Worklog PortablizeMii Clean GUI

[Colin]

Alright, so I am entirely new to this portablizing scene and I have been spending a lot of my time reading up on electrical engineering for when I start constructing my first portable. I have practically ZERO experience working with wiring or actually constructing with hardware, and I haven't taken a class on it yet at my highschool (planning on doing it this coming year though). That out of the way, there is something I DO have experience in, and that is graphic design. Digital art is something I have been doing for a long time now, and I feel like I could really help PortablizeMii out in this regard. While PortablizeMii is functional, I felt it (postLoader) would look a lot better with a cleaner, more "Wii-like" design to go with its functionality. So I have spent a few hours going through PortablizeMii's PNGs and replacing them with updated ones I have created. I am planning on updating all of the graphics, but I have run into a few problems: First, I don't actually own a Wii at this current point in time because I destroyed my last one practicing trimming the mobo, so I can't exactly test any of the things I've made to see if they work. Second, there are a few files I don't exactly want to have in the updated design (like the 5 backgrounds in the bkg folder-- I'd rather only have 1 background consistant throughout postLoader), and I think if I remove the files altogether it will cause problems with PortablizeMii (correct me if I'm wrong). Lastly a lot of the icons are REALLY low resolution, and I want to replace them with more detailed, higher resolution icons but I think this will cause issues as well. I'm trying to keep the new files the same size as the old files, but it isn't exactly the easiest to do.
With that out of the way, these are the replacement files I have made:

heres an updated pointer icon, its the original wii cursor with the number erased off the back and the gradient recreated

These are updated category icons. I still have to make icons for the Homebrew and WiiWare categories, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with the icon I made for the Emulator category. I don't feel like it blends well with the other two. I wanted to make it an NES cartridge to represent old games, because that's what I think of when I think 'Emulator'. That one took the most time (like 4 hours). The other two came out really well, I based them off the Wii Disc Channel when a disc isn't inserted.

Sorry for writing a book, just wanted to let everyone know what's going on. Hopefully I can finish all the icons within this month. Thanks guys.

**(Also, I want to reemphasize that the old graphics were NOT bad, and I have no harmful intent towards the original creators, I just have a different vision for how they could look)

 

[cheese]

Second, there are a few files I don't exactly want to have in the updated design (like the 5 backgrounds in the bkg folder-- I'd rather only have 1 background consistant throughout postLoader), and I think if I remove the files altogether it will cause problems with PortablizeMii (correct me if I'm wrong).

As a general rule, this is correct, however backgrounds are an exception to the rule, in that it will search for and use up to the number of backgrounds in the folder (though they must be named 1.png, 2.png etc). If you really don't want an image, you can pretty much just select all, and fill with a transparency to essentially remove it while still keeping the filename to keep the theme working.

Lastly a lot of the icons are REALLY low resolution, and I want to replace them with more detailed, higher resolution icons but I think this will cause issues as well.

Correct, the resolutions generally need to stay the same, and they are low resolution, in most cases, because they are either small on the screen, or the screen's resolution is lower than you think (the Wii runs at 640x480 MAX, though it may downscale to 320x240). Remember, the Wii isn't HD!

**(Also, I want to reemphasize that the old graphics were NOT bad, and I have no harmful intent towards the original creators, I just have a different vision for how they could look)

I'm sure @ShockSlayer would love to see new themes, hence why even we have multiple possible themes. Will you also be making a custom background for nintendont (it can be the same as the postloader background, both need to be 640x480)? If you want to, it's located in COPY_TO_USB/apps/nintendont/NinBack.png

Can't wait to see it!

 

[ShockSlayer]

You should probably just install the Swiiss theme and then make your modifications from there if you just want a simple look.

Messing with resolution at all means a ton of trial and error. postLoader isn't even displaying half of its assets at the resolutions they are now. It took me quite awhile to come up with what we have simply because of how it handles theme based items. And to add what cheese said about the 640x480 limitation: multiple parts of the UI are designed to be displayed in anamorphic widescreen and postLoader doesn't identify aspect ratio for anything other than video files. So no matter what you do, multiple parts of the UI are going to be stretched to fit. To add to that, anytime you start pressing the boundaries, occasionally you'll straight up lose a line of pixels. Sometimes that's just what it does.

Additionally, that cursor is identical to the one in the original postLoader, with the "1" erased. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say you "recreated the gradient" or anything like that.

 

[cheese]

Additionally, that cursor is identical to the one in the original postLoader, with the "1" erased. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say you "recreated the gradient" or anything like that.

I assume he filled the hand with white, and then re-added the blue at the bottom, probably from an image like this one:

 

[bentomo]

@Colin If you make a pig theme almost anybody around here will eat that up.

 

[Colin]

Thanks a ton for the feedback guys, I really do appreciate it. I really might mess with the Swiiss GUI as an alternative. And to answer SS's question towards the end of his post, Cheese summed that up exactly. I also had no idea the original postLoader used the same cursor I made lol I probably could've just used that one instead. Thanks again for the support, I'll add more to this once it is completed-- might be kinda slow due to not being able to test it out but I guess we'll see.