I'm so annoyed....need help please!!!

[Thayilis]

I'm having a serious issue lately and I was wondering if anyone else was having a similar issue. It seems that with certain skins if I edit the skindefinition file even in the slightest bit, the game stops recognizing it. :( I haven't changed the name of the skindefinition file or altered the name of the Skin in the skindef. I've tried everything I can think of to try and get the skin to show up and short of re-downloading it without any changes to it, nothing works. :mad:

Any help with this issue would be GREATLY appreciated. lol I'm trying to update a skin for public use and alter someone else skin for my own usage. This is very frustrating and I am hoping the fix to this is just something simple that I am completely over-looking. :o

Thanks in advance!

~~Thay

[ZhuHanuku]

If you have any errors in the xml code, the game won't recognize the interface. Have you double checked your code?

This website has an xml inspector that should help you find any errors.
http://www.w3schools.com/Dom/dom_validate.asp

[Thayilis]

Hrm, that seemed to work....it showed me an error on a portion of the skindefinition file that I had not altered though. *scratches head* Thanks for the help, that might help me figure out other issues. :)

~~Thay

[Thayilis]

Okay, wow! That website is helping a lot more than I thought it would. lol One quick question though, are we currently able to move the text underneath the mini map? I wanted to move the text and the location numbers from the bottom to the top and didn't want to start messing with it if it wasn't possible. :D

Thanks in advance!

~~Thay

EDIT: Also, I thought someone had mentioned on here already about removing the little bag icons from the actual inventory boxes? Can we do that? because I would love to still have the outlines of the inventory boxes but no little border tag with the picture of the bag. lol One last thing, what tga file is this? I couldn't find it in the big list. lol :D

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc291/JohnandRoo/whatisthis.png

Thanks again!

~~Thay

[ZhuHanuku]

I'm glad the xml inspector is helping. As for your other questions:

Radar label - I haven't skinned the radar so I don't know if you can move the text. ID="AreaText_Label" looks encouraging though.
Inv icons - You can remove the bag icons on the inventory windows by either making them invisible (substitute with a blank image) or making them really small (Width="1" Height="1").
Money background - Look for "money_player_all_background" in the xml file. There are 3 sizes. I'm not sure which tga the vendor window uses.

Hope that helps and good luck!

[daimon]

You should be able to move the minimap text. I must admit I haven't tried it either but most of the tags in minimap section are active at least.

[Thayilis]

Cool, thanks guys! Won't have a whole lot of time today to mess with it but will see what I can do! :)

~~Thay

[Thayilis]

I've got another quick question that might sound stupid. lol :o When trying to move elements, in this case the Mini map frame:

<Element ID="Minimap_Frame" X="-34" Y="-33" Width="237" Height="237" Detach="1"></Element>

To have the item move up, would I increase Y, say to -25? I'm not sure how the grid works when positioning these items. Also, this is the first skin that I have messed with that has had the Detach="1" at the end of the line. Is that needed? Or do I need to use it because the main chunk of this UI has already been using it. Thanks again and I hope I explained my question correctly. lol :rolleyes:

~~Thay

[Wicked Mouse]

Not sure about 'Detach', but the x,y coords go down and to the right, with positive numbers. So negative values are up and to the left.

[Thayilis]

Great thanks a lot Wicked! :) I haven't had a chance to mess with the mini map yet. I have been pretty busy with work and I have been attempting to skin all the other images before I jump into that one. lol

I did have one other question (sorry to seem like a nuisance :o) but I think my brain checked out already because I can not find these tga images in the master list. :(

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc291/JohnandRoo/ScreenShot00002-1.jpg

Any help with this would definitely be appreciated!! :D

~~Thay

EDIT: Yes Wicked Mouse, I am using your vault and barter images again because they are that awesome! :D lol Hope you don't mind.

[Wicked Mouse]

EDIT: Yes Wicked Mouse, I am using your vault and barter images again because they are that awesome! :D lol Hope you don't mind.Ehm, I hope you're planning on crediting that at least =) It's fine you're using my graphic files directly, but then I'd like to be credited for it at least :)

If you use Adobe Creative Suite products, you will most likely get the Bridge program installed with it. It's a document browser that is capable of showing thumbnails of TGA files. I use it to browse the UI pack from Frosty to find the needed graphic files.
If you go through code you should bump into tags/files that might hint you what is to be changed or change particular graphic files and see what's changed in the game (reverse engineering). That might help you finding the stuff you want to change. This way you don't have to ask other people and wait until they might have supplied you with the answer. ;)

EDIT/PS: graphics that show like that (blue-ish with white pattern) means that the ID tags have been identified in the SkinDefinition.xml file, but that the game could not find the corrisponding graphics file that's associated with it at the location indicated in the xml file.

[daimon]

If you use Adobe Creative Suite products, you will most likely get the Bridge program installed with it..

Some great free options for this would be
FastStone IV (http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm) (great image browser)
MysticThumbs (http://mysticcoder.net/mysticthumbs.html)(makes Windows support TGA thumbs)

[Wicked Mouse]

Neat! :)

[Thayilis]

Thanks again guys. And I wouldn't use someone else's work without giving them full credit, Wicked. :D Just the same as stealing someone's car in my opinion. lol :rolleyes: I just really like those images and have to find or create anything that fits so perfectly for the vendor and vault panels. :D For every skin that I create or edit, I will probably always use those images. :)

I've been using Faststone (Daimon hooked me up with that a while ago. lol) and I've already been through Frosty's newest V3B2 Skin Art Pack using FastStone and I wasn't able to find the images that I posted a screen shot of. Otherwise I wouldn't have made a post about it. lol I very impatient when it comes to creating or editing stuff like this and waiting for someone to respond to a forum post drives me nuts. lol I've even resorted to "testing" certain images that I am not sure what they apply to and then trying to find them in the UI. I think I might be able to find the targa files that way, but it could take a while. lol

I honestly can't say how much I appreciate everyone's help with this because I never really understood xml or coding of this nature until a lot of the great people on lotrointerface helped me to understand it. :D

Thanks!!

~~Thay

[ZhuHanuku]

It looks like you're missing a background image. You might want to check base_box_center_silver.

Honestly, it sounds like you need to be more careful with your code. Wicked is right. Check every line in the xml. Is the image name correct? Does the file exist? Is it in the right directory? Start small. Get the code working before you add more.

It sounds like you're on the right track with your testing. That's probably faster than waiting for a forum reply. Unfortunately you need patience either way. ;) As the saying goes, patience is a virtue... (it gives you non-combat power regen).

My trick for finding an image file in the game ui is to replace it with a bright pink tga. It's usually easy to spot. I'll admit that it took me months to find the purpose of the background image on the housing permissions window though.

[Thayilis]

Okay thanks a lot for the info. :D