GUI / Skinning Question

Ok -- So after much convincing of why stripped is better than presto/newopts, FLP got me to switch over. Everything is working fine, however I'm confused on how I would go about skinning the default stripped Flaghud/Droptimer HUD. I also want to know if its possible to change the appearance of my chathud. (ie make it bigger) Thoughts?

http://www.froth.org/tribes.jpg

PLZPLZPLZPLZPLZPLZPLZPLZ release that disc skin

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=278161

:bump:

I'm not sure if there is an easier way to do this but if you wanna make the chat hud longer you can do it this way.
Start a game, open console (~) and type tree();
Double click Sim Manager and then Play Gui.
You will see an object called chatDisplay Hud; right click it and choose edit.
Now you will be in a window that displays a lot of info on the hud. There will be a field called extent; edit the first number in this field to change the length of the hud the second changes the hud height (I don't think editing this one effects the hud because the chat hud is unique due to the fact that you can extend it in game or something.)
Also if that's Andy's config 5 and 8 on the number pad may extend it. I say may cause it looks like you are using the 15k config and I'm not sure they are in there, plus I can't get it to work in his normal config.
Edit: Nevermind that last part I see now you're using stripped

Ok that worked. I got the chathud to extend to where I wanted it. Now, about the stripped flaghud... How do I go about skinning the icons and changing the font?

In order to change the icons you need to unvol the stripped.vol. and replace the files called enemyflag and friendlyflag with whatever you want. Just make sure it's bmp or pbmp. Then revol the files. If you wanna change the text in just the hud I'm not sure how to do that. You can however download new fonts that will change all the tribes text.

Things you'll need:
Visual vt for revoling the files http://hosted.tribalwar.com/conversion/bLiSS/Visual VT.zip
Volumer or Tribes Tools for extracting the .vol
http://hosted.tribalwar.com/conversion/bLiSS/Volumer020b.zip
http://hosted.tribalwar.com/conversion/files/TribesTools.zip
You can get fonts and the tool for making fonts here
http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/project.tribes/
Also as a side not you can change your loading screen by extracting the strippedscreens.vol.

Forgot to mention it in my last post but to get the fonts working you can make a folder named fonts in your base directory and throw them all in there.

Thank you wetall.

Ok I was able to change the icons, however, how should I go about creating the icons so that their backgrounds are transparent to the gray hud?

Also, what font is used next to the flaghud icons in that screenshot I took above? I tried replacing several different fonts in the skins dir but couldnt figure out which font it was that I needed to replace. I even went 1 by 1 in the andrew fonts file reference txt and couldnt figure which one it was...

I believe Photoshop allows you to create images that have a transparent background. As far as that text,like I said before, I'm not real sure. I belive it has something to do with the actual script that is creating and running the hud. This would probably be a good time to ask one of the scripting gods how to make it with custom text cause I suck at scripting. There are several ctf huds that use custom text but I'm not sure how they do it.

Both Icons and backgrounds can be made transparent or translucent without hudbot. Problem is that you are very limited with colors since the palletes are very narrow.

Also.. you are NOT required to use the "colorgui" method to use translucent bitmaps, they can be just in textcontrols just like any other phoenix bitmap. This means that you can add, change or remove bitmaps "on-the-fly", which is not possible with the "colorgui" method.

I wrote a pretty extensive "HOW-TO" a year or two ago on how to do this, and you should be able to find it in this forum..

I cant figure out how to change the text still. Someone help me. Also, why did the new vers of hudbot add the background to the clock back?

cause andrew likes it that way ;)

get the patchergui.exe to change it back to transparent

search for patchergui, link to it somewhere in one of the threads i posted in in this forum