Dreamcast-Talk.com

Hey guy's not sure if this is the right place but this seemed the most code/tinker friendly area.

I have been doing a lot of research on .vms and .vmi files and I am currently developing a Python package to release to you guys that will hopefully help everyone do basic things like generate .vmi files and render / encode icon data.

To test the progress I have been making I ran a quick dump of all the Dreamcast save files and mini-games I could find, and I think the results speak for themselves.

If you'd like you can take a look here.

https://github.com/slurmking/vmu-Icon-Backups

There are over 400 high resolution gifs and icons for your archiving pleasure.

My end goal is to make sure that we preserve all the knowledge that we can, just learning how to read these files was a nightmare of scrolling through dead links and waybackmachine archives. If anyone has any questions about the .vms, .vmi, or ICONDATA file types / structure just let me know.

This is super awesome work! Back in the Dreamcast days I ran a VMU icon website. Majority of the icons I created were requested by email. Few years ago I dug up the web site files but all the vms/vmi files were lost. I was able to recreate them and get the website back up and running at the original domain name dcvmuicons.net. Last I tested the file downloading was working with the Dreamcast's web browser.

I have been dreaming of building a simple drag and drop web interface for creating VMU icons. The R&D you have done could be super helpful in making that possible.

Fantastic job as always Slurmking!

Hey man, exciting to see some interest in this. I agree, info on doing basic things like making your own vmu icons with lcd image is buried.

Most of the old tools are for DOS or win9x based, which is not ideal..

Not to mention things like making 3 frame save animations or eyecatches. That is the stuff I am interested in!

Been pecking away at this the last week or so again. Updated the package to create custom ICONDATA files from square images.

Check it out https://github.com/slurmking/vmu-tools


Original

Converted color

Converted mono
You can adjust the threshold for the black and white image to tune it to your liking.
I plan on making a better editor or possibly a web app version to make this process easier.

Just made a custom Dreamcast-Talk icon if anyone wants

Awesome work as always slurmking!

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