Creating new skins?

[tcobb64]

How do you create skins?

[tecbuilder]

The first thing you need is an descent image editting program. It will need to be able to resize an image since most likely the one you want to use won't be the proper size for the game.

The image size needs to be 790 x 563.

The easiest way is to take an existing skin and modify it. One of the things that you will notice on an existing skin is several little ovals. These ovals are what the program uses to determine what background and font colors to use for the skin. You need to have these ovals in your skin in order for the program to show things correctly.

There are a variety of different ways to create the squares that the situations show up in. You'll have to choose for yourself how you want to go about getting that done.

[tecbuilder]

I should have added the the oval mapping. Of the set of two ovals, the left one is the font color and the right one is the background color.

Starting in the upper left corner to the bottom right corner, the oval sets are:
left die, right die, male's bank display
female's bank display, timer, action info area, buttons

Also, the situation squares and passion level rectangles can be filled with a color or not. They will be covered up as the game progresses anyway.

[Don]

tecbuilder,

Thanks for your response, it is accurate and correct.

One more addition, the skin needs to be a .bmp file.

There is a skin with an all black background posted at:

http://www.gamesforloving.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=69

Finally, to post the skin on the forum, you need to zip it into a .zip file.

Thanks,

Don

[welshlover]

I found the best way to start creating a skin was to take one of the skins that comes with the game and load it into an image editing software.

Having software that goves you the ability to work with layers make life a lot easier. Load the existing skin in a layer on its own. Then build up the elements in subsequent layers. This allows you to turn off the "base skin" and see what you producing, turn it back on to ensure you get things in the right places etc.

Using layers also allows you to seperate out logical elements of the skin, like, spaces, text, colour ovals etc.

make sure that you turn of the "base skin" before you export to create your .b mp skin.
hope this helps,

[sidney]

I should have added the the oval mapping. Of the set of two ovals, the left one is the font color and the right one is the background color.

So how do you change the oval colors to suit the skin being created?

[Don]

Hi,

The ovals are used by the program to decide what color to draw various things in (as described earlier in this thread). Whatever color you fill the oval with will be used to draw that element of the user interface, so if you fill the oval with purple, the element corresponding to it (such as a font or background) will be drawn in purple.

Don

[luvher]

Hi
i have a photoshop template that I made that might be useful to make your own skins. howevre I can't upload it because I get an error message that the zip file is to large. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can upload it??

I found it made the game more personal.
I added photos of us on the blank squares, and then removed the color from the photos with an adjustment layer.
I also used two separate photos of us as the background layer, using the brush tool to paint with black on the mask layer to blend the layers together.

You can use the outlines if you wish, however I liked it better without the outlines.

I hope this is useful to some of you.

[Pickwalls]

You could create an ftp and link to it if nothing else...or Don could increased the file size limit, but that may cause bandwidth issues.

[Sarcas]

I've been playing around with new skins. Works fine. But it is a pity it is restricted to the 790 x 563 size. The first thing I do when starting to play jBliss is expand the window to max. And this causes the 790 x 563 playfield to become rather blurry. It would be awesome if we could use a larger canvas and jBliss automatically scales it to the size it uses. That way I can make the skin I want, and keep it crispy clear