Fun w/cheating meta types

[Tean]

For those of you who know what meta types are, skip to the next section. For those that don't, a meta time is sortof an "internal signature" found inside a file that tells a program how to open it. For example. If you renamed picture.jpg to picture.txt and then looked at it in Internet Explorer, IE would already know it's a JPG file and open it like that. Well, GuitarStar works somewhat the same way. I'll give you an example:

Ever notice how GuitarStar doesn't like JPG files? Not so! In this example, you can use JPGs from the internet as your album covers.

Before we do anything else we need to make sure you have extensions turned on. So open Windows Explorer, then click Tools->Folder Options. Then click the View tab and make sure "Hide extensions for known file types" is NOT checked.

1-Using Internet Explorer, go to www.wikipedia.org and look up your song name. In this case, we're using "Suck My Kiss' (Red Hot Chili Peppers). You'll see an album cover on the right hand side that looks like this:



2-Right click on that picture, and click "Save image as". Browse to the folder where the song is. In this example, it's C:\Games\GuitarStar\Songs\Suck My Kiss

3-In the area where you can type the filename, type label.png. The game will now read the JPG file because it has a PNG extension, but because it knows the MIME type, it will go ahead and accept the JPG just like it would a PNG.


There's other stuff I've been wanting to try this on too. Like creating a looping video then naming it menubackground.png and seeing if I can run a video in the background on the menus.

Have fun with it, try it out!

[moonflow43]

i'm sure you already know this but the reason jpg's aren't read in the first place, is probably because callisto just searches for png's. like: ".../textures/CreditsBackground.png"

he could just add a "or" statement to also make is search for ".../textures/CreditsBackground.jpg". but since jpg's suck, there would be no need.

it is interesting that the jpg library is in the game though. maybe it was really easy to implement? maybe a earlier beta used them? maybe xna already does it? idk

EDIT: also, i would like to ask, are you really too lazy to just convert the pictures, haha

[Tean]

When it comes to album art, yes. I figure it never is large enough that you notice the difference between a compressed JPG and a PNG, so why bother converting it?

I'm assuming that most standard file types are already in XNA's library, which leads me to want to change a .wmv to .png and see if it will read it.

[xorange90x]

or you could download Right-Click Image Converter, right click the file and tell it make .PNG and then u have a PNG without hassle.

or even simpler, open it up in Paint, File > Save As... and change to PNG.

[Tean]

The whole purpose of the topic is that XNA seems to know meta types no matter what the file extension, not really to explain how to get a JPG to a PNG.

[bob78h]

Have you tried the wmv yet?

[pcb]

this could be very simple .....

[Tean]

Jun 18, 2008 14:12:33 GMT -5 bob78h said:

Have you tried the wmv yet?

Not yet, I will later tonight when I get off work.

[callisto2002]

@all
Sorry, I can already tell you that this won't work. Think about what you're doing for a second:

1. What you've done so far:
You've passed a different file format to some function that loads a texture image. The function doesn't even look at the file extension, but actually it looks only at the header, sees the jpg/png/bmp/whatever header and loads that file into texture memory. Nothing magic.

2. What you're trying to do now:
Recall that the function you're messing with is supposed to load a 2D image into a 2D texture. Now you're passing a video, expecting the function to do what exactly? There's much more to rendering a video than to drawing a single image. Think of audio, synchronization etc. So bottom line: Passing it a video won't work.

[Tean]

I just wasn't sure if XNA had pre-defined loading of media all lumped together. Thanks for clearing that up though

[callisto2002]

Tean
Nope, sorry. Actually, XNA doesn't even have built-in support for animations or videos.