Eye Catches and VMU Icons

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Thu May 29, 2003 11:51 am

Trying to find some info on these. Well, I'm sure the icon file must be 32 x 32 but I have no clue on what the eye catch size is suppose to be. Anyone knows?

EDIT: Ok, found out the eye catch is 72 x 56 (it helps to read vmu_pkg.h

). Tried it, but the settings screen is showing it like it's suppose to be tiled 4 times in a square with only the 2 upper tiles displaying. Huh? This is whacky....

I'm still unsure about the vmu icon, though. And no, not the icon that displays on the vmu. I'm talking about the icon that represents a vmu file on the DC settings screen

SinisterTengu · Post by **SinisterTengu** » Thu May 29, 2003 11:58 am

All the info you need is here:
http://mc.pp.se/dc/vms/fileheader.html

Icons are 32x32 taking up 512 bytes (1 block)
Eyecatches are 72x56, and come in three different types, as shown on Marcus' page. It is generally a bad idea to use eyecatches since they tack on an extra 4-16 blocks depending on the type you use, and doesn't actually serve a purpose...

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Thu May 29, 2003 12:29 pm

Yeah, the eyecatch really bloated the file to 19 blocks. Hmmm, I'm wondering how I'm fudging up this icon file.

EDIT: Ok, could someone show me why I'm only displaying white pixels for my VMU icon?

Code: Select all

Deleted so everyone can read the thread :)

The image is suppose to be this:

EDIT2: Nevermind, I left pieces of code out trying to test something :-/

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu May 29, 2003 7:59 pm

Does it work then?

Oh, and the images have to be in a specific format. It's RGB565 or ARGB4444, if I'm not mistaken.

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Fri May 30, 2003 4:48 am

http://www.storm-studios.net/vectoroidsdc/files/vmu.zip

The icon file works, the EC still screwy. I'm not going to be using the EC's anyway because of how big they make the vmu file :-/

I don't know where that code came from, but it says it's from KOS 1.1.9. I don't remember getting it from there.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Fri May 30, 2003 5:16 am

The ECs do seem a little bit pointless. They just increase the filesize. Then again, the PS2 save games have little animated models - some of them even have an animation that plays when the file's deleted. Now that is pointless.

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Fri May 30, 2003 5:45 am

SinisterTengu · Post by **SinisterTengu** » Fri May 30, 2003 2:36 pm

But PS2 memory cards are 8MB, and you can fit over 30 saves on them, compared to the VMU's tiny 200 blocks (1 block = 512 bytes) of user space. When you force 8% of someone's space to be used for a picture, its a problem

Anyways, the smallest eyecatch type that only takes up 4 blocks is formatted the same way as a normal VMU icon. That will only give you 16 colors though, and its still kind of a waste...

EDIT: Oh, I see what you did wrong in your program. You gave the package a paletted icon without a palette, instead of a 16-bit true color one like you set it to with VMUPKG_EC_16BIT. You should change it to VMUPKG_EC_16COL, and add the palette info at the beginning of EC_VECTOROIDS. Maybe you could somehow use that bmp loading routine (taken from Jim's brkout I see

) to do it...

Alexvrb · Post by **Alexvrb** » Fri May 30, 2003 11:29 pm

BlackAura wrote:The ECs do seem a little bit pointless. They just increase the filesize. Then again, the PS2 save games have little animated models - some of them even have an animation that plays when the file's deleted. Now that is pointless.

I don't know exactly what eyecatches are. However, Dreamcast save games have animations, or at least icons. The icons are simple and not overdone, if animated usually 2-4 frames. For example, the FoF demo icon. Its still on there from the old demo, the save file is only 4 blocks total. 3 frame animation, meaning three blocks for the animation, and one for the data.

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Sat May 31, 2003 1:17 am

SinisterTengu wrote: Maybe you could somehow use that bmp loading routine (taken from Jim's brkout I see ) to do it...

I checked brkout thinking that. /me smacks himself for over looking

Alexvrb wrote: I don't know exactly what eyecatches are. However, Dreamcast save games have animations, or at least icons. The icons are simple and not overdone, if animated usually 2-4 frames. For example, the FoF demo icon. Its still on there from the old demo, the save file is only 4 blocks total. 3 frame animation, meaning three blocks for the animation, and one for the data.

Yah, we pretty much just told us what we already knew about the icons

The eye catches are the bigger bitmaps shown with the vmu files' info in the BIOS menu.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Sat May 31, 2003 3:43 am

Alexvrb - The eyecatch is a larger icon that appears at the bottom, next to the description and filename, on the VMU screen in the BIOS.

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Sat May 31, 2003 4:13 am

That code doesn't work. Of course it's going to give the same data back :-/ I'm working on it.

EDIT: If anyone wants to point in a direction of a easier code than breakout of NesterDC 6 then show me the light. I'm probably just tackling the header wrong :-/

EDIT2: I just knew I thought Sam Steele came up with another solution for this before

http://www.c99.org/~chip/vmu_score.c

Thanks to Clark Askam (Dragonsimoto) for the link

Look for the explanation here: http://www.consolevision.com/forums/YaB ... start=0;#8

EDIT3: Don't even think of you are going to get away with using a BIOS VMU icon for this, though. When I used it it kept throwing the rest of my data in Whacky Land.

Alexvrb · Post by **Alexvrb** » Sat May 31, 2003 10:46 pm

BlackAura wrote:Alexvrb - The eyecatch is a larger icon that appears at the bottom, next to the description and filename, on the VMU screen in the BIOS.

That's a better explanation, thanks. Since I hadn't encountered one before on my savegames, I couldn't think what it could be. The only graphics I have seen in the file manager are the icons. Now I can at least mentally place them.

WHurricane16 · Post by **WHurricane16** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 5:22 am

Alexvrb wrote:
BlackAura wrote:Alexvrb - The eyecatch is a larger icon that appears at the bottom, next to the description and filename, on the VMU screen in the BIOS.
That's a better explanation, thanks.

It's the same thing I said.

SinisterTengu · Post by **SinisterTengu** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 12:44 pm

Oops...heh, I posted something WHurricane16 already did. Anyone can feel free to delete this....