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This is an in-depth guide to making skins for Visual Boy Advance.
You need several programs to make skins including the emulator, a region creator (both of which can be found here), Microsoft Paint (installed on any windows computer), and Notepad (or similar non advanced text editor, also on any windows computer).
The first skin we are going to make is a red circle as a skin. Like below.
It is also important to know exactly where your mouse is. The numbers below tell you How many pixels across, How many pixels down (or x axis, y axis), always read in that order.
To start open Microsoft Paint. Click on Image>Attributes and change the width to 381 pixels and width to 381 pixels.
Now click on the oval tool and the shade only tool.
Left click on the color red (bottom row 3rd along).
When your cursor reads 0,0 left click and drag until it says at the bottom 381x381.
You have now drawn your skin.
Now for the screen area. We want the screen area to be as close to the middle as possible so we have to measure where we want it. The screen is always a derivative of of 240x160 to avoid distortion. Now to get the screen area measurements we use this formula (Total skin width [x axis] or height [y axis] - screen width [240] or height [160]) divided by 2 or for our picture (381 - 240)/2 and (381 - 160)/2 and the answer will be 72 pixels across and 112 pixels down. If you don't want it in the center then just decide where the top left corner of the screen should be and jot down the measurements.
So now we know where the screen should be now we draw it. Go to the co-ordinate 71,111 and draw a black (shade only) square until it reads 239x159
We now want to make the white background go away when we are playing so we need to create a color for the region creator to remove. We need to create a color that isn't already use in the picture and it needs to be memorable like 255 0 255. To create that color we double click on one of the existing colors. in the dialog box that appears click on Define Custom Colors. Now change the red blue and green amounts to your color (I will use 255 red 0 green 255 blue).
Now click on Add to custom colors, click on the color and click OK. Now use the fill pot to color the area that you want to region out.
Now save that picture (picture has to be a bmp file) in the same folder as the region creator program eg. C:/My Documents/Region/Release. You now browse for the picture of the skin, and you set the colour for the transparent area and click ok.
Now you have done the region file.
Now open up Notepad and type
[skin]
image= name of picture.bmp
region= name of region file.rgn
draw= x axis, y axis, screen width, screen height
Mine would be
[skin]
image=circle.bmp
region=circle.rgn
draw=71,111,240,160
(make sure that you don't have a space in between the "=" sign and the path, or it will not work)
Now save that in the same folder as the bmp file and the rgn file. But you must save the file as a ini file eg circle.ini or it will not work.
Congratulations you have created your own skin. to apply the skin click on options>Video>Render Method>Select Skin and in the dialog box find the ini file and click ok and you have applied the skin. To access the menu just right click anywhere on the skin.
BUTTONS:
Here is a guide on how to put buttons in your skin.
1. Get the picture you want as a button, this can be a circle or a square or anything you want.
2. With the picture if it isn't rectangular you will have to put a region with it (look above for how to make a region, but now you can use the gui region creator, this program is self explanatory, and it can be found on the vba downloads site.)
3. Now you need to make the ini file differently, like this:
[skin]
image=button1.bmp
region=button1.rgn
draw=x,y,screenwidth,screen
height
buttons=number of
buttons
[button-button number(starting at 0)]
normal=buttonnormal.bmp
down=buttondown.bmp
over=buttonover.bmp
id=what the button does (look below for list)
rect=how far right to top left corner of button,how
far down,buttonwidth,button
height
region=buttonregion.rgn
(optional)
Key:
Green - Values
Blue - Commands without buttons
Red - Commands required with buttons
List of commands:
A - A button
B - B button
SEL - SELECT button
START - START button
R - right
L - left
U - up
D - down
BR - RIGHT button (shoulder)
BL - LEFT button (shoulder)
SPEED - speed up button (emulator)
CAPTURE - screen capture (emulator)
GS - GS/AR button (cheating)
UR - up and right combination
UL - up and left combination
DR - down and right combination
DL - down and left combination
Plus anything out of Tools>Customize can be used.
4. Then put all files into a folder and apply the skin like normal.
ps At the current moment you cant change the shape of your buttons when you hover/press, hopefully that function will be updated in the next version of VBA.
Walkthrough By Nicholas Stewart aka frickendevil
Thanx to kcar18 for a little fix up here, sorry if anyone was having some problems with the skins :P.
Links:
Tutorial