Not sure how feasible this is in a Front End

[Shieldwolf]

Is it possible to start an FE with an intro video (more likely animated menu)

I would like my FE to start with a hanger door that opens (splits down the middle ) and reveals the emulator choices.

Am I just living in oblivion or can this be done.

[Howard_Casto]

It's "sort of"  possible.

For it to work:

The Fe would have to be directx or opengl based or have directx or opengl renderers.  (So that knocks out mamewah right off the bat.)

The fe would have to use video as a texture and not just a generic directdraw window.(So there goes mine for the time being.)

The fe would have to boot very fast so that the engine is ready to display as the video is being played. (There goes 3darcade)  

The video would have to include a color matt and the fe would have to use a shader or colorkeying technique to make the matt transparent.  This pretty much means that you have to make the intro video from scratch and you have to use a farily sophisticated video editor to make it.

Atm kymera might, and I say might be able to do this.  I'm not sure though, because if pmf is blitting videos instead of using a pure textured poly then it might be to difficult as true alpha blending would be neded to remove "Jaggies" and artifacts.  That is unless your video is totally uncompressed, in which case is it really worth 1 gig of harddrive space for a simple intro video?

[Mr. Dude]

You could always write a batch file to play the intro video and have the FE fire up after the video plays.  I think 3d arcade has an intro video already for the FE also when it starts up.  

[screaming]

Is it possible to start an FE with an intro video (more likely animated menu)

I would like my FE to start with a hanger door that opens (splits down the middle ) and reveals the emulator choices.

Am I just living in oblivion or can this be done.

  I'm not a FE developer, but I'd say it could be done with a simple animated GIF/MNG. It would have a relatively big filesize, but they are pretty easy to make, tools are readily available (PSP 8 is now $40 for an upgrade!), and transparency support is built into the image format.

   There just needs to be support for animated images and intro images (as opposed to an intro video) in the FE and you're golden.

*shrug* Just a thought.

/Steve

[PacManFan]

Kymaera can support Avi's and Mpg's. You can also specify for these to be drawn with transparency or alpha blending to the screen. I'm putting in support right now for letting the user create custom "actions". Kymaera can also use a movie as the background image. So it's very possible this could work now, I'll have to check it out, and I'll make sure it works by the first release.

-PMF

[Howard_Casto]

Is it possible to start an FE with an intro video (more likely animated menu)

I would like my FE to start with a hanger door that opens (splits down the middle ) and reveals the emulator choices.

Am I just living in oblivion or can this be done.

  I'm not a FE developer, but I'd say it could be done with a simple animated GIF/MNG. It would have a relatively big filesize, but they are pretty easy to make, tools are readily available (PSP 8 is now $40 for an upgrade!), and transparency support is built into the image format.

   There just needs to be support for animated images and intro images (as opposed to an intro video) in the FE and you're golden.

*shrug* Just a thought.

/Steve

Sorry, those methods won't work.  Animated gifs flicker like mad with gdi-based fes and they aren't natively supported by opengl or directx.  Mng is a worthless format that never caught on.... it's nearly impossible to support mng as there are 6 or 7 types of files that are all called mng.  Not only that, but again... opengl, directx, and the gdi don't support mng files.  Now in terms of images (not video) the only viable solution is a sequence of png files.  I do this for my logos already.  Images for an intro will never be supported by my fe.  It's just plain silly.  

But for the record, if you take a png image or a jpeg or bitmap image and rename it "intro.mpeg" then it should display... you just don't have any control over how long it displays.

So stick to kymaera, it's your only choice atm.

[Valence]

I'm not sure about how you would get the video or animated gif's going but you could get your FE configured and take a screen shot of it. Use this as the background for the clip. Play it right before the FE comes up. (or right after?) I'm also not sure of what kind of transition you would get from the clip to FE.

[Khenemet Heru]

Howard etc, I may be wrong but from my limited experience at work I think it could be done with lots of different graphic/movie formats supported if the FE is made in Flash or Director. BUT, iirc, only Emulaxian can do it right now, 'cause it's the only FE out there that is made using Director.

I'd love to do something like that myself, but it ain't happening as I had a lousy time trying to get emulaxian to work for me and I like how Mamewah works...  I tried DK but it didn't like my video card, and Kymaera was giving me headaches on my PC too at the time. I'd love to make my own FE using Director, but I'm lousy at that too    oh well...