GUI Skins

Post by **Nach** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 2:47 am

I was just looking over our GUI code before, and I realized it may not be that hard to implement a skinning system.

Basically you could put a.png in a certain directory, and it would override how the letter a looks if the a.png was conforment to our requirement for fonts.

And you can do checkbox.png to override the checkbox, but those type of images would have a different set of requirements.

This would require a few hours of work, but shouldn't be too difficult.

Would you guys want such a thing? Think it's worth it?

Clements · Post by **Clements** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 3:15 am

Sounds good to me, it'll allow for even more customisation.

Aerdan · Post by **Aerdan** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 4:16 am

And one could compress the whole thing in *.gui [renamed .tar.bz2 for size, or renamed .zip for those lusers that can't produce .tar.bz2's], and have a path to find the particular gui to use...

Speaking of GUIs, does anyone know of a cross-platform video API that's relatively simple to use in OO C++? I've looked at allegro, but it doesn't want to work with g++ on my system for some reason [perhaps due to something gentoo did when I emerged it and allegrogl]...

Dolphin · Post by **Dolphin** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 4:21 am

Cool! Wonder how many are not lazy and will actually create skins?(Im lazy, thats one down

)

MisterJones · Post by **MisterJones** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 6:00 am

While a skinning system that its low on memory would be cool, I would be happy enough with just being able to recolor everything (ie: fonts, checkboxes and such), rather than just three parts of the gui.

nailbiter · Post by **nailbiter** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 6:51 am

Cool, my suggestion for skinning Zsnes has come back, and by Nach no less. I had a different username at the time I made the suggestion though. It had quite a bit of debate, over 100 posts in the topic I believe.

Ahh, but that is besides the point. Yes I think skinning Zsnes would be cool, assuming that it doesn't increase the cpu or memory usage by much. I wouldn't mind trying to make skins but you must remember that my artistic skills are suxors, though I suppose I wouldn't need to make picture's, just edit one's I have. Or mabey I could change some colors and fonts.

MaxSt · Post by **MaxSt** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:35 am

Nach wrote: Basically you could put a.png in a certain directory, and it would override how the letter a looks if the a.png was conforment to our requirement for fonts.

When you only have 5x5 cells, there is not much freedom to create different-looking fonts.

MaxSt.

Post by **Nach** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:56 am

MaxSt wrote:
Nach wrote: Basically you could put a.png in a certain directory, and it would override how the letter a looks if the a.png was conforment to our requirement for fonts.
When you only have 5x5 cells, there is not much freedom to create different-looking fonts.

Very true. But hey, some people are creative.

About additional memory requirements for this thing, ZSNES will have additional code to convert the PNG to ZSNES graphic format, and this code will be launched when ZSNES loads causing ZSNES an extra load time of 200 milliseconds or whatever.

Now I just need to read up on the PNG format so I can implement this

Tallgeese · Post by **Tallgeese** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:03 am

Won't you need to keep the PNGs in memory though, besides running the game? Some people may be anal about that... After all, its kinda what Winamp's skins do.

I'd be for it myself... Also give options to potentially change the color! Hehe.

Post by **Nach** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:16 am

Metatron wrote:Won't you need to keep the PNGs in memory though, besides running the game? Some people may be anal about that... After all, its kinda what Winamp's skins do.

No I wouldn't. I'd load a PNG, see if it matches requirements, and if it does, convert it to ZSNES format and have it overwrite the built in graphic ZSNES uses, then forget the PNG.

Tallgeese · Post by **Tallgeese** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:29 am

What would you do with the color GUI options then? Have them not work while a skin is loaded?

Post by **Nach** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:02 pm

Metatron wrote:What would you do with the color GUI options then? Have them not work while a skin is loaded?

The skin is for the buttons and font. That has nothing to do with the GUI color options.

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 10:44 pm

If you decide to do this, I will volunteer to rewrite an old hack I did for ZSNES years ago and make the font variable-width. The only potential problem is that the menus are hardcoded, I had to manually change all the menu positions by hand to make the font+interface work. It was scrapped because the ATI/nVidia filter made the font too hard to read in DS modes.
I was also never able to fix the string widths on the load box, that was hardcoded in at least 5 places, some of which I couldn't find.
Please take a look here, Nach: http://snes9x.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1138
I can volunteer some time if you want to try and make something like that a reality. A 512x448 window for skinning could result in some really nice interfaces, including a Win32 clone for people who require that sort of thing.

MaxSt · Post by **MaxSt** » Tue Dec 28, 2004 11:19 pm

Nach wrote: Very true. But hey, some people are creative.

Even big talent won't be able to overcome such limitations.

KaOSoFt · Post by **KaOSoFt** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:34 am

Nach wrote:This would require a few hours of work, but shouldn't be too difficult.

Would you guys want such a thing? Think it's worth it?

Well, if it really does not take too much time/effort from you, it would be a nice extra feature.

Post by **Nach** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 7:46 pm

byuusan wrote:If you decide to do this, I will volunteer to rewrite an old hack I did for ZSNES years ago and make the font variable-width. The only potential problem is that the menus are hardcoded, I had to manually change all the menu positions by hand to make the font+interface work. It was scrapped because the ATI/nVidia filter made the font too hard to read in DS modes.
I was also never able to fix the string widths on the load box, that was hardcoded in at least 5 places, some of which I couldn't find.
Please take a look here, Nach: http://snes9x.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1138
I can volunteer some time if you want to try and make something like that a reality. A 512x448 window for skinning could result in some really nice interfaces, including a Win32 clone for people who require that sort of thing.

I saw that image already, I thought it was nothing more then some concept art you whipped up in paintbrush.

If you really have a patch for something like that i would be quite interested.

ThunderClaw · Post by **ThunderClaw** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:16 pm

ZFE exists. What the hell is the point of this?

I really don't understand what all the fuss is about the GUI. It's simple, it's functional, and you're probably looking at it for 5% or less of your total time using ZSNES. How about getting things like the timing overhaul done, or other such functionally based things, instead of these rather pointless extras that really just boil down to stroking the ROM kiddies?

Post by **Nach** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:35 pm

ThunderClaw wrote: I really don't understand what all the fuss is about the GUI. It's simple, it's functional, and you're probably looking at it for 5% or less of your total time using ZSNES. How about getting things like the timing overhaul done, or other such functionally based things, instead of these rather pointless extras that really just boil down to stroking the ROM kiddies?

You're right. But then again, I'm not one who can do the timing overhaul.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:51 pm

byuusan wrote: http://snes9x.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1138

Ugh, reading that was painful. I'll never prefer the slow, ugly, glitchy, samey windows GUI over the Zsnes one. I wonder why all these people scream that they like it so much better.

Aerdan · Post by **Aerdan** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 9:59 pm

We were having a discussion about the ZSNES GUI and graphics libs a couple days ago, and he showed me MGL, then some screenshots. I said it looked nice, but that I wanted to replicate the current GUI, since a number of users [including me] hate Windows passionately and don't want to use a Windowsy GUI.

Post by **Nach** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 10:03 pm

No matter what we do with the GUI, I would want the current look to always be avalible.

MaxSt · Post by **MaxSt** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:04 am

What I would like to change in GUI is to make shadows always match the background color (close to background color), to text is always filtered correctly by HQ filters.

I'm just not sure how hard that would be to implement.

(and make "filtered gui" on by default)

Post by **Nach** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:16 am

MaxSt wrote: (and make "filtered gui" on by default)

Done.

AspiringSquire · Post by **AspiringSquire** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:17 am

MaxSt wrote:(and make "filtered gui" on by default)

I think that could easily bother newcomers to ZSNES, if they don't like the way the GUI looks with the filter they use for playing and they don't know that there is the option to disable that.

I don't like all the methods of filtering requiring that the same one be used both for in-game playing and for the GUI. Could an option be added to use two separate filters between the GUI and games?

Player1 · Post by **Player1** » Thu Dec 30, 2004 1:38 am

I think the Zsnes Skin is just good as it is. Arn't there more important things to fix first?

If Nach likes it and want to spend the time he should implement it. But in my oppinion there are more usefull things.

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GUI Skins

GUI Skins

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Re: GUI Skins