What you will need:
- Updater.exe
- ResourceHacker
- Image editing program (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.)
- Web server for launcher frame (not required to change the appearance of the actual launcher, just the webpage that loads in it)
- time and patience
1. Get any updater (I am using the default EP5.4 one, download below)
2. Download ResourceHacker (download below) and open the Updater.exe with it.
It should look like this:
The directories are self explanatory: Cursor is where the cursor icons are stored, Bitmap is where all the Updater graphics are stored (this will be our main directory in this guide), Icon is where the file icon is stored, and the rest is not really important except Version Info if you want to edit it to your own.
3. Lets start editing!
As you can see, this is the main updater graphic:
Now we will right click it and select "Save .bmp resource" to save the file on your PC, so we can edit it.
Now, open the extracted .bmp file (I called it Updater.bmp) with your favourite image processing program (I will use Photoshop).
You can edit it however you want, just remember that the black area is meant for the webpage and whatever you edit there will be covered with the webpage.
Here is an example edit I made for this tutorial:
Now, lets import that to our launcher. To do that, right click the same file in ResourceHacker we previously extracted and click on "Replace Bitmap".
Click on "Open file with new bitmap", select the Updater.bmp we just edited and click "Replace".
This is how it looks like in the actual Updater after we save it:
Congratulations! You have successfully edited the appereance of your updater!
You will notice that there are more graphics you can extract, edit and replace, so get creative!
As an example of what you can do, here is a picture of my updater:
You can also add elements that go beyond the launcher, like this example:
For that, you will have to add alpha channels to bmp to allow transparency. I don't know how to do that so my launcher has no additional graphics.
