Cartridge art displayed instead of CD for MegaCD games

[Former user]

Original issue 317 created by olivier.herau on 2013-01-06T12:52:16.000Z:

Open GenPlusGX
Load Game > MegaCD

When a valid image is selected, the preview is a cartridge frame instead of a CD.

[Former user]

Comment # 1 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-06T13:02:09.000Z:

if you find a way to fit a game screenshot inside a CD, please tell me :-)

[Former user]

Comment # 2 originally posted by olivier.herau on 2013-01-06T22:34:43.000Z:

Ok I will tell you.
genplusgx uses images in PNG format which handles transparency.
it is then very easy to resize any rectangular screenshot into a square and apply a transparency mask to give it the shape of a CD-ROM.

If you have any other issues like this, feel free to ask you are welcome ;-)

[Former user]

Comment # 3 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-07T07:38:08.000Z:

Ok, fare enough, maybe i should have express this differently.
Obviously i know how to fit a square or a rectangular shape inside a circle, the problem was more to make it look not like shit, like you know, a screenshot within a circle that looks like a random CD.
If you can give a practicable mockup that actually looks good, i might reconsider it but otherwise, i'd say it's not worth the effort. That's not as if it prevented you from playing CD games....

[Former user]

Comment # 4 originally posted by olivier.herau on 2013-01-07T08:23:23.000Z:

Thanks for your reply. Sorry for my clumsy message, my english is rusty and i didn't mean to be rude. The rest of the software is far more complicated so I had no doubt you has the skills to do it, but as you said it needs some efforts to have a good looking result.
I will try my best to provide you a clean small piece of code that can turn a 4/3 TV screenshot into a nice CD mockup.

[Former user]

Comment # 5 originally posted by olivier.herau on 2013-01-08T12:19:26.000Z:

I am currently trying different styles, because for JAP, US or EU the layer might be different. But I don't know exactly which style would be the most generic.
I was very lucky to find a website discussing on this subject.
http://timewarpgamer.com/features/art_disparity_sega_cd_discs.html

I think the main template I made should be OK (see a draft version attached) but I need your opinion for the color conversion (full RGB, monochrome+one color, B&W+dithering, etc.)

[Former user]

Comment # 6 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-08T19:21:17.000Z:

the difficulty is not really to find a generic cd art but more to make a screenshot fits nicely inside it
i could indeed use your photorealistic image (which looks very nice alone) and simply display a screenshot image over it but it would not look good anymore and very weird instead
a good mockup would be something where the game screenshot would be perfectly integrated inside the template

also keep in mind that wii resolution and memory is limited so you don't want to use huge template images with too many colors but rather something already dimensionned for the 640x480 TV screen and black&white with maybe a single color (similar to existing cartridges templates - you can grab them in the source trunk under /gx/images i think)

[Former user]

Comment # 7 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-08T19:21:35.000Z:

[Former user]

Comment # 8 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-08T19:22:20.000Z:

[Former user]

Comment # 9 originally posted by olivier.herau on 2013-01-09T13:08:41.000Z:

I totally agree about Wii memory limitations. I realized too late I posted a 2.3 Mb template (what a moron x_X).
I plan to implement "on-the-fly" CD mockup rendering to preserve the snapshot feature and get rid of the memory allocation burden.

I started to make 3 different types of rendering.
- A full color version with the wide black bottom label
- A B&W+ 1 color dithered version with no MegaCD label
- A one-color dithered version with small mention of MegaCD + CD-Rom logo

I think monochrome versions could look much better with a slight color tuning.
The name of the Rom file could also be used to render the title in the 3rd version.

If the result is not good enough, a simple solution would be to display only an empty template of the MegaCD support (like the one I posted first) without using any screenshot.

[Former user]

Comment # 10 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-09T16:35:05.000Z:

Ok, i see now what you meant. The problem is that what you can easily do with photoshop is not so easy to do with C code and basic pixel manipulations we can do on gc/wii, if not impossible because of the way the different layers and graphics in general are displayed. Honestly, i do not see how you would adjust then crop the screenshot over the background, within the circle limit, while still applying the cd template over it...

Also, don't bother with the dithered versions, off course the screenshot is supposed to be in full color (that is how it is done with cartridges, right ?), there is no point to do this if this looks ugly.

Similarely, about your simple solution, what would be the point of displaying a blank CD image when the whole purpose and only interest of this is to show a screenshot of the game ? That makes no sense... i would rather have a screenshot inside a md cartridge than no screenshot at all...

[Former user]

Comment # 11 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-09T16:38:41.000Z:

[Former user]

Comment # 13 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-01-09T16:54:24.000Z:

Last remark, about using the file name to print it over, i do not see how this would be good:
- displaying the internal title as text over a screenshot would be ugly
- having external images for every existing game titles ? good luck with that

The point of the screenshot is that you can use it to identify the game, used cleverly (hint: at title screen), you can easily have the game title art displayed.

I am closing this as i have the feeling it won't lead to anything possible or usable

[Former user]

Comment # 14 originally posted by olivier.herau on 2013-01-09T20:12:50.000Z:

The problem is that what you can easily do with photoshop is not so easy to do with C code and basic pixel >manipulations we can do on gc/wii, if not impossible because of the way the different layers and graphics in >general are displayed. Honestly, i do not see how you would adjust then crop the screenshot over the >background, within the circle limit, while still applying the cd template over it...

Uh... actually I didn't photoshop at all except to have clean templates. The three images are fully generated from a screenshot of the game, and without using any extra imaging lib but old school C code.
Cropping with clean edges and merging png images is not a big issue since you know how to manipulate them.

I understand you are reluctant to modify this part of the code as the result would not be as good as for cartridge labels. You can leave the code as it is and close the subject, I will not be offended at all.
It was an interesting exercise anyway.

[Former user]

Comment # 15 originally posted by ekeeke31 on 2013-06-06T06:36:15.000Z:

issue #341 has been merged into this issue.