Way to make it look better?

[Burnf]

Playing with it a little bit, I could see changing away from MWS. The interface is a bit abbrassive on the eyes, though. Is there a way / place to get visual themes to make this program look nicer?

[Jorbes]

Playing with it a little bit, I could see changing away from MWS. The interface is a bit abbrassive on the eyes, though. Is there a way / place to get visual themes to make this program look nicer?

It's been a long time plan to have a theme building contest with some hard cash prize money.
But, the program is not ready for the "big" public yet and such a contest would require a large mass of people to know about it. A topic on mtgsalvation would get things going I suppose, just don't want to get flooded with bug reports and feature requests right now.

You can check the files in the /graphics folder to see where you can make some changes.

[pinecones]

i am trying to migrate away from MWS as well (the crashing is unbearable)... but i just can't use OPT with the way the interface is set up by default, so i'm planning on tinkering with the theme this week to get something more comfortable for me.

if i come up with any questions, would you be willing to answer them for me, Jorbes?


also as far as i could find there was no reference to the mana symbols in any of the theme related files (themes.opttheme or the ini's in the main directory). i'm assuming this means there is no easy way for someone working on a skin to do anything but replace the existing files. am i missing something, and if not, would this be something easily changed?

also is it possible to use GIF/JPG instead of PNG files for these images? was there a specific reason for choosing PNG over other formats? there has to be code existing to read at least JPG, because all of my card scans are in that format and they seem to load when i play in solitaire.

anyway... in the mean time i'll just convert everything i have to PNG to get something up and running.

<3

[Jorbes]

Hi

graphics are in the /graphics folder
to change a graphic, the best thing to do is to save your current theme (or use one of the default theme folders) and
copy the graphic file from the /graphics folder to there.

you can edit png's with paint, at least I can in winXP.

the reason for PNG is that it's lightweight, best lossless!! compression, where jpeg makes things blurry unless you use mega-high-res (like with the card scans)
PNG supports transparency, GIF too, but its only 256 colors and we live in 2011 almost, so that's out the window.

PNG is the future, people are just slow in adapting to it or do not have a strong need (mostly why most websites still use gifs for design is because the do not _need_ png)

[Jorbes]

also note that while you can use this "copy graphic to themes folder" method to override the used graphics now, in a future release (talking 1.0+ here) I am going to make theming via xml possible, where you can define the relative path to the image for each object so it's much easier to import/export/share/copy/change themes and it's graphics

[pinecones]

yeah... i just got a batch conversion plugin for GIMP and converted a bunch of gifs to PNG. i was just saying that not everyone may be as savvy... and you seem to already have code in your program to support using gif/jpg.

i'll let you know what i come up with!


edit: (though most people may not be as savvy, i don't know how much it will help the AVERAGE user to make a full skin.)

[pinecones]

i'm using round mana symbols... and when i look at my library, the symbols show up with a pink border. (#FF00FF) what am i missing?


*I'm referring to a "zone list"

[Jorbes]

i'm using round mana symbols... and when i look at my library, the symbols show up with a pink border. (#FF00FF) what am i missing?
*I'm referring to a "zone list"

make sure the graphic has it's transparency set properly.
or you can send me the graphic and I'll check it out, just attach in a post.

[pinecones]

i'll figure it out soon enough and let you know. i probably just didn't set the transparency right.

i've just spent a couple hours trying to go through all the settings i could find for a 2 player game. i haven't started to piece together the UI again, but i've at least figured out the majority of what is changeable.

i think i've read elsewhere on this website that you're going to wait until the program is mostly finished to work on GUI stuff... but if you want i could give you some feedback on the process of manipulating the theme and some things which may be helpful to add or change.

[pinecones]

oh, and i might not get a chance to get back on here until after the holiday, so...

merry christmas! ;oP

[Jorbes]

sure, all feedback is welcome.
i want users to be able to customize the table and all the objects as much as they like.

[pinecones]

what is cardframe.o.png for?

[Jorbes]

what is cardframe.o.png for?

for "other". In case people add custom cards and forget to define the type code (C, E, A, I, S, etc)
Therefor you should never see it, but it doesn't hurt to have this available in case.

[pinecones]

cool