Simple Question: 1 Picture permanently in back-/ foreground

hippy69 · Post by **hippy69** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 3:35 pm

Hello,
all this scripting may be useful for advanced users, but not for me

. I'm really confused:
How to get one single picture to stay permanently in the back- or foreground, while the rest is changing?

I did my pictures in the Auto-Folders but they appear very very seldom and I tried it via Non-Auto-Folders, but this did not work.

I should explain, that I try to use a black/white bmp.

Greets, hippy

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 11:56 pm

Well, a simple script should do it. Copy and paste the following into a text editor (on a PC use Wordpad, Mac I dunno). Change NameOfPic to the actual name of the picture without any .BMP or .JPG extension.

Then save it to a file in this folder:
C:\Program Files\SoundSpectrum\G-Force\Scripts
(PC)

OR

/users/<yourusernamehere>/Library/Application Support/SoundSpectrum/G-Force/Scripts
(Macintosh, putting your actual username in for <yourusernamehere>)

call the file "CTRL 1.txt"
Make sure it's a text file, not RTF or anything.

00:00

StartSprite( "NameOfPic",86400,kParticleFlags_ShrinkToFit | kParticleFlags_EnlargeToFit | kParticleFlags_MaintainAspect | kParticleFlags_DontCrop | kParticleFlags_AlphaBlend);
24:00:00 Run("CTRL 1");

It will display the image for 1 day. Then it should (I haven't had time to test it) start over to display it again for one day.

Oh yeah, you have to hit Control 1 in G-Force to start the script.

hippy69 · Post by **hippy69** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 7:47 am

Wonderful, thank you very much

. I just played around a little with the parameters and now got the result I was looking for. Strangly enough it did not always accept it, when I changed the kParticleFlags-commands and I had to restart the prog to make it work

.
Btw, is it possible to add some arguments to the kParticleFlags-commands and what are the figues (in my case the 86400 - filesize???) for?

And how could I integrate same fÃ¼rther graphics in this script and make them change randomly?
Is it possible to "animate" the graphics in any way?

Greetz, hippy

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:27 pm

Oh right, yeah sure, 1st it's one single picture, now its animation!

--------------------
You're welcome. Type the U key to get G-Force to reload the configs. You only need to restart if you add a brand new config or script. So just save your change and go back to G-Force and type U, then Shift-K to kill the current script and CTRL-1 to start the script again.

The 86400 is number of seconds in a day. The run command is supposed fire after 24 hours - 24:00:00 Run("CTRL 1"); That would keep it onscreen permanently if the computer is on and you keep G-Force running.

So if you now want to change the image from time to time either alter CTRL-1 or save it to a new name such as CTRL-2.txt Change the "number of seconds to display" from 86400 to say 300 for 5 minutes or 60 for one or whatever. Then make another script time followed by another StartSprite command. I.E. for 60 seconds follow with 01:00 StartScript( etc. The command can be on the same line or next line it doesn't matter.
Now it won't be exactly at random, it will be at whatever interval you specify and whichever picture you secifiy. For randomness you'll have to let G-Force do it's thing. If you have a PC and the toolbar you can specify which sprites to show by unchecking the ones you don't want to see and then save it as 'theme'.

Now as far as animating the pictures, by default the 'foreground' pictures would move and the background wouldn't. But now that are all in the same folder so I don't know exactly how G-Force treats them. I guess it's based on the size. Try not using the shrink and enlarge flags in the StartSprite command.

There are other options for the flags, please see this topic - http://forums.soundspectrum.com/viewtop ... ight=flags

Be sure to copy your current script to another location as a backup. Then if you are interested in doing more with scripts you can check out some of the sample scripts supplied with G-Force and/or download some the ones I have posted on my website. Warning: unzipping these to the scripts folder will overwrite the ones that are there. That's why I say make a backup of anything you are working on. If you want to restore the sample scripts you can re-install G-Force and answer yes to overwrite existing files.

There are some fractal backgrounds posted too as well as configs that I have made. There are several zips with scripts including ones that have unions on top of unions:
http://www.icubed.com/~chkman/GForce/

hippy69 · Post by **hippy69** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 1:25 pm

Yes. you're right it's a dramatic difference between one picture and an animation

.
But these where just questions that came to my mind, when I was playing around with this tool. So sorry about this.

I'll check out your new information, the next days.

Thanks a lot man, hippy

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Sun Dec 11, 2005 4:51 pm

The wink face

means I'm just kidding around with ya. Ask anything you like. There is a lot that you can do with G-Force. I've been trying to do some new configs but have been sidetracked all weekend. Gonna do something now (I hope).

willrob · Post by **willrob** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 10:43 am

It can do animation, if you can. Can you draw hundreds of images, each slightly different stage of a motion? If so, then you can create a script that loads them at such a pace as to animate them. Of course there are easier ways to do animations and there's no reason to use G-Force to do it. You could, in a video editing software, overlay a G-Force movie (from darkroom) into another animation.... Or yo cold just enjoy what G-Force does for you as it is.

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 8:51 am

Ran across something that answers the question of what is foreground and what is background. If you make a .txt file for each image, it will determine which is what.

// To make the item background-only, omit Pen (and just use EPen)

EPen=".5"

I found that in the sprites folder in G-Force Watermark.txt

Truus · Post by **Truus** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:06 pm

at chkman.

00:00

StartSprite( "NameOfPic",86400,kParticleFlags_ShrinkToFit | kParticleFlags_EnlargeToFit | kParticleFlags_MaintainAspect | kParticleFlags_DontCrop | kParticleFlags_AlphaBlend);
24:00:00 Run("CTRL 1");

I use this everytime when I work with Soundspectrum Darkroom and it works perfect, but.....
when I have for 1 song 2 pictures how can I do that, I've tried today, but I can not figure it out how to do that. Can you help me with this?
Thank you

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:28 pm

What did you want? Two sprites at the same time or one after the other?
This will show two separate pics:

00:00
StartSprite( "NameOfPic1",30, kParticleFlags_ShrinkToFit | kParticleFlags_EnlargeToFit | kParticleFlags_MaintainAspect | kParticleFlags_DontCrop | kParticleFlags_AlphaBlend);

00:30
StartSprite( "NameOfPic2",30, kParticleFlags_ShrinkToFit | kParticleFlags_EnlargeToFit | kParticleFlags_MaintainAspect | kParticleFlags_DontCrop | kParticleFlags_AlphaBlend);

00:01:00 Run("CTRL 1");

The 1st command starts at 0 seconds and the time it will be displayed is 30 seconds. Timed to coincide with the 1st pic ending, the 2nd command is at 30 seconds into the script. It is set for 30 seconds as well.
At one minute, if the file is called CTRL 1.txt it will then repeat with the 1st one for 30 seconds and then the 2nd one for 30 and at 1 minute start again.

Does that help?

Truus · Post by **Truus** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 3:13 am

This is exactly what I want chkman, you are the best

I had tried yesterday but, 1 picture was showed the other not, now I see what I did wrong. Thank you for your help.

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:20 am

You're welcome, Truus. Thanks for the compliment!

Truus · Post by **Truus** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:22 am

Off topic

I was on your website and I see only ? signs no pictures, how come?

chkman · Post by **chkman** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 3:31 pm

I don't know, they were there last time I looked but I see that they are gone now. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll try to fix it tonight.

In the mean time what do you think of the overall concept and the scripts?

Truus · Post by **Truus** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 3:38 pm

I didn't have downloaded yet cause I don't know what I download

I will do tomorrow and I tell you how it looks on a mac