Unibios future version color changes, feedback wanted.

BerryTogart

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Very nice screenshots - if I would have managed to visit the meeting this year this would be a definitive pickup, I guess it will have to be done by mail :)
 

Razoola

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I think I'm almost there. Made the bars darker and a dark wine color :)

breakers006.png

breakers001.png

breakers004.png
 
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zaneiken

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This is looking very classy. Will definitely be upgrading mine from 3.0.
 

Jontox

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Definitely classy!

My 2 cents would be to get rid of “forever” and associated dash underline and stick only with “SNK”centered.
As the font type used make it look more juvenile than mature.

Great work Raz!
 

Morden

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Definitely classy! My 2 cents would be to get rid of “forever” and associated dash underline and stick only with “SNK”centered.

I second that. If Raz is adamant about keeping the "forever", the dashes have to go. They clash with the solid line. Otherwise, it looks great!

I have a question about the features, though. The version jump from 3.3 to 4.0 is significant. This would suggest a major update with new features, rather than just new colors and maybe some cheat fixes. Will we be getting something new and revolutionary? Maybe some some features that work in tandem with the NeoSD?
 
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xterc

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The new gold logo looks great. Is there any way the other colours for text / lines etc. can be made customizable?
 

BerryTogart

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I have a question about the features, though. The version jump from 3.3 to 4.0 is significant. This would suggest a major update with new features, rather than just new colors and maybe some cheat fixes. Will we be getting something new and revolutionary? Maybe some some features that work in tandem with the NeoSD?

I don't think you can apply semantic versioning to this product, otherwise your example would suggest, that the new Bios contains breaking changes according to semver.org ;) (It doesn't get more breaking that ripping out the old chip from my system and replacing it for a shiny new one!)
 

Morden

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I don't think you can apply semantic versioning to this product

I can and I will! You're not my dad! But seriously, we must begetting something aside from the color change. Solid lines and more colors were something that came from this very thread, and Raz must have something else planned for this big upgrade.
 

Razoola

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The new gold logo looks great. Is there any way the other colours for text / lines etc. can be made customizable?

That is already possible for the ingame menu (but not the main unibios menu). To get there hilight the soft reboot option and move the joystick right (there are a few other options there also).
 

joala

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Raz must have something else planned for this big upgrade.

That is already possible for the ingame menu (but not the main unibios menu). To get there hilight the soft reboot option and move the joystick right (there are a few other options there also).


Keeping cards close to the chest, well played sir, well played...
 

Morden

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There's a reason why this color combination works so well. The first color for the bar I suggested was wine red, along with magenta. I guess my mind subconsciously wanted to combine those particular colors, because I knew them so well. Because I've seen them used before.

UniverseBiosMegaDrive.png

And no, it's not a bad thing, so Raz, keep the colors you're using now!
 

Razoola

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Heh, thats quite spooky. All this color fiddling got me to add the fifth color to the ingame menu. This means in the new version you will be able to edit five colors instead of only four. I also corrected some issues with the in game menu and the MVS version of kof2003, its better that is was but still not perfect due to palette limitations, as it stands now, the shadow of the small font is the same color as the large font.

breakers007.png

kof2003002.png
 

Xian Xi

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There's a reason why this color combination works so well. The first color for the bar I suggested was wine red, along with magenta. I guess my mind subconsciously wanted to combine those particular colors, because I knew them so well. Because I've seen them used before.

View attachment 47865

And no, it's not a bad thing, so Raz, keep the colors you're using now!

They're also from the Neo's Mahjong controller sans blue.
 

Razoola

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Ok, I think I am done with color changes on the in game menu and main unibios menu now. I have fixed up the MVS version of KOF2003 totally now ( and kof10thep ) given these games do not have the internal SNK font.

I am now open for suggestions on banks of colors to store as defaults in the bios for use on the ingame menu. There are corrently 16 presets, some are not so good and I can also add a few more.

If you would like to try some things out and submit them I can then hardcode them in the next unibios release. To do that download the KOF98 picture below and then edit the colors on the in game menu. Remember each graphic is locked to a color, if you want to change the grey color you must change everything thats grey and not just parts. That means the '12 Cheats Listed', the five brackets and the control information at the bottom. Also try and keep your new colors on 0x16 boundries of the HTML 0xFF scale (so 0x00 0x10 0x20 etc) This will mean they will not alter much that used on the NeoGeo.

Once your done attach the picture to this thread (make it PNG) and hopefully your changes are ok and good enough to add.

kof98000.png

kf10thep000.png

kof2003003.png
 
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Gyrian

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Raz, the last update is looking damn good. I've prepared a handful more possible tweaks you might find worthwhile:

Boot screen (no dashes, position, text in caps)

EcZrVQ3.gif


Main menu (the URL alone is cleaner, and conveys all you really need here)

8tRLXPG.gif


In-Game menu (title in caps, soft reboot colored as a menu option, then in the same style as the others)

fBtSC5A.gif


Don't know whether these are all possible, but it was fun to put them together and see what the impact would be. Going to take a stab at a color scheme next. :D
 

Razoola

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Hi Gyrian.

On your first change, I can remove the dashes and also change the color of the forever but it is not possible to align the font to the 'SNK' graphic if caps are used. Its either slightly lower (2 pixels) or the tops of the letter is highter. In short if is says forever it needs to stay lower case and its current position. I do have a space for one new color on the splash screen though so 'forever' could be in a entire new color.

Second change is very easy to apply so Im going to have a good think on this.

On the last one, I really don't want to change the size of the ingame menu window and the last option is small for a reason (because there is more than one option in there). I have been thinking about making the title text at the top caps and its easy to do. I have also though about changing the listed cheats caps also but it actually makes the text harder to read.
 

NeoHomeBrew

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Hi Raz,

what do you think about adding three bars to the top area of the logo?

universe-bios-boot-logo.png
 

Razoola

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Hi Raz,

what do you think about adding three bars to the top area of the logo?

universe-bios-boot-logo.png

I would love to be able to do something like those three bars NeoHomebrew. Unfortunately I am limited to the first 0x300 tiles on the fix layer only so its not possible. That is because these are the only uniform tiles on all AES carts and the sfix ROM found on MVS motherboards.
 

Morden

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what do you think about adding three bars to the top area of the logo?

Not being able to display triple bars aside, there's too much gold. I think what Raz has at the moment is as good as the splash screen is going to get. Also, we've opted to remove all of those abundant dashes for a reason. Replacing them with abundant solid lines is like going three steps back, I think. The only thing I'd like to see go are the dashes under "forever", and then we're done.
 

NeoHomeBrew

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I would love to be able to do something like those three bars NeoHomebrew. Unfortunately I am limited to the first 0x300 tiles on the fix layer only so its not possible. That is because these are the only uniform tiles on all AES carts and the sfix ROM found on MVS motherboards.

Too bad - that means no custom tiles, only the standard system font set could be used? https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=SFIX_ROM
 
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