Tichinde925 said:
Yea, thats what custom cars are.
Yeah. Patching a dozen bytes of code in the system menu (or IOS, or making the system menu use a patched IOS) is about as "custom" as swapping out the radio. I'd call a System Menu a "custom" one if you actually made some changes to it that involve a similar amount of skill as the "customizing" of the car that you describe.
If you want to call something "custom" at least either make it a technically relevant modification. You know, like adding Gamecube pad support to the main menu, making the background image swappable (NOT by editing the textures - I mean actually have it load a JPEG from SD). I'd call that custom, since it involves a significant modification to the code. Not swapping out textures, editing the IOS field in the TMD, and patching trivial bits of code. Menuloader already does a lot of what this "custom" menu is going to do. It patches about 30 or so bytes, total.
Most people are trying to carry on the implications or the definition of "custom" from other fields, depending on what they need. Implying that "custom" is an important achievement while just pretending that a few modifications makes something "custom" is incoherent. If you want to call something "custom" because it's modified (in any way), the custom means VERY little - I could call my System Menu custom already because it has HBC on it. If you want to imply some sort of technical difficulty, such as most people do when applying it to cars, then sorry but a dozen single-instruction patches don't qualify as custom. Pick a definition and stick to it. If you pick the former then everyone actually making new or seriously hacked stuff will just have to find a better term.
cIOS had nothing of "custom" UNTIL the new warezloader 0.3 DI patch came around. THAT is PRECISELY when the "custom" label would start to apply to at least the DI module, IMNSHO. You know, like tweaking the fuel injectors in a car with a custom mod to the ECU to improve performance by varying the timing. Legal/moral implications aside, what was done there had a lot of technical merit and clearly showed that the person doing it had a fairly deep understanding of how that particular IOS module worked and how to add the functionality required. Of course, since Waninkoko started calling it "custom" way before that, they couldn't do anything about changing the name then since it was already supposedly "custom".
If you need another analogy, previous "custom" IOSes and what seems to be the upcoming "custom" menu are about as "custom" as a Windows computer where you changed the screen saver, replaced the wallpaper, and added one of those off-the-shelf skinning tools with a Vista theme.
Any developer with the skill to truly hack the System Menu to bits and pieces should have figured out by now that entirely REPLACING the System Menu is a much more useful prospect and a much more useful thing to be spending time on. We have. If you haven't it probably means that you're just not seeing the big picture. A modified IOS makes sense because replacing IOS is a major pain in the ass and with little practical prospect at the moment, for most real situations. Replacing the System Menu is doable here and now, and just requires some time and a dedicated team of prorgamers.
If you actually manage to revamp the graphical aspect (by itself not good enough! but a decent start), add features (GC pad support), change the GUI layout a bit (that shows that you're not just replacing images), make it tweakable, and in general ADD stuff to it - not just remove restrictions - THEN I'll call it custom all right (not from scratch, but I never said custom implied ONLY from scratch). But right now it's just a few hardcoded menuloader-like patches and an IOS swap.
And if you stick to the "custom = not stock, changed in any way" definition, then that's great, but custom stops implying ANY sort of achievement and becomes a label for pretty much everything that comes out of the wii homebrew/hacking community. That makes it a pretty useless label.
