Question to Skin Developers

[idkpmiller]

1. Where should I set the background image to load from?

a. The Skin root directory
b. The _CoreImages directory off the Skin root?
c. No best practise established

2. How should I deal with MoreUp and Moredown images as these seem to be hard to position and seen to change on the three skins I have tried, and I presume I should use the ones in _CoreImages?

Thanks

[Fatman_do]

1. Where should I set the background image to load from?

a. The Skin root directory
b. The _CoreImages directory off the Skin root?
c. No best practise established

The new method used by all of sub's skins use this.

Code:

<CompositeImage name="Background" size="720,480">
      <DrawCompositeImage name="ScreenBackground" loc="0,0" size="720,480" parameters="@ScreenName=GameZone"/>
</CompositeImage>

This pulls that info in from the baseskin.xml file. It also pulls screen name font, location, and size from the baseskin.xml file.

Other than that, most skins use different locations for the background image, but skin root used to be the "standard" and is what most older skins expect.

2. How should I deal with MoreUp and Moredown images as these seem to be hard to position and seen to change on the three skins I have tried, and I presume I should use the ones in _CoreImages?
Thanks

There are no arrow images in the _CoreImages distribution of blue. I would recommend for now to copy whatever arrow style you wish to use into your own plugin's skin folder and refer to them there. You could drop in those arrow to _CoreImages I suppose, but that may lead to confusion as to what images are there by default.

I also recomend using "SelectedButtonImage" and "NormalButtonImage" for menu buttons so they can be referenced from the baseskin.xml file. (GameZone uses "UnselectedButtonImage" instead of "NormalButtonImage")

[idkpmiller]

Thanks for the comprenhensive answers I will get back onto the skinning cleanup later this week.

Thanks

[MixMan]

As you might have seen, I have re-worked the Advisor skin to Basic skin.
The Basic skin is more compatible with Blue skins _CoreImages naming.
For MoreUp/Down I have used Community skins naming More_Up.png and More_Down.png. I also Title_Bar.png as the TopBar.
I use _CoreImages\background.jpg as background image.
The plugin skins in Basic skin are almost compatible with Blue skin naming.

I also made some Themes for the Blue skin. You could test your plugins with them and the original Blue theme that comes with GBPBR.
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Skin/Blue

[idkpmiller]

Thanks Mixman will test later this week

Cheers