[THEME] After Dark

[RageOn]

Hey All

You guessed it, I've done another basic dark theme which is kind of the sequal to 'The Darkness'. It only took about a day to complete and I think it has a roomy feel to it. All the themes I have done over the past months have led me to this one and it felt natural from start to finish. Here are the pics

I've also been messing about with my mame title snaps to give them the 3D treatment for this theme which is promising so far, but still needs tweaking (Can be seen in the mame pic above). I havent seen any snaps that arent flat images so I thought I'd have a go. A monster task with over 9000 images if you were to do them individually, so I batch processed the lot which only took about 5 hours. A positive for the time taken but not exactly the turn out I was hoping for, regardless a good starting point. I tried to make them look like a sort of CD cover. I'll make them all available to anyone who is interested and maybe we can put together a full set of decent snaps. Here are some examples

On a final note, someone please stop me from theming, its becoming a habit

[KRC]

Good stuff,

I'm liking the brick background, gives it a nice old skool feel, those images are pretty impressive aswell.

Yeah theming can become addictive, but make sure it doesn't possess you

Anyway great work and looking forward to the progress on this one.

[Draco1962]

Great job, RageOn! The background kinda reminds me of a brownstone club with the neon sign guiding the way! Would be awesome if the theme engine were modified to allow for the neon sign could be animated to flash on and off to complete the "feel" that the theme can give.

Hope to see this (as well as your others) submitted as competition entries!

[RageOn]

Ty both, I'll have a look at the sign idea.... I think its definately doable

[hansolo77]

Its too bad we can't have a more stylized menu bar like "CoverFlow" (Link). Then a theme like this would really shine.

[RageOn]

I wonder if its possible to have a .swf animation in place of the menu? I have seem one that would be ideal just like your link Han, but how it could be intergrated is beyond me.

[celly]

Man that looks real good RO! Another fantastic piece of work, good job.

[RageOn]

Cheers Celly

[vsilvalopes]

Loved the 3D Snaps, the brick backgrounds and the reflections.

I will give it a try !

[RageOn]

Thanks Vsilvalopes

[RageOn]

Great job, RageOn! The background kinda reminds me of a brownstone club with the neon sign guiding the way! Would be awesome if the theme engine were modified to allow for the neon sign could be animated to flash on and off to complete the "feel" that the theme can give.

Hope to see this (as well as your others) submitted as competition entries!

Update.....Draco, I thought about what you said about the background and I did an animated one, looks ok and I can get it to work as an avi,mpg (quality and shade doesn't look right though) The m2t look great but I cant get a .m2t to play as a background. The m2t is by far the best quality and almost lossless but doesnt play. Its uploaded here if you want to take a look.

http://ul.to/4fgon1gt

If you know of a way to convert it to an equal quality video I'd be happy to do so, I just need a push in the right direction.

[Draco1962]

Have you tried .mp4 format?

[Draco1962]

I just converted your file to .mp4 using the default .mp4 settings of the Spesoft Video Converter and I think that it turned out very well and at about 1/10 the size.

I like the zap-sizzle sound of the neon as it is engaging. Very well done!

P.S. I tested it within another theme and the looping was fine, but I did notice a little lag on my system. We may need to look at lowering the frame rate and size some. Also, the sound did not play via the theme.

Startbak.zip

[RageOn]

Big thanks for taking a look and for the push Draco, thats much better.

I did a load of these after your advice, The best I found that match the existing theme was as suggested with a tweak of the snap brightness to 170 (on my system anyway). Like yourself I can't get the video sound but I can live with that. I played around with a matching mp3 in the ambience folder but thats not really the answer so I ditched it. I also made another version without sound and a slightly lower quality version for those that have dedicated cabs with a bit less power which are below. I forget sometimes about the system I'm running but hopefully no one will lag with that one. The png will still be included if anyone has problems

One I'm using at the mo - http://ul.to/eqn8yeho (8.28 MB)

Smaller version - http://ul.to/nm59l8g3 (2.84 MB)

I also tweaked the scroller position slightly to the following

Scroller=1364,1039,488,33

I'll probably do a version 2 of this theme so people wont have to mess about.

[Draco1962]

I think I would try sticking with the .mp4 format. While GameEx will support both .avi and .mp4, .mp4 is the direction that everyone seems to be going so far as overall compatibility, file size, etc.

[RageOn]

Good point, I'll do a few more.... Again, thanks for the pointers Draco

[Draco1962]

You're welcome!

[stigzler]

Great work! Just building my first cab, and this theme has it!!

Buuutt... Looking to change some of the pics for each sub menu as the girl on the emulators pic is a little too risque for a family home!!!

Couldn't figure this through the theme editor - damned if I could find where the images for each page specified. However, have figured can use file replacement in the media folder of the theme.

Is there any way you could post a 'blank' of the backplate you use for all of the submenu images?

Dunno if that's cheeky or liking Colonel Matthews to share his secret recipe!

Cheers

Steve

[Draco1962]

Actually, you can change the file (located under the \media\logos path). The file name is Adult.png. Here is a generic Parental Advisory sign you can use.

[stigzler]

Thanks Draco that's one approach, but would still love the facility to slap that ontop of the nice 'plate' background in keeping with the other logos.

[Draco1962]

OK, you mean one of the circle logos with the silvered frame.

[stigzler]

Eminently betterer way to describe it Yup - that. Thanks for the reply.

Whilst I'm at it (really getting into tweaking it now got loads of assets downloaded) - there's facility in GE to play music from a specified folder on the game selection screen for each emulator. Is there any way to have this happen on the screen before this - i.e. on the emulator selection screen? So, when I hover over C64 for example, it plays music from the C64 folder etc...

atm - in game selection screen - my videos play over top of bg music making a cacophony, but the emu selector screen is eerily silent. Is this a theme design thing - or more general GE design stuff?

I don't ask for much, huh?

[Draco1962]

That would be a feature request (see the Pinned Topics forum for where to post for that)

[RageOn]

Thanks Draco that's one approach, but would still love the facility to slap that ontop of the nice 'plate' background in keeping with the other logos.

I can help with that requests, here is a blank version for you

I would have attached another version but I've no more upload space available so I recon this is the best choice for now

[stigzler]

Cheers Rage - you're a star.