
A COMPREHENSIVE SKINS GUIDE
==============================================================================

  First of all, check out the allready made skins at the PM123
  Skin Archive: http://www.teamos2.sci.fi/pm123/skins

  Obviously you are very excited about PM123 skin support (well, you
  can change pretty much anything). You're probably skipping this
  part as you're very anxious to start drawing those bitmaps. There's
  nothing wrong in that, but these instructions should be followed or
  you might end up with lots of wasted work.

  Step 1. Planning your skin

    Yes. What kind of skin do you want? Select a theme maybe. Or
    at least a background bitmap to base everything on. If you think
    you know what your skin will look like, skip on to the next part.

  Step 2. Creating the skin

    First you should copy 'default.skn' to 'yourskin.skn' (or whatever
    your skin will be called). Everything you need to create the skin
    is explained in default.skn file.

    Try drawing a background bitmap and replacing it. It's best to
    grab an example skin from PM123 Skin Archive and see how it's
    done.

    Notes:

        - If you don't replace a bitmap, the default will be used.
        - NO TRANSPARENCY IN ANY BITMAP, including transparent GIFs.
        - For best looking results on 256-color systems, use PMView
          to reduce color depth (even 16-color adaptive looks cool on
          most bitmaps).

 Step 3. Distributing your skins

    Your skin pack should have a structure like this:

        myskin.skn
        myskin/bkground.bmp
        ...
        myskin/whatever.bmp

    Remember that everyone doesn't have HPFS! (though everyone
    should have!)

 Skin support isn't near perfect at all, and there are some features
 missing such as changing the placement of the bitmaps and adapting
 to different size bitmaps. But those will be in the next beta...

 Most of all, have lots of fun!

- Taneli Lepp <rosmo@kalja.com>
