Homebrew Directions to skinning in Moonshell

[Ace]

I'm trying to make a kind of splash/BG/Skin for Moonshell, but I'm not sure what tools are available to make that possible. As we speak, I'm trying to download Moonshell 2.10.zip to see if there are any tools there. Can anyone point me towards some good tools? I'm also wondering if I can use animated .GIFs for doing backgrounds, or if all frames need to be separated into BMPs.

Thanks in advance,

Ace Faith

PS: This is the GIF in question that I want to "skinify":

I might make some variations on it as well, with some palette swaps/ twisting shapes, something like the XMB-wave.

EDIT: Trying to find some tutorials on this. Anyone got pointers on this?

 

[jurassicplayer]

The tools you get are the source files for a skin (it has all of the needed images, sizes, and filetypes) and the makeskin.exe which builds the skin. Apart from that, your tools spread out to an image editor and you could (optional) use one of the M3Sakura previewers (they have three of them, the html/css one is the most complete) or the ms2 previewer which is sort of better than the M3Sakura previewers (can show most of the screens, although some bits are...well they aren't prefect graphically xD).

I've never attempted trying to use a .gif file in making a skin, but the makeskin.exe converts only .bmp and .png files into (I'm guessing here) more easy to use formats (.tga and some other thing) so I'm guessing it might end up failing.

I guess technically you could have a pseudo animation if you use the BGPack and place each frame as a separate image, though the speed isn't quick and I believe it can only be set at random (I haven't looked at that in a while, so I'm not sure on that one).

As for good tools to use, really the most you need is a good image editor (I use GIMP, but whatever floats your boat is fine).

 

[twiztidsinz]

You can't use it as a background, but you could make it into a boot/splash animation...

Just get each frame of the image as its own image and use MakeSplashAniForMS2 to combine it into an animation.

 

[Ace]

Alright. Thanks, this was helpful. I'll see if I can make something that can be released, since my GIMP skills are better than my Moonshell skills