Hacking Help with Skinning

[Darminator]

hi hi all.
Ive made a bunch of skins. Some work, some dont. Some work till I add icons, then stop working - yet the icons work by themselves in a different folder. I believe it has to do with the top_desktop picture - I have everything else in a skin working but that, and 9 times out of 10 now, that top picture will NOT work for me. I follow all the same steps, reducing color palette to 256 colors.. looking at image information, and comparing one that works with one that doesnt, there is no difference... I can't figure it out.

Anyone able to help me please? Otherwise I feel I am just wasting my time making anything new, when I cant get most of them working. Thanks.

edit: It's always the same problem too - as soon as I add the top picture to an otherwise working skin, it locks up on me when I try to load it. I see the top picture, but the bottom is full of colored smush. If that helps.

 

[g6team]

Did you refer to the manual for the spec? This may help

http://handheldsources.com/M3DS/Download_M3DSR.html

 

[Darminator]

yes, and looked through it again just then. . didnt see anything there I havent seen before, and nothing that helps me.

 

[SpiffyRob]

I was having similar problems myself, did you make sure that the top image is an 8-bit bmp instead of a 24-bit?

 

[Darminator]

yes, i have triple checked each of these skins top pictures, even remade them a couple of times. Nothing I can do helps, I dont get it.

 

[lilaznkilla]

You'll need 8-bit bmp. Although you triple checked, I can't see the problem. Try editting a top_desktop.bmp from a working skin so that it should work when you done with your skin.

 

[Darminator]

yep, I dropped it to 8 bit, then when that didnt work, i dropped it back to 256 colours and tried it again, it made no difference. I tend to start with a working skin all the time, because I know it works, and I can just hit save.. makes it easier.

I make the desktop pics, and try them. They work. So I spend hours making icons, and add them to the folder, now the skin doesnt work. So I add all the icons I just made to a different working skin. They work fine. But now the original top_desktop pic I made, that used to work, now doesnt.
I have tried, at this point, opening up the top_desktop pic again and re-saving it, tried making it and saving it from scratch, over again and again, saving it to all different depths.

Not changing the depth gave me a blurry top, and lines on the bottom.
decreasing it to 64k / 8b gave me a blurry top, but the bottom worked.
32k / 8bit, blurry top, working bottom.
256 colours gives me working top, lines on the bottom.

Whatever skins I have made that worked, have 256 colours.

 

[Darminator]

Has anyone else had this problem? Maybe it's just my card, somehow.

 

[ridgecity]

I been through that, and I guess it means you've reached the limit of memory made available for the skin by the card, I have make tons of fixes to each skin to make it able to load, when it would load to the top screen and white lower screen or viceversa.

for example:

this won't be able to load.

this probably will. but even then maybe not.

after I finish making a skin, I take about an hour experimenting since most don't work.

another example would be something I did:

this one had tons of problems.

this one didn't.

hope you get the idea. of course, you have to remember that after the wallpapers load, there still has to be room for the icons to load...

 

[lilaznkilla]

Has anyone else had this problem? Maybe it's just my card, somehow.

Why don't put up a copy for us to test it out, I'm not very busy I could try to get the skin working. I've made 2 so far and they seem to work fine.

 

[ridgecity]

Has anyone else had this problem? Maybe it's just my card, somehow.

Why don't put up a copy for us to test it out, I'm not very busy I could try to get the skin working. I've made 2 so far and they seem to work fine.

and the luminous arc skin is AAA work. you've raised the bar...