Post tutorial Report RSS Naming Conventions

So, I've seen a fair few skins, in the past and now, that use bad skin names. Bad as in, so generically named they're asking for conflict. I intend to end that. With a simple tutorial.

Posted by on - Basic Skinning

Now, guys.

The way VT's skin system works is not "Skin1 skin2' etc, and most past addons agree. Most. Recently, though, people (like that guy behind Love Live skinpack) have done the Skin1 Skin2 phenomena. Anyway. If it really WAS that way, then people would probably be making intensely high numbers to not conflict, but hey, they're using names. Follow them.

A diffuse's name should not be something like "Su-37_Skin3.dds". It should be less generic than that.

For instance, let's say you made Yellow.
Your skin name SHOULD be
"Su-37_Yellow.dds".

Of course, if you're worried about Yellow's popularity, we can go further.

"Su-37_Yellow-Adam". "Adam" represents the skinner's name.

You should do the same with your .skin files.

But, that's not the end. You can get as unique as you want with your diffuse's name.

Fairly soon, all my skins will follow the convention named above. You should be unique too. And even if you do use my conventions, I won't get mad: As long as your name is also not Stinger, I'm okay. And besides, people likely to make these mistakes use .dds files. The new standard skin file is .png, so join our glorious .png race.

This is all.

Not quite.

People have been saying wise words about skin naming and such, as well as how the game behaves.

According to Nergal:

Nergal01 wrote: Another very important note; having multiple skin images with the same name among different plane will override each other's skin in-game. Having two planes with a skin image named grey.png will make the skin override each other so adding a prefix on the image name (Su-37_Skinname.png) is highly encouraged.


TL:DR, using the same name between two planes' skins is bad. J-35J_Espada and RafaleM_Espada work pretty reasonably, though having "Espada.png" in BOTH the Rafale-M's (as if) and J-35J's folders is not good.

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Jason_King_of_Salt
Jason_King_of_Salt

legit

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atretador
atretador

On Transcendence modding community we could request a extension prefix-code, which we would use on our mods to prevent mod to mod, and mod to expansions conflicts.
Something like a a AAAAALNNN, the N being a number from 0 to 999 and L a letter which would represent each mod extension.
like a shield could be named AAAAAA001 or something like that, it would mean 26 * 999 possible extensions p/ user.

You could do something like that around here, like

Su-37_XB5A001_SKINNAME.fileType

you would need to keep a database on a wiki with all registered user prefixs, and a way for user to register those codes.

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SIGILL
SIGILL

While I understand the advantages of such a system, I think it is too much effort for something that could be so simple if people would just name their files well. Adding your (user)name reduces the chance to have conflicts by such a large amount that it is probably virtually impossible to find something with the same name.

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Nergal01
Nergal01

Another very important note; having multiple skin images with the same name among different plane will override each other's skin in-game. Having two planes with a skin image named grey.png will make the skin override each other so adding a prefix on the image name (Su-37_Skinname.png) is highly encouraged.

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szboudreau01 Author
szboudreau01

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm sorta thinking about leaving this tutorial openly editable, so people can add in their own little tidbits of info.. eh. I'll just pool info, and credit everyone accordingly.

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bornloser
bornloser

wtf i hope that gets fixed

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szboudreau01 Author
szboudreau01

aww shucks i accidentally almost deleted. Moddb, y u no confirmation

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Nergal01
Nergal01

I think it removes itself until the Moddb admin approves your edit.

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szboudreau01 Author
szboudreau01

No, I accidentally hit "Delete" instead of "Edit".

Jesus, that's not great button placement.

I think I need to tell the site devs to fix this problem.

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