8.6 Preview r2359-r2368 - Platform Update & Backgrounds

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-15-13 5:57 pm

PREVIEW r2359
Download from the pink box above.

Changes in r2359 since r2347 release:

Use the Gameplay.BackgroundImagePath setting to center (See r2366 notes below!) an image in the background during a song.
Updated ALL library dependencies, rolled toolsets, and generally changed a bunch of stuff!
Metadata loaded on startup should really, actually be loaded this time. (Thanks TonE!)

I thought the last preview had fixed a problem affecting a few Windows XP SP3 users where Synthesia wouldn't start at all. It hadn't. So I decided to roll back the change made in 8.5 that caused the problem in the first place (switching major versions of Visual Studio). That was enough of an impetus to do my semi-annual platform update where all of Synthesia's external libraries get rolled to the latest version. This can change things in subtle ways. Let me know if you spot anything strange! I'd especially like to hear from OS X 10.5 or 10.6 users about your experience.

The background image thing was on a whim because I had a spare hour or so.

Raymond · Post by **Raymond** » 08-15-13 6:15 pm

Crash on start up. '... GetTickCount64 could not be located in ... KERNEL32.dll'

WinXP 32bit SP3?(fully updated)

Will look in to logs.
Edit:
No logs no crash dump. (desktop, appdata, program folder)

AdvConfig still runs.

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-15-13 7:01 pm

Thanks for the quick test! Buh... apparently that's a known issue in Boost 1.54.0. *sigh*

Alright, I patched it and rebuilt. There weren't any Synthesia-specific code changes, so it's the same revision number. Please try again and let me know if it works now. Thanks again!

Raymond · Post by **Raymond** » 08-15-13 8:06 pm

No problem

It's fixed.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-16-13 1:13 am

Thanks Nicholas, tested quickly and the fingerings work now perfectly. Another thing I recognized, also in the previous versions, if I start Synthesia in windowed mode, smallest setting, the texts of Composer and Arranger are very tiny, so tiny they can not be read. Not important for me, just FYI. Maybe you could change the font size depending on the screen size or a general fixed, but bigger font size.

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-16-13 7:01 am

Weird, you're right that those are unreadable. I thought you just meant they were pretty small... but that looks like a bug where it's like a 1pt or 2pt font for some reason.

In the next proper release (Synthesia 9) we'll finally be dropping the dedicated full-screen modes and moving to a window that can be resized anytime. So the notion of "windowed mode, smallest setting" will be going away because you can always just make it bigger if you can't see something.

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-20-13 5:33 pm

PREVIEW r2366
Download from the pink box above.

Changes in r2366 since r2359 release:

Prefer background images from metadata instead of that advanced setting.
Background images are now stretched to fit the window width, with height scaled to preserve aspect ratio.
Fix: At the narrowest window width, credit titles should still be readable.

The advanced setting only allowed for a single, global background image. That's no fun.

Now the newest version of the editor has a field for background image with a "Browse..." button that will form relative paths from the metadata file. This seemed stronger than the advanced setting in every way, so I just removed the setting before it had a chance to propagate in an official release.

Now, so long as you package up all the images and metadata using the same relative folder structures as they were created with, you can share songs that will each show a different background image. Even on the iPad version.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-21-13 4:17 pm

NEW: Added support for "named bookmarks" in metadata. These display in a new
color on the song timeline and the bookmark name is shown falling in the
left margin of the song. These can be hidden by disabling the advanced
"Gameplay.ShowNamedBookmarks" setting.

Are these 'named bookmarks' those from the midi file, also? That would be great. Actually I can test it quickly myself.

UPDATE: Ok, tested, bookmark names from the midi file itself are not shown as text in Synthesia, would be nice if those could be shown also there. Then it would make sense giving them right names like, chorus, verse, intro, riff or other more creative names depending on the composition.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-21-13 4:52 pm

Tried background image here, it did not show up? I was using windowed mode, then switched to full screen, just for testing purposes, the same there, no background image. The image is in the metadata directory, theoretically it should work. Do I have to activate any other important/secret parameter?

UPDATE: Found the error reason. If 'sheet music' is set to 'Off' it seems background images do not show up. Just set sheet music to on and the background image was there.

UPDATE: Interesting behaviour, only the first time if 'sheet music' is 'Off' background images are not shown. If you do 'sheet music' = 'On', they show up, interestingly if you do then 'sheet music' = 'Off', they still show correctly. For testing I closed Synthesia, restarted, same behaviour as explained here. So the first time it never works if 'sheet music' is 'Off'. This seems to be a minor bug or so.

UPDATE: It is not necessary to play even Synthesia once, just clicking once on 'sheet music', then back on 'Off' seems doing the trick. But without this extra click work the background image will not show up, at least here. Later it can look as below, for my test.

: background.jpg (259.62 KiB) Viewed 15663 times

Korados · Post by **Korados** » 08-22-13 4:35 pm

Hello Nicholas,

I just saw the new revision! This is fantastic, thank you so much! I will try this the background image feature. I also like what you did to the time bar when the drawer menu isn't open.

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-22-13 9:22 pm

TonE wrote:Are these 'named bookmarks' those from the midi file, also?

Not yet. For now they're only bookmarks from the metadata editor. (You'll notice a new section in the editor down in the lower-right where you can add bookmarks via measure number.)

These initial metadata (falling) bookmarks were the next step toward what it sounds like you want. The only step remaining is to add a few more controls to the bookmark mode overlay in Synthesia that will let you independently toggle all three kinds of bookmarks and their names.

TonE wrote:It is not necessary to play even Synthesia once, just clicking once on 'sheet music', then back on 'Off' seems doing the trick.

Are you sure it's not just a timing thing? Maybe the metadata hasn't loaded if you start the song immediately. Instead of clicking on/off the sheet music, what happens if you just wait at the song setup screen for a few extra seconds and then continue?

(That background image looks pretty cool, actually.

)

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-23-13 5:05 am

Yes, just waiting there does the trick, no need to click on 'sheet music'. However, starting directly from the command line does not show the background image, on the same file. Will this work in future?

Regarding the background image, just type 'universe' into Google images search. 'nature' and 'sunset' are also interesting.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-24-13 11:20 am

Tried also animated *.gif files to check if the animation works also as a background, unfortunately, no. It is just a static image. Would be nice, but somehow not really important. It would be almost like a video in the background, not just an image.

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-24-13 9:10 pm

TonE wrote:However, starting directly from the command line does not show the background image, on the same file. Will this work in future?

This is actually how I did the majority of the testing for this feature and it worked every time for me. Could you narrow it down to a particular kind of command line that isn't working?

TonE wrote:Tried also animated *.gif files to check if the animation works also as a background, unfortunately, no. It is just a static image. Would be nice, but somehow not really important. It would be almost like a video in the background, not just an image.

Yeah, no... to get animation working would have taken a lot more work on my part. This was a tiny pet project that I was able to knock out in a couple hours, so I wasn't expecting to support anything fancy like that.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 08-25-13 2:06 pm

Nicholas wrote:This is actually how I did the majority of the testing for this feature and it worked every time for me. Could you narrow it down to a particular kind of command line that isn't working?

Yes, the same command line as I wrote in the previous analysis, where it jumps directly into the play mode. If I just drag and drop onto Synthesia.exe it works, as it has time to load the background image. It seems not in the case where it jumps directly into play mode.

Korados · Post by **Korados** » 08-26-13 12:54 pm

I guess I need a little noob tutorial here. What is metadata? I downloaded the Synthesia Metadata Editor but in the AppData folder there are only XMLs. So I throught
I could add my MIDIs but I have 600 MIDIs and selecting from folder to folder would be exhausting. Then they are ungrouped and I don't know how to group them like
the folders do.

How exactly can I apply a background image to the falling-note area? I want one image for all songs.

Thank you!

Post by **Nicholas** » 08-28-13 3:11 am

PREVIEW r2368
Download from the pink box above.

Changes in r2368 since r2366 release:

Fix: Background images should display even when using "--on-startup Play" (thanks TonE!)
Reintroduced the Gameplay.BackgroundImagePath setting to use as a default background image. Metadata can still override it.

TonE and Korados convinced me the system-level, default background setting had merit. TonE's image above is pretty compelling.

(For a primer on metadata, Korados, visit the Content Creator's page. But now you don't need to do any of that and can just use the Gameplay.BackgroundImagePath setting to set a single image for all songs, instead.)

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 08-29-13 12:54 pm

Nice page Nicholas

jimhenry · Post by **jimhenry** » 08-29-13 2:02 pm

Background images are fun!

There should be one shipped as a default.

Here's one I came up with:

: Steinway.jpg (60.21 KiB) Viewed 15291 times

jimhenry · Post by **jimhenry** » 08-29-13 2:27 pm

From back when we were discussing the RB3 keyboard and the Pro Keyboard screen:

Nicholas wrote:As for full "lane" highlights when you hit a key: yeah, I really like that. I want to do that now.

Is it now yet?