Cart Ordered! Question on the Harmony menu.

[Draugr]

I just ordered the microSD cart and can't wait for it to arrive.

 

I saw some videos on Youtube about the cart and was curious to know if you can change the color of the text and background of the built in menu?

 

Thanks,

 

John

[Schizophretard]

No

[Thomas Jentzsch]

We could build a 2nd menu, but how should it look like to satisfy everyone?

[Draugr]

Honestly I guess the only way to please most users would be to make the menu changeable. Sort of like the Atarimax Flash carts that allow the user's to change the header, footer and background colors. You can also add header and footer text and change fonts, but those wouldn't be necessary in the Harmony menu. Would be nice, but not important. For the Harmony cart, if you could change just the background color, or maybe the background and text coloring that would be neat. Perhaps a simple text or config file in the root of a user's SD or microSD card could be read upon power up and the values found within that file would tell the cart what color to make the background and/or text.

 

Its just an idea and might not even be doable. I just thought it wouldn't hurt to ask and mention an idea of how it might work.

 

John

[Pioneer4x4]

or a util/patcher, that patches the menu image before you flash the harmony with it

[Draugr]

Pioneer4x4,

 

That sounds good to me. I hope something may be possible.

[Draugr]

Thomas,

 

Regarding a second menu type. Would something similar to the Atarimax carts be possible. I'll post a pic of a typical menu. You can change the header, footer and background colors on these. You can also change the header and footer text, but that is less important I guess than some color customizing.

 

Note the image to the right is the Windows studio software. The left image is the actual cart menu. I linked this pic from the atarimax site directly.

 

Oh and I know the fonts aren't possible, so I'm not hoping for fancy fonts, etc...

 

Edited June 21, 2012 by Draugr

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The menu code is running very much on the edge of the 2600's capabilities. Of course we could hard code different colors, but I doubt that customization is even possible on a larger scale. For example:

- We cannot display more characters/line

- We cannot display more lines

- We cannot change the space between lines

- The black background hides the black, so callled HMOVE bars

 

We could change the font colors, but that's about all I can see.

[Schizophretard]

HMOVE bars on light green Space Invaders screen saver as background with dark green Space Invaders font? Nothing says Atari like Space Invaders and mimicking the screen saver screen would make people automatically recognize it. Even if they can't say what it is, someone that hasn't played it for 30 years would know that somehow they know it. It would look cool.