Hacking Perfecting M3DS Real Skins

[BinarySoup]

hi all,

i've been working on a skin but a few things are bugging my otherwise nice design. anyone have any solutions to the following:

• font colour. adding skin.ini file makes text light grey, deleting makes text black (no matter what colour is specified)

• how to change the brightness and help "?" icons

• start button appears negative (ie blacks shown as white)


also, where can i find other peoples skins? would be good to see what other people are achieving.

thanks, and without trying to sound corny, respect to all that contribute and make this one of the most informative and friendly forums out on the web.

 

[roadbusta]

Other people's skins:

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?dlcategory=20

 

[BinarySoup]

thanks roadbusta. do the G6 skins work on an M3 Real? i guess all the 7 iconed skins are for the M3?

i've also figured out the inverse colours issue – the "start" button is selected (doh!)

 

[cray-]

The help "?" icon is ABOUT_ON/OFF at about 16x16 pixels I think. I changed mine to a pink square so that it was totally transparent which seemed to work, except that when I pressed the area where the "invisible" button is...the about screen does come up but when I go back to the main menu the icon defaults back to the generic "?" icon.

In general I'm finding that all my colors look way too bright and washed out on the ds screen. I use eye1 calibrated monitors so yeah I'm used to things being pretty precise, but this is WAY out of wack.

 

[BinarySoup]

thanks cray.

i did actually manage to figure out the help icon by looking at some other people's skins. i've seen some other issues with that icon where it keeps the on state even though it should be off.

it's clear there are a few bugs/niggles with the M3DSReal's OS/GUI which i really hope the developers can sort out as it's a pretty nice cart on the whole. perhaps someone here could start an edited list/sticky… that we can send to the developers rather than us keep emailing them and wasting their precious time that they should be using to improve stuff/play mariokart.

re monitor:
i notice the DS's colours aren't even accurate to my iBook's LCD screen so imagine they must be way off compared to a calibrated screen. perhaps you could set up a DS profile?

ps anyone know what the thumbs.ds file contain and in what format. i've noticed not all skins have this file but work regardless.

 

[cray-]

thumbs.db file is from certain versions of Windows. It's a database of thumbnails which is usually a hidden file kept in each folder if the user chooses to show that folder in thumbnail view.

Basically it's being copied over erroneously and you can safely delete it.

As far as the monitor/ds profiling issue goes. I've noticed that even though the DESKTOP.BMP is allowed to be in 24bit color as opposed to TOP_DESKTOP.BMP's 8bit color. The DS screen itself obviously isn't able to display 24bit color as quite sever banding can be seen when using gradients that are otherwise smooth on my monitor.

Trying to setup a DS profile would involve a whole bunch of guesswork but might be a way to get you in the ballpark. I'll keep working on it.

I'm also working on a template with pixel perfect locations for all the icons/graphics. This will help since the pink transparent color seems to be ignored on certain icons so the only way to get the same kind of effect is to use the colors from the background. I'll post it when I'm done.

 

[Modulok81]

To which folder on my micro SD card do I have to copy the skins from this site http://gbatemp.net/index.php?dlcategory=20

And how can I Activate them then?