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Old 02-04-2019, 11:28 AM   #1
Icchan
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Default Changed VU-meter width in MPC, now background graphics are off...

Hi.

I realized that theme i'm using has 12px wide VU-meter on MPC by default and this can't show the dB-scale on the meter. Fiddled around a bit and managed to increase the width to 13px which displays the dB-scale... but now the background image is wrong size and the meter goes "out of bounds" which looks silly (see the image below).



I spent ~5 hours trying to read all the documentation available and trying to figure out what I have to modify so that the background element of this theme would also change size so everything would fit nicely, but I found absolutely nothing but a short mention about "meter_bg_mcp.png" file that should just magically adjust when you change meter size, but it clearly has to be some other image that produces that background image that doesn't change size but I can't find it at all...

Can anyone help me out here?

Attached here is the theme I'm using as it is right now with my small customizations.
Attached Files
File Type: reaperthemezip Fusion_Icchan_0.1.ReaperThemeZip (1.05 MB, 117 views)

Last edited by Icchan; 02-04-2019 at 11:33 AM. Reason: Added a picture of the problem, fix typos
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Old 02-04-2019, 12:39 PM   #2
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That looks, at first glance, to be a re-skin of the Default V4 theme, so I'm going to assume it is in my answer:

meter_bg_mcp.png is indeed the image; it provides the background to itself but also the fader. The amount that it 'overshoots' the size of the meter is defined by the yellow lines at the edge of the image. You can read about these in the Power of Pink document.

If you don't really care about how it all works (fair enough!) and just want it fixed, then perhaps ask someone to do it for you, it would be an easy tweak for any of the experienced themers here.
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Old 02-04-2019, 07:21 PM   #3
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Thanks WT, your reply lead me to a few things and I realized that this theme uses "mcp_vol_label.png" as the upper part of that background, so unless I resize that as well when I resize VU-meter, there's going to be a glitch as such shown in the picture between them.

So I found "set mcp.volume.label" and now it all aligns nicely. Took some time though.

I just wished who ever wrote that rtconfig.txt on this theme had realized that they could use variables and math operators to tie graphical elements together and make them depend on each other such that I wouldn't have to do that manually. Thank you for pointing me to the right direction.

I hope I'll be OK now... there's a bit of an threshold in WALTER even for someone who has done coding.
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Old 02-05-2019, 02:09 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Icchan View Post
Thanks WT, your reply lead me to a few things and I realized that this theme uses "mcp_vol_label.png" as the upper part of that background, so unless I resize that as well when I resize VU-meter, there's going to be a glitch as such shown in the picture between them..
That would indeed make them line up, which would disguise the problem by making the vol label also 'wrong' ...but if the borders being 1px unbalanced doesn't bother you then yes, that'll get it done.

If you're going to get further into theming (please do!) then I urge you to look into the pink/yellow lines because they are at the heart of the dirty tricks themers use to achieve many common outcomes. In this case, you could have changed the single leftmost yellow pixel on the bottom row into a pink pixel, and it would have solved your problem. Worth investigating!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Icchan View Post
I just wished who ever wrote that rtconfig.txt on this theme had realized that they could use variables and math operators to tie graphical elements together
I wrote that bit of that rtconfig.txt, I am aware of such things The code and the image stretching setup have to work together, its a bit more complicated than you suggest, which brings me to my #1 sugestion for anyone getting in to theming: Don't start by modding an existing theme, its harder than making one from scratch, even if its just a bit crap and you never make it public and just use it as a learning platform. There are a myriad of different ways of achieving certain results in Reaper theming, and modding requires you to know all of them if you are going to understand which one a particular themer chose to use on a particular theme, which presents a devastatingly steep initial learning curve.

Reaper theming is not really designed to do a lot of the fairly hacky things thermers do regularly. Its better to learn how its supposed to be used first, before then looking at all the fun and creative ways we abuse it!
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Old 02-05-2019, 03:59 PM   #5
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