SKINHELP SECTION - Quake1

Well right off the bat I must warn you that I dont know *everything* about making skins (well not yet anyway!) but I have learned a few tricks that may help you out.

Introduction to Quake/QuakeWorld

For you *newbies*, Quake as you know was designed by ID for single player and you can play it over the net, as far as skins go with Quake I'm sorry to tell you that Quake is NOT setup for skins. Indeed, to use different skins in Quake you need to get a patch for quake, AND you also need to connect to a server that runs said patch and thus the skins you want to use. Now the reason for this is VERY simple, really it is! Basically both the computers running quake need to have the same files and information, so if u attempt to replace the base skin with an altered skins NOONE but you will see any changes as the other computer doesnt know you are running an altered version of quake. Dont email asking where to get the patches or what server use the patches etc cos i dont know. The reason is that in MY opinion Quake sucks for netplay, go and get Quakeworld from almost ANYWHERE such as http://www.bluesnews.com or http://www.planetquake.com and save yourself a shitload of skin grief and have a faster moving , more accurate, vividly skinned ,internationally played copy of QUAKEWORLD!!!!!!!!!

spot the subliminal hints there ? :)

In case your as thick as 2 proverbial planks and decide to continue with quake for netplay, let me explain how these *patches* are working, ID lovingly created an alterable game engine in mind with us freaks being able to play at being game creators (and also perhaps to create a pool of new talent upon which they could generate some new workers for future games <G>). You can run ANY changes to quake by simply making a new folder/directory in quake called whatever you want, say u call it TEST, you would then go into the Dstart in windows 95 and select run, then run quake like this QUAKE -GAME TEST. This tells Quake to read all the ID created game info and then look in the TEST directory for more info with which to add or replace Id's stuff with. Originally when i didnt know shit about shit but knew that skins in quake was *sort of* possible i managed to get a hold of the player.mdl (which contains the base skin u c in quake) with Quakeme23, i then edited the base skin (badly) and saved the player.mdl in the TEST dir and ran quake -game test. When i played online all the other players were wearing my skin! And as i gleefully ran around asking if people could see my skin i found they couldnt :(((

And now you know WHY;
perhaps you simply want to run a modem to modem or Lan game of quake and see each others skin, well if u both folow the above directions (i.e altered skin in test dir) u can see each others skin , but only 1 skin. If you want to see lots of diff skins then a good program to get is called Multiskin Pro(lets u choose between 20 skins, u can alter the player.mdl that has the skins on it, or make a directory in the MSpro direcotry called progs, put the player.mdl your altered player.mdl in there). I dont know where it is these days as i havent used it since october last year, but it will be around in most places that contain Quake/ Quakeworld files. Anyway thats as much info as you need to start with in Quake, sure theres more i could tell you, but there's some things you just have to learn by *doing* as i did myself.....

Quakeworld is a FAR FAR easier way of seeing skins, it works by making a directory in Quake called QW, u make a directory in QW called SKINS, then download all my skins, all the skinpaks (as it saves a lot of time) and unzip the skins to the SKINS directory. When u run QW, on joining a game the program checks the server and sees what skins people are usuing, it checks your computer has all the skins. If your pc doesnt have skins that are being used it lets you download the skins (if the server has them). Now this is where a lot of people go wrong, they think that the mere act of making a skin, putting it in the Skins directory will magically award them with everyone being able to see it <G>

Not so, by now you should after readin ghte above have realised that the SERVER (the machine u connect to) MUST have the skin, and for the server to get the skin you need to UPLOAD it (send it to the server). The way this is done is email, or FTP, for this u need to send the skin to the right email adress for each server (they have their domain and email contact, FTP contact in the info section in QSPY). Or email the skin to to Id for inclusion in the skinpaks they release every decade or so, or upload it to DraGoN (how exactly is that name meant to be capitalised etc?<G>) for inclusion in his skins paks, or upload it to me for inclusion in mine. Best advice is to upload the skin to EVERY server etc u can as well as each of these other contacts. After a large amount of skins collects at Id for example (enough to merit a skinpak anyway) they are released on all the webpages and the servers..... and then finally people can see your skin.

***note:when sending skins to ID and DraGoN certain guidlines need to be followed***

Again there is more i could tell you, but really you should get into the habit of searching for info and keeping an ee on newspages etc, really its the only way to leanr and keep up also when u have learned. It is the reason that I cannot take all day to explain every iota of information when I need to concern myself with learning more and continuing to improve myself.

Preparation

Before you start planning or making your skin its best to have the right tools for the job handy, in my opinion they are as follows...

Quakeme23 - An invaluable assest in predicting how your flat texture will look wrapped
round the familiar quaker model that we've all come to love :)

QuakePalette,Base Skin - You should have these in your Quakeworld skin Directory....

Art Packages - Everyone has differing opinions upon which package is the best to use,
My personal opnion and recommendation is to use Corel Photopaint or
Adobe Photoshop. Both are excellent and when used together they rock.
Others will argue that Paint Shop Pro is better, I use it to browse...

Rorshachs Extras - This zip contains Custom Palettes for Corel Photopaint, PSP and it
also contains some base skins I have made in differnet colours. That is to say
the skins are *all* skin, meant to be used as a base only.

Reaper Bots 0.81 - Not too good for long thoughtfull studies of of your skins but great
fun to use your skins with and get a feel for them ingame.
Its also good for therapy, someone beats you up all night on the servers?
No problem, just pu their skin in reaperbot and kick the shit out of them :)

Theory

To some of you this may be insulting but I'm doing this for *everyone* so bear with me. The way a skin (Flat Texture) works in quake is pretty simple. Ever make a model such as a car, plane, predator?, well putting the stickers onto the model is exactly the same as making a skin, i.e the skin is 'wrapped' round a model (Player.MDL), and this model is then viewed in quake with your flat texture wrapped round it. When designing a skin keep in mind the shape of the model its going to be wrapped round.

The above picture is how my skin looks in Quakeme23, the lines depict the MDL shape and the texture must fill in the whole mdl or your skin will have big black holes in it. As you can see I've gone past the lines in a couple of places but that does not matter.

Testing

You should ALWAYS test your skin regularily in Quakeme23 to see how its wrapping round the model, to take a texture into Quakeme load the PLAYER.MDL as provided with the program and add another texture to it by using the toolbar button below.

As you can see above i have player.mdl's with lots of textures but you only need to add one generally. There is a problem with Quakeme in that it only lets you import BMP files in the OLD quake format which is slightly smaller horizontally and vertically.

Quakeworld uses PCX format but it WILL accept PCX files in the BMP size format, what I'm telliung you to do is work from the original DEFUALT.BMP size as it allows you to test in quakeme/reapers and also Quakeworld (as long as convert to pcx). It is much easier to do it this way than to risk cutting from the Base.pcx to the Default.bmp, as this can lead to misalignments and thus defeat the purpose of using quakeme to detect such mistakes!

Of course you can always shortcut ALL this testing advice and try to badger your mates into jumping onto an empty quakeworld and standing still in various poses for a while . Problem being they usually get pissed off with this after a while and unless you have a private server you often get people joining the server that dont want to play at standing still looking at each other and would rather annoy the hell out of your attempts to do this <G>

'Patience is a Virtue, and Artists are lazy people