Toolset or creation documentation for animated channels?

Since HBC has it's own very neet and clean animated channel, I was wondering if the creators had utilized a "toolset" for it's creation. If so, is that toolset available?

I've been poking around my Wii's FS (backup) alot and searching for methods of creating/modifying said channels.
I've extracted all the Arc/Ash files down the FS tree to create an "exposed" backup and each time I encounter a new file type, I fall deeper in the hole of un/edjucated guesses.

I've got the HBC extracted to try and learn from, but when compairing the info provided on wiibrew.org about files; .brlan - .brlyt - .tpl (and their respective .bin's) on:
[wiibrew.org]
and
[wiibrew.org]
I'm at a loss as to where to begin without a toolset (or beginers recommendation).

As far as I can tell, a lot of this requires some form of low-level (uncommon) coding, or at least in a chain/code I'm not aware of.

Any answers or direction would be wonderful. Thanks in advance :)

Keep up the good work guys!

Marcan has't released his toolset to the public (AFAIK)
My partial toolset can be found here. This has TPL code in, not so much on the BRLAN and BRLYT files though, I'm afraid. The source will work with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2008 VB.NET Express install if you fancy playing with my app

Doesn't really require a lot of low-level knowledge, you just have to muddle through the data structures



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2009 12:19PM by whodares.

whodares, have you officially dropped the channel creation tools?

if so, I hope you could help ToNoobIsHuman pick them up... my homebrew appetite is satisfied except for making my own emulator channels.....

I've not officially dropped them, but my position can be read in this post

Anybody is welcome to pick up my code and expand upon it, and I'll be available to assist if needed.

I am currently working on black-bannered legal channels by copying the nintendo apploader at install-time, I'll keep you guys posted :).

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icefire
I am currently working on black-bannered legal channels by copying the nintendo apploader at install-time, I'll keep you guys posted :).

yeah, sounds good... if we could merge that with whodares' tools... maybe we could get something awesome!

I haven't looked at whodares's tools, I'll see whats possible.

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icefire
I haven't looked at whodares's tools, I'll see whats possible.

You wouldn't need my tools directly, all you'd need to do in your program would be accept another binary to fill the "banner" position (TMD reference, and to install it as content, I think that's all). Then somebody can supply it or not...

Good luck on your installer, I'll be keeping a keen eye on it ;-)

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icefire
I am currently working on black-bannered legal channels by copying the nintendo apploader at install-time, I'll keep you guys posted :).

what's wrong with the thing I pastied on IRC?

whodares, nice set of reusable tools!

wish they were coded in c#, I hate vb since that time I stopped coding vb scripts for asp pages...

still, if I find time I may contribute

VB.NET is much better than VBScript, completely different. If I get time, I'll convert the code to C# for you

The only difference between VB.NET and C# are the keywords. "this" becomes "Me", "static" becomes "Shared" etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2009 10:38PM by whodares.

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whodares
VB.NET is much better than VBScript, completely different. If I get time, I'll convert the code to C# for you

The only difference between VB.NET and C# are the keywords. "this" becomes "Me", "static" becomes "Shared" etc.

Well I know :)
I just didn't bother to look into vb.net, I know it's actually much easier in some tasks... since I liked java and c/c++'s syntax more I naturally chose c#... even not coding anything in it I like java's strictness above all.

Do not bother to convert it at all , I gues I can catch up to it in it's current form :)

You could always seperate the FileTools into a VB.NET class library, then you can build a C# UI for it :-)

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whodares
You could always seperate the FileTools into a VB.NET class library, then you can build a C# UI for it :-)

It's really slow in lz77 decompression, I'll touch that first tweaking the c# equivalent code and see if it helps in speed... I noticed too much uses of ByVals instead of ByRefs... and I guess rewriting the bitstream read write operations could help the speed a lot too..

C++ ftw 8-)

Comex: about the NANDloader, svpe said that it needed changes to work for standard apps (and it wouldn't compile for me anyway). I don't know PPC asm (though I am learning) so i had no idea what to do.

if you edit it that would be a great help!

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WiiCrazy
It's really slow in lz77 decompression

lol, yeah, I did comment on that in my Banner Creator page on the Wiki. I was going to look into optimisations after everything was functional.

Quote
WiiCrazy
I'll touch that first tweaking the c# equivalent code and see if it helps in speed... I noticed too much uses of ByVals instead of ByRefs... and I guess rewriting the bitstream read write operations could help the speed a lot too..

True. Like I said above, everything is still incomplete and unoptimised; But, to be honest, this probably would have been an optimisation I would have missed. Thx :-)

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comex
C++ ftw 8-)

"Not if she was the last water yeti lookalike in the world and I was the only boy." ;-)

Well I switched the code to the atmacana's LZ77Stream, it's pretty fast but uncompressed stream is not recognized by the program for the banner.bin

And Vs2008's auto indentation on vb projects is just giving me some hard times... how can I turn them off?

Tools->Options->Text Editor->Basic->General, or something like that.

Have you got a link for Atmacana's LZ77Stream? Might be worth a look