Gaming Customization Thread

[Urza]

Placeholder


Wow, I'm amazed Urza.
Awesome.

I never knew there were so many ways to make windows look that awesome.

One of these days mah boi.

 

[juggernaut911]

where can i get placeholder?

 

[Urza]

where can i get placeholder?

?

Totally forgot about this thread by the way.

 

[xcalibur]

Well, since Urza isn't going to do anything I thought I might add some stuff in myself.

Basic Customization

If you want to start customizing XP then you have several options.
In this section I'm going to talk about the the main visual styles.

If you want to change the visual style of XP then you can go one of two ways.

1) You can us a program to change the skin for you (e.g. Windowblinds)
You usually have to pay for these kind of program and even if you can "acquire" it for free, they usually mess up a lot of things.
I would stay away from these.

2) You can patch the uxtheme.dll file and use msstyles which you can get anywhere on the internet.
I find that this is the easy way and I'll assume this is the way you're going to go.
To start customizing Windows XP the easy way you need a patched UXtheme.dll in order to be able to use all those styles that you see everyone use.
You can get that here.
Then you just have to go and get the style which you want to use with windows.

3) You could get rid of windows explorer completely and use a different shell (e.g. litestep)
This is only for people who really know what they're doing so I find it kind of pontless to elaborate on this point when this is a customization tutorial for newbies.

4) Get a "Transformation Pack"
I don't really like this option because it never looks that great and installs a crapload of programs which you can't keep track of.
Sometimes it also changes a few things which are impossible to get back unless you go through a great deal of trouble. That means you're screwed if you want to go back to how everything looked like.
Most of these packs are for imitating different OS's which look bland and crap to begin with so I don't see why anyone should go through the trouble.
Here are a few links to these packs if you're interested:
Flyakite OSX. (Makes it look like a Mac)

Vista Transformation Pack. (Does a extremely good imitation of Vista)

CrystalXP's Brico Packs. (Not so much an imitation as it is an inspiration

)


Visual Styles

You can find the best visual styles over at Deviantart. The most popular ones usually are the best and I find that "less is more" and that more minimalistic themes are nicer and work a lot better.

My personal favorites are (in no particular order) : Area04 , Lakrits Visual Style (a very dark style) , Amok Visual Style (My current) , SlanXP Edition 3.

You also should install the fonts that the VS's (visual styles) come with.
To do this, go to control panel -> fonts and just drag the fonts into the window.

Installing fonts will make your VS's so much more enjoyable.

Wallpapers

I'm not going to tell you what kind of wallpaper you should get since its all dependant on personal taste.
I will give you a few tips though.

1) Remove desktop Icons

Even if you have the greatest wallpaper in the world, the icons on the desktop could ruin it if they don't match.
The easy solution? Remove them.
You do this by rightclicking on the desktop and pressing arrange icons by.. -> untick show desktop icons.
Some people may not have this so to add it just do the following:

* Click Start, Run and type REGEDIT. Navigate to the following key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer

* Double-click NoActiveDesktopChanges and set it to 0
* Double-click NoActiveDesktop and set it to 0 (if exists)
* Close Registry Editor and restart Windows.

Or

To change the setting via Group Policy Editor for Windows XP Professional:

* Click Start/Run and type GPEDIT.MSC
* Navigate to this path:

User Configuration
=> Administrative Templates
==> Desktop
===> Active Desktop

* Double-click Prohibit Changes and set it to Not Configured
* Double-click Disable Active Desktop and set it to Not Configured

2) This may seem like a stupid point but its quite worth it sometimes.
Don't download wallpapers by following the "download" button some sites give you.
Some places add a lot of files to the download so instead of getting a 700kb wallpaper, you end up getting a 7mb pack full of malware/adware.
Just preview it in fullscreen and rightclick and "save picture as..." .

3) Use Deviantart.
Its nice, fast and has a lot of great walls there. Nuff' said.

Applications

Now I'm going to talk about a few programs which help cutomize your windows.

Launchy

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

This program is first becuase its awesome. Its just a keystroke launcher of applications and can do so much more.
It has a low memory foot print and runs in the backgrand and you can call it up at anytime quickly and run applications through it.
You can also run searches through the most popular searchengines without having to open up your browser first.
And so many more things with plugins.
Sometimes I find this easier to use than a dock.

Get Launchy here.

Launchy skins.

Launchy plugins.



Docks

The Dock is a graphical user interface feature used to launch applications, and switch between running applications. The dock is a prominent feature of the Mac OS X operating system and its predecessor NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP operating systems. Another early examples of a dock concept is the Newton OS dock. There are now many dock applications for many different operating systems.

There are many docks which all do the same thing so it's only a matter of personal preference. I use RKlauncher.
Although RKlauncher is still in beta, it works great (not to say it doesn't have a few annoyances). Rocket dock is also quite good and has a lot of skins for it.
Objectdock is maintained by stardock who charge for their "Plus" dock but give the regular one out for free. Its got quite a few features and I can't seem to figure out why it got so many bad reviews and word of mouth.... I've never tried it either.

Objectdock & Objectdock skins.

RK Launcher & RK Launcher skins.

Rocketdock & Rocketdock skins.


Samurize

Sick and tired of that bland vista sidebar? Or jealous since you're still stuck on XP without one?
Samurize is for you.

Samurize is an advanced system monitoring and desktop enhancement engine for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. IT professionals, overclockers, gamers and desktop modders alike use Samurize for system information, weather reports, news headlines and much much more.

Its similar to the Vista sidebar but a lot more customizable. There are a lot of different configs for this.
Samurize

Because I've never used samurize before you'll have to look around for skins/configs yourself.



Media Players

There are a lot of skins for different media players and I believe people should never ever stick to Windows media player when there's so much more out there.

Winamp is nice and simple and is very easy to skin.
It is also fast and doesn't take up a lot of Ram.

Get Winamp over here.



Foobar2000 is another free media player which many people seem to prefer but its a headache to get it perfect if you have no clue what you're doing.
It could look absolutely beautiful or horribly plain. It all depends on you.

Foobar download and support forums where you can find plugins.



Skins for these media players can be found over at Deviantart.

Avedesk

I didn't add in Avetunes since its not a standalone mediaplayer but a widget on Avedesk.
Avedesk is a widget engine which allows you to place certain "widgets" on the desktop. There are a lot of different widgets but people mainly use Avetunes.

http://www.avedesk.org/





Rainlendar

QUOTE

Rainlendar is a feature rich calendar application that is easy to use and doesn't take much space on your desktop.

Looks great and does what it says.

http://www.rainlendar.net/cms/index.php



Other applications

This is for applications which have no purpose other than to enhance the look of windows.

MiniMize - Minimizes windows into small thumbnails which you are free to move and arrange as you please.



Y'z Shadow - Puts a shadow underneath windows. Great looking and subtle. It also gives the option to make the taskbar and menus transparant.



Lclock - Replaces the default clock in windows with a slightly better looking one.



Vista Drive Icon - Replaces your main drives with icons whoch show how much space you have left a la windows vista.



Styler - Lets you "style" many aspects of windows including the main toolbar in windows explorer.



UberIcon - Adds a very cool looking effect whenever you doubleclick icons in windows.



TrueTransparancy - Changes window borders into transparent ones.



Vista Start Emulator - Copies the startmenu of Vista.



IconTweaker - Allows you to change the icons of the system.



Visual Tooltip - Gives small previews of minimized windows in the form of thumbnails quite similair to windows Vista which are in your taskbar if you hover over them.



WinFlip - Similair to Windows Vista's Flip3d but only for XP. It works quite fast but is a bit buggy sometimes.



CD Art Display - Shows the currently playing song in your own media player in a skinnable display and provides some basic functions such as next/play/pause.



And thats all I got. I hope this helps people get a much better looking desktop.

I mainly made this tutorial because of Freez.
You have NO EXCUSES ANYMORE.
FIX THAT DAMN DESKTOP

For those who are curious what would drive me to this : http://xs.to/xs.php?h=xs125&d=08102&am..._desktop617.jpg

 

[Urza]

I was getting to it... kind of...

 

[Chotaz]

Can anyone suggest me a good widget manager, with a good variaties of widgets to choose from?

 

[CrEsPo]

Personally I'd recommend LiteStep to everyone who really wants to customize their desktop. It's really powerful and allows for a lot of customization. The least one can do is check it out and see if they may or may like it.

ChotaZ: Depends on what you're after. If you want your own customization Samurize is the number one choice. If you're more after just download and use then your best bet would probably be Yahoo! Widgets.

 

[Chotaz]

thanks for the suggestion crespo, i decided to go with RK Launcher and Yahoo widgets
this is my current desktop :

atm im looking for a program that makes tumbnails of my minimized windows, i tried the link on xcalibear's post

 

[xcalibur]

Updated the link.

Just rightclick your taskbar and set it to autohide through the properties menu.
Then it won't be there to bother you but you can access it whenever you need

Oh.. and please don't call me xcalibear.. mkay'?

EDIT: 1337 posts w00t!

EDIT2: I just noticed that you said you were using RK Launcher. If you don't want to go at it the startbar way then you can rightclick RK Launcher -> settings -> behaviour -> show new applications.
This will show all running apps in your dock.
The problem is that it will show ALL running apps(so about 15 or 20). You could click "never show in dock" for the ones you don't need (like explorer.exe) and leave the ones you want like winamp or whatever torrent program you're using.
I'm pretty sure they have the same context menus when you rightclick them in the dock as you would in the startbar.

 

[flai]

Ok, xcalibur, you're officially awesome. You can be part of the customization team

Thanks alot for the contribution, I needed someone of the Windows side desperately.

 

[Chotaz]

Updated the link.

Just rightclick your taskbar and set it to autohide through the properties menu.
Then it won't be there to bother you but you can access it whenever you need

Oh.. and please don't call me xcalibear.. mkay'?

EDIT: 1337 posts w00t!

thanks for the tips and sorry about that

 

[fischju]

Updated the link.

Just rightclick your taskbar and set it to autohide through the properties menu.
Then it won't be there to bother you but you can access it whenever you need

Oh.. and please don't call me xcalibear.. mkay'?

EDIT: 1337 posts w00t!

thanks for the tips and sorry about that

That is a cute pet name. And now that is all I'm going to call you.

 

[xcalibur]

Updated the link.

Just rightclick your taskbar and set it to autohide through the properties menu.
Then it won't be there to bother you but you can access it whenever you need

Oh.. and please don't call me xcalibear.. mkay'?

EDIT: 1337 posts w00t!

thanks for the tips and sorry about that

That is a cute pet name. And now that is all I'm going to call you.

I updated the tutorial with some pictures and added in CDart Display.
I wanted to do a bit on instant messengers but I realised I never tried to skin one..
I haven't used one in the past couple of weeks even.

It was a lot of large pictures so I put them all as thumbs.

@flai: Thanks

. I'd be honored to join.

 

[flai]

Updated the link.

Just rightclick your taskbar and set it to autohide through the properties menu.
Then it won't be there to bother you but you can access it whenever you need

Oh.. and please don't call me xcalibear.. mkay'?

EDIT: 1337 posts w00t!

thanks for the tips and sorry about that

That is a cute pet name. And now that is all I'm going to call you.

I updated the tutorial with some pictures and added in CDart Display.
I wanted to do a bit on instant messengers but I realised I never tried to skin one..
I haven't used one in the past couple of weeks even.

It was a lot of large pictures so I put them all as thumbs.

@flai: Thanks

. I'd be honored to join.

Alrighty, I'll see if I can get a mod or something to move your post to the first page (if that's even possible).

 

[Urza]

Alrighty, I'll see if I can get a mod or something to move your post to the first page (if that's even possible).

In a short while that won't really be necessary.


EDIT: Spoiler tags are gone akfja';lsjergr

 

[xcalibur]

Alrighty, I'll see if I can get a mod or something to move your post to the first page (if that's even possible).

In a short while that won't really be necessary.


EDIT: Spoiler tags are gone akfja';lsjergr

OOoooooOooOoh.
Are you actually doing your part then?

 

[FrEEz902]

Half those progs don't work wtih me, because Bill gates is gay and created a mac-like compatibilty windows (XP X64, the bastard). I can't use Samurize, and Ubericon doesn't do anything :S. Also the Vista drive space thingy makes no difference.

Thanks anyway >_>

Edit: Oh and Visual Toolitp doesn't do shit. It's just there in the taskbar, but when i hover over windows/progs in the taskbar, nothing happens

 

[Urza]

Half those progs don't work wtih me, because Bill gates is gay and created a mac-like compatibilty windows (XP X64, the bastard). I can't use Samurize, and Ubericon doesn't do anything :S. Also the Vista drive space thingy makes no difference.

Thanks anyway >_>

Edit: Oh and Visual Toolitp doesn't do shit. It's just there in the taskbar, but when i hover over windows/progs in the taskbar, nothing happens

What did we learn kiddies?

Don't. Use. XP x64.

 

[flai]

Half those progs don't work wtih me, because Bill gates is gay and created a mac-like compatibilty windows (XP X64, the bastard). I can't use Samurize, and Ubericon doesn't do anything :S. Also the Vista drive space thingy makes no difference.

Thanks anyway >_>

Edit: Oh and Visual Toolitp doesn't do shit. It's just there in the taskbar, but when i hover over windows/progs in the taskbar, nothing happens

What did we learn kiddies?

Don't. Use. XP x64.

I learned that after about a week of using it.

 

[xcalibur]

Half those progs don't work wtih me, because Bill gates is gay and created a mac-like compatibilty windows (XP X64, the bastard). I can't use Samurize, and Ubericon doesn't do anything :S. Also the Vista drive space thingy makes no difference.

Thanks anyway >_>

Edit: Oh and Visual Toolitp doesn't do shit. It's just there in the taskbar, but when i hover over windows/progs in the taskbar, nothing happens

What did we learn kiddies?

Don't. Use. XP x64.

I learned that after about a week of using it.

Seems like a shame though. X64 is supposed to improve performance.
There's no point if its neglected like ths by the community.