Hi everyone. In anticipation for my empeg I have made a boot logo. Now unfortunately I don't have an empeg to try this out on so I was wondering if anyone had some spare time to play and a digital camera to get a snap for me .

I made a boot logo using PaintShop Pro it's greyscale and 128x32x16 colors. There was no option for 4 colors so I just went in and edited the pallette. PSP says the file is 2.1k in size.

I would just like to figure out if this will work or not and how it will look on the empeg.


Soooo..... if anybody has the time the logo is at http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsol.bmp


Thanks all!

P.S. I am also going to try and attach the file to my message.

#170... previous deferrer in denial about not receiving one from the first mini-batch of Mark II's

Yeah, that's the correct format all right. Cool image! There are some issues you'll want to consider, though.

When making my own boot logos, I've found the following things:

1) A white background might look odd because of the contrast around the edge of the display. You'll probably want to see if you can redesign it to use a black background. Try both and see what works.

2) The shades of gray you'll get out of a PSP color reduction are going to be different than the grays you actually get on the Empeg. The two shades of gray are darker than you expect in comparison to the white shade. The white is much brighter than the grays. You'll need to do some trial-and-error before you get the grays exactly where you want them.

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Tony Fabris

I figured something would come up about the way it would look on the empeg.
There are 4 shades of color on the empeg right??? black, a little bit of color, more color and then the brightest color right?

Which would correspond to the four shades I have in my image?
White = ?
Light gray = ?
Dark gray = ?
Black = ?

hmmm... as I see it, it looks like I have my color scheme done backwards. Any more pointers?

Thanks!!!

#170... previous deferrer in denial about not receiving one from the first mini-batch of Mark II's

Would he be able to just make it negative? Granted, it doesn't look too good in windows, but how would the negative look on the empeg?



DiGNAN

By the way, I'm happy to see someone else uses PSP. Didn't think anyone did.

DiGNAN

I use it all the time I find it does most everything that PhotoShop does, but it is cheaper and does some things a lot better (PSP 6 vs. PhotoShop 5) i.e. transparent gifs and jpg compression (without plug-ins).

I will try and negative it.




#170... previous deferrer in denial about not receiving one from the first mini-batch of Mark II's

Here's the negative version of the boot logo.
http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsolneg.bmp

Any takers on this for me yet?

P.S. email me at [email protected] if you would prefer private correspondence.

#170... previous deferrer in denial about not receiving one from the first mini-batch of Mark II's

Which would correspond to the four shades I have in my image?

I don't know what your monitor's brightness is like, but I run mine pretty bright and I use about these values as a reference:

White = 255
Light gray = 128
Dark gray = 90
Black = 0

Paint with those values to get a reasonable idea of what the image will look like when it's on the Empeg screen. Note that what I've got tagged as "light gray" corresponds to the Window's palette's dark gray, and the Empeg's dark gray is only slightly darker than that.

Once you've got the image created, it is of course a whole other ball of wax getting it into the right file format and getting it into the Empeg. Hopefully there will be a one-shot utility for that purpose available soon .

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Tony Fabris

Ick! I liked it better in positive mode. Actually, depending on how the original GIF file is saved and depending on the way the converter program is written, it might actually come up on the Empeg as a negative of what your GIF looked like.

I was thinking that to use a black background instead of a white one, you'd need to do some hand-painting and redesign of the logo to make it come out looking OK.

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Tony Fabris

Hi !
Could someone be so kind to post an executable of download.c, so i/we don't need to install all the compiler stuff ?

Would be very neic :-)

Or just email it to me ....


Nils

Bobo has a win32-compatible download.exe at http://empeg.boege.net.

It is hard-coded to Com1 however.

For uploading new kernels, the command would be "download.exe kernelfilename 10000", and for uploading new cutom logos, the command would be "download.exe logofilename a000".

It occurs to me that the file should be named "upload.exe" instead of "download.exe".

Note that the custom logos have to follow the parameters set forth in the Beta 12b release notes, or you can hose your flash bootup code. You can't just squirt a .GIF in there and expect it to work.

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Tony Fabris

may be some one could wright a program like nokia logomanager ?

Hi !
Oh mygod ... i didn't bother to look at download.c at all, because i thought it is a code to be executed on the empeg itself, thats why i begged for a compiled version, so i haven't to install all cross compiler linux stuff ... :-)

But as COM1 was mentioned i now finally noticed, that it is a windoze software, and so i compiled it by myself, SORRY for all people wondering what i want :-)

Now i got it, and i am going to play with it ...

Nils

Already in progress

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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Any preview available? How will it work?
Is it that simple that you just have to connect MkI/II then start the program and download a logo?
Or is there some compilation needed?

(I don't have an empeg right now so I don't really know about handling, developing images on the player etc so please excuse my silly question)

TeeMcBee

Well, as i learned my mistake by now, i created my logo, basically stating my name, telephone number and email, saying that there is a reward for giving it back ...

So i don't need fancy tools, as it IS a bit friggling around to do it, but i dont need to do it every 2 days ...

FINE !

Nils

Agree on the download/upload thing..........

upload.exe it is.

TommyE

Any preview available? How will it work?

No preview yet, I'm busy with some real work at the moment. Someone has already posted an app to do the bitmap mangling. My app is unlikely to appear before the weekend.

My app will do this same mangling, but will also so the following:

-be easier to use (drag and drop of files etc)
-accept BMPs, GIFs and JPGs
-attempt to down-convert colours
-have a built in facility to upload the completed logos

It is written in VB, I will be releasing an EXE (and probably the source if it's not too ugly).

I may also add a simple logo editor.

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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

Whhooo! Cool thing. Source would be cool, too!

TeeMcBee

Andy, your logo manager sounds like it will be cool. Looks like you're in competition with KoS.

Here's a thought:

A logo manager program could have a "preview" window, showing the user what the logos will look like when uploaded. That way, the user could correct any color/mirroring problems before uploading them to the Empeg. It could preview the logos in the four different possible Empeg colors at the click of a radio button. It could also do a pixellated image: three times the size of the bitmap, but doing a crosshatch pattern of two color pixels then a black pixel. That way you could see exactly what it'll look like on the Empeg.

Darn, that sounds so cool, now I want to write one! Wish I had the time.

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Tony Fabris

no competition for me... i've done only some ugly tool so i don't have to do everything in the hex-editor... but who knows.. perhaps some small add-ons... or new features would be nice

tfabris decided to give it a whirl for me on his pc. It looks pretty good to me and gives a good idea of how it might actually look on the empeg (How did you know I was planning on ordering the blue screen? )

Anyways, they are up on my site at
http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsolpreview.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsolpreview.bmp
http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsolnegpreview.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/renejeddore/empegsolnegpreview.bmp

I have both jpg and the bmps available because when saved as jpg the files lost some of thier color vibrancy. The jpgs are also a lot smaller to download.


Thanks a million Tony... now if only the empeg team would get their machine out to me!!!


#170... previous deferrer in denial about not receiving one from the first mini-batch of Mark II's

tfabris decided to give it a whirl for me on his pc.

Glad you liked them.

Yeah, and I was thinking it would be cool to have a "logo loader" program that, in addition to converting the files and uploading them to the Empeg, they could give you a preview just like that. You'd just have to map the pixels to some hard-coded color values that represented the Empeg display, then add the black lines in between the pixels.

Actually, I cheated when I did those previews and ran a "thatch" filter to make those black lines, and it isn't perfect- if you zoom in and look at it, it doesn't look like pixels, there's some extra crap in there that doesn't belong. But that's the basic idea I was talking about when I mentioned the idea of a preview window in another thread.

Also, the difference between the two shades of gray is still too great- the Empeg's display has practically no difference between those two shades of gray, and they're very dark compared to the white shade.

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Tony Fabris

I cant get my converter program to convert from .bmp to bin. Does the logo file have to be 2.1 k? Or can it be different. If it does, then how do i make it exactly that size?

I cant get my converter program to convert from .bmp to bin. Does the logo file have to be 2.1 k? Or can it be different. If it does, then how do i make it exactly that size?

It has to be that size. Make sure it's color-reduced to a palletized format, for instance, 16 colors. Make sure it's 128x32. Actually, my FAQ says that you can use MS Paint, but now that I think about it, that program might not work and you could be forced to use another piece of software. Has anyone successfully used MS-Paint to make one?

If you haven't read my entry in the FAQ, check it out and see if it helps.

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Tony Fabris

Has anyone successfully used MS-Paint to make one?

Answered my own question. It works, but you have to tell it to save as a 16-color bitmap. And the color palette doesn't have the grays in the right place. Time to update the FAQ...

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Tony Fabris