BlackCats101's skin-it'll be alright on the night...;)

flea · Post by **flea** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:42 pm

I hear u BlackCats!!!

Me, as a computer-dummy, dont even try it

Good luck though...

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:58 pm

Essentially once you get the hang of it it is fairly straightforward. The real difficulty is matching colours and themes as you have seen on mine. they never look how you imagine/want them to be. On top of that you have to match text colours to the background, and spend hours in paint shop pro messing around with sizing, quality etc. Then the EHM software crashes and you have to spend half an hour reversing all the work you have spent painstakingly putting together to find out the cause of the problem...then you burst into depressed tears of rage...and end up feeling like this guy here, in a google video i found a link to. This is supposed ly a frustrated FM player (although I doubt the translation!) WARNING CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE...but it did make me feel slightly less frustrated...
link

Post by **Minstrel** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:30 am

And you begin to see why I rant and rave so much in my guides... and add the warnings about my not being responsible for skinners going blind or crazy

My change to the main text color for Minstrel Metal Etched I think I tried easily 35 shades; at two points I designed for a while but each time eventually decided I again had to adjust the color again. It's the freakin tactics screen that will really give you the

as main color text goes. And as I've said in the guide I have no idea why some of the settings get colored over so that you have to make them almost black for them to show up without being extremely pale/washed out looking.

HINT: keep your last four color changes. When you get one close leave it in the .col with a # in front of it, it saves you time if you then say "I should have gone with that gold I had three changes ago

" You can write yourself notes too, mine often had lines like:

#23 Gold: 42 246 185 too dark, problems on tactics screen

For actual graphic elements work on changes for one element at a time so you know when you get problems where to look. You can then copy that folder somewhere else, bring back in a copy of the default and start copying back in your pieces one at a time, and starting up the game to test it. It's all about having a process and working slowly to not trip over yourself. Hang in there and take the difficulties as lessons learned

The process itself is pretty straightforward once you know what is where/named what etc it's getting the look together via all those steps and testing is the trick. It's simple in essence but far from 'easy'. But; as you can tell just from when you started to now; it works itself out

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:01 pm

Minty, I have had bizarre problems where the edited background data would not show in the game. For example, I had selected a new grey backgound and appropriately resized it and saved it as a PNG file. I saved them as 'startup' and 'default', but in the game the background was just a blank black screen

. This hasn't happened with all of them, but it does with some backgrounds i have tried.
Also, with a new bright white background I have tried, I changed the default text colour to black. However, on the main menu, the text was white and unreadable, yet the main rosters screen had the proper black text???

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:34 pm

its ok i kinda sorted it.

I don't expect to be releasing anything(you'll be gutted to know

). TBH it was/is too hard for me. Nothing turns out how you want it. You want to be able to make complex and beautiful background patterns but you can't because it will interfere with the text. This limits you to having a universal colour for the skin. Black is too depressing, grey and blue we have plenty of already and other colours are too blinding/don't look right in an ice hockey game...

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:01 pm

*sighs*
An ESPN Sportscenter theme...

Post by **inSTAALed** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:16 pm

Since when is sportscenter Blue?

Background looks wonderful though

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:40 pm

inSTAALed wrote:Since when is sportscenter Blue?

Moan, moan, moan....

Post by **Minstrel** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:42 pm

Welcome to my world

Actually I've never had a problem with backgrounds; the only thing I can think of is that there are two types of .png files usually refferred to as PNG-8 and PNG-24 and EHM needs the higher quality 24 setting so that may be it? As far as I know the startup screen text is always white no matter what but it is the only screen with it's own background so you could overlay a darker area on the background to compensate if you wanted the rest of the screen to be white...

meter · Post by **meter** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:11 pm

BlackCats101 , looks great! Dont give up...The screenie with the WHL standings looked awesome. Kinda reminded me of the Turnstyle skin for FM.

Keep it up! and finish it this before the weekend so we can enjoy it .

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:34 pm

cheers meter...and welcome to TBL!

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 3:12 pm

A new work-new titleplate, bubble effect sidebar and dark red background.

Post by **inSTAALed** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:35 pm

Bubbles look awkward, titlebar looks weird, bottom left thing that says ESPN looks reaaaaaallly weird.

Love the background and the sportscenter thing on the left, as well as the thing around the title bar.

Keep it up

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:18 pm

inSTAALed wrote:Bubbles look awkward, titlebar looks weird, bottom left thing that says ESPN looks reaaaaaallly weird.

Love the background and the sportscenter thing on the left, as well as the thing around the title bar.

Keep it up

It's alright, just end on a positive

...
Yeah I know it looks a bit

together but hey....life's a b*t*h

I'll sort it out when i have the time and patience.

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:40 pm

Right, screw the ESPN theme. I can't be bothered messinng around with an impossible array of different pastel shades and differeing opinions..

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:01 pm

New version, minus the bubbles, and with new red sidebar and titlebar

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:29 pm

I like both the blue and the orange/red but I'm not sure whether they should go together in one skin. Maybe you could do a blue version and a seperate orange/red version.

Keep perservering - you're improving

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 6:03 pm

archibalduk wrote:I like both the blue and the orange/red but I'm not sure whether they should go together in one skin. Maybe you could do a blue version and a seperate orange/red version.

Keep perservering - you're improving

Ok, archi. Cheers to Minstrel as well for the encouragement via PM advice

I will work on the orange/red one first. Which was the favoured background-the unusual orange shape one?
I think work on the buttons/links as well as the backgrounds will also add some coherency to the projects.

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 6:40 pm

Only thing I am worried about is that the two colours are too heavy together...:
Perhaps orange sidebars and titlepanels with red trim?

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:40 pm

I need to make the ESPN logo more prominent-pehaps have some boxes on the titlebar with it on...

Post by **archibalduk** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:08 pm

Keep the background and orange sidebar - they both look great

I'd drop the whole ESPN theme to be honest. I think the red Sportsnight logo stands out like a sore thumb. Also, I'm not sure about the titlebar area - maybe some other design would look good there?

BlackCats101 · Post by **BlackCats101** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:11 pm

archibalduk wrote: I'd drop the whole ESPN theme to be honest. I think the red Sportsnight logo stands out like a sore thumb. Also, I'm not sure about the titlebar area - maybe some other design would look good there?

agreed on both fronts. I'll sort the titlebar out at some point (just plain black?) as I have the Canadiens challenge to worry about tonight and late night ebaying to do...

Post by **Alessandro** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 5:24 pm

Anything new here?

Post by **Calv** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 5:41 pm

kidhander wrote:Anything new here?

Blackcats101 has been away for the week, think he'll be back in the next few days

Systemfel · Post by **Systemfel** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 3:38 pm

Back yet, BlackCats?

Well, back to work then!

I wanna try a new skin.