675 x 675, preserving aspect ratio.

That means it would keep the ratio of width to height. If it maxes out at 675 for height or width, it compensates and keeps it the same ratio.

I use Digitope image converter.

Cut off anything you want MM. In reallity all videos should have ratio's x 32 pixels.
ie 640x480 / 32 = 20x15 (4:3 ratio), (16 is a ratio of 32, it is half, 8 is a quarter and so on). If you cut the borders 16 pixels from the top and 16 from the bottom then your video clip becomes 640x448 (320x224 x 2). Any resizing should always be denominations of for every 4 off width then take 3 off height. Things can and are a little more complex than that but its a basic rule of thunb without getting too deep. If you crop the borders remember to tell the editing prgram not to stretch remaining video to 640x480 but remain at 640x448. As most editing software will require you to re-encode the video to allow a crop this is when you can resize to 320x224. Dont lower the bitrate too much as if you think about it these videos have been through 3 processes already ! Avi capture codec - wmx codec - xmv. There is an outside chance if you keep the bitrate the same they will come out of the process actually larger than the imput file ! Trial and error mate, trial and error.

PS. Some do seem to end differently. They are all a basic minimum though. Some have extended endings. Its a mind trick mate. You were concentrating on the video so much your mind told your eyes to expect more. In reallity none end more abrupt than others at all, optical illusion. Look for one you wouldnt play, the video seems ages and the end just seems to drag on. Honest ! As we all like different games this illusion is different for everbody.

672x672 is a ratio gentleman (640+32)

There's no pixel ratios on boxart man.

Just saying that I've been able to have pics on all the emulators that were maxed at either 675 pixels per height or width. Using the "Preserve Aspect Ratio" in a program, it will make sure that the width matches the height at the same ratio as the original image if it needs to be downsized.

OK that is where you said some boxarts may be off...?
How can I go about doing this... ? If i make the images 672 on one axis... the editing program compensates by giving a relative number on another (ex. 672 x 488)
I don't get it... 672 x 672 would give me a square... if I keep proportions... then I would have equal sides...

What are you guys on about...?
Thanks

I am making my SNES videos 512 x 448. Any objections...?

Ok ! How can your artwork be universal if HD users will be out of ratio ? to display the art @ 675x675 in HD would require a size of 337.5 x 450. There is no 337.5. It will be rounded to the nearest pixel. You think your program is preserving aspect ratio its not, its rounding up or down to the nearest pixel. All do it that ive used. The emulator then doubles the width and times 1.5 for height. No odd number at all can be used for width and only a few odd numbers can be used for height. Being 1 or 2 pixels out in HD leads to 2 or 3 pixels by the time the emulator corrects its for display. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

@ MM It should compensate and that is correct. You can force an uneven ratio but WTF ! Notice the even numbers it chooses to use ! Say no more. I had to rework all of the original NES BoxFronts and so decided to make my own sega ones. My previous post is a typo it shouldnt have had 672x672 as we all know thats a square lol.

So you are saying I am right... (something like 672 x 488 ?)

So wait... hold on...
What do we have messed up here... ? If we have something messed up... please help us fix it.
I think Rx has gotten a little confused... None of the box arts i have checked in the set are 675 x 675.

Cbagy,
you seem to have more knowledge on the matter than us, and I appreciate that knowledge...

That is why my name is Mega Man (Question) ... cause I am not afraid to ask them...
(4am in California don't make me read a whole page when I get back... )

hey i have to stay up till those sorts of times to communicate with you guys ie- last night lol. And i have buisness to run (i do give myself lots of time off though, lol). Your sizes seemed reasonable to me. Its a little fiddling with the numbers as lots of cover sites have different scans of custom work, varying in sizes lol. If you can find boxart showing all the cover, with spine then you can give youself a good chance of hitting the numbers. A even numbered width and an even numbered height, then crop preserving aspect based on either height or width, your choice. Then the cropped image ie 672 x 488 is your standard template size for cropping all other artwork and resizing. Sounds so easy doesnt it lol. Wait till you hit those custom artwork where the aspect was slightly off to start, crop those and resize to your standard accepted size ie 672x488. You will notice then that the correction stops all the characters on the artwork looking as fat as they are tall. I must go now as im late. Will catch you chaps later on. Good luck and dont let it stress you.

Hi guys.. I'm still around, just got a bad case of the flu. Whether it is the H1-N1, is beyond me. All I know is I've been sleeping alot and feeling like shite most of the week.

Although the fever seems to have broke so now, I suppose, it's a matter of getting food and liquids back into my system.

As for strain on NeoGenesis. I'm not really sure what is being referred too.

Yes NeoGenesis is one of the more memory hungry emu's.

The emu only loads and displays images for one game at a time. So the total combined size of all elements for that particular game can lead to issues (for examples some O2 HQ boxart that was floating around). But believe it or not I think that is more a size issue. Seems xbox does not like loading textures larger than a certain size, regardless of memory issues. BUT, memory can still have an impact.

The file list is limited (I believe) to 4096 games. But the memory reserved for that is already taken up on load. So no issue here.

If the user is loading screenshots/box-art AND movies across a network, this can impact performance a little. Since the xbox copies this stuff over the network as it uses it.

I think I covered everything..

I don't know what you're on about cbagy. I've got probably 6,000 boxarts on my rig and they all look fine to me.

Now methinks you guys are being way too picky.

Anyways. I'm not going to be resizing all of them. That would be a massive amount of work with no pay off in my eyes.

Sorry.



EDIT: Hope you're feeling better madmab.

Get well soon madmab, you need to add that smart Japan boxart/cartart code.


____________________

[GENESIS VIDEO DISCUSSION]

Genesis video output is 320x224.
Mega Drive video output is 320x240.

But that isn't important, because every game's actual game screen is 320x224 OR 256x224 regardless of region.

Personally I don't see any point to add those 16 or 32 px borders to them (ex. 320x240 or 640x480)
In Mega Drive games, those extra lines were added only to reduce overscan in 50 Hz PAL signal.



Personally again, I think that only exception, when borders are acceptable are those 256x224 games.

Lethal Enforcers II is one of the 256x224 games:


It should look like this:


Not like this: (Circles aren't circles.)


But that's totally how you prefer to see it. Both methods are "right."

Get well madmab

Looks like with the HQ nes boxarts, RX, was sizing them - 460 x 629 - 460 x 631... (check them out, if you will)

Thoughts...? I know I can get them there...
EDIT: Cbagy, what is your "proper" size that you made them...?

See.... the problem is, we've already resized them now and "broke" the perfect aspect ratio that cbagy is talking about. To make all of the artwork perfect in terms of aspect ratio now would be next to impossible. Sure... if every image we had was HQ we could just downsize it slightly to the exact measurements, but there are a lot of low quality images in the set for things like Japanese games and other harder to find stuff.

I don't know....

Like anything else, I'd probably add the stuff to my set if somebody went to the trouble of doing this, but I really don't see the point. Your eyes must be a hell of a lot better than mine. I know I'm not the most observant or picky when it comes to these things, but I dont' see anything wrong with them as-is.

Good evening gents. Rx your right, trying to correct some of the ones that may have been cropped originally wrong, or cropped correctly but the original image was deformed, is now a waste of time. In reality you need a good clean full pic to start with. Cropping the correct sizes from the start is essential in making sure that all artwork when resized to a standard size will all end up the same and still in the correct ratio to the original. It sounds crazy but once youve done a few its a piece of cake. To also make the whole package smaller and to help the emulator out dont make your final drafts too big. I'll explain. The screen max for a SDTV with overscan and a nice presentation border for the boxart artwork is ? I dunno a 320x480+ at a guess or there abouts, now that image will still look brilliant in HD and SD. Mine for example cut from the original sega boxes which are very large, anything from 700 + pixels high to 2000 pixels high. I cut them and resized them all to a correct aspect of 233 x 320. I always use the height as my yard stick and let the computer resize the width in ratio for me. So if i was to have resized to 640 tall then the width for those sega boxes would have been 466.
I thought that 640x466 tall was too big file size wise so i reduced them to half which in turn saves lots of space and more importantly memory on the xbox. As long as your original crop has even numbers for division and resizing your already half way there. It will come to you MM. Like i said once you experience a few odd sizes and learn to deal with them all with the same formula its straight forward from then on.

Rx's cuts aren't that far out,

460 x 629 if the width is ajusted to 466 then the height is 635. Which from my findings is slightly too short i would be expecting 640. At that ratio the characters would be slightly too fat or not quite tall enough depending on which way you look at it.

460 x 631 Now this one is much closer. 460 + 6 = 466, 631 +6 =637. Only 3 pixels off 640.

Only a fraction but i noticed mate. Then stretch those into HD and the difference can be seen.
Not saying that what i experienced from cutting the artwork is absoloutely correct. But what i will say is that i could consistantly hit the exact pixels for width and height every time. Regardless of the input sizes which vary wildly. As they say "measure twice, cut once." Then everything across the board is standardised period !

Have just thought, dont copy my sizes exactly. Different console manufacturers had different games cases. Therefore different artwork. Dont know the exact size of them all, thats something for you to discover. I have only looked at full size sega stuff.

Don't worry RX, I think the stuff now is fine too,
But, if I am to do any new ones ( ex. Genesis boxarts)... I want to get it as right as I can.

OK... Cbagy... what is the right dimensions for Genesis boxarts...? (that you made?) 233 x 320 or just double that - 466 x 640 ( is that too big?)
(other consoles... I will look into...)

Well as an average, taking everything into consideration, maintaining good ratios, etc etc. Yes. 233x320 was ideal for me for these sega boxes. Lightweight in file size (which helps the emulator and saves space), not overly large in pixel size (which helps the emulator) and most importantly they are first drafts from HQ sources so high quality is maintained. Alternative sizes for these particular boxes could be 350 x 480. Which is the halfway point between my original 233x320 and 466x640. 350 x 480 would be totally full screen on a SDTV but would suffer overscan. Coupled with the fact that a skinner would have no room to present this artwork without resizing it using the emulator (using resources). So a compromise would have to be met, that saves the emulator those resizing tasks. Now, working in 32's, 256x352 would be a nice large image for SDTV. It would enlarge for HD with nice round numbers. Quality could be maintained.

I've been making my 675 x 675 preserving the aspect ratio (meaning that only one dimension is that big unless the original was a square CD box or image MM?)

I haven't noticed any emulator problems with the images that size, and I figure it would be quite a while until somebody had to replace them for larger TVs with better quality down the road.

If you'd like to make the new images with the right ratio, be my guest, but I'd like to keep consistant with my other sets and have the large images that have one dimension somewhere around 675 (whatever it needs to be to look good... I think you said 672)

No quite right, ive never had any major performance problems with big artwork. And in reply to your earlier post, I dont blame you, i wouldnt crop and resize that many images lol. Even im not that keen. And you are 100% correct they do look alright. Notice the word "alright". Pop in some HQ video encodings, whether 320x224 or 640x480, coupled with huge images, and then every MB of memory counts.

I haven't tried them with your videos yet, but I know that with the non-emumovies videos we had some vids that topped 10MB each and I don't recall any problems. The only problem we seemed to have with anything in the emu with all the stuff I had was that UMK Trilogy wasn't working (but Madmab fixed that).

That being said, I wasn't aware until recently that I haven't added the Genesis HD artwork yet. From what I hear, this is a pretty memory intense emu for whatever reason. We'll have to see if it can handle the large HD images with your videos (using Gilles' skins). Correct me if I'm wrong, but at this point Gilles' skins are more memory intense than yours are, right Cbagy?

You got any of those HD Genesis artworks MM? I'll try some of them out with cbagy's videos if you have them.

Later,
~Rx

Yeah... Believe me it's about 98% done and has been sitting waiting for that last 2%. But something just keeps on coming up.

I can get you some soon Rx...

OK
233 x 320 - (I actually think it is too low res to be worth it... )
350 x 480 - (is an OK medium)
466 x 640 - Is definitely best out of the 3 but is around 200kb more than the 350 x 480 one that I am testing)

now my conclusion is: that 466 x 640 wont have a problem in the emu.
Rx's sizing's are bigger than all of these...
And we though cbagy videos may be too big for us but... our HQ boxarts are far bigger than his...
(now... proper ration is another story, but I think they are fine (and relative)... and the skin/emu "Will" force them into the given rations...Right? That is what it looks like it has been doing.. to me...

EDIT: EDIT: forget it... duh.. png conversion...
Madmab: the ? is... will a 10mb video and a 450kb to 550kb boxart running at the same time, perform soundly within the emu...?

The bigger the better, I say. Like madmab says, the memory is only an issue on a piece of artwork when it's being viewed. The artwork is so small compared to the videos, it shouldn't matter. I say have better than what we need now so it looks good tomorrow too when it barely costs any space compared to the vids.



I've got a big surprise I hope to be able to put out there in the next day or two. It really came along quick and I'm really happy with how it's all turning out.

Later,
~Rx




EDIT: Would somebody be able to make about 4 Master System/Game Gear videos for me in the next few days?

Yes RX, i believe PMIII skin is more memory demanding. Although file size of videos does make a difference to the emulator its more to do with bitrate that demands more resources. Some of the older videos had a bitrate of 500 - 600kbps mine average 1250kbps. So as you can see slightly more demanding.

@RX which videos on which system at which res (320x?). Ill do them now.

Correct, thats presuming the skinner has the correct ratio values plotted for the artwork and display sprite !
The skinner may have based their sizes on artwork that was faulty to start with.
Then even correct ratio artwork would be resized by the skin to a faulty value.
When you find your happy medium, the skin may have to be altered to suit.

OK Rx... This is a good place to start: Genesis 466 x 640 boxart test
Cbagy made videos for these I think... They are all the sonic games, so you can check them together... They're in .png... but you'll have to name them right...

Just use them as a test and get back to me... if it's a go...I will have the full pack together soon with about 220 HQ boxarts,

Cool. I should have some time today to test that out.


EDIT: Hey MM? When we finish figuring out the size, would you collect the Master System and the Game Gear as well?

http://www.thecoverproject.net/view.php?cat_id=30 Master System (100 boxes)
http://www.thecoverproject.net/view.php?cat_id=15 Game Gear (56 boxes)

I'm upgrading to the highest boxart quality I could find for these systems as we speak, but I know none of those 156 images look as good on my PC as they will from tcp.

Let me know,
~Rx


EDIT: Nevermind on the Master System. I do have a pack that (I believe) somebody got from tcp. I can't remember who it was now though. It's been sitting in my to-do folder that I have yet to integrate after the virus hit. So it looks like all we need are those 56 Game Gear boxes






EDIT 2: To Madmab... Hope you're feeing better man.

daleswanson brought up a good point. Could there be a way that the emu could just auto save the configurations for new roms if you enter the game by pressing B? I really don't care for my own setup now since I've pretty much got all the saves done, but I could see how this could be valuable for new people who dont' have the Xtras or don't take the time to FTP over the thousands of saves I'll be uploading. I was wondering if that'd be difficult to code in?

And now for the surprise....

1) Updated TG16 Synopsis. (This has all the CD names filled out with my names for you, among other updates)

2) CHIP8 Synopsis, Saves & Roms (I have never seen anything stating that these roms are anything other than public domain and they are available right off of webpages unlike many commercial roms).

Use these settings and point to them in your CHIP8 emu correctly and the games have perfect controls. Instructions for the buttons are included in the synopsis file.

And now for the big guy....

3) Sega Master System / Game Gear / SG-1000 synopsis

It's complete! and it has every romhack, translated, and prototype I could find included. Matches the no-intro CRCs so most roms should work right away for you without having to request me to add new CRCs to the master doc. It only took me 3 weeks to write from scratch. (I'm getting good at this)

Only those who have the beta for these systems can take advantage of the synopsis at this time, but know that with a complete synopsis we have complete video sets and complete artwork sets for all of the included games too.

One step closer.

~Rx








EDIT: Hey cbagy... I noticed on your videos that some of the ones from pack 3 and pack 4 overlap the ones from the first two packs. Is this intentional, as in, are the ones in the newer packs redone videos that improve off of the ones you first put out?

If that's the case, don't worry about reuploading anything. Just keep sending the new ones as you go and I'll just make a note to just overwrite old ones if you send something that you've already sent before. I remember you talking about redoing some CD videos still.

Thanks,
~Rx




EDIT2: MM? and cbagy. Genesis test successful. No problems or slowdown at all using the HD artwork that MM? sent me with your Sonic videos cbagy. Combined, they're some of the most appealing games to look at in the emus right now.

This should definitely be the minimum standard for both Videos and Artwork from now on.

Great work guys,
~Rx

OH snap! Happy F..in Halloween everyone!
Nice work Rx!

Yes, I believe those are corrections that cbagy made after some findings...
(but i may still be cropping these...)

Edit: Cool Rx!
will you guys please use the "c" edit when you convert to xmv... I explain it all in the tutorial... and it looks like cbagys videos are only 5 - 6mb in xmv format afterward.

This is telling me that I don't think Frank and Cbagy are using the "C" edit.
How To

I've actually never used that before MM, so you got about 4,000 videos coming your way without the "c" edit.

I do still have all the original WMV files though, and I may go back and do this to all of them someday if they really save all that space with zero impact to the video quality. I wanted to keep the WMVs because I plan on releasing the WMVs with the XMVs in case the madmab editions someday get ported to the PC like the XBMC does. I really think that Madmab Editions with Gilles' Dynamic Skins and the RessurectionXtras are how games should be displayed on any system, not just the XBox. I hope some coders make this happen someday when Madmab is finally done.

I won't put any more of Cbagy's vids on my box until you decide if you're cropping them or not. They looked fine to me, by the way.



So..... would you mind getting the Game Gear boxarts for me as well? I think we may need the Colecovision stuff too, but I'll verify that first. Right now I have 7 emulators staged for a release, although stupot has me adding about 120 more games/videos/artwork synopsis to the big 3 at the moment, and cbagy's doing 3 videos for hte Master System for me too. Still need Gille's generic boxart for 3 of the 7 finished systems too. They're all real close to being perfect now though.

Colecovision would make 8 practically ready to go and then the Virtual Boy will make 9. I'm hoping to get an updated pokemon mini skin and emu soon and just crank that one out real quick to make 10.

(I guess I'm doing whatever I can to procrastinate the Gameboy stuff )




EDIT: With what I've seen now, I believe we can have larger files, especially if MM?'s "c" edit doesn't diminish quality. I would prefer if future videos had the entire title sequence after the action, only including "credits" screen before if the music starts early. These are top notch videos. They should have a little tlc for the intro screens. What do you think cbagy?

@ MM yeah thats an old command from the tools (sdk / xdk). It takes too much out of them quality wise. Batters the audio and video, i think its too much. Wow that bloody set of tools takes me back. @ RX. Yes any videos that appear in subsequent packs are revisions, either better action of removing some form of fault. You are correct to overwrite any older drafts. I have had a re-think, im doing some bits to my skin to give a more cinematic feel which has led me to look at the videos in a different light again. Im gonna get "all" the official videos done and complete, at the current standard, then probably start again from scratch after a few months break from it. Paying more attention to titles this time. It may make them slightly longer but i think with a few more tweaks i can still get HQ FOR UNDER 8.5 - 9M mb.

Interesting cbagy...
Rx... 4000 videos coming my way...?
The "c" is an option anyone can do when they want to convert their wmv to xmv... like everyone here has to do "AFTER" they download the (wmv) xtras...

Of course you still have the .wmv files... that is what we have been releasing.. right...?
It's everyone choice really... no need to worry...

I'll see about those other hq boxarts when I finish the Genesis ones... I am busy tonight...
Later Guys

Whoops... yeah. I forgot we don't do xmv here... dur

Everyone can make them the way they want to from the WMV files.



4,000 vids coming everyone's way really. I think in about 3 months I'll be ready to put out a giant 8 or more system Xtras release. I might postpone that though if we still have a lot of action on adding new games. Hoping this will be the grand finale for most of them.

Now this test pack couldnt be my artwork resized could it ? Im presuming not after RX bleating on about me pinching his stuff, renaming it and then calling it mine, which as it turns out wasnt the case. I had a feeling this might happen anyway, funny how the worm turns. But i'll leave it at that, end of story.
The link i gave you MM wasnt to be used as a distribution link. After 3 downloads i deleted the online files as i was only expecting one download from the one and only link i gave to you. I do have have a "full" enhanced artwork pack to which i only gave you a small sample. Ive even gone to the effort of building proper custom cases that are accurate to the originals for those boxfronts that dont exist or are of piss poor quality.
Dear me !

In regards to memory useage it works something like this. And I'm trying to keep this simple...

Action shots, title shots, box and cart art completely loaded up and use whatever memory it is that it takes to store them. So the bigger they are the more likely they can cause issues displayed in the right combination. When the interface stops displaying them the memory is freed.

Movies are buffered so they always generally take the same amount of memory (depends on screensize, color depth). The emulator fills the buffer as needed. Obviously things like larger screen sizes, bitrates and color depths will affect performance depending on how often full frames are used, but that is way too technical for me to want to try and explain.

If any of the above elements are on the network the emulator first copies them to the temp drive and then it accesses them. So there will be a delay depending on how good the network connection is and how big the files are. There is no need to worry about the temp drive filling up because it overwrites old pictures/movies with the new ones as it goes.

@ Madmab

Would re-sampling the title shots to a smaller file and pixel size be an memory improvement even if its only minor. As ive had a hunch that those pics dont necessarily need to be as large as the are as static previews are rarely used at full size.

What do you think ? Even if its a minor ajustment to memory consumption.

Are you being serious?

Arent' those images from thecoverproject? Unless you bought all those games and took the images and touched them up yourself, I think you have no claim to them. Collecting artwork for the project from that site is something that people have done for about 4 other systems now.

I'm holding off getting mad here again because I can't tell if you're serious or not.

Well the map file to texture is a DirectX command so I'm not really sure what is going on there. You basically have three factors...

The file size which probably has the least impact since .jpg's and .png's are generally compressed. Most likely any memory used (for loading, and work space) is released once decoded.

The color depth and screensize of the source (aka the file).

The color depth and screensize of the destination. Color depth = 16bit RGB. Screensize matches the source file, pretty much.

I'm not sure what the OS (xbox) / DirectX does with the actual texture. Whether it keeps it in memory and then just blits it to the screen memory, or how that works. So this may or may not be a factor.

I only personally ran into memory issues twice..

1. Some hi-res Box/Art for the Odessey2.
2. Some hi-res manual sacans for the Odessey2.

One of them seemed more an issue of the actual dimensions of the image and not how much memory it used. But I'm not really sure since it was DirectX that was rejecting it and it was not exactly giving me a whole lot of details on why it rejected it.

What was disconcerting about the above mentioned scenario was that it was happening with the O2 emulator which is not exactly a memory hog.

To be honest HQ artwork is gonna have diminishing benefits (I'll leave it to the math experts cause I'm lazy). But you figure at SD you are at 640x480 and the boxart is only gonna take up a small portion of that unless you stretch it to the full screen. Then the next two highest up are 720p and 1080i. So you get a little more detail. But 1080i REALLY pushes the performance and memory of the Xbox.

In fact some people may consider HQ box-art about as pointless as others may consider titles screens, dual previews, movie previews, and the synopsis.

I wouldn't worry to much about title screen size anyways. Most emulated systems don't really go any higher than 320x400 anyways.


Pressing B at the games select screen, exits you out to the main menu. Not sure what your getting at here. Sure we could add an option in the "General Options" menu to "Use configuration defaults on unconfigured games" or something like that. Then the user could just press "X" to "Force the configuration screen to come up" if the above added option was set to "Yes".

I've been wanting to work on some means of transferring configurations easily way back since I started Atarixlbox. But it never came to fruition and the computer based emu's seem to be the only ones that need it the most. So I figured the point was kinda moot unless someone was willing to sit down and make configurations.

It is likely, however, that something may come into existance on my work with winuaex. If waal comes thru with his configurations. Now I just got to get over all these nice little muscle aches created by the nice little flu I caught.

Whoops. yeah... I meant X button.

That be great if you could do that. I don't mind making the saves, since they're done for about 6,000 or so games total at this point, but maybe somebody wouldnt' want to take the time to FTP all of them over. It really does take a long time since the FTP program has to create all of those folders (which seems to take much longer than just transfering files).

I thought it was a pretty good idea for the console emus. Glad to see you agree.

BTW... the link MM gave me only had about 8 Sonic the Hedgehog images in HD to match up with your videos, using Gilles' skins to see if there were memory problems. Which there weren't.

Should be a cause of celebration. Not more of this bullshit.

And the Sonic the Hedgehog I image wouldn't make it anyways since it has the "Not For Resale" words on it that they have at thecoverproject, so if these were yours, you downloaded them and cropped them from thecoverproject like about 4 other people have done for 5 or 6 other systems already including SNES, NES, Atari 2600, Atari Lynx and Atari 7800.

Tell me you're kidding cbagy. I love your work, but you're certainly rubbing everyone here the wrong way with your comments at times.



EDIT: I think you need to realize that this is a project where people have developed personal relationships and worked with each other for over a year, many hours of free time, without pay. We welcome people who want to help out and contribute and you could even be a valuable team member some day, but I think right now you're just very concerned in making a name for yourself and fighting with everyone every step of the way.

You're not going to make it to the top in a few weeks, and definitely not by pissing off somebody everytime you post something.

Help me out here. I want to enjoy having you along for the ride, but it's becoming a chore. Let's just work together.

Later,
~Rx

Well the whole point of my "auto configuration database" system would be that it would be CRC based and not dependant on filename. Plus the user could always select it from a list if they wanna take a chance...

CRC could be cool. I just figured you'd keep it filename like it is though. Just when you press "A" for a new rom it would skip the whole "making a new save and asking you if the standard settings are okay" process".

I don't think this should be a project at all for anyone. Just get the emu to automatically press "B" after the emu brings up the config menu (all behind the scenes, of course).

Yeahh I'm still around.
Been testing the U folder at the moment. There was a huge number of games I've set before that and 182 are to be replaced right now (already got them). In the end I'm glad to tell we will be close to Gamebase in number. I think I'll need two more weeks to finalize, though. And for sure, will talk of the actual emulator then.


Until then, good recovery.

From my side I caught a stiff neck strength to move from one screen to another.

Edit.

CRC seems to be the good way. At least for computer games as they are so many different versions.

Like waal said, I think this could be a benefit to use CRC files for computer emulators. That's going to take a whole lot of controller programming to make worthwhile though. I did it with Chip8 this weekend and it took nearly two days to set up around 45 games for perfect playablity and the Xtras and synopsis. Console emus on Xbox = Good, computer emus = bad. We can probably expect our favorites on these systems to have some sort of Xtras treatment, but it's really a lifetime project that I'd have to be paid for if I was to configure every Commodore game for every Commodore system.


Other than that, I think the romnames are fine for console configs, since they rarely deviate. No need to even make it CRC. If people use the Xtras names or not, they will have automatic configurations for their games without that annoying config screen. That way, they could be lazy or completely ignorant of the Xtras and still not ever look at that screen if they ddidn't press X.

Hey, sorry if you're aware already, but your megadrive dat doesn't include the lock-on roms for sonic & knuckles. Loving all the video previews atm

Lock on roms?

@RX. Yes i do re-touch and air brush all of those box-fronts. A lot are cover project downloads but im slowing goin through them removing them as some look too home-made for me and well over contrasted. Regardless i wont be submitting anymore till im finished, then im finished.

Whoa...
I think we all just have a misunderstanding here...
Those are just a few sonic games from the stuff I "DID" collect/size and crop from thecoverproject.net
(these are not from cbagy's "private pack" )

I don't know where all these major assumptions are coming from. (did you even look at my test pack? ) You'll notice even bigger sizes than yours...(466 x 640) I am collecting them all personally from tcp.net and then deciding on the final sizing... even if so... I though you (cbagy) gave us your consent to use your stuff...

Everyone keep cool and stay productive...
I'll get back to you guys when I catch up on all the reading...

ye,

sonic & knuckles and sonic 1 (not so important, just special stages)

sonic & knuckles and sonic 2 (play through sonic 2 as knuckles)

sonic & knuckles and sonic 3 (play through sonic 3 and sonic and knuckles back-to-back as any character)

I don't mean to be patronising if you were actually well aware the sonic & knuckles cart did this, but I suppose you might not have known if you've only ever been into emulation

Oh...

Not to worry pkbunghole. Those are in there now.

I always get confused when people say Megadrive instead of Genesis even to this day. Never heard of a Megadrive until about 4 years ago. For some reason my mind read it as 32x when you said it.

Those have been added in the last few months or so, much later than the release.

If you ever have a question about the rom, you can open the spreadsheet by clicking on the console name button on my first 4 or so posts in this thread and then hit "CTRL+F" to bring up a Find screen that will search through all the tabs for the game you're looking for. Feel free to ask here too, but it would be faster for yourself to check on any you think of.

I'm always willing to add new games. You'll see what I mean with the new NES Xtras whenever they see the light. With Stupot1's recent additions, we're up to nearly 1,600 unique roms. All of them with videos, artwork and synopsis.

Thanks for the tip.

Kinda cool that even newly released prototypes and other things people have been suggesting are all in the sets now. I really think we're coming to an end for most of the big emus I plan on doing.

(Ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance)