UI Skin tutorial
This will be a real basic overview, and would invite others to add your own thoughts and ideas to the this thread, perhaps we can compile enough info that one of the the fan portal sites will put it up as a permanent resource.
the quick and dirty basics
1) copy a skin from the skins directory you want to base your skin off of into a new directory in your skins folder
(folder name will be your skin name)
2) modify grfx_game.tga/grfx_gear.tga/grfx_gui.tga/wnd.ini to make your mod
3) in game goto Options>>Ui change your skin in the drop down box, relog
(exiting out completely is required to test changes to your skin once they are loaded into memory)
4)...
5) profit
Files to mod
grfx_game.tga :
this file contains the main UI elements such as the compass over lay, map most icons, and display windows.
grfx_gear.tga :
this contains the equipped gear and weapons windows that are displayed when "G" is pressed
grfx_gui.tga:
this file contains a wide range of gui elements, such as window borders, backgrounds, different status bars, and the on screen menu.
wnd.ini:
This file contains a great deal of information about window positions, and and object placement, I would advise only modifying the following, until you have a greater understanding of the way things are layed out in the game.
the following fields are straight forward enough to change.
the colors are in hex format, I would suggest googling hex colors for more info
[Vitals]
FONT_COLOR=0x476CA6
[Colors]
Listbox_Highlight=0xC0476CA6
Menu_Highlight=0xA0476CA6
Window_Headers=0x80476CA6
Action_Border=0xff374C86
*.wwm:
these files contain more advanced about associating ui elements to certain themes, information not covered in this tutorial. if you leave your file names the same as the rest of the themes these files should not have to be modded. Unless you plan to do more advanced changes.
Tools Needed
the files you want to work with are in your fallen earth "skins" directory. these files are TGA files that make use of alpha layers, you should find a graphics editor that supports these type of files, I personally suggest the following
"paint.net" (http://www.getpaint.net/) this is a free, but very limited graphics editor, and one I find myself doing most of my work in.
Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) GNU photoshop knock off, also free, fairly powerful, and useful for more complex changes
and finally photoshop, any photoshop after 7 no longer supports transparent tga, the work around this is to open the tga files in paint.net, save as png, open in photo shop, save as png, and convert back to tga. in paint.net
Tue May 11, 2010 1:42 pm