Khanon

I downloaded the package last night... I have the latest DX (june 2007) installed.

I get a nice series of errors as others have listed here. The second error, after "could not load image" pops up, says that it is, indeed, looking for yuk.tga in the folder where I'm trying to load the skindefinition.xml file from... as an example, it said: Could not find file C:\Documents and Settings\Khanon\MyDocuments\The Lord of the Rings Online\ui\skins\Shae Test\yuk.tga

Then it proceeds to say first that it "failed loading file", then "could not load sprites", then "could not close drawing properly", then exits.

Eedit: I tried Grimholm's sorta-fix. I got the initial "Could not load image" error, then it loaded the skin...but it didn't load the skin properly. Can it not handle the changes that you can now make to positioning the items in the main toolbar from anything but default? I ask, because it's not running the right resolution (1280x1024) and it improperly placed and improperly displays the main toolbar. For a reference, you can see what my toolbar looks like (atm) here.

I'm just now getting into ui skinning, and AncientWolf has been a great inspiration to getitng me going on it, so I've taken the latest Fenir Wood ui and have copied a set of the ui files from the movable toolbar files and am modding it for myself.

D.H1cks

Strange. It should only be looking for yuk.tga in the same folder as the program. So far I cannot replicate the same error.

Grimholm

Argh, but now I receive a "Error Loading default Images"-Message followed by a "Could not find 'Path\thame\yuk.tga'"-message when I try to open a skin

P.S.: Copying a random "yuk.tga" into the theme-folder helps a bit.

D.H1cks

Its good to hear. And I thank you for starting me down the right path. You may not have had it exactly right, but you were close enough.

Grimholm

Whoaaa, I was completely wrong with my investigations concerning more recent .NET 2.0-Versions. It's working with the DirectX-Update Thank you

D.H1cks

Well, its been quite a while since I have done anything with the skin viewer. But now I have some more free time, so its time to start playing again.

Some news first:

1. I may have figured out why some people cannot run the program. Grimholm let me know that it was working for him until he re-installed Windows. At first it looked like an issue with .Net maybe not being updated properly. So, I re-installed Windows myself. It would not work for me either, until I installed the latest DirectX runtime update.

So, if anyone who cannot get the program to start, try downloading this:

DirectX June 2007 Update

Anyone who tries this, please send me a PM and let me know if it worked for you or not.

2. Bad news: there will not be a new version of the LOTRO Skin Viewer.

3. Good news: I am now working on a LOTRO Skin Editor. This will be a much more useful tool for UI developers. Some feature I plan to have:

• Change the resolution of the window, to see how the UI looks on different resolutions
• Change individual ArtAssets on the fly, to see how different images look
• An editor for laying out the Letterboxbottom
• A function to automatically create/update the XML file for the skin

I am still quite early in the development, and have no idea when I will release the first beta. But I will let you all know.

Grimholm

Unfortunately I've the same problem as Nixx: Crash on Startup (WindowsApplication1 has noticed a problem ...).

I've deactivated many, many unnecessary services on my machine. Is there service, which has to be activated in order to run the program?

wheatgerm

I appreciate all the work you are putting into this. I'm sure I'm not the only one that wishes RLE TGA's would just go away. With video cards having 500+ megs of RAM on them now, texture compression just seems to be more trouble than it's worth for all but the most extreme cases.

D.H1cks

I would like to give an update on the progress of the skin viewer.

The main reason I used DirectX in the program, was it had a simple method for loading .tga files. However, I found that it does not seem to handle compressed files properly. Not only does it fail to load the image correctly, it fails to even read the file properties correctly.

So, I am working on my own method of reading in the .tga files(which is more or less working). Since I won't need to use the DirectX function for reading the files anymore, I am going to remove DirectX from my program. This is a major overhaul of the program, but I am hoping that by doing so I also make the program run better for some of the users having issues.

This overhaul will take quite some time to complete, so there will not be any updates to the program for a while.

D.H1cks

This means that the program cannot find the default XML file for some reason, or the file has been corrupted. Make sure there is a SkinDefinition.xml file in the same directory as the program.

LOL.

Windburn

I'm getting an error with the latest version that's saying (in sequential errors):
"Could not read XML data", then
"Object reference not set to an instance of an object", then
"Could not initialize the program. Exitting now.".

Any idea what might be causing this?

Edit: Looking back, all the versions since 3.0 are giving this error. I hadn't updated it since your 2nd release previously.

AmbushMartyr

Man this program has been a real joy to use! Im still new and learning the skins art, but this has been one program thats made things alot easier for me.

What would make this a all in one prgram for me is if it provided a export placeholders for all the UI in a psd format so i can take the guess work out of sizing and such, maybe even come with a editable xml file for finished products.

Thats a big order to fill but imagine your name across the net for the "Super Duper All In One MMO UI Skinning Machine by D.H1cks!!!". Yeah, now that would rock! lol.

Big thanks again DH for the hard work you put in on such a awesome product!

D.H1cks

AncientWolf:

Turns out the tga files are compressed, which my program cannot handle. For now, until I can learn to read the compress files, they will not be loaded.

AstroCat:

Its on my todo list.

AstroCat

Could we get the Vendor windows (repair, buyback, etc...) ?

Thanks!

AncientWolf

Its my superduper copy protection!

No, seriously, I couldnt tell you why; All of my images are not made from scratch though- most are from older skins (other authors) that had been redone by me.

(Redone as in just used the placeholder, NOT the artwork!)

ie; Fenir Wood Compact used Kaylan's Compact- To insure I had all graphics
the folder was renamed and I went down the list in photoshop image by image
replacing them with mine.