New FE under development: Project FEX

[nosh]

Some of you may know already but I am currently developing a new FE called FEX. I am using Unity3D which is a popular 3D game engine. I chose Unity3D because I have always wanted to get into game programming and to take advantage of all the cool things that a 3D engine offers: shaders, lighting, particle effects, cameras, etc. This is a learning experience for me so I am figuring this out as I go. Right now I am focusing on just getting the elements I need into Unity like the system menu, videos, and copy relating to the system loaded on the fly which I mostly have working already.

This is a solo project and I may need help here and there so if you know anyone with Unity experience please let me know. I have no idea when this will be ready for release and I wont do so until I am satisfied with it. Initially this will be built only for Windows because all development is being done in C# which is where my experience lies but i have every intention at some point to release for linux, mac and possibly XBone One, PS4, phones/tablets in the future.

I will post some screenshots and mockups when I finalize the design and get a little farther in development. To give you an idea it will be XBMCish so more modern than a retro feel.

Here are some initial features I will be focusing on:

HL integration
Game search across all systems
Game filtering across all systems by: genre, system, year, publisher, # of players, controller type
Favorites which can also be filtered and searched within
BG music player with playlists, on-screen controls, spectrum analyzer, and visualization animation on bg
System and Game information: manufacture, year, genre, description
Recently played games per system
FE configuration accessible in gui

Long term goals:
LEDBlinky support
Information scrapers
mp4 support (requires paid Unity Asset) currently videos must be .ogv
Camera angle adjustment
user profiles
3D cart and box option (actual 3d objects)
3D console models option, a lot of high quality models already exist, they just cost $

 

[djvj]

Sounds great nosh. Can't wait to see what you come up with. I especially like that HL integration is right at the top 😊

When you have something solid, I can create your own area for discussion in the FE section.

Sent from my Samsung S3 using Tapatalk

 

[nosh]

Sounds great nosh. Can't wait to see what you come up with. I especially like that HL integration is right at the top ��

When you have something solid, I can create your own area for discussion in the FE section.

Sent from my Samsung S3 using Tapatalk

Well of course Why would i reinvent that wheel. The layout right now is mostly 2D just to get things up and running. I recently found that i can import 3D models and textures from Cinema 4D which I have a little experience with. I know exactly how I want it to look and animate now as well as what elements I want on screen. This should be sweet.

 

[nosh]

This is a screenshot of the stage. It is basically 2 planes, one containing an illuminated background that will be customizable to change when selecting a system or game, and another that makes up the floor which is highly reflective. The tiled bump map on the floor plane I will either be changing, removing or creating my own.

The cubes are just there for show, I was playing around with some shaders.

 

[daithi1101]

Look promising

 

[timmyb]

Unity Pro supports anything that Quicktime can play. That includes .mp4s. That screenshot looks like unity pro due to those shaders.
That cube looks like its from glow11 : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/8513
So if this is the case you might want to check out this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-MovieTexture.html

Good luck on the project!

I started doing something similar in unity as well. In trying to keep the HyperSpin media/databases structure I was able to get unity to load a database (Sega 32x below) and have it load the wheel art on evenly spaced planes in the scene. if the art didnt exsist It would just apply a TextMesh instead.

 

[nosh]

Unity Pro supports anything that Quicktime can play. That includes .mp4s. That screenshot looks like unity pro due to those shaders.
That cube looks like its from glow11 : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/8513
So if this is the case you might want to check out this: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-MovieTexture.html

Good luck on the project!

I started doing something similar in unity as well. In trying to keep the HyperSpin media/databases structure I was able to get unity to load a database (Sega 32x below) and have it load the wheel art on evenly spaced planes in the scene. if the art didnt exsist It would just apply a TextMesh instead.

Ya I am able to stream an ogv to a movie texture no problem but for some reason mp4 doesn't work. The mp4's i have tried are HS media. From the research I just did your right, Unity should support anything Quicktime does including mp4 so I am not sure what the problem is.

 

[nosh]

Uploaded a video of a system video on the stage. I am using Glow 11 timmyb as well as Candela SSRR. The reflections get weird if the video quad is floating above the plane, not sure why.

 

[timmyb]

Uploaded a video of a system video on the stage. I am using Glow 11 timmyb as well as Candela SSRR. The reflections get weird if the video quad is floating above the plane, not sure why.

Thats a shame about the mp4's just saw a thread where the unity dev replied telling people to convert to Ogg even after they mentioned the mp4/quicktime support.
Though maybe it cant play them on the fly to quote the wiki: "Video files are imported via Apple QuickTime. Supported file types are what your QuickTime installation can play (usually .mov, .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .avi, .asf). On Windows movie importing requires Quicktime to be installed." But really converting the videos is no big deal especially if that means having an FE in unity.

I love the 3d carts idea. Having a spinning cart that dynamically changes the texture based on the game selected is a FE feature I'd love. Or like GameEx's support for 3d MAME cabinets.

 

[nosh]

Thats a shame about the mp4's just saw a thread where the unity dev replied telling people to convert to Ogg even after they mentioned the mp4/quicktime support.
Though maybe it cant play them on the fly to quote the wiki: "Video files are imported via Apple QuickTime. Supported file types are what your QuickTime installation can play (usually .mov, .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .avi, .asf). On Windows movie importing requires Quicktime to be installed." But really converting the videos is no big deal especially if that means having an FE in unity.

I love the 3d carts idea. Having a spinning cart that dynamically changes the texture based on the game selected is a FE feature I'd love. Or like GameEx's support for 3d MAME cabinets.

Ya i think the 3d carts would be cool, the only downside would be that all of the existing artwork would have to be converted to a mesh skin. The HS artists might already be doing something similar for the 3D boxes.

For mp4 I just think it is how they are being encoded. I have to test another video but for the one i am using, i cant even open it in Quicktime.

 

[nosh]

I am on the fence on whether to wait until Unity 4.6 to go all out with the GUI. The UI system is being completely revamped, right now i am using NGUI which is good but it doesn't really like what i am trying to do. It starts getting confused when a 2D and 3D camera are in the same scene. I was planning on doing the same thing as you timmyb with the horizontal scroll database, 4.6 has some nice UI features that allow you to automate a scrollable area with evenly spaced elements. NGUI has a prefab for something like that as well.

I am noticing transparency artifacts in the wheel art from your screenshot. I am sure I will run into the same problem and I guess the solution is to convert them to TGA or TIFF. I would have liked to just use HS media as is but like you said it wouldn't be a huge deal to do a conversion. I guess I'll just have to make this FE worth the effort .

I have had a loose vision of how I wanted everything to lay out but recently I have been struggling with how 3D this should get specifically the system/game video and information panel. However, I recently thought of a sweet idea that I think will pull together the retro/modern feel i am going for. The floor on the stage will be made up of a ton of individual cubes, when you land on a system or game selection the cubes will quickly float up and build the video and info panels, leaving a system or game the panels will either fall back into the floor as cubes or explode sending the cubes randomly in all directions. So in turn the cubes would give it a voxel retro feel, almost minecraftish. The cubes in the floor would also respond to music by going up and down the z axis based on frequency. I think that would be pretty BA.

 

[timmyb]

Actually that bit at the top on the spider-man game is the bottom pixels of "web of fire". its tiling the Image at the top. looks like its offset 2px or so. I never got around to correcting that. Not going to rant here but there was no quality control on hyperspin wheel art. some where it says 400x175 I think are the exact dimensions. But obviously no one cared about that or knew how to size a png larger than the art itself.
The layout I had was actually just trying to get it loaded into the scene. My plan was to work towards having the art list dynamic after I figured out how to copy the hyperspin carousel menu. Have you ever played with wii flow? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNOx8Q7ArGk <- thats the sort of thing I wanted.
Messed around with itween etc. But really had trouble figuring out even where to start. So dropped that and decided to try in 2D maybe unity's menu system and looked at some of ngui's menu examples as well but even getting those menus to loop was difficult for me. I'd go 3D scene for the actual FE menu maybe 2D for the config menu. But really a static menu is easy in any form.

 

[nosh]

This is moving along slowly. Most of my time is spent doing research. I have been unhappy with the video quality i have been getting from the deferred lighting rendering path, biggest problem is that it doesn't support anti-aliasing so all 3d object edges are jagged...yuk. I found some post-process AA solutions that should work great. I also started on the cover flow navigation, really once i get that working I can start putting the pieces together. At that point it will look and act like an FE, ill put out a video when its ready.

 

[t.h.c]

Actually that bit at the top on the spider-man game is the bottom pixels of "web of fire". its tiling the Image at the top. looks like its offset 2px or so. I never got around to correcting that. Not going to rant here but there was no quality control on hyperspin wheel art. some where it says 400x175 I think are the exact dimensions. But obviously no one cared about that or knew how to size a png larger than the art itself.
The layout I had was actually just trying to get it loaded into the scene. My plan was to work towards having the art list dynamic after I figured out how to copy the hyperspin carousel menu. Have you ever played with wii flow? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNOx8Q7ArGk <- thats the sort of thing I wanted.
Messed around with itween etc. But really had trouble figuring out even where to start. So dropped that and decided to try in 2D maybe unity's menu system and looked at some of ngui's menu examples as well but even getting those menus to loop was difficult for me. I'd go 3D scene for the actual FE menu maybe 2D for the config menu. But really a static menu is easy in any form.

Digging the unity 3d idea but i code in c++ Python and Java i was part of wiiflow team for awhile now been using hyperspin for almost an year or two but come here notice had cover flow project but now it's gone but I'm going bring it back soon with a twist so stay toon

retroarch basic for windows and core tutorials coming soon

 

[jeremy0203]

lol why did you post in here? This thread is almost 2 years old and pretty sure he must have killed off his idea quite a while ago.

 

[t.h.c]

Didn't know it was 2 years old was on tablet on Tapatalk when I replied

retroarch basic for windows and core tutorials coming soon