Creating a new Arena Skin

For those of you who are having trouble with reskinning their arenas... Trouble no more! I bring to you, Creating a new Arena Skin: Basic Tutorial!

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a simple custom arena skin. This can be useful to give your standard arenas a new look, or if you simply want to learn how to manipulate .tga files. This tutorial is also great for those who are new to modifying Robot Arena 2, and it is essential for those who would like to create their own custom arenas.

Here is all you will need for this tutorial:

- Paint.Net software (or any .tga editting program)

.:Download[1]:.

- Fresh copy of Robot Arena 2. WARNING! This tutorial will replace your old Arenas, so if you don't want that to happen, simply create a backup copy.

Getting Down To The Basics... Learning .tga

Editing targas, or .tga files is similar to editing a .PNG file. They both include static pictures which are able to use transparent pixels; both of which are used for the maps of the arenas and even the particles that spill out when two bots clash. Therefore, you can not only manipulate the color of the arenas, but the sparks, flames, electricity, and anything else associated with it. Those arena ideas are starting to sound good huh? Good. Now let's see if you can make it LOOK good...

Start off with opening the folder of your fresh copy of Robot Arena 2. Then go to "Arenas". Here is where you will choose whichever arena you want to mod. Each folder name is pretty similar to the arena names in-game, with a few exceptions:

·The “box” folder refers to the Combat Arena. ·The “tabletop” folder refers to the Clawtop Arena. ·The “hilltop” folder refers to the King Of The Hill Arena. ·The “kinfofhill” folder refers to the Luma Zone Arena. Not to be confused with the one above. After you have decided which arena you would like to edit, go ahead and open it up. There are usually the following different elements inside:

-The “maps” folder: Pretty much the most important element within the Arena folder. Inside are .bmp and .tga files which are used on the arena faces, windows and crowd images, or the arena surface (floor).

-The .gmf/map files: We don’t really need to mess around with these. These files are simply used for the shape of the arena. The actual “guts” that build the 3d model itself.

-(Insert Arena Folder Name)_preview.bmp: This little image file gives you a preview of the arena when you select it in exhibition mode. You can change this picture to whatever you like, but I recommend that you simply take a snap shot of your finished arena and place it here.

Editing Image Files...

Now is the time to make an Arena skin! For now, we will start with something simple. Let’s say that you don’t want any color in your arena. Kind of like an old 30’s look. Go ahead and open up Paint.Net and select either File/Open, or just click on that folder icon. Next, go into your directory that you placed your fresh copy of RA2, and into your “Arenas” folder. Select the folder of which you want to edit and then double click on “maps”. We are going to do the arena skin first. Then we will work on a preview.

In here, simply press Ctrl+A to select all of the image files, or just drag the select box over them, and press Open. It should now start displaying all of your images in the Paint.Net program. At this stage, you can pretty much draw, edit, and do whatever you want to these files. But for now, we are simply going to gray scale everything; tga files, pngs, bmps, everything. Go ahead and press Ctrl+Shift+G or go to “Adjustments” and select “Black and White.” Just like it says, the currently viewed image should now be in black and white. Simply switch between images by selecting them above, and repeat the same process until you are finished with each of them.

Saving Correctly...

Easy isn’t it? Now comes the fun part. You COULD save each image independently, but this way is ten times as fast. Close Paint.Net. That’s right, X out of the program. But don’t worry, a save box should suddenly popup asking if you would want to save all of your files in the list. Click “Save.” After that a Save Configuration screen will popup, asking you on what type of bits you should save your image. Robot Arena 2 mostly uses either 24 or 32 bit images for their maps, and it is the only settings that will work properly in-game, so select 24 bit and 32 bit, or basically, anything underneath the Auto Detect option. DO NOT SELECT AUTO DETECT!

Finishing Touches...

Ok, your arena is just about finished! But you just have one more thing to do, load up RA2 and select your new arena in exhibition mode. This is now a good time to make some screen shots! After you saved your images, open up Paint.Net one last time and select that _preview.bmp file within the arena folder. Then click Open again and select that image you took in the "Screenshots" folder. Simply select, Open, Copy, and Paste in on the preview image and save. If it asks you if you want to resize the image (if it’s too big) just keep the canvas size. Your will be able to resize it anyway if need be. Another way to make the new _preview.bmp image is to use the Print Screen button and paste it over the image.

And that’s it! You should now have a newly skinned arena complete with a new preview selection in exhibition mode. Enjoy!