Custom Icons for Twilight Menu

How to install

Download needed icons and place them into sd:/_nds/TWiLightMenu/icons/

Icons should have exact rom name with extension included.
E.g. rom file named gbagame.gba should have gbagame.gba.png named icon placed into icons folder.

You also could use custom icons for folders.

Just name your icon as the folder name
E.g. folder named NDS would have NDS.png named icon.

To use custom back button icon you should name file like ...png
(Yes, triple dot, two for folder name (1) and other for extension delimiter (2))

How to create new icons

Create .png icons

Download either GIMP (free) or Aseprite (paid for prebuild binaries but free if you can compile yourself).

As of this Twilight Menu commit:

The icon is converted from a regular PNG file to the nds banner icon format on the fly, so it’s subject to the same restrictions. 32x32, and no more than 15 solid colors with 1 transparent color. As a fallback, images of the wrong size display as the unknown icon, while images with too many colors will render the extra colors as transparent.

So it means icon should be 32x32 pixels size and 16 colors maximum.

You can set first color in color palette as transparent.
(thats what worked for me at least, both for .png and .bin files)

Edit/draw needed icon how you like it.
Also you can make corner pixels transparent to make icon look nicer.

images/aseprite_remove_corner.png

Before exporting image you need to set it to indexed mode.

Set image to indexed mode in GIMP

images/gimp_indexed.jpg

Image > Mode > Indexed

Either Generate optimum palette with Maximum number of colors set to
or use custom palette with max 16 colors.

Set image to indexed mode in Aseprite

images/aseprite_indexed.png

Sprite > Color Mode > Indexed

And choose needed color palette from left menu (folder icon).

images/aseprite_palette.png

You can set Palette Size from the menu (burger icon right to the folder icon).

images/aseprite_palette_size.png

Then export image as .png file.

Create animated .bin icons

Download NDS Banner Editor

You can use already existing .bin banner to edit or create new.

File > New

images/bannereditor_window.png

So to make animation you need:

  1. Prepare .png images to import into Banner Editor.
  2. Import them into each bitmap slot. (#1 and #2 on picture above)
  3. Add animation frames. (#4)
  4. Set bitmaps to animation frames. (#6)
  5. Set frame duration if needed. (#5)
  6. Set game title. (#3)
  7. And lastly, save .bin file.

Icons preview

Gameboy Icons
icons/Mr.Driller.gbc.pngimages/wario_land1.gifimages/wario_land2.gifimages/wario_land3.gif
Mr. DrillerWario Land 1Wario Land 2Wario Land 3
images/gargoylesquest.gif
Gargoyle’s Quest
Misc Icons
icons/Back.pngicons/Cart.png
Back buttonNDS Cartridge

P.S.

Feel free to open issue if you want to ask a question for now.
Later i either leave better way to contact me or make this readme better.