What tools are necessary for creating skins?

[Kini]

Title say is it all. I've never seen an update to the lowly PT Boat in the year I've been playing.
I know there were variations to the Battleship Grey depending on the PT Squadron and posting location.

[Vraciu]

Paint Shop Pro 5 or 7 (both free) to draw, Gimp to Convert to 32-bit, and Paint to fix the file header.   That's how I do it.

[Greebo]

Any graphics program that works with layers will do the job, (PSP, Gimp, Krita, Photoshop etc.) It is more important you are familiar with the software than which one you use. It is worth checking out the "P-38 Build Log"  thread in this forum (stickied 2nd from top), as that goes into the process in more detail.

[Kini]

Thanks Greebo. I'll start with the post.

[Kini]

Thanks Greebo. I'll start with the post.

Unfortunately the Aces High PT Boat isn't resource file in the skins folder. Is it server side only?

[The Fugitive]

I had no problem getting it.

Load game
goto hanger and select PT boat
Right click py boat selection and click "save default skin"
Close out game
Using file manager navigate to C:\Hitech Creations\Aces High III\skins At the top of the list of xxxx.res files you will have a "ptboat" folder.
Double click the ptboat folder and you will have all the default files for the skin.

[Greebo]

Fugitive beat me to it. I will add that you could also run the AH Skin Viewer, a program called "ahskview.exe" in your AH game folder. With this running select "PTBOAT" from the top drop down box and then hit the "Save Textures" button.

Either method will result in the folder called "ptboat" being created in your skins folder. In it will be all the default textures for the PT Boat, almost all of which you aren't actually allowed to edit for the game anyway. In fact for the PT Boat the only ones you can modify are "PT1.bmp", "PT1_A.bmp", "PT1_E.bmp", "PT1_N.bmp" and "PT1_S.bmp". So all the other files in the folder are not needed and can be safely deleted.

[Kini]

Thanks guys!