Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

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itsthinkingstill
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#11 » Tue May 01, 2018 6:07 pm

Great work! Did a video many moons ago

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Roareye
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#12 » Tue May 01, 2018 6:42 pm

Thanks itsthinkingstill. Awesome to see a bit more running on a native DC.

msr_001a_pp.jpg

Both msr_001a_pp and msr_006 have this look (except msr_006 has a CONTINUE button instead of a BACK button). msr_001a_tou also shares this background (and was intended to share the same background from the original site coding) but there's nothing of interest in addition to it.

msr_002--1.jpg

I replaced the bg art for this page with the game's cover art since it effectively works as a splash page.

msr_003--1.jpg
msr_003--2.jpg

Images remade, including the DRIVING TIPS header, and NEWS ARCHIVES header. These are my approximations of what those headers said and looked like, and they fit the image width, but if evidence of these pages proves me wrong these can be altered.

msr_004.jpg

This Speed Challenge page (msr_004) seems to lead to the next one (msr_008).

msr_008.jpg

This second Speed Challenge page required replica art for the right hand buttons and the Tokyo Challenge header.

msr_011--1.jpg

msr_016.jpg

These two pages are supposed to have different background artworks, but I ran out of promotional stills.

That's it for tonight, however judging by the ODM magazine pic, there's a full header with the MSR logo (which I have) to be built back into the site.

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated. :)

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SEGA RPG FAN
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#13 » Tue May 01, 2018 11:06 pm

I like what I'm seeing. Looks like you're staying as true to the original as you can with limited information out there. Kudos!
PSO Dreamcast 100% Legit: Eda FOmarl, Automaton HUcast

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Roareye
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#14 » Wed May 02, 2018 4:17 am

SEGA RPG FAN wrote:I like what I'm seeing. Looks like you're staying as true to the original as you can with limited information out there. Kudos!

That's my intention, thanks man :)

It's gonna be odd having to build the main landing page from scratch with no recovered scripts or any images to tell me what those pages looked like. I'd leave it, but HOME is linked back to on several pages and the initial News page doesn't include links to get to the Challenge areas etc, which means it's either rebuild the front page or refit the News page to become it.
- Rebuilding the Front page is more authentic.
- Repurposing the News page means less loading times.

I'm thinking to go for authentic, otherwise there's little point in not just building a new site from the ground up, though it's a little daunting to say the least. If you know anyone who used the site who could even say roughly what they remember of the front page, that'd be a great help - I don't even know what content was originally on it.

rjay63
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#15 » Wed May 02, 2018 3:37 pm

Roareye wrote:
....If you know anyone who used the site who could even say roughly what they remember of the front page, that'd be a great help - I don't even know what content was originally on it.


There's a magazine screenshot of the original homepage in my review topic; the same place as the ranking screenshot (just above).
My Metropolis Street Racer Blog: http://www.msrdreamcast.blogspot.com
MSR ghosts/time trials and official DLC: https://www.dreamcastlive.net/metropoli ... r-dlc.html

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Roareye
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#16 » Wed May 02, 2018 4:12 pm

homepage-larger.png

I didn't see this RJAY63, as I got the other ODM image from your blogsite, and this one isn't on there.
Awesome stuff, thank you so much! This will make building the front page SO much easier ^_^

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Roareye
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#17 » Wed May 02, 2018 5:59 pm

Okay I'm about to head for bed. However I thought I'd show a bit of progress for the day, though we are far from complete yet.

After RJAY63 showed me that still of the homepage, I got to work in starting to replicate it. This means coding the page from the start (Or based heavily off of the other page coding) and rebuilding all of the assets.

homepage-larger.png

Here is the original ODM magazine scan of the frontpage (Annoyingly there is information off of the left of the image that is cut off by the magazine editor).

msr_001.jpg

And here is a work-in-progress of my site. As you can likely tell there are several assets I have yet to build, however everything in the right side menu is new assets, and the layout is a near-perfect match. I need to grab the full Kudos quote from the game (I'm pretty sure it's quoted either in the manual or in the game itself, I remember it being repeated somewhere) and build the header, Homepage footer and of course the missing menu elements.

From what I can tell, the MSR logo in the top right was an additional site layer (as it doesn't appear on any of the archived pages themselves) and the large number 1 covering the top-left of the image (ODM numbered their images for quotations) seems to cover a watch and Kudos graphic, according to the remaining Ranking Table screenshot. It appears there is another image to the left of the watch, but I have no idea what it is. I'll see if there's anything like those images in-game and that should reveal what is missing.

I actually have the artwork from the frontpage still, and will apply that nearer to page completion. It's hard to make out, but it's this promotional artwork here;
MSR_DC_Art_IMAGE05.jpg


The one thing I am struggling with is the filesize of the background art. According to a few sources, the Dreamcast won't load any images larger than 15kb. The smallest I've been able to squeeze the backgrounds down to (at 600x450 resolution - the DC browser resolution) is about 17kb - that's exporting a jpg (which the original site used) at the lowest possible quality level. If anyone knows how they managed to squeeze full-size art into the background of the original site, please let me know. 15kb is unbelievably impossible at that resolution, and HTML doesn't allow for background stretching.

Let me know what you guys think, and please help where you can. Thanks again guys :)

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SEGA RPG FAN
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#18 » Wed May 02, 2018 7:23 pm

I wouldn't say it looks great and could probably be improved, but here's a 15kb 600x450 image. FWIW I used Paint.net.
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MSR_DC_Art_IMAGE05-3.jpg
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Roareye
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Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#19 » Wed May 02, 2018 9:34 pm

SEGA RPG FAN, it's great that there's a site that can get the file size down. Thanks :) I'll check it out once I've got the meat and potatoes of this page done.

----------------------------------------------

Okay, I'm done for the night. There's still several things to do on this page, but it's past 2am and I must sleep lol

homepage-larger.png

msr_001--1.jpg

So the two websites are now a LOT more akin to one another. There are a few images that need replacing, but I think it's clear how close this is to the design in terms of layout and where the artwork is going.

Need replacing;
- KUDOS K LOGO (I could only find a tiny GIF image, which looks horrid stretched this large)
- LATEST MSR NEWS UPDATES (Replace with actual Homepage header)
- YOUR DREAM CAR (The text is perfect, maybe just needs widening slightly. I don't have the car front artwork, so I used one from a new promotional art found on MobyGames, but it's as close as the promo art gets so far)
- WELCOME TO METROPOLIS STREET RACER HOMEPAGE (I think these are artwork headers similar to the menu buttons)
- IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT HOW YOU DRIVE FAST (Again, I think this is an artwork footer similar to the menu buttons)
- MISSING MENU BUTTONS - Speed Challenge, Ghost Attack, Message Board, Chat. Easily built, just time consuming
- WORLD TIME TRIAL - I made a mistake, should be WORLD TIME TRIALS. Easy fix.

The Dreamarena button was new and custom built so I actually have a very high resolution version of it if it's needed for anything in future (I'm talking natively over 2000 pixels wide - no blur or scaling) but obviously this is a much smaller version of that image.

Things the community might be able to help source;
- The Kudos K logo in a higher resolution. The blocky, stretched nature of this one is pants.
- The original car artwork used for the Your Dream Car advert.
- Any other feedback or ideas you guys might have.

dave_van_damn
Graffiti Grind
Posts: 310

Re: Metropolis Street Racer in-game Browser

Post#20 » Wed May 02, 2018 10:14 pm

[quote="Roareye"]SEGA RPG FAN, it's great that there's a site that can get the file size down. Thanks :) I'll check it out once I've got the meat and potatoes of this page done.

Brilliant work! I can see you've spent a lot of time on this. Much appreciated.

FYI Paint.Net is an open source Photoshop alternative :)
aka DavidHK on DC games.

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