anything new about creating boot animations?

hi there!

i searched the FAQ and the board for infos to change the boot animation(at 2.0)... they are all a bit old.. huh?

is there something new known how to -create- an own animation and load it up to the flash?

Tino

No one has (so far) created an editor for the factory boot up animations. Only the custom logo (which appears AFTER the factory boot up animations) has been editable so far. I've been meaning to update my logo editor to do this, but have not gotten around to it.

I will say this, though:

Anyone who wishes to create such an editor, I have reason to believe that the necessary information is in the publicly-available kernel source code. For instance, the flash memory locations of the stored frames are in the kernel source code if I recall correctly.

So. Who's up for it?

If people get serious about this, I could make it simpler to locate the flash memory spot for it (as things move around..).

I thought the flash memory location was fixed for the animated logos.

Nope. It's just a data structure inside the kernel. With a Hijack kernel, we can do whatever we please, so long as we leave a signature of some kind for uploader's to query.

Cheers

hum.. i would like to program an editor for this animations! but i can only simple C/C++ and good delphi (and some other stuff)..
so if i got an editor working with delphi, you couldnt implement it in your editor, right? -> not good!

hum.. i gonna try to change the animation in the kernel manually! is there already some point where i should start to search?
maybe we could export the animation out of the kernel and implement some functions wich can read various animations out of another part of the flash..? who knows?

tony comeon.. build version 2 of your logo edititor with everything you want.. you know you want to

#ifdef NO_ANIMATION
/* The Rio logo for the splash screen */
#include "rio_logo.h"
/* The empeg logo for the splash screen: includes tux */
#include "empeg_logo.h"
#else
/* Animations for both empeg and rio players. */
#include "empeg_ani.h"
#include "rio_ani.h"

the rio_ani.h/empeg_ani.h includes an animation.. i just dont know what animation this is.. i hope its the boot animation.. right?

Don't see why there's an ifdef, they're both in there...

yeah! there both in there.. the ifdef is only an unused feature! if the NO_ANIMATION is set, an picture is displayed instead of an animation at boot!

well.. i got the code of the animations and i got the code wich decompresses the other code... or something i think i just can do it!
gimme some time *calculating*

after 3 hours headbreaking calculations and tries,.... I GOT IT!!!
im reconstruating the first frame of the empeg animation now.. then ill see if im right

I'm game ... Is the animation basically a concanated series of stills in the usual format (2048b)?

Close. Yes, just a bunch of catenated images, but if I recall correctly, they're packed 4 pixels per byte, 1024bytes per frame.

Cheers

And oh yeah, at the beginning is a table of frame offsets (int's) from the beginning of the animation (offsets from start of the offset table). Final offset in table is zero, as an end marker.

Cheers

youre right.. why didnt you say that earlyer? *g*
whatever.. im onby progging a player for this animations..

look at this:
http://server2040.virtualave.net/draghtnod/empeg.jpg
the offsetthing at the begining is a liddl confusing.. but it shouldnt be a problem..

is anyone else working on this???

Just in case it didn't occur to you, it looks like you've got an order wrong somewhere. I think you need to flip the first and second halves of the bytes to get it in the right order, IIRC.

Hi.

It look more like a byteorder (big endian versus little endian) problem to me. But the effect is pretty much the same. Look at this:

Packed 4 pixels/Byte:

AABB CCDD

Decode on empeg:

00AA 00BB  00CC 00DD

Decode on PC (without reversing byteorder)

00CC 00DD  00AA 00BB

If you reverse the byte order on the PC, or swap the nibbles (hi/low 4 bit) in the packed byte, you will get the correct result.

cu,
sven

You're probably right. It's been months since I wrote my code to extract that data and I'm too lazy to bother looking at it.

hum.. the real problem is: what do i have to do with the begining of the code? there are a lot of equals and so on.. but i dont really see the connection to the single frame!
for example i know that 0x54 means the last frame.. but why?

Ummm ... what?

Your initial problem is that the pixels are being drawn in the wrong order. That's why your jpeg looks like it's being viewed through a lenticular screen. You need to either swap pairs of bytes or swap nybbles within bytes (probably the former) in order to get it to print out properly.

Beyond that, I don't understand what you're asking.

ups sorry for my bad english
the problem with the wrong order is corrected.. it paints a perfect picture now!

my last problem:
the first enterys in the animationcode are the pointers to the several frames (they are needed to prevent doubled frames)! i dont know how i have to use them! hum.. i have an idea! well.. i think this night will be full of calculations too *dreaming of flying pixels and offsets*

Look in the game_finale() routine of Hijack (hijack.c), and/or at the empeg_display.c driver, both of which decode and "play" the animations.

Cheers

My comment is a little more "low tech " then byte ordering.

On the boot animation for my Rio IIa (personality changed to empeg), tux is on the RIGHT of the empeg logo. How come yours is on the left?

PeterK

i know.. was a little fault by my side!

great news:
i do now know what the code at the begining means! (and now tux is on the right side) i need only a liidle time to complete the player! creating animations is no problem! i also think you can crate the animation as long as you want until the flash is full! and if the next hijack deletes all 2 animations, you can crate a very cool long one

the player is complete this evening if nothing terrible happens..

http://server2040.virtualave.net/draghtnod/empeg2.jpg

looks good.. now if i could just figure it out.. anyone planning on writing a program to do the animations and it will also flash it to the player?

u need to modify the kernel before you can flash it up! i cant and i wont do that.. i can do the program wich writes the animation!
i dont know how that flashing thing works..

maybe you can work with tony and/or mark they know all about flashing, try writing to the program to just do that animations and/or ask them to see if they would help to to do the flashing part there both pretty good about helping maybe it will modivate tony, tony also mentioned he had something that would make it real easy but he didt have the time to implant it ect.

okay..

Tony? Mark? what do i have to do to flash an animation up to the flash? i will do the program to read, modify and write the animation... isnt it possible to simple export the animation to a seperat memory area?

my empeg_ani.h/rio_ani.h player will be up in some hours..

Is the attached code of use? It takes a bunch of raw files (as output from LogoEdit) and bundles them up into an animation file. You set the frame order within the code itself.

Maybe you're already past this stage, though.

Rob

uhm.. yeah.. i am.. well if you made some animations, you can test them with my player:

http://server2040.virtualave.net/draghtnod/anima.zip
(if there are some errors or something, please email me or potst here. thanks)

but thanks! this will help me at programming an animation writer! or something that does read/modify/write/flash animations.. it depends on toms or marks help if i do one..

looks good.. tony! comeon man you gotta give him a lil insight.. we are so close i can taste it

hum.. i can compile my animations by myself.. thats ok for now

maybe the next jemplode has such a feature in it? who knows..

Not _the next one_, but _one of the next ones_. I'm working on it ... Rob's code snippet saves me a heck of a lot of time, actually. I have most of the other code already (just need a little slider bar for changing frames, and we're money

Oops sorry for my english.. *g*

if i can help you anyway, let it know me
(or let it me know? huh.. my english teachers were as terrible as the german ones )

I wasn't picking on your english -- Just letting you know that I'm working on it, but it probably won't be the _next_ release (but it will be in one of the upcoming releases). Believe me, I can ONLY speak English, so I'm the last guy to pick on your language skills (and if you've read my posts on here, I even manage to screw up my only language sometimes )

Mike

oh.. now i understand it

mike i do the same.. i do the same.. english is imperfect to even the best english professor