Anybody interested in creating their own flash0 custom theme? then this info I found will be very
useful to whoever wants to do just that. although this is an edited version of the original post it'still
contains the knowledge required for psp customization.

Credit goes to osnap1584 who originally posted this in psp-hacks.


Mega Guide for Theme Basics and Knowledge (For 3.90 and 4.01 CFW) EDITED

Introduction
Some download links and tutorials are leeched
from other sites so I'll try to credit all. If you see anything that belongs to you and you don't want it up please
inform me. I will be updating this thread; feel free to edit this with your tools and tutorial as well Robs. So I'm
going to break this down into several sections now remember these are basics so I won't go into too much
depth to confuse anyone. There are major issues with the spoiler tag so this huge guide won't have spoiler
tags. Sorry if it will be too overwhelming to load the page but like I said it's a mega guide (Don't say I didn't
warn you). Please read this guide through so you won't have to ask too many questions or we'll redirect
you here. Thank you.
_________________________________________________________________________

Some of these downloads require winrar. You can get it Here
here
__________________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents
- Tutorial Colors
- Files that You Need to Edit to Create a Flash0 theme
- Basic Knowledge You Must Know About Before Creating a Theme.
- Different Color Values for the PSP
- XMB Dimensions to Position Your Icons
- Tools:
-Images
-RCO's
-PRX's
-Other
- Final Words
_____________________________________________________________________________

Tutorial Colors
Bold= Section
Italics = Text You Should Read
Green = Subject Area
Red = Links
Blue = FAQ
_____________________________________________________________________________

Files that You Need to Edit to Create a Flash0 theme
At flash0: vshresource:
1. topmenu_icon.rco - Main XMB Menu Icons
2. topmenu_plugin.rco- XMB Text Data
2. impose_plugin.rco - Volume Bar
3. system_plugin_fg.rco - Battery icon
4. photo_plugin.rco - Photo loading icon & folders
5. savedata_plugin.rco - Save data loading icon
6. system_plugin_bg.rco - Background waves
7. opening_plugin.rco - Word/Bootwave (When you turn your PSP on)
8. system_plugin.rco - Click sounds when you scroll
9. sysconf_plugin.rco - System config icons/USB slide bar, Theme Preview
10. game_plugin.rco - Game loading icon/corrupt icon
11. visualizer_plugin.rco - Images used in Visualizer
12. 01-12.bmp - Month theme colors
13. gameboot.pmf - Short video clip when you start a game or homebrew app
14. msvideo_main_plugin.rco - Video column icons

At flash0: vshmodule:
1. vshmain.prx - Icon position/XMB Font color
2. paf.prx - XMB Icon transitions, Icon spacing, Submenu font & line color, scrolling speed.
3. lftv_plugin.prx - Custom Reboot PRX
4. opening_plugin.prx - Bootsound
__________________________________________________________________________________

Basic Knowledge You Must Know About Before Creating a Theme.
We should also get some knowledge about the different color values for the PSP and the values to position
your icons.
Different Color Values for the PSP
You might see the different color values in 10's, 50's, 100's, 200's and 250's. But the PSP doesn't use this
values.
When editing the font colors, which would be explained later in the tutorials provided, you must divide
each RGB value by 255.
You can find different colors and the RGB values in this following link:
Click Herehere
So let's say we use the color "Pale Blue":
The RGB values are:
Red= 175 Green= 238 Blue= 238
You must change the RGB values into 4 byte values. The maximum color channel strength is 1.
If you use any number greater than 1,
it will just look like it was changed to 1, regardless of the value you enter.
You'll come out with:
Red= 0.686 Green= 0.933 Blue= 0.933
These are the values you will be using to edit your font colors and infobar colors. You can also use this
method as well to edit the page data values in RCO Editor. For Example, if you decide not to make a battery
icon rather you want to recolor it; you can edit the the RGB Values to recolor it using RCO Editor in the page
data tab by scrolling down to the battery input (this applies to other icons like the busy/loading icon as well).
XMB Dimensions to Position Your Icons
The PSP runs on a X and Y axis. It will contain negative values as well.
Here's an image of the XMB and the X and Y coordinates. This will be helpful if you want to position your icons.


_____________________________________________________________________________________

Tools
Images
My favorite image editor:
Adobe Photoshop CS3 here
Since Photoshop isn't free, here's a free alternative:
GIMPhere

Why can't I use MSPaint?
For one MSPaint sucks if you want make icons and it doesn't have 32 bit support so ditch it, but you can use it
for other reasons that I will soon explain.


RCO's
You can make icons using pngs or 32 bit bmps. Usually bmps are 24 bit but the extra 8bit comes from the
alpha channel which controls transparency. Black is considered as transparency in the alpha channel and
white is the image from the rgb channels. What's gray? That's the secret to aero like icons or an alternative
to using the blending options for pngs. You should search up how to use the image editting tools above
and learn some basic functions.

The most important tool you will need to edit your rco's:
RCO Editor v1.15Chere
Here's a screenshot:


As you can see you can replace the icons or extract the icons which come out as 32 bit bmps as well
as the different tabs: general resource, textdata, pagedata, anim data.

Now what if I get these errors when opening my rco's?



When you get these errors you need decrypted rco's to edit them:
Here are the decrypted 390 rco's: Click Herehere
Here are the decrypted 401 rco's: Click Herehere

Alternatively you can use resurssiklunssi v3 on your own rco's instead of grabbing these.
Ressurssiklunssi V0.3here
You need the 1.5 kernel. Place the rco folder in the root of you ms. Place the eboot folder in the game150
folder with your kernel set to 4.xx. Place the decrypted rcos in the rco folder. Run the eboot press x when
finished press x to exit. The compressed rcos should be in the ms0:/rco/done folder. To compress the rco's
for more room in your flash 0 press circle instead of x when you run the eboot

I replace my icons with a new image but some of my icons either disappear or are corrupted.
This is due to the limited resources of the psp. Yes this means high quality icons can be problems so it'll be
a pain to fix up
Here are the rcos that affect your icons disappearing:
1. top_menu_icon.rco
2. top_menu_plugin.rco
3. system_plugin.rco
4. system_plugin_fg.rco

You can use a 1*1 canvas transparent png or a 1*1 canvas black 32 bit bmp with a black alpha channel
replacing the shadows and glows(focus); replace (tex_sdwn, tex_sdwf, and tex_fcs which will reduce the
size of your rco). For the system_plugin.rco, you can also replace the tex_line, tex_line_shadow, tex_3*3
shadow, and tex_3*3 focus.
Here's a 32 bit bmp I have prepared: Click Herehere

Another alternative is reducing the size of your icons or reducing colors. To reduce colors in photoshop.
Go to the Image tab at the top of the program -> Indexed Mode(Click on transparent if you don't want
photoshop to set a white background on your icon when doing this) and reduce the colors by clicking on
the drop down box(Local Selective) then set the colors as low as possible until it isn't really noticeable
(256 colors max)-> RGB Mode when finished.

Here's a pretty good tool to reduce icon quality as well. What this tool does is turn your pngs into 8 bit pngs:
PNG for PTF v1.0here


PRX's
Now we'll work on PRX's. I will provide a tutorial on some hex editting basics in the tutorial section below.
You will need a hex editor:
I prefer to use:
Hex Workshophere
It uses bookmarks which will come in handy as well as make things easy for you to work with.
Now Hex Workshop isn't free so some good alternatives would be:
HxDhere
or XVI32here
You can find more free hex editors Herehere

An alternative to using Hex Editors to edit your vshmain.prx is using BlessedHand's VSHmain Editor 2.0here
It's a GUI so edit your icon positions should be a piece cake compare to hex editor. However this GUI is
only for "3.90" Firmware. Also you are more free to edit your prx's using a hex editor since GUI's are limited.
This GUI however provides basic functions that you will need.
Here's a screenshot of the gui:



Some themes have icons disabled, how can I go about doing that?
As you can BH's VSHmain Editor can do that simply by unchecking the function you don't want showing
up on your xmb. This is for 3.90 though, to disable icons in 4.01 you will have to hex edit as of now.
Here are the offsets to disable your icons for 4.01 (simply changed the highlighted hex values to FFFF
FFFF to enable and 0000 0000 to disable):


You can also use Ac_k's:
Custom XMB Editorhere
It will open a 3.90 paf.prx, as there haven't been any changes in 3.80/3.90 paf.prx.

Like rco's, prx's have to be decrypted before editting
Here's something that schmilk stated that can help:

Schmilk wrote:
What kind of prx do i have? To determine what state your prx is in open your
PRX in hex editor If you see .ELF in the first line, then this program will If that
line says ~PSP. then this program WILL NOT give you a working prx because
it is compressed/encrypted)BUT, you can delete all data above 0x150 and
rename the file to *.gzip, then open with winrar or ungzip and extract the
compressed .prx, now you can update it.

Here are the decrypted prx's for:
390here and 401here

Alternatively you can decrypt them yourself using Schmilk's advice or using:

PRX Compressor V0.41here
You can also use PRX Compressor V0.41 to compress your prx's but I prefer to use matchung's prxrecomp03x.exehere
The 3.90 header is included in both files, it is needed for both apps. To use PRX Compressor V0.41
to decompress your files, select your 3.90 header then click the decompress button then browse for
the prx you want to decrypt. To use prxrecomp03x.exe to compress your decrypted files put all of your
decrypted prx in the same folder, and run prxrecomp03x.exe, select the header and a decrypted prx.

Now for Hex Workshop bookmarks, they are shortcuts to edit your float values rather then going
through the offsets. I will provide a tutorial below on how to use them. Here are the links to the bookmarks
for 390here and
401here

Here are links to the font color and infobar color offsets:

390here and
401here

I've seen themes with a reboot function instead of the location free player, how do you do it?
Use these files instead of your lftv_plugin.prx: Click Herehere
You need to edit the top_menu_icon.rco if you use only icons or top_menu_plugin.rco if you use only
text or both if you use both in your theme using RCO Editor switching the update and lftv.
Now we're not done yet we still haven't switch them technically. Open up the vshmain.prx using a hex
editor to and switch the Update and LFTV values.
SPOILER: Here are the values for 3.90 that you have to switch:




Here are the values for 4.01 that you have to switch:






(SPOILER ends)

A tool to convert your 3.90 prx to 4.01 prx
Finally the best part of this section, if you want to update your prxs. Use this Schmilk's 3.90 to 4.01 PRX Converterhere
I don't recommend converting your themes with just this tool. Please take your time to edit the rco's. At least
3 rco's are required: top_menu_icon.rco, top_menu_plugin.rco, and msvideo_main_plugin.rco. Also this tool
doesn't fully update the vshmain.prx.
You have to edit the font colors, infobar colors, and lftv to update switch.


Other
To convert your fonts, you can find some ttf files of your choose Herehere,
use Anger's PSP Font Converter ULTIMATEhere
This tool can be use to resize, italicize, embolden, and edit the shadows of the font.

To extract your waves into tgas for a bootwave or compress and convert your waves use
TGA Wavehere

To convert your 8 wavs into vags for custom click sounds (system_plugin.rco) use
MF Audiohere

To convert your prx's and waves for a custom bootsound use highboy's Bootsound Replacer V4.2here

To use ctf's, use Poison's CXMB 3.2.1here

To extract and create ctfs use Red Squirrel's
CTF Managerrhere
You need a decrypted vshmain.prx, paf.prx, and common_gui.prx.
Here's a screenshot of the app:


Mr Shizzy also released a handy theme flashing tool as with some theme modifications
use his XMB editor V2
here
This is for 3.90 firmware.
He has also released XMB Editor v3 recently for 4.01 m33.
here

To use cintro for 3.90 and 4.01 follow this brief guide:
Click HereRedhere
Autostart PRX V3 as well as a cintro app is provided in that link here is the latest Autostart PRX:
Autostart PRX V4Red[/url]http://www.psp-hacks.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=149000[/url]

Here's a tool to create your PTFS (Sony Official Themes) use
Sony Theme Converter V1.3here
You will need this to create ctfs.

Here's a tool to create your own 01-12.bmp use Blessedhand's
split merge 01-12here

Here's a tool to get rid of metadata in images for highres 01-12.bmps use SHIFT Key's
JPEG Encoderhere

Here's a link to an unlocker.bat which will unhide all files in your flash0 (instructions on how to use it is
also provided in the following link: Click HereRedhere

Here's tool to edit the 3.90 M33 Recovery Mode and the 4.01 M33 Recovery Mode using Red Squirrel's
Recovery Editor V3.0here
It only edits the color and the line below the recovery mode and you need to know the hex values
for your colors of chose.

Wanna convert your ptfs into rcos? Use ZiNgA BuRgA's PTF2RCO]here
____________________________________________________________________________________

Final Words
I am not responsible to whatever happens to your PSP. If anyone doesn't want their tutorial posted here,
please inform me. Any links taken from other sites that aren't allowed please inform me. All in all have fun
making your themes and please share your work to others. Hope this guide helps anyone who feels
motivated to create their own themes.

All credits go to all the writers and devs that contributed to this guide

osnap1584


Very informative don't you think?

Post edited by: zhason, at: 2008/07/28 13:34