bootmanager skins

[jimpanse]

moing im searching skins or themes for the bootmanager from crystal chip 2.0

[Box293]

Or are the instructions on how to create them?

[Yoc]

Theory :
- Put a full BM folder on your USB drive
- Go into the THMS folder
- duplicate one of the existing folder
- rename it according to your own theme
- change in the PBAT script occurrences of the old theme name into your new theme name
- replace the TGA file with your own
- plug the flash drive into your PS2
- be sure your Memory card (or CC flash memory) has enough space left according to your TGA image size
- in BM, go to configuration, Themes, and install your theme from USB
- Select it to activate it.

But, it wasn't working with previous BootManager. I didn't test it with 30 and 31.

[Yoc]

Ok, it works now... mm.. sort of.
The provided BM 1 theme works fine. It's funny to see this theme coming back from the old Boot Manager.
But, I tried to make my own theme. I prepared a TGA file using Photoshop, with RLE compression on to reduce size and alpha channel on to preserve transparency (don't forget to create the alpha channel, google is your friend), 32bits/pixel resolution.
But when I install it, the picture is upside down : the top right corner appears on the bottom right (like a vertical flip) !
So, I tried to flip the image into photoshop, but guess what, it worse in BM, the picture is still upside down and with artifacts (yes I flipped the whole image with the alpha channel).

I'll try with another software to see if it's not better.

[EDIT] I opened the TGA file with the Gimp, save it again in TGA and this time the picture is on the wright side. With the Gimp, you can select where the origin of the picture is, an option not available in Photoshop.

What's the maximum resolution supported by BM ? (my picture is 400x300, I tried 640x480 but didn't work).

[Yoc]

Ok, here is my first attempt to produce a working theme... It's inspire by iTunes on Mac OS X.
It's almost complete, but I've one bug with the PAL BM configuration : the position of texts is not the one I defined on the PBAT script after a cold start of the PS2. I have to switch to default theme and come back to my theme to make it work.
I don't have this issue with NTSC or 480p BM display.

Also, I could not test the VGA mode as I don't have a VGA cable...

I hope you'll enjoy it and that it will give you the will to make and to share your own.
And if you manage to make a more than 400x240 image, please let us know.

ITUNES.zip

[spedmetal]

@Yoc

I opened it with The Gimp and it looks very nice! Great job.

Here is a small note for CC2.0 users trying to use themes. As of yet you cant, not even the theme provided with the upgrade disc. There isnt enough room on the cflash and the install of themes to the cflash fails. There is no option to install themes to locations other then the cflash with the CC2.0. Jones and I ran a few script edits in order to allow the CC2.0 to install and use themes installed to the MC, however I ran into more bugs when doing this.

Hopefully the next FW/BM will address this issue as well.

[Yoc]

Yeah, my theme works fine with fw 32. You just have to reboot each time you change the BM video mode, but the PAL bug has gone. C'mon ! I want to see more themes now that we know that it works !

[Prim3]

Somebody should write a detailed tutorial on how to make one. That way, we'll have tons going around. Also, how to install them properly and safely for us noobs lol.

[CrystalChip]

Since the PS2 has only 4MByte of VRAM for frame buffers, texture buffers, etc there's not much space for skins. The default BM2 menu image, for example, is 400x240 but stretched to fit the screen when displayed. This takes less space in the VRAM than having a 640x480 menu image.

We probably need to debug the theme support a bit, this is on the "todo" list but is lower priority than some other things.

[CrystalChip]

also, at this time BM only supports "top-left" orientation of the image which is why you get the image flipped. This is also on the "todo" list.