From "The Beginners Guide to Falagard skinning - Part I"
Fortunately CEGUI supports creating a Falagard skin from a custom XML format.
Oh good, he thinks to himself! This will make things quick and easy! Just modify some XML, and you're good to go. That is, afterall, what a good skinning system offers.
As I think learning by doing is the way to go, we'll try to produce something useful with this tutorial - a fully working look'n'feel for a regular button.
Sweet, my own button. I am drooling already ^_^
We'll assume we have a imageset loaded called "MyImages". And inside this imageset we have the image "ButtonBG" defined. This is the image we'll use for our button.
Go get your horse and hold it for a sec. So, in "The Beginners Guide to Falagard skinning - Part I" the assumption is being made that I already know how to use the system for skinning? In the, what I can only assume is the, most basic of basic tutorials, you are skipping out on what is one of the (arguably) most vital components to making a skin? That's not too beginner friendly
Luckily, I grasped the system by looking through all the files before starting to dive into the documentation and tutorials - and am a programmer, so I was able to figure out what and how you might do this part...
To sum up...
Wait, what? What do you mean sum up? How do I use what you just had me make? You are not done yet mister! There is little point in having anybody create something if you don't show them how to use it...which is another vital piece to a beginner's tutorial, I would think?
Alright, as you might guess, I am a little frustrated at the tutorials and documentation found in the wiki. I am having to use your CEGUI 0.4.1 in a project. What I thought should be trivial is turning out to be a bit of a headache because I cannot easily find information that appears to be taken for granted by the vast majority of people that are already neck deep into CEGUI.
My assumption from reading the tutorials/documentation/forums and my own reasoning looking at the scheme/layout/imageset files is that, at the very basics for learning to create a skin, I should be able to modify an existing one.
For instance, let's say I wanted to change every black color listed in the looknfeel to white. There is a basic learning experience through experimentation. it also happens to be very easy. What should happen, from what I gather:
Code: Select all
Find and replace FFFFFFFF with FF000000.
Load up CEGUILayoutEditor 0.4.1.
Make a button.
Give the button some text.
Watch as the text shows up as white instead of black.
Throw a party.
Instead, I watch as...the text shows up as black. In fact, any change I make to the looknfeel seems to matter not. I delete the complete contents of the looknfeel...and it doesn't matter.
That is not what I would expect, but maybe that is completely correct! I don't know because I can't find anything to debunk my own hunch
And what are these dlls for? CEGUIWindowsLook, and others like it. I can assume they are meant to define the behavior of all these widgets, but I don't see any evidence to support my assumption. I also don't see any references to how I should create my own or if, for a basic reskin, I need to create my own.
My current questions then boil down to these: what is the minimum amount necessary to create your own skin? Was modifying the looknfeel supposed to be enough? Was I not seeing any changes because CEGUILayoutEditor is buggy and, somehow, not consulting the looknfeel files properly?
