HS ARTWORK

I need to talk about HS for a moment. It is "hardcoded" at 1024x768. It scales to 1080p fine (I can't personally say what it will look like at 4k though?). But the real problem for me is that is a 4:3 ratio. This means that all artwork will be stretched horizontally to fill my 16:9 monitor. Note that this only affects the HS menu! Don't worry emulators will run at proper resolutions. It doesn't look as bad as it sounds either. Honestly, I wonder how many people actually notice. And users on the HS forum have indeed made artwork specifically for 16:9. They had to use a cool trick where they shrink the images horizontally so that when stretched back out, it stretches to the proper dimensions. You'll need to know this if you plan on making any of your own artwork for HS. Otherwise just be aware that you need to look for 16:9 specific artwork when downloading. This only affects HS specific artwork! RL artwork or RA overlays are fine for example.

 

With that in mind, we should probably deal with all the HS related stuff first. This includes everything you see when browsing the wheels. This includes:

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1. Wheels (called logos on EmuMovies)

2. Pointers (far right on screen pointing to the current game wheel)

3. Special Artwork (default joystick animations along bottom of screen)

4. Themes (main menu, system, and game themes including all artwork they use: carts, discs, boxart).

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The easiest way to get the majority of artwork is to sign up for platinum membership on the HS forum. This will allow you to use HyperSync to automatically download and place in the proper folder all the artwork that matches your database. This isn't mandatory though! The artwork itself is free, just the Sync requires platinum. You can in fact browse and download stuff manually putting them where needed. Some of which you will want to do anyway.

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Notice Videos weren't on that list? For them you will need platinum membership at EmuMovies. Again, the videos themselves are free, you are just paying for the Sync feature. Unlike the HS platinum, I highly suggest you buy this. Downloading videos through their site is limited. And videos get added and even updated all the time.

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EM also has the wheels (logos) like mentioned so there's one less reason to need HS platinum.

The pointers are fairly easy to change manually. If you have 20 systems, you will need to change it 21 times (one for main menu).

Special artwork will need to be manually added anyway. Sync does not have options for Xbox360 or PS3 buttons for example.

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That just leaves themes. And this can be hard one depending on what you want. Personally I don't like using individual game themes. I just use default system themes. So if I have 20 systems, that's only 40 themes (20 main menu, 20 system default) that I have to worry about. If you want a different them for every game, you're into thousands. And considering the 16:9 issue, this could get time consuming.

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If any of the above artwork looks stretched on your 16:9 monitor, download the free version of FotoSizer. Set it to 75% of the horizontal but keep the vertical at 100% (put on stretch mode). Also make sure to keep the original name. This is easily done to a whole folder of wheels for instance but themes are a little harder. They are zipped for one thing. They often have .swf (need professional Adobe products to edit) instead of the usual .png .jpg files. Basically I suggest you download themes made specifically for 16:9. If they don't mention that they are for that, then assume they are not. Making 16:9 themes is beyond my capabilities, hell making a 4:3 one in HyperTheme isn't exactly intuitive. I will try to add a link here at some point.

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Fortunately for me, my tastes are pretty simple. Yeah, the flash and flare that led me to HS so long ago is actually the kind of thing I am trying to get away from these days!