AnyShape hide-color not properly recognised in BSP

[SergeNL]

BSP 'remembers' the wrong color for transparancy.

In BSP Skinmaker I check "Skin Any Shape".
In Skinmaker this works properly: every area in main.bmp that matches the color of the upper right pixel is greyed out. (Ready to be transparant in BSP)
I save the skin in Skinmaker. (Menu Bar > File > Save)

But BSP itself keeps choosing the wrong transparancy color. I once chose a color blue for tansparancy, but when I change the color of the top-left pixel, BSP keeps hiding all blue area's.
I can fill half of main.bmp with red, including that pixel, but BSP still hides the area's that once were blue..

Doesn't matter if I restart BSP, or re-click the skin in the preferences window.

Is Tizio still around? :-)

NOTE: BSP is still a great player, but the available skins are not attractive or user-friendly at all. I am making a new one. Tizio's Skinmaker is really a great invention, but needs an update.

[SergeNL]

Found a workaround..
Just use the default ugly Pink color for transperancy.
Other colors are supposed to work, if they are the same as the color of the top-left pixel. But this does not always work.

How to save the pink color in Photoshop?
Load Main.bmp of Base Skin or Sample Skin in Photoshop.
Click Foreground Color. Pick the pink color, and click "Add to Swatches". Close Foreground window.
Next time you'l find the pink in the Swatches window (next to Navigator)
In Gimp this may work too.

How to create an 'Any Shape' Main.bmp?
Load a picture in Photoshop.
Select what you don't want to be visible. (keep Shift Key down to add selections, or Alt to deselect)
Click Foreground Color, and pick the ugly Pink from the Swatches Window.
Menu Bar > Edit > Fill.
Menu Bar > File > Save.

[BSPeter]

Originally Posted by SergeNL

...Is Tizio still around? :-)

NOTE: BSP is still a great player, but the available skins are not attractive or user-friendly at all. I am making a new one. Tizio's Skinmaker is really a great invention, but needs an update.

Yes, Tizio is still around, though he doesn't frequent the forum as often as he used to do, at the time he created Skinmaker (for BS.Player v1).

You speek of ...the available skins, but are you sure you've seen them all?

You can find a few skins here: www.bsplayer.com but perhaps also look here, here, here, and here.

Anyhow thanks for your report and for letting us know the workaround you found. And - of course - looking forward to your skin-creation!

P.S.:
I'm afraid I cannot help you with Tizio's Skinmaker. I've never used it. 'My skins' I made using simple and really basic programs like paint, photoeditor, notepad and an app to create zip files).

[SergeNL]

First ontopic:

Deleting rgn.dat in the skin folder finally solved my problems with Any Shape Main.bmp's.
You can also delete rgnfs.dat, tha appearently saves settings for the full sreen panel.
(These files will automatically be regenerated when the skin is used. But you do loose the current history list)

The result: the color of the upper-left pixel becomes the invisible color. The default ugly pink color becomes a visible color, just like any other color. All fine! :-)

Boy, how stupid I was, wasting hours.. I believe the problems started, when I edited Main.bmp while it was in Any-Shape mode. The upper-left color was changed, but BSP didn't know that. BSP kept hiding the original color.
Things got worse when I made mistakes in the AddArea-code. I believe I edited Extbg.bmp, without BSP knowing that. Now it was completely unpredictable what was shown in Main.bmp.
Desperately I searched Skin.ini for the invisible color code, but it wasn't there. So where was it defined??.. The skin folder only has BMP-files, and 2 DAT-files. So it must be the Dat-files. I was cautious, and renamed them first. And when that worked, I deleted them..

Thanks for your support,Peter! Glad you're still around and involved here.. It isn't too crowdy here lately, to put it mildly.. But BSPlayer does deserve support! I'l start a new topic about desirable skins..

[BSPeter]

With respect to the .dat files you're quite right that these are generated/created automatically by BS.Player when you (e.g.) test your skin in "folder format" (i.e. like Base skin). (Maybe see my 2005-post on this very subject.)
Once you're sure everything is according to your likings, you can put the files which your folder contains (not the folder as such!), including the .dat files, in a zip file and then rename the extension .zip to .bsz

[SergeNL]

The problem and the solution:

During skin design, the skin may look good in Skinmaker, but can be very different and messy in BSPlayer.
This is an issue with the Transparency Color in Any-Shape-skins, and may happen, when you edit and save Main.bmp.
This can be very annoying, because the fix is very hard to find. But the solution is easy:

In Windows Explorer, go to the skin-folder, and delete rgn.dat
If the problem occurs with the Full Screen skin, delete rgnfs.dat.
Reload the skin in BSP’s skin-list (in the settings window), and all should be fine.

Why does it happen?

If it is a Any-Shape skin, BS Player picks the color of the top-left pixel in Main.bmp as the color that will be transparent in the control window. All area’s with that color will be invisible.
But BSP also stores the information of that transparent color in rgn.dat, the first time it loads the skin. Next time BSP starts, it reads rgn.dat, and will load the skin faster.
If rgn.dat doesn’t exist, BSP automatically creates a rgn.dat in the skin folder, when the skin is loaded.

But if you edit Main.bmp after rgn.dat is created, and the color of the top-left pixel has changed (or perhaps even the image size), rgn.dat doesn’t know that, and BSP will still load the old information.
Skinmaker doesn’t have the problem: if you load Skin.ini, it immediately recognises the color of the pixel of the renewed Main.bmp. But BSP does not.

Note on BSZ-files.

If you already transformed your skin to the solid BSZ-format, there may be some problems.
You can NOT delete an existing rgn.dat within a BSZ-file. (perhaps you can rename it to *.ZIP, and delete it with a zip-tool.)
And BSP does NOT create a rgn.dat within a BSZ-file, if there is none.

I assume that everyone during the design process will still be working in Folder-mode, but I may be wrong. Some may save directly to BSZ-format, and test from there. If there is an issue, you can do this:

Rename *.BSZ to *.ZIP. Extract the files in the Zip to a subfolder in the skin-folder. Delete rgn.dat, if it is there. Start BSP, or open the Preferences window again. Load the skin once. Check in Windows Explorer: rgn.dat will be created. Select all files in that subfolder, and create a new Zip-file from them. Rename the Zip-file to the original name, and change the extension from Zip to BSZ again. Copy the BSZ-file to the BSP skin-folder. (Not in a subfolder of that). In BSP, renew the Preferences Window. Load the skin. It should be OK now..


Thanks Peter, for going back to even 2005 to find more info… :-) Nothing wrong with your memory. :-) I hope I’ve summarised it all well now. And a little thing: normally I would start with a normal human reply to you.. But for new readers it’s best, to have the issue itself up front. And yes, I do act as a specialist, while in fact I am a newbe. I hope you don’t mind. For new readers, this is more clear. And I am a writer, and you may have your hands full already. I hope to contribute this way. Skin creation is a lot of fun, and should be supported and promoted.