10 replies to this topic

[devorian]

This may or may not be of interest to some, but if you're not too PC savvy like me and you're missing some instructions cards, or what you have isn't in a swf  you can use this free programe to convert jpeg to swf, 

 

Oxelon Media Converter 1.1

 

There's no hidden junk in there and totally freeware. Very simple to use.

[Carny_Priest]

No. This is not a good way to create a Flash instruction card. Or at least if this is what you are going to do then you can keep the results to yourself.

 

If the source at least has the correct size for the manufacturer and era, it's perhaps a better choice to use such a tool for conversion to swf than just a simple conversion to png in MS Paint. PinballX does stretch png to fit the backglass screen which distorts the image. At least PinballX displays swf without stretching the image, adding letterbox as appropriate for the backglass aspect ratio.

 

If the source is low res and or cut to incorrect aspect ratio for the manufacturer and era, converting to swf isn't going to help.

 

The correct way to do it is to redraw and retrace the card content to vector using Adobe InDesign. There are other freeware graphics apps, but InDesign does natively support export to swf. Results are clean and scalable on any size display. Even as Flash is going extinct, you can at least still then convert to a hi res (600 dpi) png - adding appropriate letterboxing for your display - and the output will still be much, much higher quality than just simply running a jpg through a conversion tool.

 

The process sounds hard, but Inkochnito's site has excellent reproductions. As the vast majority of factory cards are black and white, the time it takes me to crop out a card from a PDF and convert it to a vector-based swf takes less than a minute. It's well worth it.

[devorian]

No. This is not a good way to create a Flash instruction card. Or at least if this is what you are going to do then you can keep the results to yourself.

 

 

Who took the jam out of your doughnut ???

 

Some media packs contain Jpeg images for instruction cards as apposed to SWF. If you have multiply files to convert then this works well. It's only to display in pinball X so you can have a quick read of the instructions before you play.

 

Like I said, it's not for everyone but it may help others? 

[Brer Frog]

I've converted all my SWF instruction cards to PNG. I don't have Flash on my PC because it was always updating due to security issues. It's rarely used & Adobe said it would end support for Flash Player in 2020.

[Carny_Priest]

HyperPin was the original front-end for cabs. It's the one that defined standards for media that are still used by all the various front-ends that are active today (PinballX, PinballY, etc.). It only supported swf for instruction cards. Why is that? Because Flash can display vector-based graphics that are scalable to any size screen. After all, you are projecting the contents of around a 5" x 3" card to a 2K or even 4K backglass screen that is 24", 27", 32". 

 

If you are dumping a jpg into a swf container and that source is really good quality then it's probably acceptable. But I suspect that if you could not find a media pack for a table that you have installed then whatever you've found is not so good. Jpg has not been a standard for instruction cards that I'm aware of.

 

I know that you are just trying to tick off an item on your media audit and move along to the next item. But look in your heart and tell me which would you rather have blown up and displayed on your screen:

 

This - an original resource photoscan that is legible:

 

Or something like this - an Inkochnito repro:

 

This - a photo of a card:

 

Or this - a repro I put together which is available at the universe:

 

It's your machine. You do what you want. But at the end of the day, if you are going so far as to set everything up in a front end, you know that you are not going to be entirely satisfied with resources that don't look very professional. I've redrawn to Flash many, many cards from Inkochnito's site. They are available on the PinballX FTP. But I don't have as extensive a collection as you. Chances are Inkochnito has the reproduction. Clipping from one of his PDF and converting to vector is a pretty quick and easy process. It was how it was done for the older Hyperpin media packs from around 2012 or 2013. There is, I think still, a greymarket version of Adobe Suite that Adobe had made available. It's ancient but it is free and it does the job. Much better results than dumping in a photo or a tiff from a scan. 

 

If Inkochnito does not yet have the reproduction. Well, you'd have to reproduce it yourself but that would be a separate tutorial.   

 

It's true Flash is going to go extinct. I've looked around at what might be a good replacement standard but I'm not sure what that would be. I looked at svg but file sizes blow up and because a lot of the modern Stern cards use a mix of vector and bitmaps, it wouldn't be appropriate anyway. Png would be my fallback as well. I've got an AutoHotkey script that runs a quick slideshow and takes ultra hi-res screenshots. It has the advantage that it will display max res while retaining the correct aspect ratio and letterbox the areas outside the image. Of course, the output would not be transferrable to another machine running a different aspect ratio. I have a 16:9 but the image would be distorted if you tried to display on 5:4 or 16:10 backglass displays. I think TerryRed has actually published some conversion programs to support Popper. And there maybe something useful for swf cards in his collection of programs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Thalamus]

I just now realized. I've got sooo much things still to do :\

[Brer Frog]

I viewed the .sfw images full screen on my 22" desktop monitor & then did a screen capture to .png. They look pretty good & should be OK when displayed on the 19" backglass of the mini-pin, which is disassembled for painting. If things don't work out I still have the original .swf files.

[mwong168]

I have been using SWF tools since the good old Hyperpin days from 10 years ago. It worked fine for me and still works fine for PinballX today. I usually open up the card and save as png and use the png2swf executable.

http://swftools.org

[Carny_Priest]

I have been using SWF tools since the good old Hyperpin days from 10 years ago. It worked fine for me and still works fine for PinballX today. I usually open up the card and save as png and use the png2swf executable.

http://swftools.org

 

Yes, I have used these tools for converting the ShoryukenToTheChin FX2 table guides for use in PinballX. I've tried using with cropped images from Inkochnito's reproduction PDF, but found that the tool introduces ringing artifacts/fuzzy edges. Maybe there is some compression occurring. The result is just not as sharp as the source PDF. But, depending on goals it may be just fine. Result is legible. It's perfectly valid to make a conscious decision to sacrifice some quality to save some time. After all, using something like png2swf the process can be batched and automated. The process using Illustrator is manual. 

 

Again, the result is only as good as the source image. Fortunately, there are great sources for high quality hi-res custom cards and there are Inkochnito's factory reproductions. One warning with Inkochnito's sources. He makes a great effort to match the font used in reference scans from the original card and does great by his choices. Sometimes the fonts are embedded in the PDF. But sometimes they are not embedded in the PDF and if your PC does not have that font installed then Windows must use a substitute. The result may not look as intended and you may not have much warning. Usually it is substituting Arial for Helvetica. They are close, and it may be fine. But, really, Arial is not Helvetica. I leave it up to the user to determine if the output is good enough for the job. Depends on if the intent was to just have the rules to read or to have an accurate representation of what the factory apron card looked like. These are somewhat different goals. 

 

In my opinion, if it were just about the rules it would be slick to just substitute the original font with whatever font choice is used in the front-end and give the image a background that matches the front-end theme.

[Thalamus]

Sounds to me that this format should have been used instead of regular PDF

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A

[Carny_Priest]

Yeah, might have been a simple oversight. Reminds me; I should check the PDF files I contributed at Inkochnito's. 

 

All the tracing and redrawing was done to support this project:

 

https://www.gameex.i...-splash-viewer/

 

Has links to my work. I did it so that you don't have to! At least, for a few hundred popular tables. But not even close for all tables available to play on VP or FP.

 

Took my cues about how to create an instruction card from the legends, Uncle Willy and Player1. Who else are you going to trust on the right way to generate resources?

 

The basic tutorial is fine and if you are dealing with simple black text on white background, I can crop an image from the PDF and convert to swf in around 30 seconds more or less. In any case, it was faster for me to simply redraw than it was to open up an existing media pack, drag the card to a browser, and check the card for quality and decide if I needed to redraw or not. Of course, now, browsers do not support Flash by default, so you would have to find a viewer or add a Flash extension.

 

The one key step missing in this tutorial is that you must add an opaque white layer at the very bottom. I use a rectangle the same dimensions as the artboard. Otherwise, the background will be transparent. PinballX displays with a black background, so without that white layer the display will just look like a black screen. Very important.

 

https://www.vpforums...?showtopic=6716

 

As for custom cards, I would also add to the list:

 

http://pinballboy.com/