Hacking Skinners and Skins. Help and Showcasing.

[VenomSymbiote]

Well, seeing as the new firmware update gave us some nice new skin options, as well as the ability to place an image on the top screen, figured a board for help and showing off our skins in one place would be nice. >_> The fact I am in need of a little help also prompted me to make this. I have an idea for a skin. However before I can start I need some sort of screen shot. When you start up the G6 you'll see the options on the bottom screen, with the 6 seperate icons. Could anyone possibly get an exact image 256x192 of this? My reasoning is if I know where exactly on the bottom image the icons are, it'll make creating a wall for the bottom screen a lot easier.

 

[swiitness]

We should get one of the skinners to whip us up a basic tutorial. That way we will definitely end up with a larger skinning community.

 

[xmedia]

Wasn't there a skin previewer for the previous 2.2 FW. Something like that for the new 2.3 would really help things out.

 

[HellShade]

actually, it's not that hard, do it your self

set the desktop image to a checkerboard, with say 16x16 pixel squares, then find the location manually and draw up your own outline

And post it, that'd help the community.

 

[VenomSymbiote]

Does anyone know how to save a bmp with transparent sections like the ones in the default skin? I've been trying for an hour but it's freaking impossible it seems to do the exact things I want with my paint programs, blah.

 

[sdoc96]

I'm having problems with the top_desktop.bmp and it's 8bit bmp specs.
I've tried all sorts of adaptive/master palettes in PS, but the specs of the resulting bmp are slightly different, and hang the G6 after showing the top screen.
(ie. orig header in file is BM6, PS produces BM8 with 256 color and BM4 with 255.)
I've also tried re-exporting the bmp from ACDSee which seems to have closer specs to the orig file, but still hangs the machine.

Is anyone else trying to adapt the palette successfully and if so, what with??

@ VenomSymbiote
I think you have to use the exact same pink color that is used in the samples.

 

[VenomSymbiote]

sdoc, when you try to save the image, what do you set it as? My PS wont let me choose the bitmap option ever. Not sure why, but I do get 8bit and 16 bit options for images in general. It's seems rather wonky but I think I finally did figure out how to save things as either 8 or 24 bit using Photoshop. Try going to Image > Mode > Indexed Color. 8bit channel selected too. At least for me, when I go to save a bitmap with this setting, I get a prompt which only lets me save a bmp as 8bit. For 24bit I gotta go to image > mode > RGB color, then save it as a bmp. Only lets me save it as a 24bit. No idea why there's options for bitmap things in it but seem to never be usable. The fact it took me an hour or more to try and find some sorta workaround didn't help matters... Hopefuly what I said helps you out. I'm gonna try what you suggested, concerning the pink color.

 

[alienhead]

MS Paint FTW!

 

[VenomSymbiote]

I'm having problems with the top_desktop.bmp and it's 8bit bmp specs.
I've tried all sorts of adaptive/master palettes in PS, but the specs of the resulting bmp are slightly different, and hang the G6 after showing the top screen.
(ie. orig header in file is BM6, PS produces BM8 with 256 color and BM4 with 255.)
I've also tried re-exporting the bmp from ACDSee which seems to have closer specs to the orig file, but still hangs the machine.

Is anyone else trying to adapt the palette successfully and if so, what with??

@ VenomSymbiote
I think you have to use the exact same pink color that is used in the samples.

Sdoc, I just ran across this as well. I'm not sure why or what's going on however. I deleted the skin2(this is where the problem was) and it booted normaly in the default skin. I was able to load my other skins, even one that I just decided to test and see if it was working. Skin1 and 3 worked which are just wallpaper switches. Skin4 worked without a hitch too, and it's a bunch of different things. I tried resaving the desktop and top_desktop several times just to see if maybe they were a bit too big. Yet still nothing. I just reformatted my card and am hoping that that fixes it. I copied my skin1 and named it skin2. Since 1 works so should skin2. If it doesn't I don't know what's up. Is it possible for skin2 to be totally screwed up now or something? I guess I'll see in a bit once all my files are done being put back onto the card.


Edit: I have no clue what the heck is going on at all. If I copy all the contents of one of the folders and name it skin2, it works. But when I make something completely new it doesn't... This is driving me nuts, I didn't do anything different than I did with the other ones.

 

[Gouf]

In photoshop, for the top image. get the image to the size you want. Do a 'save for the web' from the file menu. Save as 8bit PNG, then reopen the PNG file and do a 'save as' to BMP format. Worked for me....

 

[sdoc96]

In photoshop, for the top image. get the image to the size you want. Do a 'save for the web' from the file menu. Save as 8bit PNG, then reopen the PNG file and do a 'save as' to BMP format. Worked for me....

Unfortunately, this still doesn't work for me. Thanks anyway.

MS Paint FTW!

Amazingly, this does work for me! The color adaptation is not as good as PS, but it doesn't look too bad.
To summarize, image created/saved as jpg from PS, then open the jpg in MS paint and save as 256 color bitmap.
No more hanging!

 

[juggernaut911]

BMP doesnt support transparency

 

[sdoc96]

BMP doesnt support transparency

Correct, however, the skin front end does identify certain color(s) as a designated transparency.
You can see this when you edit the skin buttons.

@ VenomSymbiote
I'm having trouble getting it working too. It appears the pink color used for transparency is RGB 255,0,255, but I've tried it in PS and MS Paint to no avail as yet. Will keep experimenting.

EDIT - it appears Bergunzo has it sussed as far as the transparency goes, looking at his XP V4 skin buttons.
Maybe he can clue us in if he reads this.

 

[VenomSymbiote]

Yeah, using that pink color does indeed cause a transparent effect. I used it on my Brawl skin in the skins topic, worked just fine. Next time I try to fiddle with backgrounds, I'll use MS Paint and see if it's finicky.


Edit: Kay, went and tried MS Paint for the backgrounds that were giving me hell yesterday. Worked! As stated, it doesn't look quite as good as if you used a different program, but it works without causing the system to crash. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[sdoc96]

Hmm - transparency is working ok for me now - don't know what was going wrong before, but it is working fine.

What is really strange is, when I gave up previously (to have a few beers), the pink area was showing up grey.
After the beer/reboot, the very same icon is now showing the transparent area correctly.

Oh well, at least it's working.

 

[HellShade]

probably the beer.

 

[Bergunzo]

I use paint for Xp skins and for transprency I use purple/pink color. I haven't any problem; if you want the exact color download my skin and take the color from my icons

 

[4saken]

Revival time!

Something I just put together an hour or so ago. The one that's called "doesnt work..etc.zip" doesn't really work since the G6 overlaps the menu icons rather than switching them (see for yourself if you use it

)

So I replaced them with another set of icons so the same thing doesn't happen again. Hopefully you will enjoy.

Photos are in both the download links

Please don't diss my shitty camera

works one
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=997

doesn't work one
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=998

 

[swiitness]

I've created my icon for "My Card", now how do I make the icon for it that shows its been clicked if you know what I mean? How do I make the icon that is sorta greyed out like with the other icons called XXX_OFF.bmp

 

[g6team]

I've created my icon for "My Card", now how do I make the icon for it that shows its been clicked if you know what I mean? How do I make the icon that is sorta greyed out like with the other icons called XXX_OFF.bmp

To create the grey out effect simply turn the Transparency down when making the .OFF.bmp

Hope that'll help.