hasnt been distributed. I was busy elsewhere so ive only just got round to working with it. Its my workhorse at the minute. The WIP 2 skin for both MednafenX and NeoGenesis have had a major overhaul and are more the better for it. Wait till WIP 3 before you test it out. As far as videos and artwork are concerned im plodding along, down to E in my rom list. Have to sideline them for a few days as im back working on the skins as ive lost a few days working out the best method for encoding the videos and then cracking on (still not 100% happy). Anyway im plodding along and will have something for you soon.

Videos look Great Cbagy
2 things:

Does DarXride - 32x look more pixelated than it should be...? or is it just me...?

And... I really think 4 seconds would do as a better standard than 3 for the title shot.

looks good... these Vids will be much better AND much larger than the current collection.
Thanks

yes MM the 32x was a pixelated piece of S***. I was wounded when i bought one. Agree about the title not being long enough, 3 seconds is too short in real time. Thats what im not 100 % happy about. Will have another look at some of the ealier conversions. Has anyone tried these on xbox with a SD resoloution ?

Cool, Thanks
For SDtv's and the sizes on the emus, they are more than good...

Does this stuff really look bad or move around on an SD compared to an HD?

I've never used an HD cable but anything that has been put out, whether HD or SD has always looked fine on my TV (clarity wise, and as far as positioning goes). My TV is either 480 or 720 (i or p). I never bothered checking. It just looks good.

Without a HD cable of any sort all your getting on your TV is SD 480, regardless of TV type, as far as moving around goes ... youve lost me. Can you elaborate.

Here's four 'SQ' Genesis vids I've redone. I prefer them original size 320x224, which means there's no black borders.
Skinner can stretch them to 2x if he/she want. I'm not replacing Cbagy's HQ stuff, which indeed is impressive encoding! aLL gooD.

I just prefer them same size/style than screenshot is (no black borders in screenshot).

So if you are someday reuploading Genesis 'SQ' videos, could you Mega Man take a look?
I can make more of them if you need.

EDIT: Forgive that Lethal Enforcers 2 video. Just noticed that it's rare 256x224 game, so the original video is correct with borders, my isn't

Looks like our Genesis buffs are coming out... Gilles loves Genesis, right?
I'll look at them frank... but currently I don't have a 7z extractor...
any help?
Thanks

Here.

VLC media player snaps:

Before:


Now:

Wow
videos looks excellent frank... perfect... please make more if you like...
Maybe you can coordinate with cbagy so you don't over lap each others work.
Thanks man

Your videos look way better guys... but...
NOTE: this will significantly increase the size of the Xtras pack.
these will be 10mb (xmv) average... most now are only 3 to 5mb average.
I am fine with it.

Its not a Genesis, mines a MegaDrive in the emulator.

Im actually starting again, reducing bitrates thus lowering file size. Not by much. Try to get HQ for under 8mb. Also dealing with the end credits better.
I did initially try @ 320 x 240 but found only a 5 - 10% reduction in file size. All depends on the birates of course. You could bash a 320x240 quite small. It does go to show that the first batch were very blurred though. Not knocking anyone. I suppose the collection had to be started but then the Genesis seems to have been overlooked for a bit. Checked the NES emulator again tonight. The videos and artwork are much better.
Im putting out my last draft of the skin for NES and then im finished with it as i dont even play those games. Im concentrating solely on Genesis/Megadrive.

PS. Much better video's than the standard Frank. Well done.

I want redone all of these 320x240 vids (list below) at 320x224 without borders.
XMV filesizes will be max 10 MB. Average XMV will be about 8 MB.

There's lot of well-made stuff in the current vids too, which I don't want to meddle. Only these 320x240 is under my radar.

Likely any videos that are sub-par are the ones that were collected from emu movies. I'm assuming you guys are looking at the more popular US/EU roms. The videos that were made by xbscene members (the oddballs or the better known games that were overlooked), are much better quality across the board. By the time we were working on completing the Genesis set, there was a pretty good standard we were following.

Anyways... thanks for cleaning this stuff up guys. This is why I wanted to hold off on a release on the big 3 (now 4) until after the new year. Give everyone some time to improve vids, get the HD artwork in all of them, add any games still missing and (hopefully) eliminate the need for any future updates.

~Rx

My current 640x480 vids are coming in at under 8mb, 7.5 - 8 average. Allowing an extra second or two for flashy titles brings them in @ 8.5 - 9 mb.

Ok so I finally got around to figuring out what this Xtra's project is all about. Kudos for all the work everyone involved has done, it's great to see so much enthusiasm for keeping the scene alive.

But there's one simple criticism I have that was enough to make me not touch any of this. The naming convention used for many games is horrible ('Super Mario Bros I'??). Wouldn't it have been better to have just used the existing No-Intro or Goodset names, even if you insisted on taking the info in ()'s off the end? I'm sure most users aren't serious enough about their ROM collections to care about such details. But for me it was a dealbreaker. At some point in the future I may try to use a program like FatMatch to do some serious renaming of all this. But until then I shall just wish you all luck with the project.

This is an issue i raised. I have all my roms, HQ video's and HQ Box Art named correctly. When i hand it over to the team i hope there will be a re-think.

neogenesis in HD mode 1280x720 (stretched 640x480 really)
with HQ artwork and 640x480 video previews. Videos 8.5 mb 30 seconds.
Excuse the piss poor camera work.

Nice work cbagy!

It is unlikely that anyone would ever come to an agreement on how filenames are named. But I can tell you this much...

1) The alternate Goodset names for the Xbox suck.
2) There are no alternate 42 character names for no-intro..

THANK, YOU... madmab...
Likklebaer:
Sure there are a couple of (I's) in there, but the names are the best they can be...
mabmab is right,
there is no 42 character names for no intro. And "no intro" roms still have all the crap at the ends anyways...(U's and shit right?)

For this reason, These and especially "Goodset" names would be impossible. (don't even get me started on "Goodset" names... )

Are you familiar or aware of using dats in "roms center" This will set you up fine, and it is not too hard. (Follow the directions on the front page of this thread)

Frank:
sorry man,
looks like some of those vids on the list were mine...
I wasn't aware of the proper sizes for these specific games...
If you re-do them, I am sure they will be great...

my only flaw in making the videos was sometimes not getting proper resolutions from my programs and then having to crop them.

Cbagy: That skin is getting better and better all the time.

Everyone:
and yes my friends... "Mega Drive"
Well, sorry little doggies... out west we call thems the "Genesis" Yeeeeee Haaaaaa...

I will not be renaming anything when this is done.. You will all be more than welcome to rename them yourselves. I've spent 4 years renaming stuff to fit the 42 character limit.

(EDIT: Every time you decide to change a rom name, you must make sure that you change the video and the screenshots on your Box and on your backup PC if you use one like I do. In my case, I also have to rename the WMV file as well since I'm keeping a perfect duplicate copy of all videos in WMV hoping that the madmab edition emus can be ported elsewhere like they've done with XBMC someday).

The "Super Mario Bros I" was used because if I didn't use that, the romlist would have shown the games as follows:

Super Mario Bros II
Super Mario Bros III
Super Mario Bros

-OR-

Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Super Mario Bros

Go ahead and try that out yourself.

Any videos/artwork that come my way will be renamed to what we have in the set already.


I've already pointed out that eventually the idea is to have the romlist display the full name used in the synopsis. This would allow for more than 42 characters and should render the romname obsolete anyhow.



EDIT: Madmab... you saved my life here

If you guys didn't like those names, you would have liked the Gameboy and some others even worse.

For Gameboy Advance, I started the names "GBA - " and for Gameboy Color I used "GBC - ". The same for Game Gear "GG - ", SG-1000 "SG - " for Sega CD & TGCD "CD - " and 32x "32x - ".

I did this because oftentimes in the same emu there would be games with identical names for two different systems. Also, it keeps the screenshots and videos sorted by console within their folders.

The only problem with this was that I lost the ability to jump from one letter of the alphabet to the next (or previous) like you normally can because every game started with "GBA - ". Madmab just updated the emus so that it ignores these prefixes when viewing the romlist so the alphabetical still works.

Again, I hope to make the filename obsolete. MAME doesn't use them at all and still displays the full romname in other ways. My filenames are much better than MAME's since they're pretty usable on their own, so they'll still be nice to keep that way once this all progresses more.

Thanks again Madmab. Great fix!

Agree with you there Rx, we can all call them what we like.
Mine ( roms , vids and artwork ) follow -

segagame.png
segagame.xmv
segagame.bin
segagame - 32x.bin
segagame - CD.iso (segagame - CD 02.mp3 etc)

segagame - CD.iso then makes it irrespective if it's SegaCD or MegaCD.
One label one description.

and i can live with -

Golden Axe II.bin
Golden Axe III.bin
Golden Axe.bin

If its neat, accurate and read-able, like a collection should be.
There may have to be 2 sets of dats, video's and artwork.
Now this is by no means a threat or me moaning.
It's just the way i see it panning out as more users
get switched on to the ResXtras.
Be prepared to explain this one a few more times yet.

@MM The skin is now more accurate as the video preview and artwork
preview dialogues have been rebuilt to a pixel perfect aspect ratio
based on my own findings. The black border problem with HQ video's
has been avoided / enhanced by the introduction of a different preview window.
That said the preview window still shows old style video's in perfect aspect, just bloated to fit.

Really if one wanted to, there are some tools over at no-intro that you can use too....

Gather the CRC's of all of your screenshot, box/cart-art, movie files and rename them to a CRC.
Rename your ROM files.
Create a .dat file of your ROM's with the CRC's in there.
Use that .dat file to rename the screenshot, box/cart-art, movie files back to the new name.

A little work but worth it for those who are fickle about ROM naming and don't mind "Super Mario Bros" being the last in the list, even though it was the first game made.

I won't be explaining it to anyone much more. It will be in the instructions. From now until then, I will simply tell them "No, they will not be changed"

If you wanted to make separate datfiles, be my guest, but you're also going to have to rename every file for every game you rename and then upload and/or host them separately. Otherwise, you'd be giving people datfiles that will not match up with my naming conventions and you'd be expecting that they'd take the time to rename all of those by hand on their own like you did.

My way is better than your way. Some people may disagree, but I for one know that Super Mario Bros comes before Super Mario Bros 2, and that's how the games should be displayed. Aesthetically, it may not be as pleasing with the "I" there, but that is what the synopsis entries are for and emulators should all one day behave like MAME does now and display the full game name instead of what the file names are.

I don't know how many times I have to say this....

THE ROM NAME IS A PLACE HOLDER TO GET EVERYTHING TO MATCH UP.

In the end the idea is that you won't see the romname within the GUI.

Sorry for getting pissy, but your posts about this do come off threatening now and they're bullshit. I have much more important things to worry about and to work on still on this project other than petty whining about a file name.

You are right "Super Mario Bros." should come before "Super Mario Bros. 2", but alphabetically (nothing to do with when it was made). I don't know why the emulator lists it last, perhaps this is something that could be fixed in the list sorting rather than compensated for by the naming convention. Just a thought.


Threatening? WTF is threatening? I just said I don't like your naming convention. If you read my whole post you'll find I was complimentary about the project as a whole. If you only wanted positive feedback perhaps you should have said so in the initial post.

I'm not saying I'm going to take the trouble to rename everything you've done to a different convention. But I will say that it wouldn't be as much of a problem as you're making it out to be. There are programs such as the one I mentioned in my last post specifically designed to rename artwork to match ROMs which I'm sure would cut down the time and work drastically. And there would be no re-uploading involved since one could simply build DATs that would rename the existing sets.

Well it didnt take long did it !!! Never mind expected as much in the end.

Here we go.
Producing Hi-Res artwork doesnt take long (im approx 20% done)
Producing HQ videos doesnt take long
(approx 10% done not only maching for file size but better quality and 640x480)
Producing alternate dats, again doesnt take long.

Ive only been at it about a week in my spare time !!!.

Now if one was to take on many projects ie- 12 emulators approx (as the team has),
then it would seem like an uphill battle that takes ages.
However an individual with geniun passion for a particular system/emulator can be
single minded and concentrate. Perhaps even go that one step further.

If we had to follow the strict folder structure that was fought for (and lost) then we would all have to create a media directory on F:/G: (seperate from the emulator) for all videos regardless of emulator. I personally want all the stuff relevant to the emulator in the emulator folder. This way i can transfer or burn the files at will with no folder searching for end users. I do distribute these emulators for friends, family and associates. When i explain things the way as it stands i get puzzled looks. Then i explain the alternative method which goes down better. Inexperienced users can easily add to a rom collection or add to video or artwork collection with ease.

So as things stand, it looks like alternate dats is the way to go. With matching HQ vids and HQ artwork.
This is where i believe we part company gentlemen. Good luck.

PS. Likklebaer. I think the pissy comments are for me, you just raised an issue that has been mentioned before.
Its not an issue thats going to go away either. Future post will see it raise its head again from new users.

I wasn't talking to you. (Edit: likklebaer)

But anyways, there will be no renaming because it's not necessary.

The rom name will not be what is displayed in the end anyways. I guess I'll just say it a few hundred more times before the feature is implemented and you see for yourselves. It's totally a moot point.

And yes, it would be a shit ton of work, because lets say you wanted 100 of my roms over 6 different systems to be renamed. Now I have to do the following:

1. Rename the rom.
2. Rename the XMV
3. Rename the WMV
4. Rename the Screenshots folder
5. Put together another Enhanced Artwork folder with the new names
6. Rom-Zip all roms so the romname and zipname are the same.
7. Torrent-Zip all roms to make sure they're all torrent zipped again.
8. Test every single one of these games in the emulator all over again to make sure that videos, screenshots, box/cart art all work with the new names and that something wasn't messed up.

That's 800 additional steps I don't need to make. I'm not going to do this for any games. This has all been tested and everything is working perfect as is.




CBAGY: Blow me. It's been years that I've done this, renaming things from scratch since Goodsets and No-intro names usually suck. Go ahead and re-make everything on your own. I'm looking forward to seeing how much of my own work ends up in there and if you only remake one system or two. I'm also wondering if you're going to re-make high def videos for every single hack, prototype, translation, unlicensed game and how much of my stuff you just decide to put in there.

In the end IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!!! HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU NEED TO HEAR THAT THE ROMNAME DOESN'T MATTER!!!!???????????? IT WILL NOT BE DISPLAYED IN THE END.



BTW... this is a nightmare for editing purposes in the emulators. I used to have my games named this way at one point but it looked ugly and the movie and screenshot folders were a mess.

Sorry to piss on your bonfire ResX but nothing of yours so far has made the grade in my NeoGenesis setup,wrong res, wrong aspect, bad quality should i go on ? Not even the official skin. I dont see that changing. However i will make an alternate pack "XboXtras".
This has been on the back burner for a bit but its time it came out of the closet. I'll say again "XboXtras"
How many of those will make it into your packs ? We shall see. Although i will say don't hold your breath on timescale, what i can say is before xmas. As far as HQ artwork goes, quite soon.

Look forward to them appearing in your packs.

32x - segaame.bin
32x - segaame.bin
32x - segaame.bin
32x - segaame.bin
CD - segaame.iso
CD - segaame.iso
CD - segaame.iso

Now thats a F****** mess. Following that structure then every other game that isnt a 32x or CD game should
be pre-fixed with Cart ?

Cart - SegaGame.bin.

As far as saying it doesnt matter cause the rom names wont be visisble with the crc checks you want in place.
Good job then, sweep the problem away. Hide it ! So someone has to edit the emulator and create new tools cause, everything is named wrong ??? Do you work in global banking ?

LOL...

No testing, so nobody knows if all of your CRCs will work.

No testing, so nobody knows if all of the games work period, since I've taken the time to weed out the bad ones.

No testing, so there will likely be bugs with stuff not matching up right on names.

HQ artwork will be in my next upload. The one you have has about 250 games missing from it that are in the new pack, including prototypes, unlicensed, hacks, translated.

No generic boxart, unless you take Gilles's work, meaning that if you do include any of these harder to find roms you will have a big ugly blank spot when that game shows up.

I'm sure you're not taking new title shots and action shots, so if they make it in your pack, those were all ones I took on my own.

Wow.... so it looks like you're taking my team's work which was about 95% done, renaming some games and adding a few HQ videos you did on your own then slapping your own name on it.

Trust me when I say that I will do my best to make it known that your work is simply my work with a few personal touches and a re-branding.



EDIT: And by the way, everone on the team who has helped out.... he did insult the videos or any other work you've contributed as well as your skin there Gilles. Guess he had to "come out of the closet" to tell everyone exactly how he felt.



EDIT 2:



I'm not the one with a problem here. To me, there is no problem. I've been working publically on this project for 1 1/2 years and now only 2 people have ever mentioned a problem with my romnames.

Just because they don't match your personal preferance, doesn't mean that they're broke.

Here's how it works,

Super Mario Bros I
Super Mario Bros II
Super Mario Bros III

Will look like this when the emu is updated for it:

Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3

And that's the order they're going to show up in the romlist.... Ya know why???

That's right...

BECAUSE SUPER MARIO BROS. WAS NAMED SUPER MARIO BROS I.!!!!!

Dur...

Because I'm a fair guy and don't like talking about people behind their backs cbagy, I wanted to let you know I've updated my thread to say the following...

See Post #1429 where cbagy says he's going to rip off my team's work, make some changes and give you all the XBoxXtras!!!!

I'll take it down as soon as we put all of this silliness behind us.




What you're talking about doing is removing a features for games by removing the "I"'s and having your CDs set up the way you have them as opposed to the way I do and how they will be able to be manipulated by the Madmab Edition emulators, as is evidenced by the last point I made in my prior post.

I'm sure you've used MAME before. Tell me what half of those romnames mean, but then tell me they don't look good when the emu plays them.

The romname is just a placeholder.

Starting up an entire side project for a placeholder red-herring is just silly.

I'm willing to call truce if you are.

~Rx


EDIT: I agree that otherwise there is plenty all of us can work together to improve upon. Naming conventions I'm inflexible on for three reasons. One, it's not necessary because I like the way the rom names are now. Two, it's a lot of work and time spent I could be doing things like improving on the synopsis or starting up the Rx treatment to a new emulator. Three, the roms are a placeholder and the emulator will use the names the way I have them to display them in the proper order with the proper name in the end, like MAME does.

Well i can assure you "nothing of yours has made the grade".
There are no cart shots (dead wood and the quality of what was there made my eyes water).
There are no action shots (dead wood).
I appreciate and applaud your collecting of these rare items of artwork.
However im sure i remember what a Genesis/Megadrive cart looks like.
As far as the Madmab Editon emulators adding extra preview options for the cart and action shots ?
Thats all fine and well, where will your rom list be ? There will be no room. Dead wood as ive said all along.
Once looked at PMII skin and found a config with just one rom at a time in the list. WTF !!!
Waste of space in more ways than one.

The skin, im sure Gilou can read previous post and make up his own mind, so lets be honest. You embelished my statements slightly didnt you ?
However, not one to hide behind the internet, what i will say is. If the PMIII skin was food it would taste like cardboard and holds about as much visual interest as a rusty nail.

The video's, again youve stretched the truth a touch so i will make a clear statement that i've said. quote"although i aprreciate the work others have put into the videos only about 2 -5 % are even of any kind of encoding quality. The rest are just piss poor." I'll repeat that. Im saying 95% are piss poor.

Hope that clears things up as we wouldnt want any PM's flying around with worthless "tittle tattle" pretending to be how it happened would we !

PS. Didnt think we were fighting ! Just having heated discussion. Its how things are created in the crucible of heat.
I dont get upset mate ! Its just the way i talk, open and in your face. Dont mean anything by it.

Personally I use entirely separate emulators for MD, 32X, and CD. It's just a case of hex-editing the xbe to use a different save folder for each and it avoids having to use these dodgy filenames. I like all my systems separate.

You can just go ahead and read my last post.

I don't PM anything. I keep things in the open. I'm well aware of what people said in an admin forum about me on statusx a while back when they "knew" I wouldn't be looking.

That's not how I roll. If I have something to say about you, I will say it so everyone can hear it.



You're being silly now, and you're continuing to be silly.

For reasons stated above, the rom names are a moot point.

The Artwork/Video packs you downloaded and had on your box before doing any editing on your own are at least 4 months old if not 6 or 7 months, so they are missing a lot of games a lot of vids, the HQ treatment and other things.

You weren't around for emu discussions on how the emu will handle things, so you know nothing about what we've done and plan to do on both ends for the greatest expierience possible, assuming you use the Rx name format.

There is just so much you don't know, since you haven't been a part of the team, and so much stuff that is already done that you are doing double work on.

Why are you trying to muscle your way in and be a leader here when there are people ahead of you in the queue?

I'm happy to add your work, and I hope you give it. Threats of making your own releases and planning to release them a month behind mine are pretty annoying though. Maybe you should step back, take a moment and breathe and think about this.

You've got many years ahead of you on this project if you go solo. You may have many years ahead of you even if you should decide to work with the team. I can only try to illustrate how hard it is to actually get any help around here. If you do choose to go on your own, I wish you luck and hope you can find people who will help you with the project too. Tons of people want to have the newest stuff right now, but only a small handfull are willing to contribute to that end.

was thinking of a similar thing myself Likklebaer. As the collections grow it probably would be best.

@ RX
Havent said i wont contribute, i said i will and i will. What i am saying is i will make an alternate dat and make it available for all. You will be suprised how long ive watched these forums, and especially the Resxtras (since its inception). Im pretty well read and informed of most stuff (besides your private discussions obviously). When i hand you my stuff your gonna have to rename 30 % i reckon. If any vids i produce do get accepted then your gonna end up with a right mixed bag. My intention was to make them readily available to you, but, have a standalone pack of my own (ResX compatible) thats just HQ. Now that goes for the artwork too. Im also shipping the new NeoGenesis skin with a reccomended setup regarding the Xtras. Carts and action shots dont figure. I wont be supporting them at any time.

Not trying to steal anyones thunder. Spent most of my life keeping myself under the radar. You can have and keep all the plaudits, if you feel you need it. I dont. My wife strokes my ego and thats fine by me.
I understand and commend your committment and fire. I know youve been at this some time. But i do believe you have got some things wrong, perhaps youve a mindset on how you want things. Thats fine but it doesnt translate across the board to every user. Its not truly universal. I myself have a reasonable understanding so i could sort out your (crazy) naming convention no problem. Others might not as well you know.

Take care. Back to producing videos tonight (boring).

That is a good idea. It's one I've thought about bringing up to madmab at one point, but in the end I relized that I already had every single rom and Xtra set up the way I have them.

Back when I made a ton of this stuff before I went public, I didn't know a thing about hex editing, so I thought I had to work in the boundaries that every game had to be played in the same emu, meaning that all the artwork and to be in the same folder in the end.

At this point, it would be a rediculously large task.... Maybe even a few months because it would be hard to stay enthused about it. Now we're talking probably 3 to 4 thousand games would have to be renamed when you include Sega CD, Sega 32x, TGCD, Atari 800, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Game Gear and SG-1000. Now multiply that times the 8 steps above, and you can see how I'd be dooming myself to what could possibly end up being a half year more of free time burnt up changing things that already work and testing that they all work when I'm done.



I don't mind if somebody does this someday after I'm done. I would just hope they'd wait until I completed the project instead of splintering off now and confusing the hell out of people. I've got 100 more important things to do right now spread out across about 20 emulators that need tending too first. Anyone who renames everything and starts making packs now wouldn't be compatible with any of the future updates.


Again, I wasn't directing any of that prior stuff to you. Sorry I didn't post back to you thanking you for the good stuff you've said.

~Rx

Cool.

I feel your wrong on just as much as you feel that I'm wrong, regarding the romnames. Like I said in the end, the official name from the synopsis will be what is displayed. Even using your romsets, this will still benefit you since some game names are over the 42 XFAT compatible naming convention.

Like I said, notihing crazy about my rom names either.

When you use your sets, even with the synopsis update, they will not display in the proper order.

Yours would show up like this:

Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Bros.

This is because of your rom names.

Because I named mine:

Super Mario Bros I
Super Mario Bros II
Super Mario Bros III

They will look like this in the emu:

Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3


What I'm saying to you is I would stop wasting time even renaming my stuff because you're actually breaking features by doing it.

~Rx

We must have been typing at the same time.
Wasnt going to rip off your work. As ive said none of it is on my xbox.
What i am going to do is do it properly and with quality.
The users can decide as apparently its for them, let your peers be the judge.
I can also open a thread stating whats really happening.
Downloadable content on a weekly basis, avoiding large bandwidth hungry, downloads.
Then you could upgrade the ResXtras from the public links i supply from my stuff.
Doesnt that seem fair ? Nothing underhand there.

My dats would perform exactly the same task and would be 100% compatible with Madmabs version of this emulator

Yeah... we've been writing over one another.

Check my last thread.

I'm cool if that's how you want to handle it, but just keep it your updates then and not all the stuff my team has added.

I still don't understand why you'd do it. You're breaking features of the Madmab edition by renaming stuff (see above)

EDIT:



Still writing over each other.

They'd still be compatible, but titles that have many entries would be displayed out of order, as I posted about above.

Not to mention that I will probably be around here a year or two more at least, vigorously updating stuff as I have been so far. It may have been a while since an official release, but there have been literally thousands of changes since the last updates. Maybe over 10,000 changes.

When you splinter off, you suffer from having to re-merge all of your stuff with mine anytime I come out with an update. It's really going to make a lot of extra work for the both of us.

EDIT 2:



I don't think that's going to work out as well as you'd think either. You might get one or two people who download small things every week or so, but that is usually the type of stuff that gets collected and put into a large collection like mine.

Megaupload is only what I use at this point. Eventually this will all be torrented in a one stop plug-n-play setup for each emu, but that's still a while down the road because we're always adding new games. Stupot1 is still working on an additional 30 or so videos for Sonic, Mario and other hacks for NES, SNES and GEnesis as we speak.

I'm not going to put up a new torrent for every emu, every week. People wouldn't want to be downloading a new one every week. Updates like they have on torrent sites for no-intro and goodsets suck too. I will make a full package for each emu when they're ready, and they will work perfect and show the official game name from the synopsis when they are done.

It is MUCH easier for EVERYONE to edit the game names from the synopsis, so why don't you just work on this with the same rom names and we'll argue romtitles when the Madmab Editions are out and people are using it with all its updated code and the synopsis files.

ahhh perfect seg-way, speaking of xbox-scene and how long members have been on here, ect ect. just curious why the Mabmad edition emus arnt avail to the public yet? why are they being held captive usually on this site as long as Iv been a member Iv always seen people share what they got if its mentioned - yeah I know it "makes" people help out to get them" "not really" but was just wondering when a good amount of the emu's will be released.I mean recently Iv lost interest in the xtras and started focusing on the wonderful world of Mame
(finally got back to actually playing some games)alot of good stuff is happening right know with the arcade emus...!

p.s this is an emu forum/thread relax peoples,make sure to take your pills, drank your drank,or smoka fatty=in no way shape or form am I talking about a buldging overweight husky prime ribbed female so please no one be offended by this comment....

Back to my weiser

ahhh, why did I just awake to a whole page of this...?

You guys know cbagy.... he's always given BP the hardest time...
and we know Rx...

Cbagy:
You just have a differing opinion that's all...
We will be releasing HQ boxart for all the games that have them available.
(and they will be the highest quality the xbox emus can handle.)

As far as videos... yes, you could say they are all "low-quality", but the "standard" was more about structure, timing and content, (not high quality) and it was optimized when I, and others started making videos for the project. (the emu movies ones don't really have these standards.)

now about video quality/size:
your HQ ones are going to double or triple the sizes of each one and in turn, the packs will be much larger. Now, I wouldn't mind them and would love to see HQ ones.
but, we simply weren't looking to do them this big. I could have easily made the ones I did higher quality...but the emu-movies ones weren't and they are probably 70 - 80% of them.

Believe it or not,
as much as the "low quality" ones aren't acceptable to you,
we have seen and there are people that come here and complain about the sizes of the packs as they are...

and say: "I will never fit those on my hdd, because it is too small or they simply don't want to dedicate that much space to on their hdd to the Xtras."


As far as the skin goes... OK... you don't like not having a roms list...
Well, in Gilles skin there are about 5 different skin setups in SDtv and HDtv quality's

Just out of curiosity: (keep in mind, I like your skin),
Why do you care about having HQ boxarts when the boxarts are viewed in your skin very small anyways...?

In the end... its just different tastes... baahh.. we will all never completely agree. (and probably shouldn't, cause it makes the world go round)

Yes, this project is big and has many features... it was originally about having all videos, screen shots (tile and action), and box/cart arts for all the games. And also to have a clean and tested set of roms that goes beyond any "no-intro" or "Good" set.

Now that every came is collected and have videos for...
Yes, we can go back and update the quality. (but, having every game with these things (at least), was this projects first priority.)

Peace people - MM?

Just a thought. I've been following this thread since a while, and realize how renaming things can be annoying. Tedious, off-putting, i assume more than one people here get a pain in the head and red eyes because of the FATX 42 characters limitation.

What about writing a tool (in C, Perl, C++ whatever) you allows you to do that, and do details by hand? It will save you a lot of time. That's what i did for FBA drivers, the tool process most of the data, i just do the adjustements by hand.

No probs Mega Man. I totally understand if you think these are too big.
When I'm done I'll send them to you, and you decide which ones (if any) you want to add in the official pack. My current XMV is ~7,5MB average.
I'm doing these mainly for myself use anyway and I really can live with rest of the videos. aLL gooD.

It's happens due to one of those weird quirks in C and how it compares strings..

True but you pretty much said you were not gonna bother with the RessX sets because you didn't like the naming convention.

That, of course is your choice, but my rebuttal was that no one is ever gonna be satisfied with the names and we cannot cater to everyone or we'd be sitting around here arguing all day and getting nothing done.

The no-intro gang got around alot of their renaming problems by naming everything after the crc and then the user would run their utility against a provided .dat file. So changing filenames across the board was simply a matter of updating the .dat file. In some cases they would provide a batch file to rename CRC's if they chose to use a different ROM with a different CRC.

Guys there is no reason to branch off like that. A simple "Cbagy's .dat files for renaming ROMS to Cbagy's standards" would do the trick. The user can easily run them against the RessXtra's. FWIW I always liked putting the release year and developer in a game name (ex... Centipede (1981) (Atari) ). But you don't see me bitching and moaning about it....

In fact there are quite a few Lynx, 7800, and Atarixlbox movies I'd like to redo and if I get a chance I will. But really... I don't see any reason to get dramatic about it or call someone elses work "Cardboard" either..

There is a reason the people in this project has gotten along for as long as we did. And it didn't have to do with insulting someone else work, or choice of priorities..

Because technically the emulator is incomplete. We tried releasing NES in a semi useable state but it is far from what we plan on making it and since I have a policy of "when it's done" I'm not in a particular hurry to release them all at once either. I want to get certain "features" functional before doing some type of mass release.

The whole give it to the people helping idea is to encourage input so that the project will finish more quickly and everything can be released. It's not a "punishment" so to speak, just a reward to those who help, and it benefits the public as well cause the more people that get involved the quicker things get done.





hehe. The same problem happened over on the xbox repository. I tried to encourage the other involved parties to use the no-intro tools and .dat files to reduce storage useage and wasted bandwidth but they only were interested in doing things their way.

Luckily for me no one was interested in doing the systems I was...

As far as file size. Yes the movies are gonna be a bit of a burden for the xbox hard drive. That is why I added streaming across a network so people can just slap these things on a network if they are so inclined. In fact they could probably just pick up an extra Xbox and run it as a fileserver if they so choose to do so.

Hiho, I'm watching this thread since it was started (over 1 year now, I swear I've read all posts from beginnig till end) and waited like forever for the new madmab updates to support dual preview. I don't want anything more then the emulators can display a video-preview and a screenshot/boxart. All these extra features like "Enhanced Help Screen" and "Game Synopsis" are really cool, but it will take 5 years testing, bugfixing, and adding this features to every XPORT Emulator... etc. Thanks to madmab and ressurectionx.

I also had so those plans for years. Having Video-Previews, Box-Art, cool themes, etc... is what makes the emulation on XBOX (and PC other systems) great and enjoyable. You (and for example people that visit you and want to play some oldies) often don't know what games are behind all those names, so these extras like video previews really help and you will enjoy these games even more. But you all know that.

I really want to thank you all who have put so much work and engagement in this project(s). RessurectionX, Gilles999, madmab, MegaMan(?), XPORT, nes6205, and many many others that I forgot...

But I have to agree with cbagy. It took me like months to download the videopreviews, boxart etc for ZSENSXBOX, because MU is painfully slow in Europe (but this is the smallest problem). I was a bit disaspointed about the overall quality of the videopreviews. Call me a bean counter, but If I do something, I want to do it right. It would be great If we/someone experienced could write a tutorial / guide line for creating video previews so that they will all be uniform quality. These Rom-Projects called TOSEC/No-Intro/GoodTools etc.. also use uniform naming conventions, dumping methods, file formats... to guarantee quality. What do you think about it?

I've also started to do my "extras" a long time ago. I use No-Intro Roms and no rubbish like betas, prototypes, hacks, translations, homebrow roms. Simply retail games. That keeps my collection clean from 1000 roms to browse and is also confusing for less-emulation-experienced people who use my box. And maybe we can also share lists of sources where you can find/ collect High Quality Box-Art, Screenshots & Co.

I also think about new skins. I like the work of Gilles "dynamic skins", but I thought about doing better system specific Skins that have funny animations like the Mednafen-X NES from XPort. What I mean is that when you use a SNES Emulator the theme should show a SNES and it seems that you interact with that console. its hard for me to explain it in words. The Reset Button of this Snes Picture should be the button to exit the emulator... (or the Gameboy shows the screenshot in the Standard XboyAdvance Skin) It could be like this, but better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hntix3N1jGc Hope you understand the shit I'm writing.

@cbagy: Maybe you can tell me which tools, settings and so on you use to create these great Highquality Videos, I will do also some for myself (or the community if you want) meeting your quality standards. The same I want to know about HQ Boxart and so on. I'm really looking forward to your "XboXtras" Pack. Can't wait. And update packs aren't a bad idea. It could save people with low connections much bandwith. And I really want to help where I can, the only thing I want is to have a uniform method all users have to follow for creating this stuff. It will be better.

Thank you for reading. I don't want to piss anyone off or say his work was shit, If it came across I want to excuse me for that. Hope this "english" wasn't too bad.

Greetz EvilFasaMaka

Uhh, watching Hyperspin always gives me a headache. Too many random images and sounds. But some of their backgrounds do capture the feel of the original systems quite well.

Good mornig or evening (dependant on time zone).
Hey guy's i know things appeared to get hot under the collar yesterday but i
dont think its anything to worry about. Just passionate personallities clashing thats all.
No harm done my end and i hope the same for others. @MM i know i have small previews in one config but try the others, dare to explore. One config uses artwork @ 50 % (cause of overscan i could have been bigger) of screen height and still isnt stretched from its original res ! Although i would prefere to look at HQ video than a static box ! Yet the file sizes are still small but HQ.
Anything i make will be submitted for all, as ive said.

I think for standard users the FrankMorris video replacements will sit nice in the ResX packs.

@ EvilFasaMaka check your PM box.

Hey EvilFasaMaka,

What's really a bummer is that if people make alternate packs to mine for release, they'll be able to take advantage of the synopsis that I put about 1,000 hours or more of work on so far, and that a handful of others have also donated a good amount of their free time to. A HUGE part of the work I do is putting together the synopsis and making sure it works with every single game and looks good.

If I were to come in here with the intention of releasing a competing set right now and simply replace videos and artwork in folders that were already created and rename a few things, it wouldn't take very long at all in comparison. Pretty underhanded if the XboXtras do get released, I think. I'd probably just pack up and move on if that happened.

I don't mind a lite version after the fact, but it would be kind of lame to steal our thunder like that.

I'm under the impression that this is not what Cbagy is doing now, but time shall tell.




You see from the last 24 hours of posting that I am immobile on rom names. I should probably bring up point number two that I am inflexible on as well. The scope.

It is my intention to add any prototypes, unlicensed, pirate, hacks, etc. so long as I have people here to make the videos/boxart for them. It's a ton of work doing these extra things, and sometimes it can take a day to do just 50 to 80 games, because I have to find artwork for much more elusive games, get the synopsis which is sometimes very hard to find but very rewarding when I do, and I have to test that the rom works and all the Xtra features work with it.

If somebody wanted to put together "lite" versions of my Xtras after the fact, with all unlicensed games stripped, be my guest. I happen to like these cool extra games that add a lot of character to the collection, and if people like Stupot1 are willing to come to me with game adds and the videos already made, I'm going to be adding them.



I'd appreciate that when somebody didn't like the quality of the Genesis videos, that they'd specify that they were the Genesis videos so people don't think that this stuff isn't worth the time to download. There is obviously a drop off in quality on that system. Overall the other systems are fine for the most part. I only know of about 80 Super Nintendo videos that need to be redone.






I know this is taking a long time. I'm very aware of that fact as I started this project when I was 26 and I'm now 30. It sure would be a lot quicker if we had some more good help around here. Maybe instead of waiting silently, you'd like to give a hand. We already have enough people around here who like to speak their mind but then never lift a finger to help, even after they said they would.

Regards,
~Rx

Well I was hoping to be able to post in here last night just in case things got too crazy but unfortunately was just extremely busy with work... But luckily it seems like the dust settled a bit..

I can emphasize with you, it has been a bit of a long haul. One thing I can assure you is I don't think RessX plans on doing the Xtra's for all of the systems, just the main ones, and some of the smaller easier ones. But some of the more oddball systems, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your opinion, may get left out.

But as far as the scope of the project. That is pretty much the way it evolved and unfortunately or fortunately (depending on how you look at it) I didn't really want to do any major releasing until I had the interface and new features up to a certain point or standard. I've been slowly working on converting all the remaining systems so that Gilles can (hopefully) crank out the remaining skins.

But really it all boils to a small handful of people working on the project. With one programmer (me), and one main skin designer (gilles), and RessX kinda co-ordinating everything. Everyone else involved pitching in here and there. We've been trying to do the best we can do but help really does not come much from elsewhere. To be honest alot of these interface "features" are not much use without the "Xtra's".

Stuff like "Enhanced Help Screen" and "Game Synopsis" were really not that hard to add and since Gilles had already gone to the trouble of creating the screens and the guys snapped of a sample synopis real quick it was no big deal. In fact there are quite a few good ideas that got left by the wayside.

ZsnesXbox, MednafenX_PCE, MednafenX_Lynx, MednafenX_NES, and Neogenesis had support for videos well before I got involved or before RessX decided to start the RessurectionXtra's.. So really him, our group, and all our fantastic helpers is the only person that bothered stepping up to attempt anything up to this point.

Luckily, though, after the release of MednafenX_NES we did have a couple people jumping on board and making skins, like cbagy and frankmorris. But really, outside of NES and Genesis we've solely had to rely on Gilles9999 for our skins for the rest of the emu's. Which is alot more work than one may think. And I myself can understand how he as an artist is striving for consistency and I think he does a very good job of it. So I certainly respect that.

Basically I choose to get involved, sidetracked, however you see it, because this was a case where I felt that the right people were in the right place at the right time to get it done. So sure I may have been sidetracked from other goals I had with AdamX, Z26, BlissX, and etc. But sometimes you have to jump on the train while it is still there, and that is what I chose to do, and once committed it would not be fair (as much as I want to) to the people involved for me to jump out mid-trip.

Sadly, though, real life interferences have been making it difficult for me to code efficiently or with the large gaps of time. So some of the features may delayed as a result, and quite a few placed waaaay on the backburner. But sometimes that is the way things are and I cannot do much about it.

Don't get me wrong, but on the one hand you comment about the length of time the project is taking, but on the other you say your dissapointed in the quality. We've been working on improving the quality as we gain experience and have the time. But I think the overall agreement between us was to get the work out there and hope other people would be motivated to get involved and help improve the process. Alot of this stuff is new to alot of the people involved and sometimes it takes a little while to get the gears going.

Yeah we've been trying to get someone to do that, nudge nudge. Keep in mind that a good many of the videos were taken from the emu_previews projects. If you look at the ones done by us you will see the quality is more consistent.

If your referring to rely on them for naming the roms, it won't work. Xbox filename limit is 42 characters and most rom-projects rely on much larget filenames. Tosec is very inconsistent (aka non picky) about the quality of it's lists and tends to have alot of bad and useless ROMS. GoodTools is better in that respect but they only cover certain systems, and are a little inconsistent on some systems like Atari 8-bits, C64, MSX (all cart only), and non existent for other systems like the Amiga. Plus their xbox naming alternatives, really, are not that good and VERY confusing, and do not sort very well on the Xbox. No-Intro is better in that they narrow the ROMS down to a more cohesive whole but they have absolutely no Xbox naming convention, at the moment. Plus there are a fair amount of systems they do not even cover. Matching romsets are also a little hard to find then say, Goodtools..

I'm not hammering on these guys. I'm just saying they do not provide much better naming conventions in an Xbox environment. I'm a big fan of no-intro sets, and for systems that no-intro does not cover I usually go with Gamebase, except for the MSX of which I prefer the offline list, for the Atari 8-bits (atarimania), and everything else Tosec (blech). But outside as acting as a reliable source for good roms, they do not help much in regards to naming conventions.

Yeah that's something that RessX has been doing with his .dat files. In fact he splits them up so people who prefer to to use something like prototypes can just skip them.

Well take anything we can get. Sometimes high quality box-art can be harder to find that you think. Just keep in mind guys that the emulator kinda chokes if these files get a little too big...

I'm a big fan of system specific skins as well. If someone wants to try to update some of the older x-port skins to dual previews, then by all means feel free. The only reason they were dumped was because Gilles wanted to go for consistency and the XBMC look.

Well we've talked a little bit about providing some system where a user can be more selective about what files they download, but really that require someone with the skills and a system on the internet available to deal with that and all the traffic that goes with it.

No problem. I had no issues understanding what you said.



I forgot to mention that the synopsis is intended to have alot more impact than people realise. Although I've been trying to keep lowkey about it because I know some emulators are really pushing the limits in regards to memory useage and I'm not sure how much that will affect the overall "Goal" of the Synopsis.

FWIW I did realize that I'll probably have to look over the filename sorting code anyways in order to get it to sort things properly since the same (or similar) code will be used for the synopsis...

Hey Madmab, I remember reading a while ago that you'd fixed the filter bug in XPort's XSNES9Xbox. I appreciate you taking as long as it takes with the releases, but is there any chance you'd consider a fixed build of this one? I'm not bothered about new features or dynamic skins but it would be great to just play this emu with Simple2X working.

Finally got videos done for the Atari 7800 zapper games, prototypes and Xenophobe. I had to use a screen capture program so they're not the greatest vids in the world, but they're not so bad. The zapper ones are pretty much placeholders since you can't advance without the gun, but I figured I'd just make these on my own since I've been asking for a year and nobody's done them.

Just waiting on Gilles' generic boxarts for the system and this one is wrapped up and ready to go as well. 5 down, X to go...

~Rx