Skinner query..

[Forevever]

If a skinner is cheating, and in my eyes it is, how about those programs that write "region.txt".

Do you think thats cheating? I kinda think it is... but at the same time I've been all over the internet, reading up on it as much as possible, and I still can't figure out all the numbers in the region.txt.

If you think its cheating and are willing to teach me how to do it, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise my next skin is going to be done with a region generator.

[Mr Jones]

I don't think thats cheating, I don't even consider using a skinner to cut your image up cheating, your using all the tools at your disposal to make your task as painless as possiable.

Would you paint the walls with a toothbrush?, no you'd go get the biggest brush you could find, in the end the effect would be the same, you just used a tool for the job like any other job.

A skinner / region generator is just another tool that you can use in helping you create a skin, it's no differnt than saying "oh well I have this great template file that I use in paintshop to help line my bitmaps up", that's just a tool, or is that cheating that you have something that helps you?

Use all the tools at your disposal :)

[ampburner]

cheating? What are you talking 'bout?
using skinner.exe isn't cheating dude! neither is using a region generator...! The skin is what counts...the end result. using tools is just an intelligent way of making skins. Skinning is not a game with set rules that can be broken or obeyed...I think you misunderstood us. The reason we hate skinner.exe skins is that the people who use it to "make" skins do not put any effort into developing it, so...

I don't have a clue what you mean by 'cheating'

P.S. I hear Skinmaster has a great region.txt generation feature.

[Edited by ampburner on 07-21-2001 at 11:45 AM]

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by ampburner


P.S. I hear Skinmaster has a great region.txt generation feature.


by the way has anyone ever miss typed that and put .com on the end of it instead of .co.uk :D

[Edited by Mr Jones on 07-21-2001 at 11:52 AM]

[ampburner]

Hey MJ...why are you miquoting me? I mean the original post is right above yours...everybody will see that I obviously said skinmaster...not Mikroamp.

[note to self]
Do not operate a computer when drunk... :o ( ;) )
[/note to self]

[Mr Jones]

What you talking about :D

[Lucid DM]

Oh dear. Post changing at its worst http://www.mear.fsnet.co.uk/grinblue.gif.

[Forevever]

I apologize for my choice of words (cheat). I agree that skinners are not necessarily cheaters. My choice was based on the cheaters (people) who use Skinner.exe without any real effort.

But thanks for clearing that up for me. and here's a preview (so totally incomplete, but in the works..)

http://members.aol.com/forevever/noname.bmp
Outer white areas are transparent.

[Lucid DM]

Nietzch.

Um. I mean.

Nice http://www.mear.fsnet.co.uk/grinblue.gif.

[garetjax]

Thinking of something sophisticated and intelligent to say...coming up with:

Very Nice indeed.

LMAO

[Doggy Dog]

Wow, veeeery nice, personally I don't know how to write regions, so I use a program.

[skinme!]

it's very easy really. I do use a crappy region gen. because i'm lazy and lifes too short, apparently, although whoever said that clearly never thought about living to 200. can u imagine? yeah well.

[Forevever]

Personally, I like to do things the hard way. Makes me feel more like I accomplished something. However, I do like this region writing program I have (don't as me which one, I dont' konw offhand) its real easy to use. And since I could not find any instructions that made sense to me after the first 5 lines on how to write it myself, I'm stuck cheating :P j/p

[Duk]

Very good then. Might I recommend for your next skin to use nothing but MSPaint and Notepad. Oh, I suppose you may use a zipping utility as well. That's it tho. And NO cheating. ;)

[Mr. Bojanglez]

writing the region.txt is the easiest thing i do on a skin...

This is how I learned it..:

I unzipped someone's skin who used transparency, opened ther egion.txt files and compared the region.txt file to the transparent part of the skina nd boom I learner in 5 minutes and wrote my first one...

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by Duk
Oh, I suppose you may use a zipping utility as well. That's it tho. And NO cheating. ;)


Yeah but only something like PKZIP, or PKZIP25, if you can find the DOS prompt that is, by the way, did you know you get a better zip compression using PKZI25 than you do with WINZIP?, see it pays to still know your way around the DOS prompt :)

[garetjax]

does better than both I think.

[Nini]

Wow! your skin is very nice - love the colors :D
Forevever, did you every try the region.txt in the base skin? I learnt how to do it with that tutorial... :D
I personally don't like those region tools very much, duno why, the image with that you make your transparencies is just so SMALL! ;) so I prefer PSP, a sheet of paper and notepad :D

[Forevever]

Maybe I'm too fried but when I tried to learn to do the region.txt, I managed to get rid of the outside edge and thats it. I couldn't do anything fancy.

You's can all pick on me if you want, but I've been counting pixels since my first day skinning. I've never used any skinners. I have always used PSP (v.3.0 through v.7.0). A friend of mine recently hooked me up with Microangelo, and my only text editor for anything I ever write is "notepad". (I wrote all of my web pages (http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/Forevever/index.html) in notepad as well).

I have 2 skins that are, in my eyes, picture amps - Chaotric (http://www.winamp.com/components/detail.jhtml?componentId=65080), which was a picture that my man did for me (with tons of plugins). It lost a lot in the conversion. And an earlier skin Forever 2 (http://www.winamp.com/components/detail.jhtml?componentId=65078), which is actually a web set (buttons, backgrounds, etc) created by http://www.fullmoongraphics.com, that I pieced together.

And if you download you will see, they are completely updated except no cursors.. although cursors are in the works. I don't slack off and the only real problem I've found in skinning is the freakin minimize button on the Playlist(wsmode) that makes the close button move when pressed. But that happens on the original winamp base skin as well so I assume there's a glitch there.

I think this is going back to my "Standards" post. How can you be proud of something if you didn't put effort into it? Granted, skinner.exe is not cheating if you use it along with your brain, but if you're slapping a picture on there and clicking "submit", I don't know how you can be proud...

ok I've gone off on a tangent, I'm gonna shut up now :)

[Nini]

yes counting pixels...don't even tell me of that :D

<note>'ve been sitting on Tori gemmed till 2am last night< :eek:</note>

I like your forever 2 skin, but how did you manage *881KB* ? Fortunately I have DSL.;)

[Forevever]

Originally posted by Nini
how did you manage *881KB* ?

I hadn't compressed the zip file. My winzip was set to no compression. I fixed it (60kbs now I think) and added cursors.

Forever 2 (http://www.winamp.com/components/detail.jhtml?componentId=72232)

[Duk]

::thump thump::

[flatmatt]

I wrote the region.txt for Terminus, but all I had to cut out were straight lines. On Español I'm using Skinmaster.

[zkreso]

Writing your own region.txt's is the best way to go... once you learn it you won't need any programs at all (except PS/PSP and notepad)

As for the compression, WinACE rules!