RadKade Project

[djvj]

Bondy, I gave lamuel specifics on getting the FE to work with the next version of HL currently in beta. So I don't think it will work with the public one. The next version will make it seamless to hop from one FE to another w/o changing anything.

Nice work Lamuel. My concern with allowing such distortions of the art is that I can force it to stay true to its original while still scaling. Most ppl do not want distorted artwork and prefer correct aspect ratios.

 

[djvj]

Tested the latest from GIT.

Ran the server, then ran the FE.

Nothing launches and it never reaches HyperLaunch as I have no log from HL at all.
Rad Launcher is able to have multiple instances, should only allow 1. Somehow I'm always getting 2 instances of rad launcher when I manually only launched one. Ah I see now, the FE now launches the launcher on its own but doesn't detect to see if one's running already.
No ability to exit Rad Launcher from the taskbar, I had to open task manager and force close. Please at least add a right click menu unless you plan on getting rid of this executable entirely soon.

Videos in the FE are black for a good 5-10 seconds before I start to see anything, then fade into some odd colors before finally appearing normal. I think whatever method you use for fading in is not supported correctly on my end.
Screensaver kicks in and still never changes the media when it lands on a new game.

 

[lamuelwms]

Bondy, I gave lamuel specifics on getting the FE to work with the next version of HL currently in beta. So I don't think it will work with the public one. The next version will make it seamless to hop from one FE to another w/o changing anything.

Nice work Lamuel. My concern with allowing such distortions of the art is that I can force it to stay true to its original while still scaling. Most ppl do not want distorted artwork and prefer correct aspect ratios.

As for the scaling in the video, that is fluid scaling. The next patch will support any 4:3 or 6:9 resolution native. Of course when scaling up to true 16:9 there might be a slight letterbox effect. However, this can be worked around by adding a couple of nice GUI elements to the application; as any letterbox effect would be minimal at best (i dont have a 16:9 monitor so i cant test that at this point.) But in the final version, distortions will not be allowed.

 

[lamuelwms]

Yeah, I'm not sure whats going on with your end DJ. I will try switching the video renderer to DirectShow from D3D and see if that nails it for ya. As for the rad launcher thing too; that's got me stumped as well. I am going to enable verbose logging in the next build to give me volumes of information about whats going on on your end of the woods; and we should be able to hammer it out.

 

[djvj]

Ok sounds good, you can never have too much logging. Verbose logging should be a setting if possible.

 

[lamuelwms]

@DJ, in the newest GIT you should see a folder called /TEST UTILITES/VIDEO TESTER. Run that little app in there for a few minutes and let me know if you get any weird video anomalies. I also got the resolution fixes implemented in this next version. The artwork is no longer skewed upon resolution. The tradeoff is the program will only support 16:9 and 4:3 not, looks like I'll have to make a seperate branch of the program for the users who have vertical monitors (but thats easy enough (i might be able to detect it and change the layout in code anyhow) just havent dug around into it enough.) Today I will be looking at alternate video players. I really like the DirectShow player, but for some reason it cannot play the MP4 videos (DOH!) Guess from here on out I'm gonna focus on using DirectX (which is a nightmare.)

Did some work on the media descriptors today; the latest build got real heavy (now 13.9MB.) Let me know if any effects or still garbled video on your end.

And I removed the RAD LAUNCHER as well.

 

[djvj]

Ran the util, and I heard audio, but nothing moved for the first 5 seconds. Then all of a sudden the colors got all messed up and slowly faded back to regular colors.

You don't need a separate branch for vertical. You simply need a vertical setting and you can rotate all your artwork on axis and adjust for it. Your aspect ratios would then be 9:16 , 10:16, or 3:4. Automatic detection might not work 100% of the time because I've seen setups where windows was still in landscape but the FE/Emus were set to run in portrait.

You might want to look into ffmpeg as that's the only thing that works well. I helped Emb do a lot of testing in this area on RetroFE and everything else had issues. Although I don't think he was trying Direct anything because of cross-platform support.

Launching worked finally but you aren't sending the right path to your exe, forgot a backslash and the CLI switches.
RadKade log:
8:22:40 PM: Sending arguments: "Nintendo Entertainment System" "10-Yard Fight (USA, Europe)" "RadKade" "D:\RadKadeRadKade.exe"
HL log:
20:22:41:523 | HL | DEBUG1 | +0 | Main - Raw CLI received: "Nintendo Entertainment System 10-Yard Fight (USA, Europe) RadKade D:\RadKadeRadKade.exe"
Should be:
-s "Nintendo Entertainment System" -r "10-Yard Fight (USA, Europe)" -p RadKade -f "D:\RadKadeRadKade.exe"

Don't know if you care but your title name is Rad Kade, not RadKade.

Stretching worked good and artwork stayed as the correct ratio.

 

[lamuelwms]

Added favorites, genre, year, rating sorting. Added parental controls. Fixed a ton of animations, added quick view details next to game. And added more blinking lights. Second monitor controls/marquee support added/ LED blinky tomorrow.

 

[daithi1101]

+ 2 on the XML list mate, it would be nice and handy for those of us invested in the Hyperspin naming conventions and XML's. this look really good by the way!

 

[marxkemp]

+ 3 offcourse
And with wheel support...

Just kidding...but I like wheels and it would be a nice hyperspin alternative because there is no development going on with that frontend

 

[bondy]

Mate, this is looking bloody good. Every day it gets better and better.

I assume that if I want to disable 'randomised' sounds while scrolling through the games on a system I'll be able to? My personal preference would be to have the same 'click' sound you used when scrolling through the systems. I'd be happy to manually delete the unused sounds in the 'sounds' folder if the option is not available.

 

[Turranius]

This looks like a promising replacement for HS for me. I really like the look of it.

If you need a webpage temporary with Apache, let me know =)

 

[lamuelwms]

thanks for all the nice comments everybody; today i added some neat stuff in the application to the main menu and game menu. not going in to too much detail at the moment, but one thing i did do in the video below is allow for the addition of BACKGROUND MUSIC PER GAME, the frontend can now load and display game manuals (as demonstrated in the video, pdf.) working on parental controls and credit timers next (to time how much you allow your children to play daily.)

BTW, LEDBLINKY is now working and i have enabled speech output for those who want/need it (i suggest a custom speech engine.) Oh, just for kicks and giggles i added in speech recognition so you can now say "play super mario brothers three" and it will launch the game, so on and so on. mainly added that one in there for the kiddos.

 

[lamuelwms]

here is something i am excited about, the ability to login to the frontend. different users will have different settings (where applicable) such as ratings filters, play time monitor and much more; this is all part of the parental control system.

 

[djvj]

Cool. If a user only has a control panel and no keyboard, how does one input names like that? I can find it pretty tedious to try and put in user names via an onscreen keyboard or a circular alphabet every time I start the cab. At the very least, usernames could be a predefined selection and you only have to put in a pw.

 

[lamuelwms]

@DJVJ, the above image was a first draft. Here is a video that shows the operation of the final login menu, btw; thanks for the suggestion!!!

 

[djvj]

ok that's much better

 

[lank.g01]

Loving your work lameuelwms!
This starting to look like a realy slick frontend.
I thought I might throw in a request, would it be possible to implement sub menus? E.g. on the main menu you have Sega, Nintendo or Sony, then if you select Nintendo it comes up with a sub menu with all Nintendo consoles. I have always wanted this feature in a frontend as the main menu can get clutted when you have 90 + systems.

(Not sure if this is a big ask)

Thanks in advance mate, keep up your awesome work.

 

[lamuelwms]

Great idea, done and done! Actually thinking about it I love that idea, an infinite scalable amount of main menu selectors to lead you to a final destination (game selection screen), brilliant lank.

 

[marxkemp]

Ok, lamuelwms! Thats indeed gonna win me over with 100+ systems.
In Xbmc's Rom Collection Browser you even have scrapers for the game info and art