Extended Banner

Overview

The Extended Banner format is very simple. The Extended Banner is used to add text (and optionally an extra texture) to a given banner. It can also (optionally) be used to set an expiration date for a banner.

See here for how the extended-banners are loaded from extdata. The Home Menu extended-banner loading function will immediately return without loading anything if the programID is for System Settings.

SpotPass

When Home Menu loads extended-banners, it also attempts to load a "CBMD" banner via SpotPass service commands. Normally this CBMD banner doesn't exist in extended-banner extdata. This is broken with New3DS titles since Home Menu uses these BOSS commands with the New3DS bitmask in the programID set. The common and language-specific(when offset is non-zero) "CGFX" specified by the CBMD are decompressed and processed.

The "CGFX" sections in this CBMD are actually the exact same exbanners loaded from normal extdata. The exbanner data from SpotPass is stored to the same state as the extdata-exbanners. No CWAV is loaded from SpotPass data.

The exbanners from SpotPass must have a timestamp less than current_datetime, otherwise they won't be parsed. The timestamp for the banner is calculated with: nintimestamp_mktime(out, exbanner->year, exbanner->month, exbanner->day, <hour=23>, <minute = 59>, <second = 59>, <millisecond = 999>);

Format

Extension: .BIN

OFFSET	SIZE	DESCRIPTION
0x000	0x002	Texture width (if texture is used)
0x002	0x002	Texture height (if texture is used)
0x004	0x002	Texture colour format (if texture is used)
0x006	0x004	Year to expire
0x00A	0x002	Month to expire
0x00C	0x002	Day to expire
0x00E	0x016	Name of texture (if texture is used)
0x024	0x200	Plain text comment (255 character max) to be displayed in the banner on the HOME Menu
0x224		If used, this is where the extra texture is located, otherwise file ends.

The date used for never-expiring exbanners varies, on retail like with Mii Maker this is December 31, 2099, where year is 0x833, month is 0xC, and day is 0x1F. The expiration-timestamp is only used for SpotPass exbanners, not extdata-exbanners.

Texture Colour Formats

CODE	ENCODING
0x00	RGBA8
0x01	RGB8
0x02	RGBA5551
0x03	RGBA565
0x04	RGBA4
0x05	LA8
0x06	HILO8
0x07	L8
0x08	A8
0x09	LA4
0x0A	L4
0x0B	A4
0x0C	ETC1
0x0D	ETC1A4

Titles using extended banners

System:

• Mii Maker
• Face Raiders