I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but here goes...I d/l the generic skins and the patch. I created a skin folder and put the skins in it. I have paint shop pro4. I tried to open the skin from there and it said that the file type wasn't known. So I opened the skin folder, clicked on a skin, and opened the image and then copied it and then pasted it in paint shop pro. Now I have a image with a bunch of body and armor parts on it in paint shop. Now, how do I turn that into a skin for my charater? Am I doing something wrong?

Its a while since I fooled around with skins, but if I remember correctly, all you need to do is alter the generic skins. I found the only real way to find out a change was working was to try it then see how it looked on my character.

IIRC you must rename the generic skin file to match your characters name and you must save the files as uncompressed .TGA files (I think!)

here is a link to the official Delphinesoft website where all the above is explained in more detail! Just follow the "skins" links. Also this site has good info.

Hope this helps - have fun [img]graemlins/biglaugh.gif[/img]

four problems that may show up when customizing skins:

1) Patch 1.04 has to bee installed (no Problem)

2) There has to be a skin-folder in your darkstone directory - "skin" (not "Skin", "skins",...).

3) The modified skins have to be renamed to charactername.tga and for the face charactername_face.tga. If Darkstone doesn't find the file it uses the default-skin, if the file exists but is corrupt the character will be white all over (like a ghost).

4) The ghost problem may be solved by using the correct format for your bitmap - it has the be a 24-bit UNCOMPRESSED targa-bitmap.

The best way to create a new skin is to coulour the complete area with one coulour and then change parts of it and see how it looks. You can cut regions from the default-skin, edit it in paintshop and insert in in your new-skin-bitmap too. To see the changes run Darkstone and Paintshop parallel and use ALT+TAB - you have to reload a savegame to see the skin-changes...

hth ;)