Shadowing basics

[bjoreman]

What is shadowing?
The basic premise is very simple:
A resource on your pleo's SD card will be used instead of one in the internal memory if they have the same identity. Every resource - motions, sounds, commands, scripts and properties - in your pleo have a name and an ID number. If you name a file either the name or ID of a resource and put it on an SD card which you put in your pleo, your pleo will use that file instead of the internal one. Essentially, whenever your pleo looks for something, it will first look on its SD card, then in its own memory. If it finds something going by the right name on the SD card, it will use that, otherwise it will use what it finds in its own memory.

What this means is that you can easily replace single elements of your pleo without changing anything else. And, whenever you want to undo the replacement, all you need to do is delete the modification from your SD card. As Ugobe has not yet released much information about pleo's internals commands, scripts and properties are effectively very difficult to create, but sounds and motions are pretty simple thanks to MySkit. I will focus the rest of this text on those two file types.

So, how do I shadow something?
Here's the outline:

• Have a file of the right format (a sound or motion file).
• Find out the name or ID of the corresponding file on your pleo, the one you'd like to shadow with your file.
• Name your file the name or ID of the file on your pleo.
• Put the renamed file on your SD card.
• Insert the SD card into your turned off pleo and start it up.
• Your file will be used instead of the internal one.
• To get things back to the way they were, turn your pleo off and remove the SD card. Either delete the file from the SD card and put it back in, or just start your pleo again without a card.
• Your pleo will now run using the internal file again as no shadowing file is present anymore.

So, how do I get a motion or sound in the right format?
This whole section boils down to this: learn to use MySkit (or get someone else to do it for you, I guess ). MySkit's website has plenty of information, and InmemoryofRomeo has also written an extensive guide on the application.

The same thing pretty much goes for sounds. MySkit has a good sound editor built in which allows you to easily open wave files  (or record a new sound) and save it in the format pleos like. If the file you want to use is not a wave file (they usually have the extension .wav to their file name) there are many programs out there which can convert sounds for you, so no need to give up if your ideal sound happens to be an mp3 or something like that.

Here's one way to create a wave file from a sound in a different format. This method uses Apple's iTunes jukebox, so it has the advantage for this tutorial of being a freely available solution available (and working the exact same way) on both Windows and Mac OS. But there are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of alternative ways for both operating systems. I'm using iTunes in Swedish, so I may not have the exact words right in the below description. Do correct me if you find errors!

Anyway, here's the process if you have Apple's iTunes:

• Put the sound in your iTunes library.
• Go into iTunes' settings, and on the general tab, click on the button for import settings.
• Note what the topmost combo box is set to. This is the format iTunes will use whenever you import music from a CD, so once you're done converting pleo files you probably want to re-set this option before you import another CD (if you're an old-timer like me who actually uses music CDs every now and then ).
• Choose "WAV encoder" in the topmost combo box.
• In the second combo box you can, if you like, choose custom settings and set the sampling frequency to 8000 kHz, sample size to 8 bits and channels to mono. This makes the file produced by iTunes smaller and closer to what your pleo will use, but if you don't change this here MySkit will do it for you so it's really a matter of taste.
• Clik "OK" to close the various settings windows  and get back to iTunes' main window.
• Select the sound you want to convert.
• Go into the menu "Advanced". There should be an option to "Create WAV version".
• iTunes will work  for a second or two, then a copy of your sound will appear in your library. All information will be the same as for the original, so they should be right next to eachother.
• Drag the new copy from iTunes to your desktop. Presto, a file in wave format, ready for MySkit to use!

Right then, how do I find out the name or ID of the file to replace?
Once you have the file, all you need is to know what  to name it. You could enter your pleo using Dinomite and look at the list, but it struck me that it could save eveyone a bit of work if I just went in an did that once and for all. So, here's the full list of motions and sounds: http://www.bjoreman.com/files/resources.txt. It's 428 sounds and 495 motions, so I decided to put it in a separate file to make this text a bit easier to handle.

Each line has this format:

sound: ID=4511, name=startup

To get shadowing to work properly, you want to rename your file so that it's named like what's  after the equals sign after either ID or name. So, to shadow the startup sound, either name your file 4511 or startup. You want to leave the file extension intact. The file extension is the dot and last letters of the file name, .usf for sounds. Depending on how your computer is set up you may not even see this extension. So don't worry if you don't see ".usf" at the end of the file names to begin with, but leave it in place if you do.

Nothing bad happens if you accidentally remove the extension, but the file won't be found by your pleo either, so everything will be as if it wasn't there at all.

And we're done!
Drag your freshly renamed file to your SD card, insert the SD card into your turned off pleo, start your pleo and enjoy the change!

[gucci_boi7782]

BRAVO!!

Wonderful manuscript for those of us (like me) who are completely lost when it comes to using the third-party resources.

[bjoreman]

Thanks a lot! I hope it comes in handy and that people make their pleos do all sorts of unexpected things with the information ...

[InmemoryofRomeo]

Fantastic job at describing how to shadow For all those of you out there still unsure, grab a .wav file and rename it startup and just try it out

[justbede]

Nice one Bjoreman great job just going to mention if anyone want's to keep Pleo's behavioours a mystery and hopefully see new things with every interaction don't pay to much attention to the file names as they contain spoilers to what they do, on the other hand if your nosy there some fun stuff and unexpected things all i'm going to say is dino dung

[fancyfont]

  Remember Justbebe, Pleos are not suppose to soil your carpets.

[justbede]

Heh somebody should have told whoever made the skits :p

[allosaurus]

THANK YOU!

I've done a few myself now!

[kisumi]

been trying for over a week to make pleo start up with a new sound, following the instuctions but Indie still just says "huh", hes so stubborn! hehe

[InmemoryofRomeo]

Is Indie updated? That might make a difference

[mweed]

Shadowing should work on any LifeOS.  So upgrade is not the issue.  BUT the name of the file to shadow might be different from one OS to the other . . .  I remember in the original lifeOS, the startup name was something odd that you wouldn't guess was the startup sound.

[bjoreman]

been trying for over a week to make pleo start up with a new sound, following the instuctions but Indie still just says "huh", hes so stubborn! hehe

A few ideas:
Perhaps the filename is wrong, as others have said. Might the extension have ben lost?

Is there something wrong with the file format? What was the original file format, and how did you convert it to work with the pleo?

Does it work if you try a different file? Could the file be too large? Just a wild guess, I don't know of a limit but there could well be one.

Lastly, does the SD card work for other files? If you put a downloaded personality on the card, does the pleo use it properly? I have two SD cards which generally didn't work with my pleo, so that can be the case. Those were really small, 16 MB, and came bundled with cameras I got years ago, so they probably weren't up to modern standards.

[allosaurus]

Shadowing should work on any LifeOS.  So upgrade is not the issue.  BUT the name of the file to shadow might be different from one OS to the other . . .  I remember in the original lifeOS, the startup name was something odd that you wouldn't guess was the startup sound.

Do you remember what the startup sound was called?

[dwkmi]

To get shadowing to work properly, you want to rename your file so that it's named like what's  after the equals sign after either ID or name. So, to shadow the startup sound, either name your file 4511 or startup. You want to leave the file extension intact. The file extension is the dot and last letters of the file name, .usf for sounds. Depending on how your computer is set up you may not even see this extension. So don't worry if you don't see ".usf" at the end of the file names to begin with, but leave it in place if you do.

So should the extension be .wav or .usf

[InmemoryofRomeo]

.wav