WbLogo v1.2 - By Gareth Murfin
------------------------------
* December 23rd 1997 *
This is an excellent new Wb utility designed to show off the Amiga OS to its
fullest by having an on screen animation running all the time on your Workbench
backdrop! WbLogo was inspired by the transfer animations of popular browsers
which impress anyone, I decided that if Workbench had its own 'transfer anim'
type thing it would be very impressive so I sat down and made WbLogo.
WbLogo comes with lots of animations to choose from and also instructions on
how to convert any animgif to work with it. This is obviously useful because
there are loads of great animgifs on the web which could be converted for
WbLogo.
WbLogo is the newest thing to make your Amiga OS look great and even impress
your PC and Mac owning friends who don't have the equivalent for their own OS.
Installation
------------
1. Reboot your Amiga so that you arent running any applications like MUI which
will change your Wb pallette.
2. Look at the WbLogo.anim's and find the one you want to be installed to your
workbench backdrop. Then load PPaint and load the anim as an animbrush. Then
use the Ppaint grab screen option to grab your workbench screen. Then in the
brush menu remap the colours of the brush. This will make the brush's pallette
the same as your workbench so that the animation looks ok.
3. Then rename the WbLogo.anim.x to WbLogo.anim and copy it to the WbStartup
drawer, then copy 'Wblogo' to the WbStartup drawer.
4. Then edit the tooltypes of the WbLogo icon and change the X and Y tooltypes
to position the animation where ever you want it on your Wb screen.
5. Copy the rest of the animations to somewhere safe on your harddrive so that
you can change the aniamtion for a new one if you want to.
6. Voila... thats it! Now each time you boot you Amiga you should have the anim
of your choice on the Wb screen....
Making your own Animations for WbLogo
-------------------------------------
WbLogo uses the colours of your Workbench to display all animations, this means
that if you just make an animation and stick it in then it will look crap. So
you must make the animation a certain way in order to get it to look good.
1. Firstly you should get the exact colours of your workbench into your paint
package. I found the best way to do this is to take a screen grab of your
Workbench and load that up. Then clear the screen and work with the colours
you have from your wb. Obviously the more colours you have on your WB the
better.
2. Secondly you should make an 'AnimBrush' in Dpaint or Ppaint and save it as
WbLogo.anim. Then copy it over the original Animation in the WbStartup drawer.
3. Double click on the 'WbLogo' icon and see if its good.
Converting AnimGifs to work with WbLogo
---------------------------------------
Since there are many excellent Animgifs on the web which look very impressive
I decided to workout how to convert them to work with WbLogo. It is an easy
process.
1. Firsly you have to convert an AnimGif to an AnimBrush. This is very easy if you
have Ppaint 7.0, simply load it up and click on the Arexx Crown in the menu and
load the Animgif you want. Make sure that the Animbrush box is ticked when doing
this.
2. Now take a screen grab of your workbench and load it up into the paint package.
Then with the AnimGif still as your brush goto the Brush menu and Remap the colours.
This should remap the colours of the brush to your Wb colours. Now the AnimGif has
been successfully converted to an Animbrush which should look fine in WbLogo. Save
the Animbrush as WbLogo.anim in the Wbstartup directory. Double click the icon and
see if it looks ok.
Known Problems
--------------
When MUI loads it usually messes with the Workbench palette, So if you load
any MUI programs like for instance YAM, Miami, iBrowse, Voyager then WbLogo's
backdrop animation colours might be remapped ;-( This will usually make the
animation look crap..although in some cases it has been known to look pretty
cool ;-).. This problem however isnt so bad because the animation will be
100% perfect again after a reboot. To solve this just quit WbLogo when using
MUI or just grin and bear it because you wont be using MUI all the time so most
of the time WbLogo will look fine.
If the X & Y tooltypes are too high then WbLogo will attempt to open its
animation off the screen, this however will not be possible so it will report
a problem. To solve this lower the values for X & Y in the tooltypes...
If the WbLogo.anim file is not found in the Wbstartup drawer along side the
WbLogo exe file then it will crash... to solve this copy the file into the
same dir as described in the installation instructions.
Very large anims are restricted only by chip mem so try these at your peril.
Solution...buy a gfx card ;)
If you didnt remap the animation to the colours of your workbench then the
animation is likely to look rubbish! To solve this remap the anim to your WB
colours as desribed in the installation instructions.
If you include an Icon for the animation file then this will result in an
error everytime you boot because the Wbstartup drawer is trying to execute
it everytime.. Solution, dont include an icon for the WbLogo.Anim, but remember
DO include the WbLogo exe icon or it wont work ;)
When making your own animation sometimes it plays too fast because of the fast
bitmaps etc used in WbLogo. So if you make an animation which appears ok on
ppaint/ViewTek but doesnt play well in WbLogo then you maybe have to slow it
down. The best way to do this is to go through and make a double of each frame.
This will half its speed and usually makes it play much better. This is simple,
just goto the first frame and add a frame, then goto the second frame and add a
frame. Each time you do this you dupicate the frame so that it takes double the
time to play.
Registration - WbLogo is AnimWare!
------------
Since WbLogo isn't restricted in any way you may think registration is pretty
pointless. However registering is free basically and once registered you will
be able to submit your own animations to me to be included in the archive for
the next version.
To register simply make your own animation which works in WbLogo and eMail it
to gazy@globalnet.co.uk along with a little readme file to explain how & why
you made it aswell as your eMail address and URL etc.
Once I have received your animation I will put you in a special list which
will be included in the WbLogo archive and I will also credit you for your
animations. The animations will be included in the next version of WbLogo.
This will also allow me to see how popular WbLogo is and just how widely
it is used.
Users anims will go into a dir in WbLogo called 'MoreAnims' along with
your the readme's for them etc...
A text called RegedUsers.txt contains all the registered users, their eMails
and details about the animation they did.
Also Check Out :-
-----------------
Also look out for these programs which were all done by the author. They are
available from http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~gazy/ (and some from AmiNet)
Please eMail gazy@globalnet.co.uk for info on any program or if you want to help
with my 'projects in the making'.
AmiClock - Nice Wb Clock
AmiGreet - Greets you on bootup
Carnlevels - New levels for carnage
Dwarfdemo - Small aga demo about DWaRFx
|DWaRFx| - Ultimate IRC scripts!
JoyMouse - Use CD³² pad as a mouse
Theme040 - 040 upgrade for Themepark aga
ZombieFest - Small zombie film demo
Zippyxdemo - Aga MegaDemo
Hoppyxdemo - Aga MegaDemo
DMscript - Upgrade to DiskMaster
Dotd Rpg - Dawn of the dead text RPG
SetPatch97 - Unofficial GateWay 2000 SetPatch
VikRad S.E - 4 Player War game.
Gloom3 - Commercial DOOM game
GloomRejects - Gloom 3 Rejected files
GloomLoading - Bug Fixes for Gloom3
WbLogo - Wb backdrop animator
AmiTip - Brings up a tip on bootup
Rejects - 3 minute Cartoon with sound
SSClock - Sampled Speaking Clock!
Projects in the making :-
LunaIRC - NEW Amiga IRC Client! [ 40% complete ]
Skoolz Out - Skool Daze clone [ 60% complete ]
Stix N Trax - Ice hockey game [100% complete ]
Evil Residence - Zombie platformer [ 70% complete ]
Mooving on Ice - Cow's Ice Hockey game [ 40% complete ]
ShowConfig2 - Replacement for Wb ShowConfig [ 90% complete ]
AmiGuess - Number guessing game [ 90% complete ]
AmiGreet v1.4 - Speaks to you on bootup! [ 90% complete ]
DWaRFx-TNG v2.5 - The Ultimate AmIRC scripts. [ 75% complete ]
Gaz - gazy@globalnet.co.uk
- GalaxyNet #AmIRC (SpryNet.Us.GalaxyNet.Org)
- http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~gazy/
WbLogo® is Copyright © Gareth Murfin
C< Alpha Software.
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