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Avalaunch Xmas Anime Launch Skin - Disable-able?


pwntang666
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12 hours ago, pwntang666 said:

Hello,

I installed the latest version of Avalaunch and the launch skin is this anime santa chick. I'd like to disable so I can launch with my favorite Vida Guerra skin. Is this possible to do in settings or by modifying the xml, or do I need a different build of Avalaunch?

Thanks!

Upgrade to the latest release 0.49.3 (Edit: From the info I've found - 0.49.3 is Build 137 while the XMas Build is 138.)

I also found this info posted in an old forums.xbox-scene.com entry (rebuilt site from archived data now at forums.xboxscene.org)

by Hazanko « on: August 25, 2005, 02:55:00 PM »
 
is there anyway to change the startup screen on avaluanch? what i have right now, is that Happy Xmas startup screen with that anime chick in a santa suit. maybe it isn't possible to change it, because i looked all over in the avalaunch folder on my Xbox, and didn't find anything. thx for any help smile.gif
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by wolf202 « Reply #1 on: August 25, 2005, 03:10:00 PM »
 
in the main ava folder there is like a bootimage.bmp or similar thats the picture replace that and ur good alot of skins have there own boot images

-wolf
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I was told a long time ago, may even have been on the Xbox-Scene forum, that the anime 'Santa' boot image is embedded in the Avalaunch default XBE. No mention was made that I remember there was a way of overriding it or that it was in the skin.

However later I did get hold of an archive of Avalaunch skins and indeed some do include a "bootimage.png" in the skin's own folder. I'd assume JPG, BMP and PNG are all supported image file types.

What I do not remember is if the anime 'Santa' had a bootimage added to its Default skin or whether, as I was told, it was an embedded icon.

Somewhere I must have the Xmas Build 138 or the Default Xmas skin (if that was how it was done) itself but in my Avalaunch archive I've just checked and can't find it. There's a possibility it was on the HDD I forgot to format correctly and lost all of F:\ a couple of years ago and it wasn't backed up to the archive I used to repopulated the HDD after I'd reformatted it properly. :(

Maybe I have it on one of my stored stock softmodded Xboxes HDD but I'd rather not have to hook all those up again to their respective Xboxes just to see if its there. So I too would appreciate it if someone could point to a download location or share it here. 

 

 

   

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I don't know if the Build 138 info I found in old posts in forums.xbox-scene.com is accurate or a typo.  I don't find a 138 build just 137's

The version on my Xbox may have bootimage.png embedded in the default.xbe file; however, I've not tracked down its location.

There are mentions of w:\bootimage.png and bootimage.png in strings found inside the executable using a hex editor.

 

Edit:

Found a PNG file, not sure of its name.  The data stored in the file doesn't actually contain the name of the image.  I'll see if I can extract it from the file to see what it looks like.  There does seem to be only one dot PNG file embedded in the XBE file.

Edit2: I don't think it's an image just part of the PNG library - the magic number used to recognize image files as being stored in PNG format.

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The anime santa chick was actually in E:/TDATA/080299ff it was called xmasgreet or something. 

I didn't see a file extension and it showed 0 bytes on the disc so I just deleted it and Avalaunch booted normally. 

I can't seem to attach the archive folder here because I'm limited to 2mb. Is there another way I can share it?

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I was playing around yesterday with Avalaunch on both a chipped and and softmodded machine and in no case where a skin includes a bootimage.png could I get it to change the bootimage.

The one you get with Avalaunch v49.3, a white/cream coloured Avalaunch logo, simply could not be overridden. I tried using JPG and BMP extensions instead, shutting down, rebooting and extracting the "bootimage" file to the Avalaunch main folder. No go, nothing changed.

I'll have a look at that E:/TDATA/080299ff location and see if it is populated and what happens if you remove it then try one of those skins with a "bootimage" file or put one of those in there.

Getting the anime Santa pic alone to work may not be that simple.

 

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Oh, there's also a title image inside avalaunch.xbe's $$XTIMAGE section.  It's stored in an Xbox XDK XPR format.

I extracted it from the XBE file with mborgerson's pyxbe application (https://github.com/mborgerson/pyxbe) which creates a dot BMP file then converted it with IrfanView from the BMP file to a JPG image so you can see it in this post.  All three formats are attached: JPG, BMP and the raw $$XTIMAGE (xpr) data section of the XBE file.

avalaunch_title_image.jpg.901c2c9b236ed8cb72417b9ede193fa1.jpg

avalaunch_title_image.bmp

$$XTIMAGE

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So they were correct at Xbox-Scene saying the boot icon(s) were embedded in the main XBE.

But what isn't explained is what the bootimage.png files are doing in the skins if they can't be used to override those embedded icons. Why are they there?

I can't find any information about that and you'd think that if they needed to be extracted somewhere else it would have been added in a note attached to such skins or at least been 'common' knowledge.

Has anyone here actually found a way to get them to work? As said, I've tried it both in the skin's own folder and 'loose' in the main Avalaunch folder alongside the main XBE and nothing has worked so far.

There's stuff in the notes that accompany Avalaunch and the main configuration file suggesting that the skinning engine was never fully enabled. I'm wondering if this bootimage feature is one of those things that was left unsupported.

Edited by HDShadow
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28 minutes ago, HDShadow said:

So they were correct at Xbox-Scene saying the boot icon(s) were embedded in the main XBE.

But what isn't explained is what the bootimage.png files are doing in the skins if they can't be used to override those embedded icons?

Yes, the images are inside the XBE file itself for the startup splash screen and the title image used by dashboards when displaying an icon for the application.  There's also a $$XSIMAGE used by the game save manager but avalaunch does not have one.

Quote

Has anyone here actually found a way to get them to work? As said, I've tried both in the skins and 'loose' in the main Avalaunch folder alongside the main XBE and nothing has worked so far.

No, not working for me either. I see the strings bootimage.png and w:\bootimage.png inside of the XBE file but have not decoded the executable enough to know if it actually tries to open them.

Quote

There's stuff in the notes that accompany Avalaunch and the main configuration file suggesting that the skinning engine was never fully enabled. I'm wondering if this bootimage feature is one of those things that was left unsupported.

Most likely the case - the version I have on my Xbox is alpha 0.49.3 without the Xmas splash screen. Software development cycles went from alpha to beta releases before a final version was released.

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Poking around on the Internet I did find a few files to update Avalaunch.

latestversions.txt:

core 0.49.3.142 rls142.zip
language 1.0 languages_1.zip
defaultskin 1.2 DefaultSkin_2.zip
xml 1.0 avalaunchxml_1.zip

From this list, I did come across two of the files:

rls142.zip

extract and rename Dashboard.xbe in this Zip achive to replace/update Avalaunch's default.xbe

DefaultSkin_2.zip

replace the media/skins/Default folder's content with the files in this Zip archive.

The other two files were not found.  They may be the same versions that came with the Xmas release.  Haven't found where Avalaunch stores the version numbers of all these files to know when it should have downloaded an update for them.

The URL stored in the default.xbe file where the updates were located is no longer accessible.

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I managed to get the bootimage.png working but I'm not sure what I did that was different to what definitely didn't work before.

As suggested the bootimage.png needs to be extracted from the skin folder (Avalaunch > media > skins) and put in the main Avalaunch folder ie. alongside the main XBE etc. I have Avalaunch in F:\Apps\Avalaunch but it should work from E:\ too.

Reboot or shutdown/restart after its been installed and relaunch Avalaunch again. The new bootimage.png should now be used.

This was done on a Xecuter 2.6CE chipped Xbox v1.6 (Evox M8+ BIOS). Avalaunch version I'm not 100% sure. I have it listed as v137, I guess that is v49.3 build 137 but that needs checking.  I'll do that and try it on a SID/AID softmodded Xbox again tomorrow.

 

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Just finished testing Avalaunch skin "bootimage.png" on a SID/AID softmod and, again, this time they worked no problem as for the chipped machine ie. just copy the skin's "bootimage.png" or your own to the main Avalaunch folder and reboot.

Still can't work out why it didn't work before but it certainly does now with both Avalaunch 49.3 v137 and v142.

The v137 copy I have has release notes saying it is v137 but that does not always mean anything as often such notes are left in without adding the new release information. I've even come across some Xbox software where the changelog header title is still v.XXX but contains the changelog for more several more recent updates.

Avalaunch 49.3 v142, at least the three copies I have checked, downloaded from different sources, don't have release notes or any other way of identifying the version build on the Xbox. But that was the last version AFAIK so chance are that is what most people are using if they have Avalaunch. What matters is that the method described for replacement of the embedded bootimage with an alternative, which could just be a blank one, works in all cases.  

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