TCPTool – The Cover Project for people who can’t use paint programs.

[Ozzy_98]

You can read the details of this over at my blog, but I wrote a quick and dirty app to help me crank out covers for my stuff.  The program can not do anything too complex, it just takes a template image, and pastes other images at the locations stated in the .ini file.  So for example, you could have Sonic - Front.jpg and Sonic - Back.jpg, Mario - Front.jpg and Mario - Back.jpg, and it'll create Mario.jpg and Sonic.jpg.

So it takes this:


and makes this in less than 1 second:


You just load up a folder with all the images you want, and it'll spit out the covers.  No GUI options, no CLI, just run the program, receive covers. There's MAJOR limitations however, it can not do layers, and you still need to get the source image in good shape.  Details and the actual program can be found here: http://rhwiii.info/blog/archives/1083

Note: I'm a security engineer\government defense contractor.  So if you don't want to run software from a stranger, that's a good thing.  But I thought I'd share it anyways incase anyone wants to try it out. It's great if you have 30+ covers for a system to fill in, and they're not listed here. If you have 1-3, do it the right way or make a request.

[irvgotti452]

Wow very nice work on this. I wanna give it a go to see how it works. So this so far only covers gamegear, tiger and lynx (checking to see if I read that right).

[Ozzy_98]

That's just what I included, if you edit the ini file it could handle anything you toss at it.

[Oobgarm]

Wow, this is a neat idea. I'm gonna have to give it a look, as I have a lot of NES covers to convert to a box template, and this might help if I mess with the ini.

[Thom Grayson]

Programming flies right over my head, so I'm just going to assume this was a lot of work to make and say - this looks really cool.

[Ozzy_98]

I added a few tricks to this, if anyones interested let me know I can clean it up and make it usable for others soon.  I disabled any errors if it couldn't find a file, now it just skips that action, and added text output via text files.  So now I take this INI file:

Code: [Select]

2039,0,3259,1370,Front.jpg
0,0,1525,1370,Back.jpg
168,199,740,512,Screen1.jpg
780,199,1353,512,Screen2.jpg
430,20,1110,180,Logo.jpg

FontSize, 55
FontStyle, Italics
Xvalue=140, YValue=540, FontName=High Tower Text, ShadowR=0, ShadowG=0, ShadowB=0, FontR=255, FontG=0, FontB=0, Shadow=False
TextOut, Blurb.txt

FontSize, 35
FontStyle, Normal
Xvalue=140, YValue=630, FontName=High Tower Text, ShadowR=0, ShadowG=0, ShadowB=0, FontR=0, FontG=0, FontB=0, Shadow=False
TextOut, Description.txt

FontSize, 20
FontStyle, Normal
Xvalue=370, YValue=1215, FontName=High Tower Text, ShadowR=0, ShadowG=0, ShadowB=0, FontR=0, FontG=0, FontB=0, Shadow=False
TextOut, Legal.txt

FontSize, 55
Xvalue=1675, YValue=350, FontName=High Tower Text, ShadowR=0, ShadowG=0, ShadowB=0, FontR=255, FontG=255, FontB=255, Shadow=False
plus my Lynx template:


Add in these .jpg files per game:





and these text files:

An arcade in the palm of your hands!

    Now the adventure and thrill of this fast-paced, action
packed coin-op hit is placed in your hands!
 
    Kick, punch, and master the special Ninjutsu techniques
as you battle your way through four of the nastiest neighbor-
hoods known to man.

Atari, the Atari logo, and Lynx are TMs or (R)s of Atari Corporation.
Ninja Gaiden is a TM and (c) 1988 of Tecmo Limited, licensed to
Atari Corp. (c) 1991, Atari Corp, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1302
All rights reserved. Printed in Hong Kong. Made in China.

and get this cover:



And using the same INI, I can still make a whole back cover as a jpeg, and just skip any of the screenshots, logo, and text files