Homebrew DS Skin Maker

[CannonFoddr]

Actually - I've just found it !!!!!!

Tried 'Copying' a nds file from one place to another.
There's not much to it though as it's basically what I've done already except that 'Copying' shows @ the top & a percentage just above the 'bar', so I won't bother updating the plugin just for that

EDIT: I think I've sussed out why I'm having trouble with 'stacked inherits'...
...It seems that we can't have one section call another section that also has an 'inherit' in it

Spoiler: This code doesn't work if 'Popup' is selected

CODE
......

 

[jurassicplayer]

Well on the Moonshell2 .xml, I have some of the stuff now aligned up correctly (maybe 50%...or less has been completed) and I have the filelists aligned for the most part (the clock digits are proving to be a problem. I can't seem to get them straight at the moment xD).

A quick rundown of what I did:
-Added button functionality to the edited screens
-Aligned the Accessories
-Aligned the Recent
-Aligned the File list Single view
-Aligned the File list Double view
-Aligned the Movie Player
-Aligned the MP3 Sidebar
-Aligned the System Menu
-Added click functionality to Accessories
-Added click functionality to Recent
-Added click functionality to the MP3 Sidebar
-Added click functionality to Movie Player
-Added touch functionality to the scrollbar arrows (so you can preview pressed and normal state scrollbar arrows)
-Added touch functionality to System Menu
-Added my screenname to the authors xD

Fun little things:
-When in folder view single mode, all previews return to folder view single mode and vice versa for double (so its more like Moonshell2).
-Highlighting and leaving the scrollbar arrows jump to the top and bottom respectively.
-Complete Moonshell2 font is included.
-This took me a while because I am completely redoing sections as opposed to just realigning.

http://www.mediafire.com/?iydddnnggdw

-edit-
Also, I think it would be nice to have an animated option (it would help Cannonfoddr with the AKAIO .xml maybe?) for those two frame animations that AK users sometimes do.

 

[Mbmax]

How have you managed the quality loose when you import pictures extracted with makeskin.exe from an .skn file ?

Edit : ok. not managed.
That's the main default of opening an already compiled .skn.
BMP files are converted into b15 during .skn compilation, mean loose of quality.
This loose of quality is of course still here when you unpack the .skn file.

Zoom on this png to see what i mean ...

 

[Stormwave]

Aye, at present the program will convert any bit depth bitmap into b15 before running makeskin.exe. The converting into that, and then out again can take a minor quality hit (my program will round the RGB values down, which means it may become darker every time you do it). If you want the best quality downscaling, I would recommend using photoshop or whatever to save it as a 16-bit bitmap, since photoshop is probably better at guessing the colours, then the program won't need to adjust the colours.

 

[Mbmax]

I see.
We have found a workaround for the ez5 to avoid quality loose. We pack original files inside the .skn file.
Original files are zipped, renamed into .ini and packed with makeskin.exe.
When we import an already made skn, we just unzip files contained in the .ini (zip) file.

If you have time, check ez skin forger RN81

Just for the info, the ez5 kernel use moonshell type 3 skins with .dat extension.

 

[Stormwave]

Thats a good idea if you want the source files to be ideal quality when reversing the makeskin process. I'll think about adding that feature in, it might come in handy.

 

[Maplemage]

Sigh no Ez flash compatability but the moonshell and Ez flash skins and stuff look the same seriously check it out

 

[Stormwave]

I'll add Ez flash compatability if you want, getting tired of trying to load NDS files for my other programs, so I could use a break and work on this again for a bit

Any other firmware requests while I'm at it? Also, I'm not sure about many firmwares, but the DSTwo has several "modes" that DS Skin Maker supports, are there any alternate modes for the other firmwares that I should add in?

 

[Stormwave]

Updated to 0.48. Mainly minor fixes and additions:

- Changed wood logo (thanks jurrasicplayer)
- Added YSMenu preview (thanks CannonFoddr)
- Added DSTwo "Real-Time Menu" mode
- Updated DSTwo previews
- Greatly improved the quality when the program drops bit depth from 24-bit or 32-bit bitmaps down to 16-bit.

 

[Stormwave]

I'm planning to update this is the near future.

Does anyone have any specific requests to improve this program?

My current plans are:

- Allow for the two frame animation trick (flashcarts that use clock_colon)
- Improve the preview outputs

I want to make this program the best it can be, so any ideas are welcome and will most likely be implemented.

 

[jurassicplayer]

Well, it would be convenient to also have the EZVi firmware as an added skinnable firmware.
Some other ideas taken from ESF/AKEdit/DSTWO Skin Editor:
-"Animated" loading bar in the preview screen.
-Drag-able objects for skins on the DSTWO, AK2, EZVi (if you add it), and WoodRPG/R4.
-Map-able hotkeys (this is just something I would find convenient xD)?
-A template skin for all of the different firmwares so users have some idea of what it looks like (have the option to start with a template or not maybe?).
-Take off all limits to the clock stuff for AK2, DSTWO, and WoodRPG/R4 (for the people that actually make animated skins, they regularly break the limits for the clock_numbers and clock_colon).
-A button to open and edit the .xml file (makes it easier for the people making the plugins xD).

That is about all I can think of at the moment.

 

[Stormwave]

Great ideas jurassicplayer, thanks a lot.

I'll get to work on them tonight

 

[Stormwave]

Quick question:

-Map-able hotkeys (this is just something I would find convenient xD)?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, can you elaborate?


I'm working through all the other requests gradually.

 

[jurassicplayer]

The idea I was sort of imagining (I don't know how or why I was imagining this xD) was having an extra parameter where you could define a key "X" and then while previewing, you just click "X" to instantly go to that screen rather than right-clicking (it takes more movement and time to right-click and scroll to the options xD)...and maybe also have the more well known shortcut functions like ctrl+s, ctrl+o, ctrl+n, etc.

 

[Stormwave]

Ah, I see what you mean.

I'll certainly add the basic Ctrl+O etc ones in, not so sure about the mappable ones as I have completely redone the way the previews are displayed so it may not be as necessary (although I might include it anyway).

The development is going pretty well so far, I've done lots of the things I wanted to do.

I was wondering if anyone is interested, would they like to help me finish this off before I release it? i.e. I'll give you the beta release and you can help me make the previews, finalise ideas, etc.

I want this to be the best all round skin editor

As for my current progress, from your list of suggestions I'm this far:

-Drag-able objects for skins on the DSTWO, AK2, EZVi (if you add it), and WoodRPG/R4.
-A template skin for all of the different firmwares so users have some idea of what it looks like (have the option to start with a template or not maybe?).
-A button to open and edit the .xml file (makes it easier for the people making the plugins xD).

Are all done, dragable objects took the most time, but it works great (imo) and will make skinning a lot easier.

 

[jurassicplayer]

Well, I would love to help, though I can't really do much really apart from testing, making previews, and maybe coming up with ideas (so you are left to your own resources for coding unfortunately).
About the "animated" loading bar, perhaps you can just have a parameter in the images to tile the image over defined limits.
For a generic example:

Supposing that the image is a 9px high by 1px in width, said image would tile itself from position (x,y) until it reaches a length of 216px (so it would tile itself lengthwise 216 times) and since the loopy=9px the image would not be tiled vertically.

 

[Stormwave]

Well, I would love to help, though I can't really do much really apart from testing, making previews, and maybe coming up with ideas (so you are left to your own resources for coding unfortunately).

Thats exactly what I need tbh, making the previews takes so long and I've exhausted most of my own ideas

QUOTEAbout the "animated" loading bar, perhaps you can just have a parameter in the images to tile the image over defined limits.
For a generic example:

Supposing that the image is a 9px high by 1px in width, said image would tile itself from position (x,y) until it reaches a length of 216px (so it would tile itself lengthwise 216 times) and since the loopy=9px the image would not be tiled vertically.

Would that be different from the tag I've already made?

In the imagetile tag, you just pick "width" and "height" and image will tile itself within the given rectangle.

 

[jurassicplayer]

Would that be different from the tag I've already made?

In the imagetile tag, you just pick "width" and "height" and image will tile itself within the given rectangle.

Now that you mention it...it wouldn't be all that different xD, so maybe you can add an "animated=1" effect to that by just having it tile one at a time so we can see a semi-animated loading bar for the EZVi skins at whatever speed (preferably a little fast)...Considering everything, you don't actually NEED to add this sort of thing in (since I just realized that if I made a mouseover box ontop of the loading bar, I could just make a two screen thing, one with the loading bar on and one with it off).

I'm pretty exhausted on ideas too since for the most part, I only have played around with the MS2 xml instead of the rest of it so I can't really think of other things that might be needed, but I can definitely do the testing and previews easily enough xD.

 

[Stormwave]

I've added an "Animate" tag to the beta version, this should allow what you want. You basically specifiy an amount of states and then reference that state within the tag. For example





As you can see in the example, the "width" of ImageTile is 20 multiplied by the current animation state. The animation has 10 states, so when it's at the end "width" will be 180 (as 9 will be the maximum). It redraws the frame every time, so it can't animate really fast. In this example the Delay is 200 milliseconds, so the animateVariable value is incremented every 200 milliseconds and the preview is redrawn. This allows for the "clock_colon" animation to work, as well as an animated progress bar, and anything else that needs to be animated.


I've finished the clock_colon stuff completely now, it wraps around the screen and animates properly (so you can finally preview the animation trick for any firmwares that support it).

I'll send you a link to the beta version once I add EZVi support so you can have a look and see what you think.

 

[Buleste]

Sorry to revive an old thread but is there anyway you could add iSmartMM to this wonderful programme? It's very similar to the SCDS2 skins with some name and layout changes.