Well I found my old folders full of Uplink skins, and of course none of them work properly with Onlink. So, as I consider myself (somewhat of a) graphics designer, I'll be damned if I don't make one.

Now, the designing and creating of the visuals is of no problem to me. What I don't know, is how to go from a finished design in say Photoshop, and have it apply to Onlink. I'm not even sure where to begin.

It appears that, from looking through the contents of old skins, that each object in the game has a name for example passwordscreen.tif. They also contain a .txt file called theme.txt with some data in which I believe must be the standard default colours for certain parts (The background for example).

Is it as simple as designing each object (The password screen for example) and renaming it, and modifying the .txt file, or is there further 'programming-y' stuff involved?

Edit.

Well so far, i've messed with the .txt file and placed a few of the images into the Onlink folder and loaded them, and it appears to be skinning those few bits. However, it does appear some things are immune (The HUD buttons, for example)

So, Miah or Tycho, if it is possible, how do I get a hold of all the image files/names and that, so I can begin my skin?

Eh. It's not so easy. I'm adding crap all the time, but I should be set up to 0.3.x shortly here. It depends on how long Rickton needs to hack out a decent keymapper concept image.

Admittedly, it's not as easy as I thought it would. He's got an artist's block, I have an artist's block. Together we make a wonderful brick wall of un-inspiration.

That aside, I can give you what we have so far. I haven't debugged custom themes, so let me know anything that you can't take control of a part or anything. I'd love to debug it.

As for the current files... it's a bit messy. Like a hairball. You'll see what I mean. I removed some things (like the records) because of irrelevance. Themes generally don't extend to photos.

*HURRRRRRRRR*

*-KACK*

Awesome, thanks for that.

Whilst I havn't got time yet to go through and check the whole lot, the Software button plus the other HUD selection buttons, plus the World Map for whatever reason arn't skinned with the new image even when I load the theme ingame.

Also, there's a bunch of files included in that zip that begin with ._, and I can't access these. I assume they havn't been done correctly?

If you have any ideas for how you'd like it to look i'm all ears; I'm happy to do an alt skin for you.

If anyone else has anything they'd like to see, just shout.

Yeah, admittedly I need to pick about the theme engine. Something isn't working right on the mac end, and I guess that would extend to the other ends if you're having issues. Lemme know if ANYTHING works. If it does, it's something I can work with.

As for the ._ files, those are mac files. Ignore them, there's nothing relevant there.

Hey, I got all the others done. It's just the keymapper that I can't figure out. And I've had ideas, but none of them have translated well to a 24x24 pixel image...

So far, Userid.tif and passwordscreen.tif ARE skinned when I alter them.

I just took a look at some of the HUD buttons, and the notepad button ingame is a totally different button to the one included in the zip. It still won't skin though.

Looks like as far as the notepad is concerned for 0.1.2, it was mapped to a pc.tif.

Got it yeah.

Well I won't have time to really have a go until this weekend, but I'll jot down my sketches on the train tomorrow.

Once you get some info on how to get those icons that won't skin to do just that, post it here and i'll get on with skinning them aswell (Don't wanna do skins on stuff I can't see ingame)