windows startup logo

[Tails]

Is there anything else to know about the windows startup logo? I know it is a bmp file with the name of c:\logo.sys (windows 98). It seems to dislike 24-bit images though. I'll try 8-bit next time, but is that the only catch?

[mouse]

Yep needs to be 256 colours and 320x400 in size.

[Morgoth]

(He should really tell people, what version of windows he is using.)

[cg9com]

Originally posted by Morgoth
(He should really tell people, what version of windows he is using.)
Originally posted by Tails
(windows 98)
clear :D

[Morgoth]

Did I say "version of windows"? I ment to say "sound card"...

but I miss some little things, so, my fault :thumbsup:

[mouse]

Can do this with Windows XP too, needs resource hacker. ;)

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by mouse
Can do this with Windows XP too, needs resource hacker. ;)

Or you can go to www.themexp.org and download lots that are done.

[Tails]

Yep, 256 color bmp works. However, it looks crushed down as if it were trying to display as 320x240 since there is no 320x400 mode that I know of. And one thing I'm so curious about. How does the Windows (98) logo have that little animating bar at the bottom? There must be some touch of unnoficial standard that it is accepting. BMP files are not animated. I'd like to do the same thing with my image though. I'll try setting my screen capture program via autoexec.bat and see if I can catch the actual size. It is still considered as DOS until the desktop shows, right? We'll see. Most of my cool utilities are for DOS, and not XP.

This is just a little continuation of a theme I'm making (which will eventually be XP compatible someday). Take a look at my properties page http://XFox_Prower.tripod.com/download/system.gif (right-click and paste the url to defy the referrer).

[mouse]

BMP's can be animated, I noticed this was the case doing a skin for the Neo Planet browser a few years ago. Confused me at first and tbh I'm not sure what program you'd use to make one. http://silverpaw3d.com/smilies/confoosed.gif

[Raistlin]

Originally posted by Tails
And one thing I'm so curious about. How does the Windows (98) logo have that little animating bar at the bottom?

Could be some sort of "overlay" or maybe (im just guessing here) the size of the logo is not what it appears like it might be 10 pixels shorter and the logo isnt stretched. So if you could somehow get a picture that is smaller then the screen and isnt stretched maybe the animated bar will show up at the bottem...

[oracleguy]

No, I remember reading something about this way back in the day. That bar isn't animated, Windows just moves the bar itself. I forget the exact details but if you were to look at the logo.sys you'd see its just static.

Take a look at: http://www.nucleus.com/~kmcmurdo/win95logo.html

[liorean]

Oracleguy - well, if you look at the Win95 installation startup screen instead, you find both colour cycling and motion - only one version of the motion and one version of the colour cycling part is available whyen you view it in a BMP file viewer. I'd guess MS added some scripting capability that simply gets parsed away as a comment in other viewers.

[malform]

ANIMATED LOGOS

I'm a theme maker. It took a while to figure this one out!

LOGOs must be 320x400 256 color BMP.[ Resized from an image that normally fits the screen ratio of 4/3].One must rename the file with a .sys extension. Give them different names for identify and to keep from accidentally overwriting one with another.

The typical animated bar LOGO has been reduced to 236 colors BMP, leaving twenty colors free for animating.[Uncheck the include windows colors].

If you open the file with a hex editor [free], you will change byte $32 to EC, to animate colors 236 - 255.

Set byte $33 to 00 for normal movement, that is, the colors 236-255 rotate. Set to 01 and the colors sweep back and forth.

Back to the image.You can edit the palette colors 236-256.

You may select and draw with these animated colors.

For a bar you want the colors to slowly change from one color to another, then back. One usually makes an eleven color gradient for twenty animated colors:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2.

You could draw the bar with the twenty animated colors. To save time , I copy the bytes from another LOGO that make up the bar.

The part of LOGO that has the animated bar is $436-$11F5.

Do your last save with the hex editor.When you save from your paint program, it resets the bytes to unanimate the LOGO.

Of course, rename the file with .sys extension.

When you edit the palette, sometime image colors lock in with animated colors, and change . You can usually tell about what color those pixels should be. You select the best non-animated color and redraw or fill in the problem bytes.

[Tails]

So the trick is to make a bit of room at the bottom of the image in a specific range of the palette to show? What programs can best be used to switch palette entries around? I think I can do this with GIF files, but I don't know if it will use the same palette entry order. I'm stuck with the Animagic gif program which scammed many people. They aren't around anymore because they probably were brought to justice. I can't find a good freeware gif animator that can crop and change framerates. So what is the best out there?

Yes, I know it has nothing to do with animation, it's just palette swapping. Do certain color #s need to be reserved? I use XtreeGold 3.01 (quite an ancient veteran DOS file management gui program still used today to get around today's Windows 98 problems).

[malform]

I use Paint Shop Pro, which is much like Adobe Photoshop.

I go to "colors/reduce color depth/x colors". A dialog box lets you reduce the image to 236 colors, or any number you select. Actually, this is a target number. Often I select "reduce to 250 colors" and I end up with about 236.

You go to "colors/count colors used" to see how many colors are used in an image.

Go to "colors/edit palette" to pull up and edit the palette.The unused, soon to be animated colors will be at the end of the palette. (If your image had 236 used colors, then the last twenty are unused: colors 236-255)

Double-click the first unused color (color 236) and a dialog box pops up. You should create all of your custom colors at this time, as the starting position resets each time you open this box.

After creating your custom colors, select the first one, and select OK.

Notice the custom color you selected is now in the palette.

Double-click the next color in the palette, and assign it the next custom color,etc.

[Remember to reopen the file with a hex editor to set bytes $32 and $33. Save, then rename with .sys extension.]

[Tails]

Take a look at this image:
http://www.Prower.org/xfoxlogo.png
I know its a png file, not a bmp. The 8-bit bmp conversion is truely pathetic. But maybe I'm using the wrong program for that. Looks good though, right? I made it myself with NeoPaint.

[cg9com]

Hey! Sonic's trusty sidekick!
It all makes sense now ...
:D :D :D

[Tails]

Sidekick? lol. I think there are more fans of Tails than there are of Sonic. Although I wish there were a way to take a world-wide poll.

[malform]

I LIKE the PNG. It makes me want to work on some original graphics for a change....

I assume you were thinking of making a LOGO?

This image would stretch out as a LOGO. You'd need to add width to the image (change CANVAS size) until the image was 1/3 wider than it is tall (add more orange), then resize to 320x400.

The colors. Yes, there are too many for 256 color. If there were fewer colors in the backgroung, perhaps? Besides, a colorful background kind of blows away the image in front of it sometimes.

The blue patterns at the top could replace the green at the bottom, and the orange could change to a red, or light grey, or some other color already used in the cartoon character.

If you work on it, sometimes you CAN get a decent 256 color BMP.

[Tails]

I'm going to check out that logo utility from http://www.xrx.ca/logoutils/ later. This way, I can view it without restarting my computer. Because 3 out of 4 times, it doesn't boot up.

[Tails]

This is frustrating! I made a cool background in NeoPaint. I had to do it as 24-bit, but there were actually less than 8-bit colors used. Of course Windows Paint can't save a 24-bit image as 8-bit. It can't even save a 256 color image unmodified as 256 colors without a disgusting loss of color. It even somehow lost quality when saving a 256 color bmp as 24-bit. I tried pasting the stuff I wanted onto the background and then converted the bmp 2 8-bit using PictView 1.95 (pictview.com) and moved the palette entries around in NeoPaint. But after the pasting, the order of the colors are ruined! random areas! I blame Paint again for this. It's the only paint program I have that is free and supports pasting with opacity. What do I do? Paint also made the palette entries a little off, so the exact color code in rgb is not exact, and I can't even locate the proper color in that scattered mess of a palette.

[malform]

Time to bust down and buy a decent graphics program.

I got Paint Shop Pro6 for $70 on E-bay over a year ago. You can aquire Adobe filters, and use most from within PSP6.

Photoshop 5.0LE is comparable in price and function.

[Skyzyx]

Yeah, you take a 320x400 BMP image, and resize it to 400x320, and save it as logo.sys

[Quiet Storm]

Tails, please check your email.

[Tails]

Aha, I did it, and without psp. Til I get a new cd-rom drive or new computer, I can't install it. But I did it all using MS-Paint, NeoPaint, Pictview 1.95 (my own private release), and Animagic. I'll upload the pic soon ^_^.

[Tails]

Here it is attached. Check it out. It's my first. I'll do many more later.

[Quiet Storm]

Anyone interested in looking at this:

http://www.nucleus.com/%7Ekmcmurdo/logos/

[malform]

I saw this program. It is probably worth $5 or $10 considering the work it could save over time.

It just makes me feel dirty, like using a WYSIWYG HTML editor. It takes the "craft" out of your hands.

I just made this LOGO......

PS: I attached the LOGO file, but I don't see it in my post....

HELP ME....

[Tails]

I used that program. It's nice how it detects if a file is modified, because I had to work on the palette 3 colors at a time and look inbetween saving. Are you the creator of the program, Quiet Storm? I'd submit my logo, but I just made an even better one (will be up soon). But who likes the old one so far? The line by the text is too noticable of an error, so I made a different gradient.

For the attached Logo, Malform, is it less than 50 kb? and it must be a zip file.

[malform]

LOGOs are 127K.

This is a reduced image that used to be a LOGO.

I made this for an AEON FLUX theme.

[Tails]

This is my new logo.