Homebrew Cover Collections - part 2

AdamCatalyst

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If you want to use a lot of big images (like in my theme) you should further compress the png's exporting them to indexed mode 256 colors.

Tetsuo is right, but regardless if you use a lot of big PNG-8s or PNGs-24/32s, you should make sure you are encoding them efficiently. I have seen one WiiFlow theme where the images were ~900% larger than they needed to be. Some software will compress PNGs very aggressively (I would say Photoshop 2021 is on average about 98% efficient), but some software, not so much. In order to compress a PNG efficiently, a number of different CPU intensive algorithms have to be tested on that particular image, which I suspect is why not all software bothers to do this.

If you're using a Mac, I highly recommend trying the free ImageOptim (I'm sure there are similar free alternatives on all other major platforms). It's default settings will only losslessly re-compress images, which means it makes them smaller while keeping the quality pixel for pixel identical. Running just a few images through there, will give you a sense if your PNG authoring software is already doing enough, or if it's producing bloated PNGs that would benefit from better compression.

If even the re-compressed the file sizes you are are seeing are still larger than acceptable to you, you can also enable lossy compression, where it will degrade the image quality at a preset amount in order to reduce the file size even more. This is identical in principle to what Tetsuo was recommending with 256 colours, except that it reduces the colour palette a variable amount, based on the amount of image degradation you are willing to tolerate. The reduced amount of colours increases the efficiency with which a PNG can be compressed.

Please feel free to PM me if you wanna know more!

-a

p.s. Link to ImageOptim https://imageoptim.com/ & link to some Linux & Windows alternatives: https://imageoptim.com/versions.html
 
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Hello everyone, I have a question because I read and try, but I still have a problem with it seems to me that I put the roms into the appropriate directories in the ROMS folder, I named the covers downloaded as the roms and put them in wiiflow / boxcovers / gba etc ...
after launching the program and turning on the plugin, eg GBA, boxes appear and I see available xxx games, but there is no cover !! what am i doing wrong? the games obviously launch properly
 

Deleted member 547976

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Ok, it's a pity that none of the forum members could help? but fortunately after a dozen or so hours of trial and error I made it and the games have covers !! but why mortal kombat II genesis does not show MK1 cover correctly and MK2 does not?
And the games on MegaCD do not know what to do to make them properly zipped
 

Tetsuo Shima

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Ok, it's a pity that none of the forum members could help? but fortunately after a dozen or so hours of trial and error I made it and the games have covers !! but why mortal kombat II genesis does not show MK1 cover correctly and MK2 does not?
And the games on MegaCD do not know what to do to make them properly zipped
Sorry, I just saw your post, Mods please, can this thread be stickied?
I can't understand your problem with MK, but after checking filenames, also remember to always reload cache each time you made a change. If you didn't already fixed it.
The Mega CD games can't be zipped. They are CD images and they need to be in .bin/.cue format.
 
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ToddofWar420

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Hey guys, I know it's been a minute since I last posted an update for the new upcoming SNES set but I have been continuously working aggressively on it daily in hopes to get it done soon. Here's another preview to check out.
We got Jerry Boy, Kaizo Mario World 1 (I did all 3 of 'em), Keeper, King of Rally, Kirby's Avalanche (which took me awhile to get right). I also added the newly recent translated game Kirby's Super Star Stacker which that cover also took awhile to make. Then we got Kunio's Dodge Ball (I just took the in-game english title and placed it on the cover so they both match. And finally, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Master Quest. Btw, I just finished like 25 Zelda covers. Covers for the new A Link to the Proto, all Zelda BS titles with alternates, A Link to the Islands, and a few of the best other hacks as well.
Enjoy the preview for now and stay safe out there.
SNES Preview 5.png
 

Tetsuo Shima

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Three more Source Ports covers for you to enjoy.
All these games are working (with sound!) in Wiiflow and they will be included in the upcoming Plugins Pack update.
Bermuda Syndrome.game.png
Descent.game.png
Theme Hospital.game.png
 
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Tetsuo Shima

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Update: added the full set for missing covers. It features blank covers for Plugins, Wii, GC, HB, Channels...everything.
There's a total of 68 covers plus 8 alternate covers. The .png's are compressed to take less memory as possible in wiiflow.
You'll have to reload the cache to make them appear.
If your Wiiflow is already short on memory (you have themes, downloaded lots of covers) there could be some cases where some plugins are suddenly not showing games anymore. Just reboot your Wii (even multiple times if necessary) and everything will come back into place.
Link in the 1st post.
Extract it in wiiflow/boxcovers/blank_covers.
 
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AdamCatalyst

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Tetsuo Shima

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I took the liberty of losslessly re-compressing the PNGs as aggressively as possible. They are ~15% smaller on average now, pixel for pixel identical. Every little bit helps reduce memory load problems.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t57v9ciuxicmulp/blank_covers.zip?dl=0

p.s. Happy to have my server re-compress any PNGs for themes etc. if it is help.
Thanks you did an excellent work. I'm not very good with compression.
If you want, I can send you the Gimp source files, or the unoptimized exported png files.
Maybe they could be compressed even further.
Remember, if you want to test different blank covers, you wiil have to manually delete the respective .wfc files and Reload cache in Wiiflow.
For example, if you want to replace the supernes blank cover, you need to remove SUPERNES.png.wfc, found in wiiflow/cache/(your Snes cover folder)
 

AdamCatalyst

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Thanks you did an excellent work. I'm not very good with compression.
If you want, I can send you the Gimp source files, or the unoptimized exported png files.
Maybe they could be compressed even further.
Remember, if you want to test different blank covers, you wiil have to manually delete the respective .wfc files and Reload cache in Wiiflow.
For example, if you want to replace the supernes blank cover, you need to remove SUPERNES.png.wfc, found in wiiflow/cache/(your Snes cover folder)

Hey Tetsuo,

It's really super easy. I'm not doing anything, other than running them through a CPU intensive program, that keeps trying algorithms until it finds the one that compresses the PNG smallest without degrading it. If you are working with GIMP, my personal advice is not to bother with compression other than the quickest most default settings. Then run the images through a dedicated app for compression. It will likely be easier, and will definitely yield better results. But it takes way longer, crazy CPU load.

On a Mac I use https://imageoptim.com/mac

But there are many other options that do similar things on Linux, Windows, etc. https://imageoptim.com/versions.html

If you think it would be helpful, I could put together a graphical step-by-step walkthrough for anyone. It would have to be for the Mac software, but the principles would apply to anything.

p.s. Thanks for all the awesome work you do, making life a little more fun for all of us.
 
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Tetsuo Shima

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@AdamCatalyst Being on Linux I've tried with Trimage, as suggested on several sites. Unfortunately it's not very good, I've tried to compress my uncompressed Arcade png and it could only compress it by 11% (size went from 762KB to 677KB). There are no settings I can change from this app to futher increase compression.
Using a manual method, Hakaisha managed to shrunk it down to 483KB with no noticeable loss.
 

AdamCatalyst

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@AdamCatalyst Being on Linux I've tried with Trimage, as suggested on several sites. Unfortunately it's not very good, I've tried to compress my uncompressed Arcade png and it could only compress it by 11% (size went from 762KB to 677KB). There are no settings I can change from this app to futher increase compression.
Using a manual method, Hakaisha managed to shrunk it down to 483KB with no noticeable loss.

That's frustrating. I didn't realize that. Well, if you ever want me to compress stuff for you before release (or whatever), just PM me a link and if you want the quality to be lossless, or 90% visual quality or whatever, and I will do it ASAP. I'll do entire cover collections even, I've got an old server that can chew on PNGs all night.
 
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Tetsuo Shima

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You are very kind and your help is really appreciated. I'm sorry to be such a n00b with image optimization.
I will upload them somewhere and PM you a link.
My posted covers compression is not 100% lossless, sometimes I had to sacrifice a little quality, but it's hardly noticeable on the Wii.
I've experienced that I could achieve the best optimization working on the original source images, rather than the final exported png's. However the program you used seems to be a really good one, and could do a better job.
 

Wiimpathy

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There are indeed some good tools to compress png. I've made a few tests with the 69 main blank covers and different tools/settings.
In linux, even with my crappy laptop, I found a good compromise with speed and filesize. If you're not allergic to command line here's a little how to:

Install the tools

For Debian and derivatives:
Code:
sudo apt-get install pngcrush advancecomp


Compress png

- Open a terminal in the folder containing the png files to convert.
- Create a folder called output:
Code:
mkdir output
- Type this command:
Code:
find . -iname "*png" -print0 | xargs -r0 --max-procs=2 -n1 sh -c 'pngcrush -d output -rem alla -nofilecheck -reduce -m 7 "$1" && advpng -z -2 -q "./output/$1"' -


It took about 30 seconds. The converted files are a bit smaller than the imageoptim pack: 14,4MB vs 15,2MB.

Note that depending on the CPU, you can change max-procs value to speed-up conversion.

You can also play with some options to reduce size even more.
For example : advpng -z -4 ...
pngcrush -d output -rem alla -nofilecheck -reduce -brute "$1"
But the gain is minimal and with -brute it takes ages to compress!


Even if lossy, pngquant is amazing too. Very fast and really small size.
Code:
for i in *.png; do pngquant "$i" --quality=80-95  --strip --verbose --output "./output/${i%%.*}.png"; done
 
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Tetsuo Shima

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There are indeed some good tools to compress png. I've made a few tests with the 69 main blank covers and different tools/settings.
In linux, even with my crappy laptop, I found a good compromise with speed and filesize. If you're not allergic to command line here's a little how to:

Install the tools

For Debian and derivatives:
Code:
sudo apt-get install pngcrush advancecomp


Compress png

- Open a terminal in the folder containing the png files to convert.
- Create a folder called output:
Code:
mkdir output
- Type this command:
Code:
find . -iname "*png" -print0 | xargs -r0 --max-procs=2 -n1 sh -c 'pngcrush -d output -rem alla -nofilecheck -reduce -m 7 "$1" && advpng -z -2 -q "./output/$1"' -


It took about 30 seconds. The converted files are a bit smaller than the imageoptim pack: 14,4MB vs 15,2MB.

Note that depending on the CPU, you can change max-procs value to speed-up conversion.

You can also play with some options to reduce size even more.
For example : advpng -z -4 ...
pngcrush -d output -rem alla -nofilecheck -reduce -brute "$1"
But the gain is minimal and with -brute it takes ages to compress!


Even if lossy, pngquant is amazing too. Very fast and really small size.
Code:
for i in *.png; do pngquant "$i" --quality=80-95  --strip --verbose --output "./output/${i%%.*}.png"; done
Thanks for this Wiimpathy! Thos is what I needed. I will experiment with it
 

Tetsuo Shima

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@Wiimpathy I've tried with pngcrush on my original uncompressed files, but it only compressed them by 8%. maybe I should try it on the compressed pack from AdamCatalyst.
I've tried with pngquant too, but says:
pngquant: unrecognized option '--strip'
Don't know why
After an apt-get update, it says that pngquant is at the most recent version (2.5.0-1).
 

AdamCatalyst

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@Wiimpathy I've tried with pngcrush on my original uncompressed files, but it only compressed them by 8%. maybe I should try it on the compressed pack from AdamCatalyst.
I've tried with pngquant too, but says:
pngquant: unrecognized option '--strip'
Don't know why
After an apt-get update, it says that pngquant is at the most recent version (2.5.0-1).

FYI, the app I am using them runs them through Zopfli, PNGOUT, OxiPNG, advPNG, and PNGcrush, at the "insane" setting or equivalent for each, so its unliklely that re-compressing them will do anything, unless you lower the quality threshold from lossless. In the last pack I gave you, I thought that the 90% quality looked near lossless, and the 80% quality looks acceptable. Let me know what you think, and what seemed like a good file size to quality trade-off for you.

@Wiimpathy, you aren't kidding about it taking ages to compress at the "brute" setting. Thanks for sharing all the command-line info!
 

Tetsuo Shima

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FYI, the app I am using them runs them through Zopfli, PNGOUT, OxiPNG, advPNG, and PNGcrush, at the "insane" setting or equivalent for each, so its unliklely that re-compressing them will do anything, unless you lower the quality threshold from lossless. In the last pack I gave you, I thought that the 90% quality looked near lossless, and the 80% quality looks acceptable. Let me know what you think, and what seemed like a good file size to quality trade-off for you.

@Wiimpathy, you aren't kidding about it taking ages to compress at the "brute" setting. Thanks for sharing all the command-line info!
Sorry I've just replied to your PM.
I must have been sleepy, somehow I missed the notification...
 

Wiimpathy

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@Wiimpathy I've tried with pngcrush on my original uncompressed files, but it only compressed them by 8%. maybe I should try it on the compressed pack from AdamCatalyst.
I've tried with pngquant too, but says:
pngquant: unrecognized option '--strip'
Don't know why
After an apt-get update, it says that pngquant is at the most recent version (2.5.0-1).
Which pngcrush?
Code:
pngcrush --version

Here's mine:
pngcrush 1.8.13, uses libpng 1.6.36 and zlib 1.2.11

Maybe libpng and zlib matter too.

You could also try optipng:
Code:
find . -iname "*png" -print0 | xargs -r0 --max-procs=2 -n1 sh -c 'optipng -o2 "$1" -dir ./output && advpng -z -2 -q "./output/$1"' -

It's based on pngcrush and I have the same results with it.
- Your uncompressed: 17,7MB
- pngoptim pack: 15,2MB
- pngcrush+advpng: 14,4MB

No idea about pngquant except if you have an ancient version you should have that option. Or maybe 2 installed versions and it's picking the wrong binary. Oh well, not a linux forums here, that could quickly become boring, sorry.:)
 
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