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Posted: 07-14-11 9:40 pm
by Lemo
Following the release of Synthesia 0.8.2 (dev)

:arrow: Here is a Flagchievements Skin for Synthesia

Image
Flagchievements.rar
(5.2 KiB) Downloaded 266 times
Those are replacement flags to help track of your performance with each of your midi files.
You can use the circular menu to assign them manually,
or use the following automated script of mine.


Score2Flag

This script reads the content of Synthesia database, and assign the corresponding flag,
depending on your last score (in rythm mode) for each song.

score <= 100 (A+++) Star
score <= 99 (A++) Gold+
score <= 98 (A*) Gold
score <= 89 (B*) Silver+
score <= 79 (C*) Silver
score <= 69 (D*) Bronze+
score <= 49 (F*) Bronze
score = 0 (none) Dot

So why is it the last score instead of the best score?
-the code is more complicated and I'm a lazy person
-it's more accurate in the case you already scored 100% for right hand, and currently working on both hands
-unless your practice is totally weird, your last score is supposed to be very close to your best
Score2Flag.rar
(198.54 KiB) Downloaded 270 times
Experimental script, use at your own risk :mrgreen:
Since I'm overwriting Synthesia database (songInfo.xml), I recommend you make a backup of that file before.
You can use Aria's Synthesia Configuration Utility for example.

The process may take a while, and I'm a crappy developer, so be patient :p
It takes around 15 seconds (for me), then you'll see the icon disappear in the bottom taskbar.
And yes, you have to update it manually each time.

Anyway, Nicholas mentioned he'll be doing something later for achievements (didn't he? :roll: ),
so there is no point making something perfect for now.
I may eventually do a launcher to update flags automatically though, if enough people are interested.

Posted: 07-15-11 5:52 am
by Nicholas
Regarding last-score vs. best-score, I'll be updating the metadata editor as the last item in 0.8.2 to make this type of thing easier for community tools.

And regarding achievements: yes. Little markers like those in your screenshot helping to inform you of your progress in a song is just the beginning! :D

Posted: 08-24-11 9:00 am
by aria1121
Lol I actually started using this and is really quite fun editing those stuff, I tried out some crazy stuff to find out what the resources are.
BTW where did you get the icons from?

Posted: 08-24-11 10:33 am
by Lemo
Well, glad you're enjoying it :]
If you manage to end up on something good don't forget to post the skin here
The icons from the slim edition, as I wrote in the readme file, are from the Gentleface Toolbar Icon Set

Posted: 08-24-11 12:30 pm
by aria1121
Okay. I have tried to download some commercial-usable icons then decided to make 'em self. Was a quite lot of work, but here it is:


I'm currently working on this.

Posted: 08-24-11 2:56 pm
by aria1121
Hey Lemo, if the folder contains a dot (in the filename) it thinks the filename is less then one. Not very bad but when you are going to give it teh versionnumber it doesn't recognise it :lol: GIMME FOLDER

Posted: 08-24-11 2:59 pm
by aria1121
Can you please give me the instrument sheet? "that thing that Synthesia shows as instrumenticons" is a bit hard to make.. (If I save it it comes out as an HEX format, but however...)

Edit Nevermind I found a solution.

Posted: 08-24-11 3:13 pm
by Lemo
Woa, that's...colorful ^^
You could almost do a DOS-skin from here, considering your DOS addiction :lol:
It looks like LCARS from Star Trek somehow
I'm glad you built from the slim edition, collaborative work is fun
Think about adding some screenshots
aria1121 wrote:if the folder contains a dot
Yea, I just noticed that too
It was originally something to remind people to drop folder instead of files
...but I forgot folder could have dots too :p
aria1121 wrote:Can you please give me the instrument sheet?
To retrieve all the ressources from the original Synthesia, the best method is to download the mac version,
and extract it with 7zip. You will have a "Ressources" folder, with all the graphics there.
There is a function in ResHack, but it only retrieve raw files, without their right names and extension.

Also, I noticed you used all 74 files from my skin
If you don't need to change a file from the original Synthesia (like the instrument sheet?), you can just remove
it from the skin folder. Skinbox (ResHack) only applies the dropped files and keeps the rest as original.

Posted: 08-24-11 3:26 pm
by aria1121
Yeah. Thanks, I'll post something more interesting tomorrow.

Posted: 08-25-11 1:44 am
by aria1121
Lol I forgot I made those creepy paticles (I always turn 'em off).

Posted: 08-25-11 2:21 pm
by aria1121
v0.9.1 arrived. A bit better, I experimented some with that instrumentsheet. It's almost impossible to get 'em all rightly aligned.

Lemo, did you make the instruments yourself or were they also from that iconset?

Posted: 08-25-11 3:04 pm
by Lemo
Yea I did those myself
If you're using photoshop, you can use the grid for example to snap things on
Each square is 48x48 if I recall correctly

Posted: 08-25-11 3:10 pm
by aria1121
I used Paint.NET which is a bit easier to use, but you kinda have the same tools (but no so pro as PS!). Photoshop is hard to use because it takes about 5 minutes for my laptop to get out of freeze to only open the initialization screen then it closes :? lol
I gridded them with some random black lines then removed them with Magic Pencil.
The way Nicholas made the icons is pretty harder than just making them with anti-aliasing enabled :(

Posted: 08-25-11 4:48 pm
by Nicholas
aria1121 wrote:The way Nicholas made the icons is pretty harder than just making them with anti-aliasing enabled :(
Proper alpha channels are better than pre-multiplied alpha any day. ;)

... it's just harder to work with. :lol:

Posted: 08-25-11 5:29 pm
by Lemo
yea I'm way too lazy to work with tga in Photoshop :mrgreen:
so how better?
tga load faster than png for games or something?

Posted: 08-25-11 6:04 pm
by Nicholas
Lemo wrote:so how better?
It's really six and one half dozen of another. Having a separate channel (like TGA) makes things explicit. Pre-multiplied alpha (like PNG) can leave some of the choices for a pixel's color value up to the software's choice. And in 3D APIs, that can get mangled and leave artifacts.

For example, what do you do with an all-transparent pixel? Most editors will use something like #00000000 or #ffffff00. (That is, fully-transparent black or fully-transparent white.) On your screen, those will usually end up looking exactly the same. But, if that's immediately next to something like #ff000000ff (solid red) and you draw that texture on a polygon requiring upscaling (and your interpolation method isn't something like nearest-neighbor), in some cases, the pixel the graphics card has to insert between those two will end up something like #ff808080 (semi-transparent light pink). It can cause a halo around the edge of your otherwise nicely cut-out texture. Even if the editor picked the more "sensible" choice (transparent black), it'd still come out #80000080 (semi-transparent dark red). If you were drawing that texture against a solid red background, it would still have a halo... just a dark one in this case.

With an alpha channel, you could have the transparent pixels be #ff000000 (transparent red) in that area, so you won't end up falling into the interpolation/haze/halo trap.

Still, the difference isn't that big. In the TGA case though, the editor is giving you full control over all 4 channels, for every pixel. In the PNG case, some of those choices are made for you. Usually it's just wholly-transparent pixels. Though I've seen some bad editors make weird decisions about semi-transparent pixels too(!)...

EDIT: The pair of images at the bottom of this page shows the bad things that can happen quite nicely, actually.
EDIT 2: This one too!
EDIT 3: There is also a good chance that I'm using the term "pre-multiplied" incorrectly... but that is neither here nor there. ;)
EDIT 4: Ha! Here is a video about it!

Posted: 08-25-11 8:08 pm
by Lemo
Ah I see, so tga with alpha is a more readable format for most programs okay!

But about png, (if I never really thought about that question before) it seems not to have a premult alpha
according to google first results

Actually I'm quite aware of alpha issues, since I've been working in vfx and cg for sometime already
But all the subtleties of this mess often get out of my not-so-technical brain functions
I usually just stick to what my eyes tell me, what mode is best to choose and tweak if needed :]

(thx for the link tho, good reminder!)

Posted: 08-25-11 9:45 pm
by Nicholas
Lemo wrote:But about png ... it seems not to have a premult alpha
Nicholas wrote:EDIT 3: There is also a good chance that I'm using the term "pre-multiplied" incorrectly... but that is neither here nor there. ;)
:D

Posted: 08-26-11 2:04 am
by aria1121
"I don't always use Photoshop
but when I do, I'll make something nice."

Quote to use for next projects :)

@Nicholas
If the resources are so easy to edit, can't you make us the other things too like those pics in the Keyboard Settings menu etc.?
(lol got super enthousiastic about editing)

Posted: 08-26-11 11:05 am
by Nicholas
aria1121 wrote:@Nicholas
If the resources are so easy to edit...
Ask Lemo. Editing support is unofficial right now. ;)