Control if you want to show only top or bottom splash screens

This release modifies splash option to accept more parameters. Now you can pass 0 to disable splash screens, 1 to only enable top screen (splash image or ASCII art), 2 to enable only bottom screen (entry information) or 3 for both (the same as the old 1 option, and still the default).

Added support for boot screens

This release adds support for boot screens. By default there is a nice ASCII boot screen that is embedded in the application, however there is support for external custom boot screens by passing a properly converted BGR image to the option splash_image. You can convert the common image formats to BGR by accessing the following website: https://xem.github.io/3DShomebrew/tools/image-to-bin.html. Remember that 3DS top screen has a resolution of 400x240, so you should convert any image to this resolution first.

An example of boot screen image can be seen below:

This release drops support for both debug and cfw_fix options. With splash screen support, the bottom screen is used to show entry information, exactly like the debug option did, so it was removed. cfw_fix was doing something similar to rendering something in the 3DS screens already, so now I am actually rendering something useful in the screen, this option made no sense anymore. However, the benefits of cfw_fix are still there.

Added [GLOBAL] section

[GLOBAL] is a special section that takes the role of what [DEFAULT] done before v1.5. So, if you set any option in [GLOBAL], it will override the internal defaults from the application. This is useful, for example, to enable debug mode in every entry.

Bunch of bug fixes

After the simplification of boot.c from release v1.3, finally someone found a homebrew that breaks because of those changes. This homebrew is CTRXplorer. So one of the major highlights of this release is bringing back the old homebrew boot method, fixing CTRXplorer boot (and maybe other homebrews out there).

This releases fixes payload option too. It was always set to -1 even if you tried to force it to another value. This option is probably broken since its introduction, making this the first release that this option is working.

One last fix, support for DPAD was not working. This releases fix it and add support for Circle Pad too. However, you may need to update your boot_config.ini, since the name for direction sections changed.

Thanks MassExplosion213 for the reports above.

Another change is a major rewrite in boot_config.ini. The objective is to make everything more user friendly, and reduce user confusion between options. Some early feedback seems to be so far good. So I recommend every user to read the included boot_config.ini file in this release again.

Finally, [DEFAULT] section does not override the internal default options anymore. This was a workaround because if the user pressed a button without a section, it would get the internal defaults instead of just booting whatever was in [DEFAULT]. However this workaround causes a whole another class of issues.

So this release brings a much better solution. Without entering too much in the implementation details, it means that path option does not have an internal default anymore (it used to be set to boot_default.3dsx), so from this release you MUST have boot_config.ini file in your SD card (in previous releases it was optional, however BootCtr wouldn't be really useful without it) and each section MUST have at least path set (in previous releases, it was optional too, however it would get whatever was set in [DEFAULT]).

Improved boot rate for rxTools users

This release brings two new options for boot entries. The first one is cfw_fix. This option increase boot rate in some CFWs (rxTools), making it similar to the boot rate from version 1.2.1. Since cfw_fix may have some side effects (like decreased boot rate in any other CFW that isn't rxTools), it can be disabled by passing cfw_fix = 0, however this is not recommended. The default for this option is on.

The second new option is debug. This option prints the current entry to 3DS screen before running, waiting until the user press Start button to continue. While this is not exactly useful, it may help when while investigating in case of issues.

See boot_config.ini file for the documentation of these new options.

Going back to roots

The major change in this release is the first code cleanup since release v0.2(?). For the first time ever, I do understand what is happening in boot.c, since the number of lines of code in this file is reduced by more than half. scanner.c/scanner.h files are gone for good too, at least until someone finds a homebrew that breaks under these changes. The removal of these files reduced the total binary size by ~1.5KB!

There are various changes in the repository organization, and by consequence, Makefile. No more silly #include "very/long/path" too. While this does not change anything, it makes the repository much more organized, at the expense of having headers and source code files separated. I don't really like this, however it is the correct way to organize the source files.

Hotfix for N3DS users

Fix binary payload loading on N3DS. Thanks Aurora Wright from GBAtemp for the report.

Compatibilty with ctrulib 1.0

This version brings changes to make BootCtr compatible with ctrulib 1.0. This should make it easier to build now (since you can simple install the official release of ctrulib X some random git version). This brings updates from CakeBrah and libkhax too (so they're compatible with ctrulib 1.0), so maybe there is more stability, maybe not.

Small fixes

The major change in this release is the use of mid-kid/CakeBrah itself instead of a fork. This brings some new fixes comming from upstream that may or not help in boot rate in some situations. There is some smaller fixes too.

HBL-Emergency->BootCtr

As described here, this project was renamed, since the old name (HBL-Emergency) was not appropriated anymore for the features that this project have. So I decided to rename it to BootCtr.

Since the project changed names, I decided to bump the version number to 1.0. There isn't many exciting changes, however, mostly bug fixes in this release.