Musings of a Game Developer
Latest Post
Vendetta Online Onyx Skin
Following on from my previous post about Vendetta Online, I’ve spent a large portion of my day working on a new skin for Vendetta Online. I’ve always found the default skin fairly mediocre. While it’s nice, it doesn’t scale overly well to my 1080p monitor. Now, in the modern day, it’s not unusual to have a high-resolution monitor, and to have the radar sprites aliased and upscaled to fit the screen was my equivalent of scraping nails down a blackboard.
So, instead of bitching about it, I thought I would ’simply’ fix it. Now, I leafed through a couple of other people’s skins, browed through the empty ‘how to make a skin’ wiki page and thought; “It’s not going to be easy, but I’ll give it a try.”. Now, if you’ve ever had any experience re-skinning an application before, you’ll know that it’s never as easy as you think it should be. Vendetta Online is, unfortunately, no exception.
I thought it would have been nice if the skins consisted of an XML file that would allow you to set the text colors and provide solid borders without the need for producing graphics, but I can also see how this is low on the priority scales for the developers. Anyway, with over 100 files to produce my head is already turning around ideas of how to produce a piece of software to make the whole process easier, but for now, here are some screenshots of the skin that I have been working on.
(Click images to enlarge)
As you can see, there are a few bits that need some extra work. Most importantly, the HUD elements are still plagued by an aliasing problem that was the main reason that I wanted to write this skin. However, this time, it’s not the radar, but the central HUD elements. Anyway – I’ll find a good compromise, get it all packaged up, and hopefully release it out to the community at some point soon.
Recent Posts
Vendetta Online Introduction
I’ve been playing Vendetta Online for a couple of months now in the little spare time I have, and I wanted to put a little bit of background onto my blog before launching into some screenshots of the skin that I’m working on for this game.
Recent Comments
Anya: Thanks so much for this. I was battling with it for a while last night and wonderimg why it couldn't find the file in StorageContainer.TitleLocation. All I'd missed was the "copy if newer" option.
LongBarrel338: You're a Legend !!
Timothy Kellar: Great write up. The iPhone is truly awesome and I don't like being without it. This time last year I had jumped in a pool with my iPhone and it was dead. I had to wait 10 days before I was able to get...
iPhone Coding – Sending In Application Email: [...] iPhone Code Snippets – Launching Safari and Other Apps [...]
John Wordsworth: Many thanks Wazoo - I'll update this article to point to the MSDN entry when I've ironed out the last few bugs from the blog design! I'm hoping to start on some articles based on things that I learnt from...
Kaffeevollautomaten: Thank you for your help!
wazoo: Thanks for this code..it did help me in XNA GS3.1, but not in 4.0 CTP. Did some googling and came across this entry in the MSDN. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb199094(v=XNAGameStudio.40).aspx hth!
Aidin: Hi, thanks, it helped me!
Paul: Thanks, worked like a charm!
Wipeless: Thanks, works for what I need!
drozzy: Why can't I put it into Content folder? I put it in there and selected "Copy if newer" and can load it fine with "Game.Content.RootDirectory" + "levels/level1.txt" path?
fade3e@live.com: nvm, im stupid i got it to work, thamks ,much
fade3e@live.com: i am having trouble reproducing this on the zune it keeps hanging at StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(CustomerDir); the error is An unhandled exception of type 'System.IO.IOException' occurred...
Michael: Thanks a lot! Great, helpful, clear instructions!
mat redvers: Thanks for the info for network3 mms settings. i couldnt find the .cab installer on xda anywhere? this worked perfectly