For now, I'm making this thread to share some tips that I've come across while making themes (and helping others) and I encourage everyone else to share their tips and experiences with making themes too.
This list will grow as I think of stuff and others share their tips.
Hitflame colours
I was asked by cmsk8ter in PM how to change the hitflame colours in RB themes, as changing the fret colour didn't seem to do anything. I'd come across this problem before in my Oldschool theme and especially Guitar Legend (all the note colours are completely different). I'd just dismissed it as a FoFiX bug and moved on, but on cmsk8ter's request I dug through the theme code and found some old settings left over from an older version of FoF that still work:
Code: Select all
flame0_1X_color = #ff00ff
flame1_1X_color = #ffff00
flame2_1X_color = #00ffff
flame3_1X_color = #ff7700
flame4_1X_color = #00ff00
flame0_2X_color = #ff00ff
flame1_2X_color = #ffff00
flame2_2X_color = #00ffff
flame3_2X_color = #ff7700
flame4_2X_color = #00ff00
flame0_3X_color = #ff00ff
flame1_3X_color = #ffff00
flame2_3X_color = #00ffff
flame3_3X_color = #ff7700
flame4_3X_color = #00ff00
flame0_4X_color = #ff00ff
flame1_4X_color = #ffff00
flame2_4X_color = #00ffff
flame3_4X_color = #ff7700
flame4_4X_color = #00ff00This allows you to change the colour of each frets hitflame, dependant on the current multiplier. During overdrive, the flames will go white (I haven't tested bass groove yet, hmm...). This only works on RB themes.
Menu Spacing
I wrote this to help stashincash out, and I may expand on it later...
When making graphical menus, often the selected menu images get put too close together (especially when they're slanted), leading to an awful bleed into the previous option... such as in this screenshot (apologies, stashincash):
Here's what you need to do to make the menus properly (assuming you have this issue)
first, figure out the height, from the highest to lowest point of the tallest option.
Adjust your canvas size to be exactly that size multiplied by the number of options (in this case 3). If your option's hight is 180px for example (I chose a random number), and you have 3 options, canvas height will be 3*180= 540px
Then put guides spaced evenly down the image. In the example above, you'll put guides at 180px and 360px (turning on the rulers helps)
What you need to do then is use the lasso select tool, select all the options below the top one (including the options on the left hand side) and shift them down so the second option fits in between the next two guides you just placed.
Then do the same for all options below that one, etc, until they all fit within the guides you placed.
When you go and put the menu back into the game, the spacing might be too far apart. that's when you start adjusting the vspacing options in the theme.ini
my old settings text is used as an example
