Thread: North American Branding (work in progress)

I just did a small test with the Ultramar gas Stations and it works with Nextgen. I am not sure if you are interested in a Nextgen version or not.

This is just a proof of concept and is far from finished. I must say that I do not understand the syntax of your poi_visiblities.txt file (Primo version). For instance, Ultramar is referred twice and I can't figure out the logic. The other weird thing is that The Ultramar logo is the 8Th icons in the gas7.bmp strip and is labelled as the 8th in Primo but I must indicate 7th in Nextgen. Maybe Nextgen starts at 0 instead of 1. These are mostly the 2 problems I must understand before I fully convert your Primo branding to Nextgen.

Maybe you or someone else could educate me on how to read the poi_visiblities.txt file.
Anyway, I am including my stripped down Nextgen version of your branding.

Since it's been almost a year since I first started this project I will have to refresh my own memory somehow. I do recall the poi_visibilities and the icon name and number didn't line up, and it's exactly as you said with the zero and one. It was something i was going to fix in future versions if it's possible with the programs I'm using.

I'll try nextgen for sure at some point and have a go at the branding.

As it looks like you are the one who created the poi_visibilities.txt file, maybe you can help me a bit.
Could you tell me what is the relationship between ultramar/turbo and uni-mart/ultramar?
Could you elaborate on the meaning of the trailing zeros? Sometimes the 1st 0 is replaced by 3000, 5000 or 15000 and the 2nd 0 by 500

2 lines from your poi_visibilities.txt file:

Petrol_Station
Ultramar|turbo|0|0
Petrol_Station
Uni-Mart|ultramar|0|0

I'm waiting for my GPS to arrive in the mail, so I can't recall much until I get going on it again. I believe IGO makes the poi-visibilities if it isn't already set as a default inside the branding.zip. I had a test gps, but it no longer functions.


I believe the 0 is off, and the 3000, 5000 etc is the distance. Look at a particular gas station icon and the the visibility in the igo GUI. Then take a look at your poi_visibilities and you will see the changes.

Originally Posted by zzyzxroad

I believe the 0 is off, and the 3000, 5000 etc is the distance. Look at a particular gas station icon and the the visibility in the igo GUI. Then take a look at your poi_visibilities and you will see the changes.

Ok. That makes sense. I will experiment with it. However, for the following 2 lines:

Petrol_Station
Ultramar|turbo|0|0
Petrol_Station
Uni-Mart|ultramar|0|0

Would you know the link between ultramar and turbo or Uni-Mart and ultramar?
Why is ultramar named twice?
Are the names case sensitive(Easy to check but if you know, it would same me time)?

I'm not sure why the names got scrambled. As long as the right icon for the gas station is being showed.

I have made a successful branding just for all the NA gas stations and it works perfectly except for a small detail. On the map, if I press on any gas station icon(displayed with the right icon) and look at the detail screen, the icon displayed in the detail screen is different than the one on the map. The detail screen always displays the first icon of the icon strip used in the branding.

I am reluctant at continuing converting your original branding file as it would be a lot of work to fix later. Until I learn how to fix this, I will not continue to convert any new categories(restaurants/etc). I have asked for help here
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] but so far nobody replied.

Remember, my branding works for NextGen, not sure for primo. I could send you my branding if you want to play with it.

As soon as I know how to correct this, I could finish the branding for all NA categories within 2 days.

Hi everyone. It's been a loooong time since any activity in here. I've played around with damn branding for a while and for the life of me I cant figure out why the icon names aren't paired up with the poi names in the poi_visibilities.txt. For me it works enough to have them displayed properly on the map, but glitchy for varso in the detail screen.

A couple other problems I have is with the converting software. Most of the software was buggy and finicky at the best of times on windows 7, but now that I'm on win10 I have a couple extra problems. I can install a program, and when I click the EXE it brings up installshield and the program won't open. it gets quite discouraging to work at this over and over and can't get it to work right. In the last while I've redrawn several gas station icons to be more realistic, but obviously can't implement them in a new version due to the software problem.

I received a PM from a member regarding my branding and I would like to reply but his mailbox is full so I will post it here:

Originally Posted by badwhip

do you have a how to somewhere when making a custom branding file? how does the icons line up with the data on map? also why are there strips of poi instead of each one on it own? also what size are they? thanks for any help.

you can put any icon or a set of icons into "UPOI Editor" to make the POI strip. If you are using square icons then they are usable in a branding file. If the icons are round or other shape, then you have to convert those areas to a transparent background, then use iPAQ to convert it to BMP for iGo (It's a special format). the icons can be any size to start with, then UPOI editor will resize to 2 different sizes to use in your branding zip.

I don't know how the icons lined up with the map names. In the POI_Visibilities.txt file, my names were offset from the icon names, yet it displayed properly while using the software. For example:

Petrol_Station
7-Eleven|eko|5000|0
Petrol_Station
Chevron|cenex|5000|0
Petrol_Station
Costco|conoco|0|0
Petrol_Station
Upi|united dairy farmers|0|0
Petrol_Station
Irving|ingles gas express|0|0
Petrol_Station
Wilsons|wesco|0|0
Petrol_Station
Ultramar|turbo|0|0

You can definitely make poi icons individually instead of stripe, but for my branding I have over 700 icons which would be a nightmare branding file with a couple thousand files. And I probably only have 70% of the icons finished I think. The stripes are much more convenient as cateories so there would only be a few dozen files.