Hacking EZ Flash 4 extracting skin

[8BitWalugi]

Hey there,
I want to update my EZ Flash's firmware, but I don't want to lose my skin in the process. The skin I'm using is Dr. Meat's Mother 3 skin (found here, mirrors on the last page of the same thread).

I was wondering what I could do to extract the skin from the update file. Is it possible? I was considering manually remaking the skin but I can't exactly emulate the EZ4's firmware, can I?

Thanks in advance for any help at all.

 

[FAST6191]

The links on that thread seem to be dead, last page too.

Anyway there have been some tools at various points that could extract things ( http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2601 being the one most would remember), however I neglected to mirror/take copies of them and I am not sure if I ever heard back a few years ago when I contacted http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?t=2712 (le.schtroumpf.j there, le.schtroumpf.jedi elsewhere on the internet). I believe they are packed in GBFS ( https://pineight.com/gba/#gbfs ) for the GBA side of the loader where the DS side uses JPG of various forms in a fairly standard DS ROM makeup. I remember trying some things before and getting somewhere but not to the level of "here is a batch file, have at it" which is what some of the tools I mentioned did.

Technically you can emulate the loaders too. Various people have disabled checks/features that emulators do not support.

 

[8BitWalugi]

The links on that thread seem to be dead, last page too.

Anyway there have been some tools at various points that could extract things ( http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2601 being the one most would remember), however I neglected to mirror/take copies of them and I am not sure if I ever heard back a few years ago when I contacted http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?t=2712 (le.schtroumpf.j there, le.schtroumpf.jedi elsewhere on the internet). I believe they are packed in GBFS ( https://pineight.com/gba/#gbfs ) for the GBA side of the loader where the DS side uses JPG of various forms in a fairly standard DS ROM makeup. I remember trying some things before and getting somewhere but not to the level of "here is a batch file, have at it" which is what some of the tools I mentioned did.

Technically you can emulate the loaders too. Various people have disabled checks/features that emulators do not support.

Thank you for the fast reply! I saw a post you made about the GBFS and tried to open it up, but all I ended up getting was 2 corrupt files (One was 2GB in size, something doesn't seem right)

How would I go about disabling the checks? When I boot the ezfla_up.bin in VBA it just freezes at the "No disk" screen.

EDIT: I realised it might be helpful to have access to the specific ezfla_up.bin I'm using, so I uploaded it here. If you can extract and post the graphics it'd be really appreciated!

 

[kuwanger]

mother3 skin bmp (and some other files for gba mode. No experience on the DS end, so you'll have to look elsewhere for that. And I don't really know if that's all the files. I made a dumb dumper some time ago, and it worked well enough for me. But, *shrug* if it's accurate/complete/whatever.

 

[8BitWalugi]

mother3 skin bmp (and some other files for gba mode. No experience on the DS end, so you'll have to look elsewhere for that. And I don't really know if that's all the files. I made a dumb dumper some time ago, and it worked well enough for me. But, *shrug* if it's accurate/complete/whatever.

Thank you so much Kuwanger!
I figured while you're here, do you still have the files to this skin? I'm a big Boktai fan and would love to see your work!

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

If you got the skin extractor 1.0, it would likely help everyone be able to update skinned versions.

The one here, is dead.

 

[kuwanger]

boktai.zip
boktai_v2.zip
default (Darth Vader) skin; includes dump.py for skin dumping

Basically, I moved from kuwanger.net to kuwanger.altervista.org so you can change links accordingly. And all my skins, IIRC, include all the source images.

As for dump.py, you'll need python v2. The images that are dumped are named .bmp but internally to the skin they're actually .bm files (a special, very simple, near-raw GBA specific image format). Included is a bm2ppm.py to convert individual files to ppm; I just use a script to actually convert bm->ppm and then ppm->bmp to get actual bmp files for actual usage with the skinning tool. Sorry it's so convoluted, but I really only got as far as making it work for me and ppm files are incredibly trivial to make.

 

[8BitWalugi]

boktai.zip
boktai_v2.zip
default (Darth Vader) skin; includes dump.py for skin dumping

Basically, I moved from kuwanger.net to kuwanger.altervista.org so you can change links accordingly. And all my skins, IIRC, include all the source images.

As for dump.py, you'll need python v2. The images that are dumped are named .bmp but internally to the skin they're actually .bm files (a special, very simple, near-raw GBA specific image format). Included is a bm2ppm.py to convert individual files to ppm; I just use a script to actually convert bm->ppm and then ppm->bmp to get actual bmp files for actual usage with the skinning tool. Sorry it's so convoluted, but I really only got as far as making it work for me and ppm files are incredibly trivial to make.

It's alright, thank you so much for your help so far!
One more question, how do I skin firmware 1.77? Every time I run EZ4Skin it never writes to firmware 1.77. 1.720 however writes fine, so I'm pretty sure the newer firmware is the problem.

EDIT: Turns out I was using an old version of EZ4 Skin. Now I'm using this one, however I don't know how to manually insert the asc.dat via hex editing, so I can't finish up my skin :/. Would you be able to help?

EDIT 2: I got the font working, but I can't seem to get transparency working. I used your Boktai skin as a base, Kuwanger, and I made my own, but could you give me a hand in getting the transparency working? Here's the link and an image of it now.

I get the feeling the problem lies in the firmware, because this is running 1.77 and your colour fixer/colour fixed skin is 1.72.

 

[kuwanger]

could you give me a hand in getting the transparency working?

Yea, in part. IIRC, icons can be transparent and you can use full white (#ffffff). However, IIRC you can't use transparency in itemdesc.bmp. You can give it a try anyways with full white (as it has been a while so I could be wrong). And you're right, my fix_colors patcher was designed to use the upper-left pixel in icons and itemdesc.bmp as the transparency color to give more flexibility. But without the patches, you'll have to revert to how the official kernel does it. It might be trivial or a big pain to figure out where to patch the new firmware, but honestly I'm not too interested in trying.

This is one reason I was really hoping at some point they'd open the code to the kernel. It'd also give me motivation to make themes independent of the firmware, among other things. But, *sigh*, it's unlike to happen. (Dreams of Pogoshell Plugin support for EZ4, among other things...)

 

[8BitWalugi]

Yea, in part. IIRC, icons can be transparent and you can use full white (#ffffff). However, IIRC you can't use transparency in itemdesc.bmp. You can give it a try anyways with full white (as it has been a while so I could be wrong). And you're right, my fix_colors patcher was designed to use the upper-left pixel in icons and itemdesc.bmp as the transparency color to give more flexibility. But without the patches, you'll have to revert to how the official kernel does it. It might be trivial or a big pain to figure out where to patch the new firmware, but honestly I'm not too interested in trying.

This is one reason I was really hoping at some point they'd open the code to the kernel. It'd also give me motivation to make themes independent of the firmware, among other things. But, *sigh*, it's unlike to happen. (Dreams of Pogoshell Plugin support for EZ4, among other things...)

I see I see... Well, the Mother 3 skin uses white so I'll see how I go.

Thank you yet again, I'll report back with how I went later.

Edit: Everything was successful! Here's a new thread I made for the release of the skin

 

[Luan.]

Can somebody do a 1.77 firmware with this theme?
https://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17912

 

[Infiltraitor]

Hello Everyone. Sorry to bump an old thread, but I am also looking for the same application if its available today. I have tried google and this post was the first one to come up.

I am trying to extract the bitmaps from an old update file I have. If you guys have it please share it,

Thanks,

 

[Takokeshi]

Hello Everyone. Sorry to bump an old thread, but I am also looking for the same application if its available today. I have tried google and this post was the first one to come up.

I am trying to extract the bitmaps from an old update file I have. If you guys have it please share it,

Thanks,

You may have luck following:

As for dump.py, you'll need python v2. The images that are dumped are named .bmp but internally to the skin they're actually .bm files (a special, very simple, near-raw GBA specific image format). Included is a bm2ppm.py to convert individual files to ppm; I just use a script to actually convert bm->ppm and then ppm->bmp to get actual bmp files for actual usage with the skinning tool. Sorry it's so convoluted, but I really only got as far as making it work for me and ppm files are incredibly trivial to make.

With https://web.archive.org/web/20181020203713/http://kuwanger.altervista.org/default_skin.zip

 

[Infiltraitor]

@Takokeshi

Thank you for the reply, I was hoping for another way. I guess this is the only option. I don't know how to run .py scripts, I am not that good with programming. While I am finding a way to have it working. Do you have by any chance have the BMP set for the Clearlooks? I might as well use it while I am trying to make .py work.

edit: While the Clearlook Reset that you have will work for me, I need the BMP to edit the icons and desktop like adding a wallpaper.

 

[Takokeshi]

Clearlooks ppm resources, open in gimp to edit, save as bmp as needed.

 

[Infiltraitor]

@Takokeshi

It's alright, thank you so much for your help so far!
One more question, how do I skin firmware 1.77? Every time I run EZ4Skin it never writes to firmware 1.77. 1.720 however writes fine, so I'm pretty sure the newer firmware is the problem.

EDIT: Turns out I was using an old version of EZ4 Skin. Now I'm using this one, however I don't know how to manually insert the asc.dat via hex editing, so I can't finish up my skin :/. Would you be able to help?

EDIT 2: I got the font working, but I can't seem to get transparency working. I used your Boktai skin as a base, Kuwanger, and I made my own, but could you give me a hand in getting the transparency working? Here's the link and an image of it now.

I get the feeling the problem lies in the firmware, because this is running 1.77 and your colour fixer/colour fixed skin is 1.72.

Hi again, I am also looking up for a way to test the update files ahead before the actual date. On the picture by 8BitWalugi, it shows pink frames instead of transparency. Do you happen to have the program to preview this ezfla_up,bin?

 

[Takokeshi]

Hi again, I am also looking up for a way to test the update files ahead before the actual date. On the picture by 8BitWalugi, it shows pink frames instead of transparency. Do you happen to have the program to preview this ezfla_up,bin?

I don't know about that, sorry. You might need to replace the pink with white (#FFFFFF) as mentioned by kuwanger earlier.

Also if the EZPDA 1.7.5 from ezflash.cn doesn't work right, you might have better luck with EZ4Skin: https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/EZ4skin

This has Revision 6 and 7, the Revision 8 from another thread linked earlier was modified for 1.75+ firmware and probably won't work for 1.72

(note: you might be able to run the ezfla_up.bin in visualboyadvance for previewing.)

 

[Localhorst86]

@Takokeshi



Hi again, I am also looking up for a way to test the update files ahead before the actual date. On the picture by 8BitWalugi, it shows pink frames instead of transparency. Do you happen to have the program to preview this ezfla_up,bin?

You can run the ezfla_up.bin file as a GBA ROM in the emulator called "BatGBA" - other emulators will not usually don't work.

 

[Infiltraitor]

You can run the ezfla_up.bin file as a GBA ROM in the emulator called "BatGBA" - other emulators will not usually don't work.

Thank you, I've tried VirtualBoy earlier and it does run the .bin file. However, it will keep saying that there is no card inserted, I will try BatGBA next.