Ian Novack's RIVEN Windows 95 Plus! Theme ian@aatech.com © 1998 Novi Productions Like the MYST theme, this theme is almost original. By that I mean that I didn't take someone else's theme and modify it to fit my tastes. I pretty much built this one from the ground up, but a big Thanx to Benjamin M. Telle (BMTelle@home.com) for some of the sound files, Lee Lanthier (leelan@owt.com) for the D'Ni font, and John Marvin (jsm@fc.hp.com) for his freeware Riven Movie Player. The zip file contains icons, cursors (including animated cursors), sounds, wallpaper, and a font. There are more icons, cursors, and wallpapers than you need, so feel free to tailor this theme to your tastes. The Cho Splash is for the start screen, while the Starfield Splash can be used for either the waiting or the stopped screen. To install, make a new directory called "Riven" in your Themes directory. Put this zip file in it and unzip it to that directory. Put the font file in your fonts directory and the theme file to your Themes directory. All Riven, indicia, sounds, images and text ©1996, 1997 Cyan, Inc. All rights reserved. Riven® Cyan, Inc. Windows 95 and Plus! are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Inc. Enjoy! Suggestions are always welcome. --Ian The following is documentation I got in '96 when I first learned about making my own splash screens. It's complete enough that I thought I'd repeat it here, though I have not included his splash screens: ------------------------------------------ (7/7/96 - Addendum to the original documentation is at the end of the file) If you're running Windows 95 on your PC, have you ever gotten tired of looking at those pretty, pastoral pictures when you start and shut down your computer? Wouldn't it be nifty if you could replace those trite reminders of Microsoft's dominance with some really keen images? Perhaps, say, you could throw in some pictures from your favorite show, Babylon 5! Fret no longer, friend. As an adjunct to the Babylon5 Windows Scheme, I've created some files to replace the stock logo files that come with Win95. There's no "easy" way to install them, really... I wasn't comfortable creating a batch file that blithely goes around renaming .sys files on your computer! There's not much to it, however, and it can be done pretty easily with Explorer or the DOS prompt. The original files are as follows: LOGO.SYS - located in your root directory of C:, this is the startup screen. LOGOW.SYS - located in your Win95 directory (C:\WINDOWS or C:\WIN95 or whatever), this is the "please wait" screen. LOGOS.SYS - located in your Win95 directory, this is the "safe to power down" screen. My naming convention for distributing the B5 logo files is fairly straightforward... it's the three distinguishing characters of the set of logos, followed by the 'Win95' filename that it's intended to replace. The extension is BMP, simply because what these logo files are... 320x400x256 bitmaps. The OS simply "stretches" the picture to fill the screen. (Yeah, it's pretty dumb, since you could make the images a lot prettier if you left them as 640x480, couldn't you? Was compression THAT necessary?) I'll use my Vorlon set as an example, mainly because it's the first completed set... VORLOGO.BMP is the startup screen, VORLOGOW.BMP is the "wait" screen, and VORLOGOS.BMP is the "safe" screen. Simple, huh? Here's what you do: copy the appropriate files to the locations of the (poor, doomed) files they are meant to replace. Then, you'll probably want to make backups of the originals... I just renamed them with a W95 extension, i.e. LOGO.SYS becoming LOGO.W95, and so on. Just in case you decide you want those silly things back some day... silly you. Now all you have to do is rename your chosen Babylon 5 logo file to the appropriate .SYS file! Say, 'VORLOGOW.BMP' becomes 'LOGOW.SYS'. Don't forget to switch the extension! Once this is done, all you have to do to test your new logos is to run the shut-down sequence, see how it looks, then restart to get a look at your new opening logo! Neat, huh! ========================================== Okay. A few addendums, provisos, some quid pro quos... (Hey, I _am_ Djinni on IRC. Bear with the Aladdin references.) These images are _not_ going to look as pretty as Micro$oft's pictures. They had months to make theirs up, and I created mine using Paint Shop Pro 3.11 in about half-an-hour apiece. They also used some nifty techniques to make the most of a bad situation... they managed to do some smoothing on the fonts and images so they still blow up nicely... as soon as I figure out how it's done, I'll be revamping these, I assure you! Your particular install of Win95 may have placed the original logo files in locations other than I've given. I suggest using the Find Files feature on your Start menu to search for LOGO (or LOGO*.SYS, something along those lines), then making note of their placement. Also, if you're going to install PLUS!, I suggest waiting on replacing your LOGO.SYS, since PLUS! slaps one of its own in place. If you use Explorer to perform the installation of the new logo files, it might be an idea to make sure that you don't have the .SYS files hidden! In an open Explorer session, select View|Options..., and it will display the dialog for Hidden Files. Select the button marked "Show all files", then click OK. You'll be able to see those pesky LOGO files now! When you're done, you can always go back and "Hide" those system files... My logo images are basically modifications of material found on Hyperion's wonderful FTP archive, most easily accessed via the Web at http://www.hyperion.com/lurk. The originals are, of course, all property of PTEN/Warner/JMS/etc. These modified images are for your personal use, and I make no official claim to them. Unless you really really love them, of course, in which case they're MINE! ALL MINE! *grin* If any of these images offend your sensibilities... well... I'm sorry. Don't use them. I strongly suggest loading them up in your local bitmap-image viewer (Paint, if necessary *shudder*) for a preview before you decide to make "sweeping" changes in the look of your operating system. Remember, of course, that the picture you get is going to look rather squished, because it's 320x400. If you come up with something better... send it over! I'll make sure it gets onto the site ASAP! I'm not proud... I know there are more creative, graphically-minded folks out there... but I thought of this stuff first, and since I've gone to the trouble of providing a site, we might as well put it all together. Besides... if I get a chuckle out of it, I'm happy to post it. Let's see some creativity! And, if you don't feel up to the trouble but you have a good idea, Email me and I'll see what I can do. Oh, that! Okay, last thing: Any questions, comments, suggestions and the like may be Emailed to... rael@europa.com "Be seeing you!" ---------------- Addendum - I've received a fair amount of Email from folks who have downloaded and installed these splash screens. In amongst the heaped praise are a few notes of discord, mostly to do with technical troubles. We have discovered two potential problems. One is the fact that if you are using a compressed drive partition, the LOGO.SYS file must be placed in the UNCOMPRESSED (host) partition for it to appear properly. The second problem is... well... a little more esoteric, and I haven't found a decent explanation as yet. The second problem centers on a particular rogue build of the Microsoft Plus! pack that, for reasons unknown, HIDES the splash screen in some undiscovered location. If you follow all of the instructions in this document and the splash screen still fails to appear, you may be a victim of this problem. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a solution to this problem. Please feel free to send me Email, as the answer may yet come to light. Also, I _DO_ now know how to make palette animations. As soon as I have free time again (yeah, right!) I'll be more than happy to completely rework these babies so they'll really shine. I created these many months ago, back when I wasn't as heavily involved in my Web-related projects, and I can't make any assurances as to when I will be able to get back to this material. Thank you, and good night. Karel P Kerezman http://www.europa.com/~rael "Adversary" or "Djinni" on EFnet IRC's #babylon5