WoW on your iPhone
Okay, this ain't really MobMap-related, but generally related to WoW. However, it has just turned out way too good to keep it to myself, so I somehow abuse this blog now to show you this:
I got myself an iPhone 3G right at release day cause my old cell phone broke down and I wanted to replace it with a phone with good internet support, to browse the web and write e-mails and ssh onto my servers from anywhere I want. So even though I generally dislike Apple for its "we know better what you like than you do, so eat what we serve you or die" philosophy the iPhone 3G was a perfect fit, and the soon-to-be-released jailbreak would solve the problem that Apple thinks they'd be in charge of dictating what software I'd like to run on my device.
During the last weeks, I have found some time to perfect my own iPhone WoW Theme, which was inspired by a screen shot I once saw on wowinsider.com. The Theme consists of three independent style modifications:
- WoW Icons replacing the standard icons of all the default apps on the phone (and some additional apps I have placed on the first screen, like Cydia and biteSMS).
- a WotLK background wallpaper (taken from the current WotLK beta client). This modification also adds a slight shadow behind the icon labels and changes their font size, thereby making the labels more readable on the background image.
- a WotLK background video wallpaper, which is based on the WotLK beta client's login screen, too. This one is really cool, as it shows that dragon on the login screen flying by, landing, roaring and all the time there's snow falling down - well, you know the sight if you've already started the beta client at least once (however, there usually are UI components in front of that epic background - it was quite tricky to hide those for video recording, I basically had to modify every single resource file that creates those components, making textures fully transparent and replacing the fonts with a font that only contains "empty" characters, as just modifying the .xml or .lua files that form the login screen and thus hiding the whole screen at once was not possible due to these files being protected by a digital signature). The video wallpaper however uses like 10% of the iPhone's CPU power at all times, which is why you might want to choose the static wallpaper instead.
The whole package is designed to be used with WinterBoard, which can be installed via Cydia on any jailbroken iPhone. The contents of the theme package have to be copied to /private/var/stash/Themes on the iPhone in order to be available in WinterBoard (via SSH/SCP or any other means). The theme package can be downloaded here.
The package file contains a .psd file I used to create the WoW-like icon .png files from the raw WoW icons. You might find it useful if you want to create your own icons. I might also create some more icons for some more applications installed via AppStore or Cydia some time later, as I'd really like to have all the icons on the phone being replaced by WoW icons, not just those on the first screen. However, as any user has different applications installed, you'll probably have to create at least some icons on your own if you adhere to the same goal. If you need some more in-depth knowledge about iPhone theme customization, you might find this tutorial and this site from the creator of WinterBoard very useful - I learned everything about iPhone theming from those two resources.
I got myself an iPhone 3G right at release day cause my old cell phone broke down and I wanted to replace it with a phone with good internet support, to browse the web and write e-mails and ssh onto my servers from anywhere I want. So even though I generally dislike Apple for its "we know better what you like than you do, so eat what we serve you or die" philosophy the iPhone 3G was a perfect fit, and the soon-to-be-released jailbreak would solve the problem that Apple thinks they'd be in charge of dictating what software I'd like to run on my device.
During the last weeks, I have found some time to perfect my own iPhone WoW Theme, which was inspired by a screen shot I once saw on wowinsider.com. The Theme consists of three independent style modifications:
- WoW Icons replacing the standard icons of all the default apps on the phone (and some additional apps I have placed on the first screen, like Cydia and biteSMS).
- a WotLK background wallpaper (taken from the current WotLK beta client). This modification also adds a slight shadow behind the icon labels and changes their font size, thereby making the labels more readable on the background image.
- a WotLK background video wallpaper, which is based on the WotLK beta client's login screen, too. This one is really cool, as it shows that dragon on the login screen flying by, landing, roaring and all the time there's snow falling down - well, you know the sight if you've already started the beta client at least once (however, there usually are UI components in front of that epic background - it was quite tricky to hide those for video recording, I basically had to modify every single resource file that creates those components, making textures fully transparent and replacing the fonts with a font that only contains "empty" characters, as just modifying the .xml or .lua files that form the login screen and thus hiding the whole screen at once was not possible due to these files being protected by a digital signature). The video wallpaper however uses like 10% of the iPhone's CPU power at all times, which is why you might want to choose the static wallpaper instead.
The whole package is designed to be used with WinterBoard, which can be installed via Cydia on any jailbroken iPhone. The contents of the theme package have to be copied to /private/var/stash/Themes on the iPhone in order to be available in WinterBoard (via SSH/SCP or any other means). The theme package can be downloaded here.
The package file contains a .psd file I used to create the WoW-like icon .png files from the raw WoW icons. You might find it useful if you want to create your own icons. I might also create some more icons for some more applications installed via AppStore or Cydia some time later, as I'd really like to have all the icons on the phone being replaced by WoW icons, not just those on the first screen. However, as any user has different applications installed, you'll probably have to create at least some icons on your own if you adhere to the same goal. If you need some more in-depth knowledge about iPhone theme customization, you might find this tutorial and this site from the creator of WinterBoard very useful - I learned everything about iPhone theming from those two resources.
