HyperLogo Wheel Image Generator 0.1

[fata1err0r]

http://www.danesgames.com/apps/HyperLogo.gifHyperLogo Wheel Image Generator 0.1

I have decided to abandon my mame2hyperspin project in favour of this one. I hope the following makes sense as its 2:40am :p

It allows you to open any HyperSpin Database XML and automatically generate the wheel logos for it.

Download : HyperLogo 0.1.zip (1.22mb) (http://www.danesgames.com/apps/HyperLogo 0.1.zip)

You might need the Visual Studio 2008 Redist to run:
Visual Studio 2008 Redist (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en)

How to:
1. Click open and browse to your hyperspin/database/<emulator name>/<database>.xml
2. Click browse and go to any folder of your choice, or the corresponding images/wheel folder
3. Choose your font settings, fontface, size, stroke, colour etc...
4. Press Generate Logos

http://www.danesgames.com/apps/hyperLogo.jpg

http://www.danesgames.com/apps/hyperLogoScreen.jpg

[RetroBorg]

Looks interesting, I like the preview window, I'll give it a go tommorrow.

[Dazz]

Wow, another excellent contribution to the community! I'll give this a try out and see how well it works.

Many Thanks!

[joebells]

I'll give it a try later. Thank you. I had worked for a short while on making a little image magick script to do this but didn't get a chance to finish it, now it looks like I won't have to :D

I wonder what is easier for hyperspin to do, load in a bunch of images like this or, if bbb does go ahead and add this functionality, for hyperspin to auto generate the wheel text like he was thinking about.

[Dazz]

I think BBB should drop adding text to the wheel and get clone support and let clones use the primary theme working ASAP. With people like this stepping up to help the community we really don't need to waste Bill's time in adding something that the community has been able to do nicely.

[joebells]

This tool looks like it will work just fine but it is something else that must be run. If you add a couple of games then you would have to run this again and generate the new images and so on. If BBB adds wheel text then nothing extra needs to be done just set a couple of options in the config and hyperspin takes care of the rest for whatever games you add at any time in the future.

But this tool is just what I wanted for now. I had started to work with image magick myself to do this but this is nice and easy and already finished.


What might be kind of cool is background support. being able to specify either a border and a pattern or a border and a background image for each wheel image it generates. Don't know how much work/how hard that would be for your program.

Thank you fata1err0r

[Ego-X]

This looks like an excellent tool.

Thank you!

[BadBoyBill]

Nice, thanks fata1err0r, Im gonna try this now, I know people want me to add text support but this does look like a great tool and there is an advantage that I can see right away. Yes its possible for me to do this within the program but it's possible that it would slow the wheel down as it would have to dynamically create the wheel image each wheel turn. As soon as you start adding effects like strokes, glows, gradients then it could possibly slow the wheel down especially in hyperspin mode. With this there would be no slowdown at all.
The wheel would not be allowed to turn until the next wheel is fully created and ready to go, even though it would do this pretty fast it might not be fast enough, but thats not a sure thing since I havent actually tested it. Would be a shame to do all that programming just to find out that it does slow it down.
The other big advantage to this is the choice of font which you would not get in HS, you'd be stuck with whatever embedded fonts I choose.

Thanks fata1err0r, will this have gradient support in the future, 2 or 3 color ?

[amchine]

Works great! Thanks! Gradient support would really be awesome!

[BadBoyBill]

Cool was just playing with it, works great, do your libraries support outer stroke? It looks like its doing center stroke? Where the stroke is drawn half inside the font and half outside the font.

[joebells]

I have no problem just using the tool if its alot of work to add and then might end up causing lag.

[fata1err0r]

Yes, I decided to use ImageMagick this time around. I am planning on making many effect options, it is quite trivial now since I.M. is so awesome :) Check out this page

http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/fonts/

I'll do some work on it this week, and I should have a new release for you next weekend. Good to hear you all are finding it useful :D

[BadBoyBill]

Awesome, those examples are great. Thanks.

[joebells]

yeah imagemagick is nice, very nice. I kind of had something working but it was just a simple command line script thing that read a directory and you had to specify the options each time. Nothing at all as nice as this program.

This page has some nice examples too like, backgrounds and gradients :D

http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/text/

Thanks fata1err0r

[spoetzl]

I think this type of tool would best be used if integrated into a "scan for new games" feature within HS. Example: scan rom dir .. build XML .. scan wheel image dir .. if no image corresponding to game .. then create temp image in a separate folder. There would be no impact to wheel spin if this is done ahead of time.

I agree that yet-one-more-stand-alone-tool will slowly make HS not very friendly for people outside the dedicated community.

[brian_hoffman]

I tried the app tonight... I love the idea but Im having a problem using it as it crashes a quaterway through... It maybe due very long file names? Im using on my gba.xml

:(

[fata1err0r]

Yeah, I have been having a crashing issue as well... after about 2000 files it crashes in string allocation in imagemagic. Maybe there is some function to flush strings that i need to call, all of the pointers i am creating are being freed as far as i can tell. Give me a couple more days to try some things and if i can't work it out i might send it to you to check out if thats cool.

[brian_hoffman]

sounds good!

[fata1err0r]

Note: if you uncheck overwrite files, you can resume where you left off... but it requires you to write down the font settings to keep it looking consistent.

[brian_hoffman]

It crashes instantly if I try that.

Faulting application HyperLogo.exe, version 0.1.0.0, time stamp 0x48a7002a, faulting module CORE_RL_magick_.dll, version 6.4.2.7, time stamp 0x48a1756c, exception code 0xc00000fd, fault offset 0x000ee4b7, process id 0x148c, application start time 0x01c9028a6df64ec2.

[joebells]

its because the gba xml is using the pocketheaven naming :laugh: definitely a sign to switch over to the no-intro dat

I kid, I kid(not about switching :D) I'm pretty sure the no-intro naming is fairly lengthy also for the 2 in 1 games and such so it probably wouldn't help solve this problem if name length is the problem.

[brian_hoffman]

Im going to use the no intro dat. Ill start tommorow on that.

[joebells]

cool, thanks brian :D

[BadBoyBill]

Try breaking the loop at around 1500 games and restarting it where it left off. I had similar problems with working with the listxml and so did Spiderstyle in HyperHQ.

[fata1err0r]

Found the memory leak, imagemagick wasn't freeing memory even though the image object was going out of scope. So for now im gonna make it static and post a message to their forum. But i should send a fixed version out tomorow :D

[mrjah]

I love this tool. Is there any current work on it, or is it officially idle?

IMO the following basic elements would make this a very powerful tool and potentially a basic part of the HyperSpin experience (assuming it isn't integrated into the Hyperspin executable in some form):

1) Debug that pesky crash tendency; and

2) Provide an option to specify an alternate graphics format, for games that appear in an emulator's XML database file but are not available in that emulator.

For example, in MAME you could create a nice bold format for roms that appear in your XML database file AND your \roms directory... and a more subtle, perhaps semitransparent or gray format for roms that appear your XML database file but NOT your \roms directory. So if you wanted to use the full XML game list, all games would be on the wheel... but it would be immediately apparent which games you can play right now, and which you can't.

Other formatting options would be nice too, as discussed earlier. But I'd hit numbers (1) and (2) first.

[bobrocks95]

This seems like a great alternative while we wait for wheel logos to be made(and God only knows how long that will take with MAME).