Khameleon front end public beta (successor to Kymaera)

[RetroBorg]

Sounds like you've been busy, looking forward to seeing the results.

[Cakemeister]

I found a nice optimization (use of OpenGL display lists) which greatly increased frame rates for the simplest skins, ones with no movies or texture scrolling. This will help Khameleon to run better on low end machines.

Edit: Running the "Niobe" skin that was designed for Mamewah, the idle framerate displayed by Fraps went from 20 to over 100 fps on my crappy laptop.

[gonzo90017]

How crappy is your laptop?

[Cakemeister]

Thinkpad T60. The processor is actually okay, Intel T2400 @ 1.83 GHz. The machine has 1GB of memory. But the built-in video is what makes it crappy. It doesn't support a lot of the OpenGL extensions.

I should try this on a machine with a decent video card and see what the benefit is.

[JoyMonkey]

Are you planning on doing another public beta?
I'd love to give it a try with all the new bells and whistles that you've added.

[Cakemeister]

I've been trying to get the external masking to work the way I want. It's actually pretty hard to do in OpenGL.

My model drawing code doesn't work either.

Once I get one or both of these working I'll make another public beta.

[RetroBorg]

Once I get one or both of these working I'll make another public beta.

Looking forward to that.

[RetroBorg]

How are you progressing Cakemeister?

[Cakemeister]

Slowly. I'm trying to learn the GLSL shading language and how to use it.

[Howard_Casto]

As someone ready to see this released I demand more pictures!

Btw if you'll post some screenshots of the render errors in terms of the models I may be able to help.  I ran into a lot of really wierd stuff when getting dk ready for 3d models... lots of times it isn't the render code but the model itself!

[Cakemeister]

Well, right now the texturing doesn't work.

[Cakemeister]

I got some textures to load, but it looks like some don't load and some are displaced from where they're supposed to be.

[RetroBorg]

I hope you solve the texturing problem as that's looking great.

[Cakemeister]

I figured out one texturing problem. The problem I have now is that one side is missing. I don't know if it's the model or the loader code.

[Howard_Casto]

My guess would be your problem is either the depth buffer (3d arcade models confuse the hell out of buffers, you might as well just turn it off) or the order in which you assembled the model when you exported.  Things towards the outside have to be last in the object list when you export to X (or whatever) with sides and especially the bezel being last.  I'm pretty sure it's one or the other because I had the exact render errors on the exact same model and if I remember correctly (it's been a while) the solution involed one or the other. 

[Cakemeister]

The problem turned out to be that the side wasn't exported into the .3ds file. Dunno why.

Arcade machine models are typically created in the .max format, which is closed source. On the 3darcade site they have some models published in .w3d format, which is also closed source.

My code needs models in the .3ds file format for which there are several source code libraries available for reading. The .3ds format has some flaws, though.

Howard was working on another kind of file format which he called UAM which had the textures and meshes all included in one file. If the UAM file can be easily exported from the original .MAX sources and the file format is open for all, I might use that in addition to the .3ds files.

[Cakemeister]

I've implemented an animation scheme similar to what the new frontend HyperSpin does. Right now Khameleon only does translations like Atomic does, but I think that by the time the official HyperSpin is released, I should be able to duplicate most of its animation effects. You will be able to animate translations, sizes, rotations, and alpha (fade-in/fade-out), all on a per-object basis. I'll probably make some canned animations to replicate what HyperSpin does.

I'm also thinking about having an emulator selection skin. When an emulator is selected the appropriate skin will be displayed for that emulator. Then ESC will go back to the emulator selection skin. Right now ESC will just exit.

[RetroBorg]

I've implemented an animation scheme similar to what the new frontend HyperSpin does. Right now Khameleon only does translations like Atomic does, but I think that by the time the official HyperSpin is released, I should be able to duplicate most of its animation effects. You will be able to animate translations, sizes, rotations, and alpha (fade-in/fade-out), all on a per-object basis. I'll probably make some canned animations to replicate what HyperSpin does.

I'm also thinking about having an emulator selection skin. When an emulator is selected the appropriate skin will be displayed for that emulator. Then ESC will go back to the emulator selection skin. Right now ESC will just exit.

This is sounding better all the time.

[headkaze]

I've implemented an animation scheme similar to what the new frontend HyperSpin does. Right now Khameleon only does translations like Atomic does, but I think that by the time the official HyperSpin is released, I should be able to duplicate most of its animation effects. You will be able to animate translations, sizes, rotations, and alpha (fade-in/fade-out), all on a per-object basis. I'll probably make some canned animations to replicate what HyperSpin does.

I'm also thinking about having an emulator selection skin. When an emulator is selected the appropriate skin will be displayed for that emulator. Then ESC will go back to the emulator selection skin. Right now ESC will just exit.

Lol watch everyone jump on the bandwagon now! Since everyone is doing the same animation system maybe we should come up with a format standard? Or would people prefer to write custom importers? Right now the format I've designed can do any sort of animation HyperSpin can, incuding rotation, scaling, translation, shearing and alpha blending. It's very simple, frame based and supports the standard Flash based easing (Linear, Quad, Cubic, Quart, Quint, Sine, Expo, Circ, Elastic, Back & Bounce) so it's also very flexible and all controlled through xml.

Also it would be cool to have a rasterized font standard as well. That way people can use the same layouts and fonts in different FE's. It could also mean that only one theme editor needs to be written.

We could come up with a standard and then just ignore unsupported commands. Or is it too complicated trying to agree on a format?

[Cakemeister]

Well, the format I created for animations is pretty simple. Here's an example:

Code: [Select]

<Animation>
   <Name>
      animate_atomic_snap
   </Name>
   <StartClock>
      0
   </StartClock>
   <AnimationStep>
      <Duration>
         2.0
      </Duration>
      <StartOffsetX>
         2048
      </StartOffsetX>
      <EndOffsetX>
         1024
      </EndOffsetX>
      <StartOffsetY>
         -4192
      </StartOffsetY>
      <EndOffsetY>
         0
      </EndOffsetY>
      <Duration>
         1.0
      </Duration>
      <StartOffsetX>
         1024
      </StartOffsetX>
      <EndOffsetX>
         0
      </EndOffsetX>
      <StartOffsetY>
         0
      </StartOffsetY>
      <EndOffsetY>
         0
      </EndOffsetY>

   </AnimationStep>
</Animation>

There are a couple of thing's I'll have to add, such as a movement type (linear, sinusoidal, etc).

Not sure what you mean by a rasterized font standard. I use the FreeType library to render ttf fonts.

[headkaze]

Seems a little long winded, which might not be a problem unless it's all generated by some sort of editor.

The format I'm using is more like this

Code: [Select]

<Tween Ease="Bounce" EaseType="InOut">
   <Frame Duration="5"><Rotate X="0" Y="0" Z="0"></Rotate></Frame>
   <Frame Duration="5"><Rotate X="0" Y="0" Z="5"></Rotate><Scale X="0" Y="0" Z="-1"></Scale></Frame>
   <Frame Duration="5"><Rotate X="0" Y="0" Z="0"></Rotate></Frame>
</Tween>
If your thinking more of a Flash type animation system then something like this is probably more appropriate. Once this sort of thing is working then we can just have "canned" animations by having commands that group some of these into one or more commands.

BTW How did you read AtomicFE skin format? I looked at that a while ago and it looked encrypted. Or was it just some sort of binary format?

[Cakemeister]

Atomic skins are binary files. I just had to go into the skinner and figure things out from there.