Minimal Glass Minimal Glass is meant to be a plain skin for optimal play, with a stylistic twist. There are many variations of backgrounds in the pack to accommodate most standard gameplay setups and to give the player choices in customization. Future updates may include more variations in backgrounds and other areas. Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, and error reports. Screenshots: Download Minimal Glass v1.1 WARNING: The Zip is only 348 KB but when extracted is about 82 MB. Now that is monstrously huge! The name is quite fitting too. Minimal yet extravagant. Less is more?
Ooh, pretty. The blocks remind me of Heboris's gold and silver squares, actually. About the guide lines, I'm not sure... On one hand, I'd say use the guides in the first shot, because 5 groups of 2 columns might be easier/simpler to mentally process then the 1-1-2-2-2-1-1 pattern the red sides create in the second shot...but I kinda like those red sides, though. Maybe extend the red color one row inward? (So, from left to right: 2 red, 2 gray, 2 black, 2 gray, 2 red.) EDIT: D'oh, forgot the other thing I wanted to mention. It almost immediately jumped out at me that O, S, and I look way brighter compared to the other four shapes. Probably because the background is almost all black. I think it'd probably be easier to quickly see the general shape/bumpiness of the field during play if all the blocks were around the same brightness. So I'd either darken O, S, and I, or lighten the others. Actually, since the background is so dark already, might be a better idea to darken O, S, and I...if the blocks were too bright, they might interfere with the grid lines. (EDIT 2: Oops. That bright green thing is S, not T. Ah well, at least I was only one letter off. )
Really? I have to see for myself hehe. Now you made me even more indecisive. I like the simplicity of the first shot too. I wanted to add the red lines in the second shot to distinguish the far columns used to clear. Hmm, I'll wait for some more input to decide if they're necessary. Good idea. I didn't even think about how the brightness levels would affect the surrounding objects and background.
honestly, i would just like a plain dark gray playing field against a black background. whatever you decide on though, let's give this thing a try. would it be possible to submit 3 skins with differently colored grids so we could try all of them? edit: wow i came off pretty anxious there i can wait a little while...
Yeah, I'll just pack all the variations together in the final pack. I like having a modular interface anyway. I'd rather people set it the way they like since that's why I'm asking for suggestions in the first place.
Those blocks sure look pretty :thumbsup: - I dunno if it's just my monitor, but the pics look *completely black* within my web browser. After saving the pics to my hard drive, then opening them in PSP and increasing the brightness (using PSP), I could then finally see the guide lines and such.
First release! Look at the first post. Really? Hmm, they look light enough for me to see. Is anyone else having the same problem?
I downloaded the release and opened the backgrounds in PSP. Seems that for your grid you used some of the extremely dark(er) black colors (32/32/32 and lower/darker). Unless one has their monitor's brightness and contrast jacked way up (to the point of a fullscreen true-pitch-black 0/0/0 screen appearing almost milky), they prolly wouldn't be able to distinguish any colors that are that dark (prolly 42/42/42 or darker/lower) in a pic. (Edit) P.S. If your backgrounds look OK to you on your monitor, the backgrounds that I've created for my skins must be absolutely BLINDING to ya <BG> -
As did I. I see now why the filesize is so killer: all the backgrounds are saved as 16-million color. Luckily, PSP's unique color counter reports that only the "NoGrid 3" variations ever use more than 16 colors, the "NoGrid 3" ones using just a few more colors...if you saved the "NoGrid 3" backgrounds as 256-color, and all the rest as 16-color, then you could knock the total unzipped filesize down to...eh, maybe 30-40 megs, without any colors being lost.
Just a small buglet that I found. In your "Minimal Glass.skin" skin definition file you have the following: -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ljblocksSega=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - ARS.bmp ljblocksSRS=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - SRS.bmp ljconnSega=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - ARS.bmp ljconnSRS=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - SRS.bmp -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Hehe, because of the "ljconnSega=path\filename.bmp" and "ljconnSRS=path\filename.bmp" lines, LockJaw attempts to use the same regular blocks images for connected pieces... definately a strange effect <BG>. To force LJ not to use any connected blocks images, simple use these lines instead (with no filenames specified for the "conn" lines): -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ljblocksSega=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - ARS.bmp ljblocksSRS=Skins\Minimal Glass\Blocks - SRS.bmp ljconnSega= ljconnSRS= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- BTW, just a suggeestion: I noticed that all of your background images were 16 colors (or less). For any images such as these, reducing their color depths to an optimized ("octree") 16-color palette will greatly reduce their filesizes. As an example, a 16-million color 800x600 image would be 1,440,056 bytes (like your current background images are). But, reduced to a 16-color image, the filesize is reduced to 240,118 bytes. (Re: Overall ZIP filesize vs. total extracted filesizes) Hehe, amazing what PKZIP can do, ain't it <BG>? - (Edit) Hehe, I see that 4matsy already replied with what I was saying above... goes to show ya, I should "think before I "speak" - errr - "type"" <LOL>! -
the grids are a little dark for me too. i think either making the gridlines or the whole playing field a tad brighter would be good. the blocks looked great, i just had to fix the bug that Rich Nagel mentioned.
Was that aimed at me tepples? You really should be more direct. Anyhow, I can't seem to adjust the gamma to make the boxes nearly invisible. I tried to find another guide and ran into these ones here. http://www.worldserver.com/turk/compute ... gamma.html http://www.efn.org/~k_mccree/Gamma.html According to those links, I'm fine.
I think it was directed more towards jujube and I <G>. After tweaking my monitor settings, I indeed was able to see the dark gray graphics. One thing though, I have *no* gamma setting for my monitor/vid card, only the standard brightness and contrast settings on my ageing monitor. Nevertheless, I think it's still too dark. With a correct gamma setting (I'm able to set a software sort of gamma correction globally from within - and only when using - Paint Shop Pro, it has seperate adjustments for red/green/blue), when it's set properly (PSP gamma correction), everything else seems way too "washed out" (when loading in any other regular pics and such). Anyhow, you have to remember (at least in my way of thinking): the difference between RGB, say, 0/0/0, and a figure such as 16/16/16, is so subtle, that it's hard to see clearly. In other words, really dark, and black as night... same difference <G>. This especially holds true when the blocks are extremely bright: think of a flashlight shining in the night at ya, the flashlight is extremely bright, and attempting to see anything that is moonlighted behind the flashlight is next to impossible. Anyhow, my suggestion (just my own personal prefs) would be to use no color blacker or darker than maybe, say, 24/24/24 (especially due to the contrast of the bright blocks).
Could you, perhaps, email me the file and I'll upload it to a less annoying filehost? I can't seem to download it.
