[COMMUNITY PROJECT] 400x400 Game Logo Snaps Project

[nightgaunt98]

3 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

You mean with changing per game bezels, marquees,  and the like?  I think we would be would be in well over our heads on that one. Not to mention the size of the theme with the given functionality of GameEx. I am not up to that challenge! 

I did it on the frontend I was using before I migrated here by creating a theme for each game. An arcade cab would pop up

with the marquee and bezel art for each game. The vid would play behind the artwork so it looked like you were standing in front of the cab.

It was a HUGE time consuming project. You can see the first draft of it in that silly animated video on my "about me" page in the profile.

I completely redid it after the video was made to have the cabs look way more realistic, which was yet another fun and tedious PSD venture...

(Which makes me wish I would have waited to make that silly video, ah well)

But I'm happy with my final choice as it is now.

 

Anyhoo, back to the task at hand.

I downloaded the BitTorrent Sync app and have the folder for the logos.

Nice and organized, good job!

I'm on my mac right now and will have to set it up on the PC later in the cab so i can check out GameSetMatch.

Seriously, nice work on setting all that up!

[Draco1962]

@stigzler - We will need to be patient as it is going to be one of those long-haul projects with interests and availability waxing and waning. I expected no less when I proposed it. As you have seen with various community projects and as a whole, it is the few that carry the many. We do these things for ourselves and share for the greater good.

"Real Life" responsibilities are kicking me in the dangly bits as of late and I will be one of those that drops in and out and participates as time permits. Don't get discouraged. 

[stigzler]

Pah. Wheres the commitment? Wheres the passion and dedication!? I expect 10 logos per week from 10 members immediately.

Only joking. People have busy lives and its a hobby full of consumers. I accept the apathy and expectations that someone else will do it. However, I do worry that without promotion and encouragement, it could disappear into project obscurity. Night helped with a great start, and your mobilisation has inspired but it shouldnt be down to us 3 to do it all. You do enough here already, dude! I wonder if theres some kind of system for member types to recognise those that contribute content. That may motivate. Also, Ive posted before about  job board post where people wanting to contribute coild go ans pick up a role. For example, im also goign to be starting a marquees project soon. Lets match the talent to the needs.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kustom Kid]

For what it's worth I'm not a content creator as I just don't have the skill set for it, but I do recognize, respect, and appreciate everything people like yourselves(stigz, Draco, night), Tom, Adultery, Headkaze, gstav, Tempest, Circo, and a slew of others I can't recall off the top of my head, do for the community and hobby as a whole.

[stigzler]

thats a gracious shout out, kustom. In all reality, the skill set to do this would probably take you an hour to learn and a further hour to practice. you can also do it for free. Just in case you wanted to give it a go....im happy to knock together a tutorial video if theres not one from googling "removing background, gimp"

 

 

[Draco1962]

I just want to add that if all someone can do to contribute is to upload decent source files, that is part of the battle that myself and others with the creative skills to clean up and convert won't have to focus upon, making better use of our time.

 

[stigzler]

That's a brilliant idea, Draco. New folder created in the Collaborative folder called "Source." Demon source-ers (like tthurman) can shove their sourced images in there. Some suggested preferences:

• The game logo part of the image should be larger than 400px wide (unless screen grab/pixel art is unavoidable)
• If you can get the logo on a solid colour background, you get a free Mars Bar.

(any others?)

Also, if you can save your image as the game name. E.g. in GameSetMatch, the mame rom names:

So, in example above, if you've found a source for Air Race, save it as "airrace.png" in the Source folder. If your saving an alternative version, just suffix with "_x" where x is a number. E.g. airrace_1.png would be the first alt version.

You can also use GameSetMatch for Source files. Just set up "Cloud Folder" as below:

[nightgaunt98]

Just a quick blip to let you know I have not abandoned/disappeared!

Got a bit slammed with work, but I'm hoping to dedicate a bit of time to this project this weekend...

[stigzler]

Nice one, fella. I'm a bit up to my neck in other projects atm, but let me know if anything needed from an admin point of view regarding the Collaborative folders. 

If we get a number of people working on this project, then I'll look at modifying GameSetMatch to enable user sign-ins to credit uploads to specific people. 

[Draco1962]

Just so you know I am up to my arm pits in family stuff so my participation will be spotty at best. Hopefully things will settle down to a dull roar in the coming weeks.

[Draco1962]

I have an idea that may simplify some of the sourcing, if not just by the shear numbers. Why not boil the list down further by eliminating all the additional variants and limit it to just the main ROM name instead of ROMb, ROMn, etc.? Not everyone has every variation of a game and, while it may be a PITA for those that do to make copies of the main file and rename them, at least the primes would be covered.

[stigzler]

@Draco1962 - I think that's already been achieved after your suggestion of using the GameEx Mame db3 + subsequent GameSetMatch setup here: 

Some variants get through, but not many.

I still think we need that enticing GameEx job board.....

 

[stigzler]

OK fellas. Been hammering away at GameSetMatch all weekend and made it sooper-dooper slick now for compiling and administrating image sets. 

I found (just laying about somewhere) a set of PlayStation game logos. That led me to tweak GSM to accommodate the GameEx db3 files a bit more effectively. The problem encountered was that there are 5/6 different naming conventions for each game, so had to accommodate this somehow. So now, it will search also on a guessed gamename. The most powerful addition is the fuzzy search on any image folders - returning near matches on the gamename. 

Check the vid here to see how easy it should make it:

Funny thing is, I spend more time making the tools than I actually do using them...

Night - I saw you got access to the MameSandbox - were you practising on it? Just asking cos hate you to toil awya on the wrong folder if you were uploading actual final images! The final mame folder is a separate folder. That is just a practice area. 

 

[tthurman]

First off, a huge thank you to nightguant for having the patience level required to guide me through this, and for supplying me with the necessary files.  After much trial and error, numerous numskull mistakes, and gallons of coffee, I finally got it  Due to my lack of experience on the theme front, this was no small achievement for me, plus this is outside the box for GameEx.

As time allows my new rig is under construction, and since these logos are instrumental to supporting the grid view style he introduced us to, I hope to be a big contributor.  

Note:  I'm still in "moving hell" right now, and couldn't even locate my power supply cables without doing a two hour reconnaissance mission last night.

Since I've been following the thread I thought I'd point out a few things.  First nightguant is spot on, this isn't a theme for the completest IMO,  you're best advised to pick your favorites here, it quickly becomes cumbersome with thousands upon thousands of games.  Add to that all the clones, and well have a look for yourself.......

missing logos.mp4

Lots of repeat logo's showing.  

I can't wait to see this in all it's high def glory on my 40" display, but that will be some time from now.

 

Note that afterburner doesn't capture the actual game, hence the dead spot following the control panel display.

[nightgaunt98]

Nice!

Looks like you are starting to get there...

Here's a full vid of my current setup with the grid view using the 400x400 title logos:

I'd like to make a custom theme soon and upload it for anyone interested.

But I'm wondering if it would cause some headaches for folks trying to use it, it's setup exactly how I want it

with only the games I play along with quite a few menu options disabled.

You know what I'm talking about, tthurman!

It's been causing you a bit of grief, innit?

 

And stigzler, yeah I poked around in there this past weekend.

Loaded it all up, found the list of missing logos and started working on 18 Wheeler.

But then I was trying to figure out a way to display the rom description name in the list and came back to this thread to see 

if you had it setup and I was just missing something. Saw that you already created an 18 Wheeler! Figured something was up with the list

so instead of creating a bunch of duplicates, I played Robotron and called it a day ;-)

 

[stigzler]

Dont use the sandbox. Thats a practice area. Use the live folder instead - youve already signed up to this one too.

[tthurman]

Nice!

if you haven't already done so you should check out Typhoon 2001, it's on the ftp.

Yeah, your exact setup won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I can see this being worked around pretty easily.  Seeing how your setup inspired this project, and especially If we collectively come up with all these logo's, it'd be a shame not to see a bunch of killer GameEx systems putting them to use.

Some of what you did caught me way off guard, blacking out the control panel and removing some options from the menus immediately come to mind, but had I been aware of this going in, it wouldn't have been such a head scratcher.  

All that said I think a base theme along with a sort of modding guide detailing how to add/remove things, Exit GameEx for example for people like me without dedicated cabs, may be the best approach.  I think this will bring with it the potential to see some really cool variants of this theme, that may even inspire some new creativity, and take it completely in other directions.

That's my initial feeling after running through setting it up anyway.  It would be nice to have some additional input here, but until you work with this a bit, you really can't offer much of a objective opinion, IMO.

[Kustom Kid]

On 5/26/2016 at 9:25 PM, nightgaunt98 said:

Here's a full vid of my current setup with the grid view using the 400x400 title logos:

 

 

This is a bit off topic, but how did you get the logos to fit at 400 x 400? I had to resize everything to be 256 x (whatever) and a fair number of them are out of proportion in order to be able to see the entire logo.

[Draco1962]

2 hours ago, Kustom Kid said:

This is a bit off topic, but how did you get the logos to fit at 400 x 400? I had to resize everything to be 256 x (whatever) and a fair number of them are out of proportion in order to be able to see the entire logo.

Refer to the ImageMagic section of the first post. Some images may have excessive empty horizontal space and need to be cropped before using it to center on a 400 x 400 layout, but for the most part, it just works!

[Kustom Kid]

Thanks @Draco1962!

[tthurman]

I'm not sure if you followed the thread where nightgaunt basically arrived on the scene and shared with us this theme or not, but it's in the general forum.  

I'd link it, but I'm posting from my mobile, regardless he mentions there that he had a hand selected list of games, around 300 if memory serves me correctly, and if you go to the nightgaunt folder on the ftp server you'll see a "full size logo" and "256 x" with the 256 x having around, yep 300 or so.  

I could be off here, but that's what I used, I'm fairly confident he used, and seems to be what you're doing to achieve success as well. 

[Draco1962]

Of course, at least for the MAME titles, you will see a lot more on the FTP under \GameEx\Projects\400x400 Game Logo Snaps Project\[Arcade] Arcade (Mame) - 6594 to be exact, that have already been centered 400x400.

[Kustom Kid]

@tthurman I did see that post by night. I had GE already set up similarly where I was using the Title screen snapshots from Emumovies instead of an alphanumeric list. His setup looked a lot nicer.  I did see his uploads on the FTP, and @Draco1962 I saw the 400x400 logos as well.

What I did was make a new folder and copied the title screen snaps into it. I then resized the 400x400 logos and overwrote the title screen snaps they replaced. The result was mostly successful. There are a few out of proportion logos, and where there aren't title logos the title screens fill in nicely. 

Thanks for the help guys. I'm starting to mess around with GIMP and IfranView so hopefully in the near future I can start contributing some.

[nightgaunt98]

2 hours ago, tthurman said:

I'm not sure if you followed the thread where nightgaunt basically arrived on the scene and shared with us this theme or not, but it's in the general forum.  

I'd link it, but I'm posting from my mobile, regardless he mentions there that he had a hand selected list of games, around 300 if memory serves me correctly, and if you go to the nightgaunt folder on the ftp server you'll see a "full size logo" and "256 x" with the 256 x having around, yep 300 or so.  

I could be off here, but that's what I used, I'm fairly confident he used, and seems to be what you're doing to achieve success as well. 

The "Full Sized Logos" are my collection from when I first started and planned on going the completionist route.

The 256x256 logos are the ones I decided to only include in my cab (for now).

They were sized that way because after a bit of trial and error that seemed to fit best (at the time) in the 

squares provided with GameEx. Well, kinda. No, not really. They were rubbish. 

I was wrong on the dimensions, but I figured it would do for now. 

Honestly I was not looking forward to resizing them all again individually in Photoshop, so i was just going to leave them

as is until another elusive day off from work rolled around and I could try again.

 

And then Draco swooped in like the Patron Angel of OCD and gave us the tutorial found on the first post of this thread!

The 400x400 resize method and guide worked perfectly.

So yeah, that 256x256 folder is probably worth ditching...

His tutorial works extremely well for other projects, I used it to resize all of my marquees and a few other art folders.

Saved me countless hours and horrendous stockpiles of art files are now all sized exactly the same with a few keystrokes.

Ruling.

[stigzler]

Big update to Game, Set and Match with this project in mind. Check here:

Hopefully now will be able to start focussing on content creation/organisation.