Skins

1st January 2004 15:34 UTC

The SimpleSkins / RedStar AVS Quad Pack
It took me and my friend 35 months to make this

we were going to release them as 4 seperate packs, but i figure make a 96 preset pack.....this way we get the message across that we mean buisness.

So if you didnt get it before, THERE ARE 96 PRESETS IN THIS PACK! not 25......not 10.......not 5....96! (and 99% of it works!)

So let me explain the 4 differnt packs

Cubex- Sophmoric, Basic
Nighthawk- More Flashy, More Depressed Moo
Lucifer- Some of the Most Flashy (in this pack), "Laid Back but Hardcore" - Xero
Roma- The outtakes and Some Really Flashy Ones Too, Mixed Moods

This may be my first attempt at AVS presets, but concider this, Ive been doing thiis for 35 months, and thtas alot longer then ive been skinning.

This Pack is avalible at my website(http://www.simpleskins.vze.com), and was submitted to winamp 12/31/03

i hope you enjoy the preset (questions and comments are welcome)

Yathosho

1st January 2004 15:52 UTC

pretty basic presets here (and whats the statement, that only 99% of them work?!).

however, publishing the pack as is brings along a couple of problems.

1. the installer is not allowed to be distributed
2. some of the APEs are outdated and will overwrite newer versions without asking

it's also very uncomfortable to use static installpaths, since everybody not using an english windows version or a different winamp installpath has to specify the correct directory manually. nsis is a modern (and legal) installer, that will allow more flexible installations (you can find nsi scripts to detect the winamp installation path in the nsis archive). if you don't want to mess around in nsis, click on the pimpbot link in my signature.

ps: there is no need to distribute the .clm files

Skins

1st January 2004 16:12 UTC

Hey thanks......gues i should pull my thing....forgot about the winzip thing (i was going to get a program before i published it, and forgot.)

The reason i include the .CLM files, and the .APE files was that the presets didnt work normally on my friends computer without them.

il work on getting that leagal version up.

And about the 99% thing.....One of the presets dosnt display right (if just goes black, but the codes are there)
the preset it "Lucifer-Window to the otherside" i included it so if someone wanted to tinker with it, or if it jsut didnt disply on my computer.

Skins

1st January 2004 16:21 UTC

ok im getting an error with pimpbot.....

Yathosho

1st January 2004 18:22 UTC

could be that dll already comes with the new nsis, but unless you're going to include truetype fonts you don't need it anyway

hungryskull

1st January 2004 18:26 UTC

I couldn't even get close to going through all of these. But I noticed that quite a few are very simple. It seems like the ones from "Lucifer" are the least simple and n00bish.

Skins

1st January 2004 20:09 UTC

Because You only looked at the ones at the top of the list.....

but hey, it is my first attempt at AVS presets.

Umm It still woulnt work, so what im going to do is keep on re-downloading it.

Skins

1st January 2004 20:13 UTC

another error

you can see that i have NSIS on the computer, but it isnt reading it (or atleast i think)

Yathosho

1st January 2004 21:07 UTC

that might be the explanation for the first error. pimpbot requires a nsis installation to compile installers, it's just an easy to use frontend. i guess the previous error (with the font dll) came up, because it couldn't find the nsis installation.

UnConeD

2nd January 2004 13:24 UTC

I'd surely NOT publish them. To quote the FAQ:

If you are a beginning artist, it's best to post your work in the AVS Presets forum as a regular zipped package first. The people there are also AVS artists and can give you useful tips on how to improve your presets.

First of all, I see no point in showing off the amount of presets... except in rare cases (like desibel+), large packs suffer from low quality. Throwing out the less-than-good presets will raise the quality of your pack.

Your installer is indeed pretty crappy and illegal on top. You extract the APEs in a subdir, which will not work, and you're using old versions to boot. Use the latest colormap/convolution/texer from Winamp5 (or the latest Pimpbot).

Yathosho is right about the clm files (I wrote colormap.Ape, so I should know): the CLM files are just for storing and copying maps, and are not required for the preset.

As far as the presets go: the only ones that seemed somewhat interesting were the Nighthawk ones, where at least some effort went into aesthetics and colors. But even those needed a lot of work to be good. Most of the presets are either simplistic, overly slow, or both.

Finally, there's a bunch of ripping going on: the DM in Photonic NRG is by skupers, and this isn't mentioned anywhere. Back in the Box is an el-vis remix. New Galaxy is a remix of an old newpicks preset (I think katmandu-commercial). I didn't dissect every preset, but I'm sure there are more. Roma seems to be the only one giving some credit, but I doubt you asked skupers for permission if the others are rips.
I'm amazed that if you say you've been skinning for so long that you still don't respect other's work.

Here are a couple of my favourite AVS packs that you should check out:

http://www.deviantart.com/view/2512760/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/1776153/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/2194656/
And mostly anything at:
http://visbot.net/index.php?title=RELEASES

If/when this gets published at Winamp.com, it'll get removed because it is a definite rip, which is not allowed.

Skins

2nd January 2004 16:03 UTC

all of the ones that were remakes, were commented with the original comment and the author (unless they were done by my friend, im not sure what he did exactly)

ok, im going to work on the presets some more before i re-post this, i pulled the submission from winamp, imand im going to do the samew with my pack on my site......that still dosnt help me with pimp bot though.....

Im going to go through them now, and ill )hopefully) put the new Zip file up....

Skins

2nd January 2004 19:23 UTC

ok, here is the updated "Leagal" version of it (zip)

fragmer

2nd January 2004 23:02 UTC

Optimizing tips
This is getting better. But why did you remove "Cubex - Anarchy Smoke Fire"? It was one of the best presets :)
You still have a lot to learn, ripping is normal for beginners, it's part of learning.
Here are some speed-up tips:
- Instead of using 4 fadeouts with low velocity, use one with higher velocity.

- Set lower grid size in simple DMs, for example if you're uning DM for simple shifting or zooming, why calculate same thing 16*16=256 times?

- In DMs/SuperScopes don't calculate on Point/Pixel things that don't change. For example: You have SSC and per-point you have "r=i*2*$PI". But "$PI*2" never changes, you can calculate in on Inizialization of the preset. Or if you have variable "t" in SuperScope, every frame you add some number to it: "t=t+0.05" and on point you use the sine of it: "x=sin(t)". For example you have 800 points. So your CPU does 800 same calculations every frame! Calsulate sine of "t" every frame instead: "t=t+.05; st=sin(t);" and on point use that value: "x=st;".

- Try making your own movements, like this:

r=r+sin(d*$PI*5);

Skins

3rd January 2004 00:30 UTC

??? that one was not intended to be a rip....(then again none of them were really intended to be a rip)

i removed AS&M cause it is a rip of Somthing MiG did

dirkdeftly

4th January 2004 23:07 UTC

if it's a remix:

1) don't change the preset name (bitter paper -> bitterest paper doesn't fly here pal)
2) give the author credit in the filename
3) always put the original comment in the file (which you did)
4) always, always, ALWAYS ASK PERMISSION FROM THE ORIGINAL ARTIST.

even if you're borrowing the slightest bit of code - and you "borrowed" a helluva lot of code in this pack - CREDIT THE ORIGINATOR IN A COMMENT. i can't stress this enough. if you're going to keep going on not crediting people you *will* get your packs taken down and you will probably get banned, and if nothing else the active avs community will cease to acknowledge your existance.

what's this about the winzip installer being illegal?

Skins

17th January 2004 08:06 UTC

Yeah, again, i as not the only one working on this, so icannot speak for my partner, but i attempted to contact the original authors....most of the e-mails i sent were not recived duue to outdated adresses, and the rest never got any response...... i'm working on updating it some more....

as for Winzip not legal, it is referring to the self extracting portion of the trial version, it isnt legal to distribute anything you compile with the trial version....but i'm to cheap/poor to break down and buy win-zip.As for the whole you guys noting that i ripped, hey, it's my first time, and i heve never doe this before.

as for the coding, 99% of the coding was done by my friend...so i dont know what he stole it from, or where...as for eventually publishing it, i dont think ill ever do that.......i'm going to stick to making really bad skins.

mabey ill perfect (yeah right) this and publish it, but until then im going to just use them for myself.

dirkdeftly

17th January 2004 20:35 UTC

yeah but uhm.

does ANYONE actually care about that "not legal for distribution" bullshit? i've never actually seen a winzip self extractor without that message on it. ever.

Skins

17th January 2004 20:43 UTC

ive never see anyone ever pay for it aather.......but i dunno.

UnConeD

18th January 2004 00:02 UTC

I don't think people care so much about it being illegal, but rather that it is annoying to have a whiny installer, especially when better alternatives exist.
Selfextracting winzip installers don't autodetect paths, can't do multiple winamp versions and don't offer a choice of installing APEs and such.

Skins

18th January 2004 01:21 UTC

yeah, but aslong as the user keeps all there stuff in the defalt folders, and the person zipping it acctually knows what there doing, it should be fine.

And Why wouldnt you want to install APE's? they would just write over by default if they were allready present.

Yathosho

18th January 2004 01:36 UTC

Originally posted by Skins
yeah, but aslong as the user keeps all there stuff in the defalt folders, and the person zipping it acctually knows what there doing, it should be fine.

And Why wouldnt you want to install APE's? they would just write over by default if they were allready present.

Skins

18th January 2004 15:54 UTC

indeed....well seeing as i dont have 5.01, or 5.00 (nor will i break down and download it)i wouldnt ahve known that.

umm yeah, so to keep with the subject, the Presets are still dwindleing down, but still some reworking on most of them, so i guess ill post the good and "legal" version in a few months or so.

that ofcourse if i dont resume/start work on a skin or two....

UnConeD

18th January 2004 19:33 UTC

Why don't you want to download Winamp5? It comes with a newer AVS with more features and more APEs. And the new APEs (like Texer2) won't work on older AVS versions.

Skins

18th January 2004 21:20 UTC

Ehh, i like my little Winamp 2.xx whore of a Packard bell.....lets see ive got pretty much all of the versions from 2.00 to 2.95.....and while it may be pointless...it's...

....i dont like WInamp 5.......thats why.

UnConeD

18th January 2004 21:24 UTC

You do realize that with the exception of modern skins, Winamp5 is simply the next Winamp2.xx? And you can turn off modern skins anyway.