Dealing with Windowskins in Ace

[GrandmaDeb]

After fooling around with the database and some of Aindra's windowskin resources and looking over a recent windowskin discussion here: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/14983-what-is-going-on/#entry152030

I still have some questions about the best way to construct Ace windows.

As most folks probably know, there are many resources for windows available from VX  http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/14078-rpg-maker-vx-and-vxace-windowskin-resources/

including windowskin splitters and Aindra and Woratana's Windowskin Generator with resources included.

But the thing is that with the way Ace handles windows, all bets are off for the way the VX windows show up in Ace.

This is what I am encountering:

* It matters very much how much shading is on your background ace windows help.bmp

in sections A and B. Although you can change the RGB colors, you cannot alter the grayscale shading on the window at all. So in some ways you are better off making parts A and B completely desaturated, and just selecting colors completely from the database window.

** If you don't put anything in section A then section B doesn't show up in the window for me. (I haven't tested this many times yet, but so far, whatever area is transparent in section A has no image from section B either.) But the A section does need to be completely filled with some kind of color/shade info, it seems, to carry the background info through.

*** If you DO add color in part A, it will affect the final color of your windowskin. So you will not be able to use the same color values for a windowskin with a grayscale part A and B as one with colored part A to get the same result.

The part I bolded is the part I am most interested in hearing from folks about.

Because then all I really need is a bunch of grayscale backgrounds for those windowskins, and I can stop messing with color at all in that section.

But Woratana and Aindra's generator is gonna be outdated for Ace, which is a shame. 

 

[SlaveOfThaMind]

any way to use (animated) images for the background instead of colors like you can with the main party menu?

 

[GrandmaDeb]

Hi rpgmakerwebber,

anything like that would be a question for the scripting section, since it would be a feature outside of the usual Ace stuff, I think.

As I have continued playing around, what I said above, "If you don't put anything in section A then section B doesn't show up in the window for me." continues to be true. Even patches of transparency in section A negate the pattern in section B. Turns out VX did that and I just never realized it.

ace windows help.bmp

The Ace windows help file doesn't really elaborate. =D 

But you can have a window with a transparent center, (lol like a window!) or a completely transparent (i.e invisible) window (as Lunarea uses in her little pause picture trick.) Somehow the transparency in Background A prevents the image in Background B from even showing up.

But my original question - Is there any purpose at all to having color in Background A? - remains.

*****edit*****

Okay, I'll amend this question. I just made the ugliest window in existence as a test.

If the background has a pattern involving changes of color, then clearly it needs to have colors, right?

But if it is monochrome, then all it needs is shading in the window; the color has to be set in the database anyways, right?