Hacking Coverflow7 USB Loader

[PNo4]

PN04

Nice work. I have some other stuff to finish off the backgrounds. I personally prefer the boxes a little closer in the background but I think it's looking great what you have done and thanks for the help in making them, saves a lot of hassle in the meantime for me.

Yeah locations was just a quick fix to get x coordinates multiples/dividable by 4. Moving the small covers closer together and closer to BIG cover, should be no problem, you just find good locations and move them, since aspect ratio are already done.

 

[cdreams]

@PNo4

I have one made here for them closer together so it's all good.

I basically have a template for the small placeholder and large one. Also making templates for the top banner, buttons, possibly text, and items for the config page, so eventually you will be able to take my templates and move them around and then you just need to put in the correct coordinates and it will work.

 

[DragTom70]

Mh, Don Killah just a question: The reflection ("shadows" / "highlights") are part of the nice PNGs cdreams made. Do you have plans to add an iTunes-(8)-like-cover-movement?

From a photoshop point of view

"real" reflections are easy:
1.) Copy and flip the cover-picture (reduce the hight to 50%)
2.) add a layer in the size of the cover (which is #808080 to #000000 grayscaled) and
3.) negative-multiplicate or multiplicate depending on the BG-Color*

Looks like this:

[REMOVED]

[REMOVED]

Here is the [REMOVED].

Best regards
Tom

* YES, I do know there are OTHER ways to do this...

 

[gameshark]

This is really a nice loader .

i resized and renamed a lot of covers and small covers for this project.

feel free to use them

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QJPLSMXU


thanks for the loader

 

[PNo4]

@DragTom70

Made cdreams original with you shade thing, looks nice.

Having these shadows though, would mean that every game have 4 pictures for the 4:3 screen mode, and 4 pictures for the 16:9 mode, end result would be 8 pictures for each game cover, kinda many pictures if you have 200 games on the disc.

But it looks great.

 

[DragTom70]

@PNo4: Mh, maybe I do not get the point. Why do you need multiple image if you have the original image. As said before my coding days are far far away (remember Elite Commander

?) but if you have one source/original image it is (at least it was) very easy to scale it, flip it or do pixel-multiplication to it.

Please don't understand me wrong. I am an "old guy" with no experiences to Wii coding but it should be possible.

[REMOVED]

A "simple" version with reflections but w/o "perspective". Maybe I do one later

Best regards
Tom

PS: My teacher in the 80s would've sent me out of the class if I put 2 similar images in different sizes to an Apple ][ code

 

[akex]

Mh, Don Killah just a question: The reflection ("shadows" / "highlights") are part of the nice PNGs cdreams made. Do you have plans to add an iTunes-(8)-like-cover-movement?

From a photoshop point of view

"real" reflections are easy:
1.) Copy and flip the cover-picture (reduce the hight to 50%)
2.) add a layer in the size of the cover (which is #808080 to #000000 grayscaled) and
3.) negative-multiplicate or multiplicate depending on the BG-Color*

Looks like this:

Here is the PSD-File.

Best regards
Tom

* YES, I do know there are OTHER ways to do this...

I don't agree with you. If you take a look at Ipod/Iphone coverflow (I have both), you won't notice any deformation of the cover. Moreover, reflection resized by 50% looks kinda weird and not "real" IMO. Best way to do this is to flip the cover as you said, not resize it, add a mask to the layer (gradient from black to white). No need to use multiplicate or something else.

Will try to add a screenshot and the psd tonight (GMT) as i'm at work and no photoshop on my computer.

 

[PNo4]

@PNo4: Mh, maybe I do not get the point. Why do you need multiple image if you have the original image. As said before my coding days are far far away (remember Elite Commander

?) but if you have one source/original image it is (at least it was) very easy to scale it, flip it or do pixel-multiplication to it.

The Loaders show pictures, there is no internal c/c++ code that re size the pictures, flip them around making them 50% less high and adding the shadow.

Resizing in code have been tested, it pretty much broken everything in the loader, so for now anything you see on screen is pictures read from SD-card.

So if you need a picture for everything you wanna see on the screen.

That means in case of the new picture you made, 6 pictures for each cover is needed (2xBig + 2xMiddle + 2xSmall).

This is until someone figures out how to do this in pure coding and NOT breaking the loader functions.

 

[DragTom70]

@akex: Maybe you do not agree with me because coverflow is unstretched on you iTouch/iPhone. But do yourself a favor and go to you next lake and watch the objects on the other site of the lake IN the lake. You will be amazed by the effect

You might consider that nature is very more realistic than your ITouch/iPhone

But I admit you are partitially right in a different way: A nice technical look has not much to do with nature/real things.

Look at this. It has kind of an unrealistic perspective w/o looking that bad:

[REMOVED]

Best regards
Tom

 

[cold4ire]

@akex: Maybe you do not agree with me because coverflow is unstretched on you iTouch/iPhone. But do yourself a favor and go to you next lake and watch the objects on the other site of the lake IN the lake. You will be amazed by the effect

You might consider that nature is very more realistic than your ITouch/iPhone

But I admit you are partitially right in a different way: A nice technical look has not much to do with nature/real things.

Look at this. It has kind of an unrealistic perspective w/o looking that bad:

Best regards
Tom

would that require 3 images for each game. faded perspective, and the other two?

or possibly 5 images per game.

 

[DragTom70]

The Loaders show pictures, there is no internal c/c++ code that re size the pictures, flip them around making them 50% less high and adding the shadow.

Resizing in code have been tested, it pretty much broken everything in the loader, so for now anything you see on screen is pictures read from SD-card.

Oh, ok, sorry PNo4! Inspired by the name of this loader "CoverFLOW7" I thought a flow would be integrated. I did not recognize that the final version will just show static pictures. My fault.

 

[akex]

@DragTom70 : I just took my iphone and used it (as it's like a mirror when shut down) to reflect some picture and see the effect. I can say now that i was right

.

Even if the "real" reflection was stretched, coverflow (with unstretched picture) was first massively used for Apple products. And when you look at some other software that use coverflow, you will notice that reflections are unstretched too

.

I like you last picture, and can say it looks quite good even if the effect is not natural

.

@PNo4 : for reflection, did you look at opencv library ?

 

[PNo4]

would that require 3 images for each game. faded perspective, and the other two?

or possibly 5 images per game.

3 images for each game + 3 flipped images with the shade effect (so 6 images in total per game)

QUOTE(akex @ Apr 23 2009, 12:45 PM) @PNo4 : for reflection, did you look at opencv library ?

No. the only thing tested and fail so far was freeimage library in trying to use 1 single picture size, and resizing it in code, it fail BIGTIME because every function of the Loader broke because of it.

The idea was abandoned, and eventually people went on to the LibGUI versions of loaders.

 

[ewart475]

Not any good a coding or anything like this but if the loader was to look like this with a channel to start it this would be the best looking usb loader in the world please guy's make this happen

 

[DragTom70]

@akex: Mh, playing around with my own Iphone after you last message I have to say, ya, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

Sorry!

And it's not just related to our iPhones

[REMOVED]

 

[akex]

would that require 3 images for each game. faded perspective, and the other two?

or possibly 5 images per game.

3 images for each game + 3 flipped images with the shade effect (so 6 images in total per game)

QUOTE(akex @ Apr 23 2009, 12:45 PM) @PNo4 : for reflection, did you look at opencv library ?

No. the only thing tested and fail so far was freeimage library in trying to use 1 single picture size, and resizing it in code, it fail BIGTIME because every function of the Loader broke because of it.

The idea was abandoned, and eventually people went on to the LibGUI versions of loaders.

Ok,

so maybe we can make a windows prog who could, from a cover, create the other one and the reflection. With 5 covers at the same time, it won't take a long time to display on your loader. Then you could join the prog in a zip archive aso ...

 

[akex]

@akex: Mh, playing around with my own Iphone after you last message I have to say, ya, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT

Sorry!

And it's not just related to our iPhones

. I did not have a lake near my job, only an iphone

. For reflection, try to add mask to the layer, you will see, it's a lot easier

.

 

[DragTom70]

. I did not have a lake near my job, only an iphone

. For reflection, try to add mask to the layer, you will see, it's a lot easier

.

Yepp, you are right with the mask too...

 

[lexlth]

I liked this ideia, I will test today...

But I'd like to know if something is possible (sorry if somebody has already said this):
Organize the games. I'd like my games come in alphabetical order. Some loaders gets the output from the ls comand and add the games as they were inserted on HD. I'd like them organized, and better, it coud group the most used or some marked as favorites (in titles.txt).
This would improve a lot the loader, because we do not have to scroll all the time for a specific game from a 100 list games....

Thanks.... and good work !!!

 

[exoskelett]

I've got a problem with this: When I start it, I only see the standart USB Loader 1.2 background and there are no covers, even though I put all PAL-covers onto my SD-card. What could I do wrong?