I know that you can edit the Anna Vu with kernel hacks, but does anyone have examples/downloads of this? Also, is there a way to edit the "Image Pan" picture to something else as well?

I have some code for editing the Image Pan visual but have not had the time to work on it yet. My intention is to eventually allow editing of the Image Pan visual and the startup animation to be do-able in my logo editor.

The main problem is that the image pan visual is a loose file on the player's hard disk, and the hassles involved in doing RW-RO file transfers from VB are the main problems.

I have been trying to match the format of that escher file and put something else in its place, but have not had any luck. Do you know what the file format / structure is?

It uses a proprietary RLE compressor to create. Borslav and I have the code for the compressor and some notes on it. With the permission of the Empeg guys, we could send this information to you.

Only if the source code would be useful to you, of course...

Greetings!

Actually, probably not. While I can still read code, I would be utterly useless in trying to write a converter. Thanks for the offer, though.

Hi,

Hmm, I've been messing around with the files for the last couple of days. I got the .BF format figured out, pretty easy really (thanks guys@empeg for those plain bitmaps I'm considering a font editor, but the hard work is the editor, not the file reading and writing.

Toby's RLE compressor isn't THAT hard either when you have a good hex editor. But I'm having problems with the initial index. I don't know what he uses it for; movements, they seem like odd pointers into the graphics or something ... I would have guessed at it pointing at the start of each bitmap line, but it doesn't seem so.

I've attached evidence of a (sort of) working RLE decompressor. The red dots are where the index points to. Some bitmap lines are offset one pixel wrong, and for now I can't figure out why that is either.

So the converter is running 50% now. Which means it reads the files, but can't write them (not until I get the index stuff figured).

The FONTFILE.RAW is a total mystery for now Toby, any hints?

The fonts are not difficult to understand when you see the source code. Making an editor you can skip one of the steps I go through when modifying them (you should be able to generate them in an alternate way actually).

Could be cool to have. I was going to write a small program to go directly from a raw bitmap to the font source file, but I found that I was getting fast at editing the fonts by hand without an initial bitmap (or using a bitmap editor).

But I think I could definitely use something a bit more graphical. At least a few more times. Once I'm happy with all the font mods it's not something I'd keep changing. I'm still toying with the idea of doing a cyrillic set, but I haven't had any time for that recently.

It would definitely be a good idea to get the necessary permission from Rob and whomever else would be appropriate to give the OK. Anyway, if they give you the needed files, you'll see what I was talking about at the top.

Bruno

FONTFILE.RAW:

+0 - Byte offset to FONTDATA
+4 - FONTLOOKUP

FONTLOOKUP:

+0 - Maximum character height
+4 - Average character width
+8 - CHARDEF (starting at ASCII 32)
+20 - next CHARDEF (ASCII 33)....
+20 + n*12 - all the way to ASCII (((sizeof(FONTLOOKUP)-8)/12)+32)

CHARDEF:

+0 - FONTDATA offset for this character
+4 - Width of character
+8 - Height of character

FONTDATA:

RLE data for each character offset in FONTLU



The annoyance of course is that you have to decompress each character with the RLE decompressor which seems to be causing you some trouble with dodgy offsets.

The player decompresses each character as it needs it to save run time memory overhead. This is how we suddenly acquired a more complete character set and actually saved memory (at the expense of cpu) overhead.

Does this file contain both the small and large fonts that the player uses?

There are unique files for each font. Small, medium and the large visuals font.

Bruno

What I would really like is to be able to change to bitmap on Tux too Much. I know It would'nt be 'Tux'd anymore, but I really love this visual and it would be cool to be able to change the piccies.

Can this be done ?

Cool. Tonight I'll add this stuff to the riocar.org developer info section unless one of the other admins gets to it first. Good info to have around for anyone who wants to write utils to manipulate said fonts.

Just to clarify the file FONTFILE.RAW contains the information needed to draw the large font used in the InfoTex range of visuals.

The files Bruno has helped us to improve are small.bf and medium.bf - These are the font files used by the player (along with graphics.bf) - These have a completely different format to FONTFILE.RAW, they are small characters and there would be no point in run length encoding them. If anybody else would like the source code to compile the .hf font source files into .bf font files then please ask as we have it available as a stand alone program (Bruno has used it I believe).

In answer to somebody else's question about changing the TuxMuch background image, yes this should be very straightforward as the file (logo.raw) is not even run length encoded (same as vuback.raw which goes with the AnnaVu visual). The format is:

IMAGEFILE:

+0 - width
+4 - height
+8 - pixel data in 2bpp packed as 4bpp (i.e. 1 byte = 2 pixels with 2lsb colour)

-----
Toby

<B>In answer to somebody else's question about changing the TuxMuch background image, yes this should be very straightforward as the file (logo.raw) is not even run length encoded (same as vuback.raw which goes with the AnnaVu visual). The format is:

IMAGEFILE:

+0 - width
+4 - height
+8 - pixel data in 2bpp packed as 4bpp (i.e. 1 byte = 2 pixels with 2lsb colour) </B>

Not being a teccie, I do hope this means something to someone ! I can create .raw from Pant Shop Pro 7. Presumably I can load logo.raw into PSP7, modify it and then save it back straight to the empeg ?

I do apologise mr bukem - I doubt very much that you will be able to convince paint shop pro to read and write files of the correct format, however there are many people on this bulletin board with much logo editing and type conversion experience who I am sure would be only too happy to provide the means necessary to turn files saved by paint shop pro or other such application into the required format.

Hi,

Okay, the first release of emRAWerter is up.

http://www.karlslund.dk/empeg

It reads and writes the RLE compressed files (escher.raw) used as a background in "Image Pan" visual.

I know the format for the "Tux Much" visual as well, but the other format was more fun to hack at first

Oh yeah, it runs Windows only. So sue me.

I'm able to use my Empeg Logo Editor combined with UltraEdit to create an image that works for the Tux visuals. Eventually I will work this into the logoeditor code as an actual "Save As" option, but for now here is how to do it:

- Create the desired image as the "home" image in LogoEditor. If it's in the "car" image, use the swap home/car feature to get it in the home slot.

- Save it as a BIN file in LogoEditor.

- Open that file in UltraEdit, in Hex mode.

- File size, as displayed in bottom-right corner, should be exactly 4100.

- Select the first four bytes of the file (my first four bytes are the letters "empg" for example).

- Ctrl-C to copy those bytes to the clipboard.

- Ctrl-V twice to paste the bytes into place, once atop and once inserted.

- File size, as displayed in bottom-right corner, should be exactly 4104.

- Place cursor at the beginning of the file in the binary half of the screen.

- Atop the eight pasted bytes ("65 6d 70 67 65 6d 70 67" in my case) type the following eight bytes instead: 80 00 00 00 20 00 00 00.

- File size should still be exactly 4104.

- Scroll to the hex address 00000808h and place your cursor on that byte.

- Press Ctrl-Shift-End to select all bytes from there to the end of the file.

- Press Ctrl-X to cut all of those bytes.

- File size, as displayed in bottom-right corner, should be exactly 2056.

- File, Save As, "logo.raw". Make sure file name is all lower case.

- Connect to the empeg with Hypterterminal. I assume you know all about this one by now, if not search on the FAQ for "hypterterminal".

- In hyperterminal, press q <enter> to get out of the player. Should drop you to the shell prompt (must have developer installed).

- cd empeg/lib/visuals

- You should be in the empeg/lib/visuals directory.

- rw

- rm logo.raw

- rz

- Should say "waiting to receive". In hyperterminal, select Transfer/Send File and go get the logo.raw you saved. Send it.

- Back at the player's shell prompt, ignore any extra garbage on the line.

- chmod 644 logo.raw

- ro

- exit

Enjoy your new logo! Right now I've got Yoda's eyes throbbing at me...

NOTE: This only works for Tubular, TuxMuch, and TuxTooMuch. It does not work for the "Logo" visual.

Cool, awesome, rocking.

I've now got a portrait of Geddy Lee as my Image Pan visual. Too perfect.

Thanks!

That's not perfect. That's frightening.

``Ahh! It's an alien! Oh, no. It's just Geddy Lee.''

Heh.

Hey, Toby... Wouldn't it be neat if we could add an extension to the config.ini syntax for favorites....

[VisualFavourites_DSP]
count=5
1=Image Pan
2=Image Pan<geddy.raw>
3=Image Pan<parrot.raw>
4=Tux Much
5=Tux Much<yoda.raw>

Ooo, or better yet, assume that each .raw file will be named with a single-word name and the .raw extension, and we could do:

1=Image Pan
2=Image Pan Geddy
3=Image Pan Parrot
4=Tux Much
5=Tux Much Yoda

Then you'd also have the proper name for the screen pre-made...

( Yeah, I hate feature creep, too. )

Hi,

Thanks!

I put up V1.01, which adds support for the uncompressed files as well. Still a bit crude, but it does the job.

http://www.karlslund.dk/empeg

Hi,

No, what would be really, really cool, is ...

Someone telling us the interface that visuals.bin uses to communicate with the player.

Then someone else guru-like writes a new customvis.bin.

Finally I add it to my visuals.list file

THAT WOULD BE COOL.

Another thing I'm thinking is, Toby's visuals must be composed of several layers of stuff. A background with stars, a scroller with text, something that makes the scrolltext bounce and zoom, an effect for trails etc. If those bits were made available we could "compose" our own visuals from the stuff already there. Like the vis-studio that comes with Winamp.

Keep hope alive

>Oh yeah, it runs Windows only. So sue me.

Mmm.. very tempting here to cut/paste the unit serial number from your posting into Hijack's player "blacklist"..

I don't do windows.

-ml

(just kidding, about the blacklist).

Hi,

You can have the source. It should compile under Linux with Kylix. :-)

Any interest for it under Linux at all, or is everyone hardcore enough to edit them there with a hex editor like Fabris suggested?

Cool!

May I suggest adding instructions to your README.TXT file on exactly how to send files to the player and mount the hard disks properly etc.? (Like I did earlier in this thread.) Then it would be fully self-documenting and we could put it on RioCar.org.

Geddy WHO?...(Just kidding...)

This should be in Wish List, no?

I was wondering why someone would be RLE'ing a couple of bits. The offsets also didn't seem to jive but I only looked briefly.

The large graphic font is the coolest one to have an editor for. The small ones are easy enough to do by hand and aren't something you might want to have variations of. I have some more edits to do, but not because I want alternate styling, just to make some corrections and make a few things cleaner.

Image editng is an excellent idea as well, but it would be really cool to have support it the player for multiple files. Being able to select them from the visual menu item (all grouped appropriately). Random support would be neat. As would the band-specific graphic idea someone else mentioned. But don't include my statements as a vote to try and get anything like this into 2.0. I'm happy with the bug fixes you guys are making already.

Bruno

Ooooh! Good idea, then you can use "Select Mode" to cycle through the images.

Calvin

Hi,

If you care to write them up in your usual friendly manner, please do so. I'm more the short tempered "it just has to work for me" type :-) Then I'll gladly include them (just mail it to me).

Any suggestions on a character editor for the big font?

I'll probably NOT implement all the editing tools in the software, but rather keep the cut'n'paste method. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, as there are many other great bitmap editors around.