IMAGE HACK 

Before starting this modification make a copy of your navmate.exe

You will need the following programme to successfully complete this mod :  Resource Hacker

Additional items for this mod :
a good image editor, photoshop or paintshop pro

Additional files to be used :

  



Let's get modding : Difficulty Level - Moderate

This mod will use Resource Hacker, any program that allows you to edit the .exe files image resources can be used.

Load navmate.exe into your resource modification program.
(It would be a good idea to copy the navmate.exe onto your harddrive to edit. I have found soem resource editors 'hang' when trying to edit off the cf card or sd card)

What we want to do now is to export the bitmaps to see what we have.
To accomplish this , do the following steps :

 1. select the bitmap folder
 2. select action, select 'save [bitmap] resources'
 3. create a folder to export the bitmaps to
 




That is all you need to do to get all the bitmaps out to a place you can modify them.




Next modify the elements you want.
(Just a note, there are a lot more elements (bitmaps) in Navmate than are actually used during navigation.)

 

Above is an example of creating a new car bitmap for the 2D / Split view mode. You can use Photoshop, Paintshop or any other image editing software you want.
You need to remember the following when editing the bitmaps.

- They are 256 colour bitmaps.
- Each one can have their own palette
- Each 'series' of bitmaps (compass, 2d car, 3d car and signal strength) must have the same colour for the transparent colour, and the colour needs to be at the same 'location' in the palette.
(easiest way to acomplish this, is to make one bitmap work, save the palette , then load the working palette into each of the other bitmaps)

 A bit more on palette index:  the 256 colour palette is numbered with an index of 0 - 255 , below is a list of the palette colour and it's index for each
of the four main bitmaps people like to change:
 
Compass: index 9 (colour #10)  r = 57 g = 74 b = 119

2D Car: index 9 (colour #10)  r = 0 g = 96 b = 32

3D Car:  index 78 (colour #79)  r = 0 g = 96 b = 32

Signal Strength: index 88 (colour #89)  r = 0 g = 0 b = 0

 
Above is the Palette from the Compass Image and the Signal Strength, each palette is almost identical, but the transparent colour is ina different location (index) and a different colour. You may have to fiddle around with the palette location a bit if it doesn't work perfectly the first time. Please note, set the background colour AFTER you make your image 256 colour, if you set your background colour to the 'transparent' colour , the colour may be correct, but the location of that colour won't be, and you will have problems with the transparency not working in navmate.


Once you've completed the modifications to your bitmaps it's time to replace them.

As you did for exporting the images, select action, this time select 'replace bitmap'.



This opens a list of all the bitmaps, simply :
'open file with new bitmap',
scroll through the list to find the bitmap you want to replace,
then hit the repalce button.



Repeat until you have finished repalcing the elements you wanted to replace.

Once finished, hit save. (save as navamte.exe. resource hacker does automatically make a backup file)

After you have saved your file, it's time to try it out. Copy it from where you edited it, to your CF card (or SD card), navmate directory.

Try it out, voila. You've got a new look to your Navi. A personal look. Enjoy!

   

    

 (special thanks to e2400 on 8th civic for the inspiration to edit the bitmaps)

EOF.

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