Preview image project

[ruckage]

Hello,

I was a little disappointed that Emulationstation can only display 1 preview image so I’ve created a program to generate Preview images which combine the Wheel images used by Hyperspin, a title snap and an in game snap. This was originally for my own personal project but If there is interest then I can see if there is somewhere that I can upload them so anyone can use them.

I’ve so far generated a set of Arcade images (6327 images) and plan to also do Megadrive, Snes, PC-Engine, Master system, and NES – and maybe more if there is a enough interest.

The only downside is that as the images are quite large the file size is quite big but I will use PNGoo to compress the PNG files which should reduce the filesize dramatically with no noticeable loss of image quality. (the arcade set is 2.6gb uncompressed but can be reduced to a bit over 500mb with compression).

Below are some of the previews so you can see how they look.

[url=http://imgur.com/NoafyLX][img]http://i.imgur.com/NoafyLX.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/5xX6JKv][img]http://i.imgur.com/5xX6JKv.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/aKEfNaD][img]http://i.imgur.com/aKEfNaD.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/vwvq0Z0][img]http://i.imgur.com/vwvq0Z0.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/iDXozEO][img]http://i.imgur.com/iDXozEO.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/fufvFUv][img]http://i.imgur.com/fufvFUv.png[/img][/url]

[InsecureSpike]

this is awesome!
but a big project no?

[ruckage]

[quote=110534]this is awesome!
but a big project no?

[/quote]
Thanks for the reply. It’s actually not too bad. I’ve written a program which was the tricky part, now I just provide the images and it’s more or less automated – the program does the hard work.

[robertybob]

Looks very interesting! Would there be a noticable quality difference if these were to be saved as JPEGs to save even more space (and not use up as much RAM?)

[ruckage]

[quote=110574]Looks very interesting! Would there be a noticable quality difference if these were to be saved as JPEGs to save even more space (and not use up as much RAM?)

[/quote]
Hello.

They need to be PNG files as they have a transparent background and JPG doesn’t support transparency. The transparent background allows the chosen theme to show up behind the preview images.

The file size varies from image to image but once compressed isn’t too bad at all and is only a little bigger than a medium quality JPG – between 60KB and 170KB per image.

To give you an example for file size if we take the Metal Slug 5 image:

Uncompressed PNG: 593KB
Compressed PNG with PNGoo: 153KB
JPG image (quality 50): 132KB

[rdhanded2]

I would be very interested in these for sure.

[ruckage]

I’ve been working on the Megadrive/Genesis previews. There didn’t seem to be a complete wheel art set for this so instead I’ve added to my program so that it automatically generates the ‘Logo’. It’s a nice consistent look and I will probably do the same for the other consoles. I’ve already generated all 1597 of the previews.

Here’s how they look:
[url=http://imgur.com/IUdAC1A][img]http://i.imgur.com/IUdAC1A.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/jlfrGAo][img]http://i.imgur.com/jlfrGAo.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/pclBVJh][img]http://i.imgur.com/pclBVJh.png[/img][/url]
[url=http://imgur.com/GLQATIZ][img]http://i.imgur.com/GLQATIZ.png[/img][/url]

[dustloop]

This looks outstanding! Does this take up alot of system resources on the Pi 2? I have been spending so much time customizing my romsets I am now looking for a flashy theme thats high quality. This looks like a great idea. I hope you make it public :D

[tronkyfran]

SUPER GREAT!!!!! Any hope for 8 and 16 bit computers???…. :D

[ruckage]

[quote=110728]This looks outstanding! Does this take up alot of system resources on the Pi 2? I have been spending so much time customizing my romsets I am now looking for a flashy theme thats high quality. This looks like a great idea. I hope you make it public
[/quote]
Hi there, it should be fine as far as system resources are concerned – really it’s no different to displaying any other preview images. I will definitely release these publicly as well but I’ll need to get everything working myself first and then I’ll need to find somewhere to host them.

[quote=110810]SUPER GREAT!!!!! Any hope for 8 and 16 bit computers???….

[/quote]

Thanks. 8bit and 16 bit computers would definitely be possible providing there are good sources for the title/snap images. I’m happy to take requests but no promises.

[InsecureSpike]

do you have any arcade/mame pack ready?

thanks

[ruckage]

[quote=111058]do you have any arcade/mame pack ready?

thanks

[/quote]
Sorry for the delay. I think I have an arcade pack that’s ready for testing. It comes with a very basic gamelist.xml – just enough to display the images and the correct game name but none of the descriptions etc. It should work with MAME, FBA and Neogeo.

Any suggestions on the best place to upload it? (it’s around 600 MB)

[mayki]

mega:///#start

[InsecureSpike]

or

https://www.mediafire.com/

[rdhanded2]

I would love to check these out if you get them uploaded.

[wr49152]

Hi there. Any news on this? This looks so impressing, I´d love to try that. Would be a nice christmas gift.

[ruckage]

Sorry for the delay.

I’ve uploaded the arcade previews to Mega.nz so you can give them a try.

The zip contains several folders that correspond to each of the arcade emulators. You need to extract the zip file and then paste these directly into your roms folder. It will tell you that these folders exist and ask if you would like to merge them – say yes to merge the folders together.

Just to clarify the following folders from the zip need to be pasted directly into the roms folder on the raspberry pi:

fba
mame-advance
mame-advmame
mame-libretro
mam-mame4all
neogeo

If you have a gamelist.xml already in any of these locations on the raspberry pi then you may wish to back it up first as it will be overwritten.

To save SD card space there is only one set of images which is found in the “mame-libretro” folder. All the other folders just contain a gamelist.xml which links to the image folder in this location. It saves having a separate set of images for each emulator and a considerable amount of space.

You can download the files here: Retropie Arcade Previews

Let me know how it goes. For best results use a theme with a large preview. (simplebigart for example)

[rdhanded2]

I will give this a try tonight and let you know how it goes. Looking forward to it. Thanks!

[ruckage]

No problem, thanks for giving it a try.

[InsecureSpike]

awesome! thank you, really looking forward to testing these,

thanks

[rdhanded2]

Installed and looks great. I like that you changed up the preview pics for the different versions of the same game such as USA/EURO/ASIA versions, etc so that it is not just the same pic repeated. I am a fan.

[InsecureSpike]

yep, deft have to agree with rdhanded2,
really great work, mate love them!

[ruckage]

Thanks for the replies, glad you like the previews. I can’t take credit for the actual images used as they were all created/captured by others (the snaps and title shots from Emumovies and the logos from Hyperspin). All I did was create a program that merges them together nicely (and also creates the needed gamelist.xml).

Regarding the gamelist.xml, I’ve noticed on my pi with large gamelists for some reason if you exit emulationstation then there is a really long delay before the usual “emulationstation will restart in 5 seconds” message appears in the console (I can’t remember the exact wording). Has anyone else noticed the same problem? It doesn’t seem to affect anything else.

[rdhanded2]

I experience that as well as extremely long boot times since I have so many games installed. If I attach my external hard drive the boot takes a few minutes and exiting emulationstation it takes forever to get to the 5 second prompt.

[ruckage]

I’ve had a rethink regarding the connsole previews as I like the idea of having a preview of the game box. I had trouble finding complete sets of 3D box art but did find a good source of box scans. Using these I created my own 3D model and a program to render 3d views of all the box art for Sega Megadrive (there are some missing but mainly obscure Japanese unlicensed games).

Below are some examples of the previews featuring 3d box, snap and title.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/O0WPYOP.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/jryZu00.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/YmedLda.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/gnvkMN0.png[/img]

[rdhanded2]

Impressive!

[rdhanded2]

PM Sent

[tronkyfran]

Awesome!!!
If you need help to model some 3d cartridge, tapes or box, I could lend a hand ;)

[InsecureSpike]

loving these mate!

[ruckage]

Thanks for the replies. I’ve just completed PC engine/TG16 previews (419 previews). For these, instead of the game box I used the Hucard for the preview image as I felt this would look better than the square jewel cases.

These are actually custom images as finding a good quality and complete source of Hucard scans wasn’t possible so the ‘labels’ on the Hucards are actually scans of the box art. Although this isn’t 100% authentic I think it works well and in most cases is very similar to how the actual Hucards look.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/FCQ6zYG.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/nNX6Yu1.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/jvtdge1.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/9cGJ9F2.png[/img]

[Omnija]

Looks awesome, have you thought of an easy way to incorporate this with ES scaping?

[InsecureSpike]

sweet! great work mate!!

[ruckage]

[quote=116449]Looks awesome, have you thought of an easy way to incorporate this with ES scaping?

[/quote]
Unfortunately I don’t know of a way of incorporating this with the built in scraping (other than manually replacing the images after scraping). However I also made a program to generate the gamelists so these are usable but it is limited to just displaying the correct game name and the preview images.

[Anonymous]

This is amazing!!

[InsecureSpike]

are there any download links to the PC Engine & Geneses sets?

[Author]

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