Why a new guide?
- The old ones are about 6 years old now and the recent change in the forums led to distortion of their structures making it hard to read.
- They lacked a crucial precautionary step which may result in failures in creating the file.
Hello there PMU folks! This guide is for all of you who are unsure on how exactly to go about making a .pmuskn file. Yes I’m talking about the fancy ones which are auto-detected by your game client as PMU packages. Without any further ado lets dive right into it!
How to make a .pmuskn file
The guide will be divided into a few steps so that it’s easy to digest, but rest assured it isn’t all that hard! The spoiler tags within each step contain details/screenshots corresponding to them.
*This guide is written under the assumption that you have all the folders of your skin ready to be bundled. It won’t cover the making of the skin itself.
Steps :-
- Select all the folders used by your skin (Character Select, Configuration,…) that you wish to convert into a .pmuskn file.
Make sure you select each of the 11 folders making up your skin (i.e. : Character Select, Configuration, Delete Account, Game Window, General, Loading Bar, Login Menu, Main Menu, New Account, News & Widgets). 12 folders in case you have opted for custom music as well (11 + Music).
- Right click on any of the folders while maintaining the selection and select the “Send to” > “Compressed (zipped) folder” option.
Make sure that your selection does not switch over to a single folder while right clicking. On performing this step you should have an additional file along with the other folders but of the .zip format. This is the file that we will be converting to the .pmuskn format.
Before converting the file in step (3) I strongly advice performing a few sub-steps [3(A) & 3(B)] to correctly change its extension.
[u]3(A)[/u]: Hit the[b] windows + R[/b] keys to open the run box and type in : [b][i]control.exe folders[/i][/b] to open up the folder options window.
[u]or alternatively[/u] open the Folder Options from the control panel.
[u]3(B)[/u] : Switch to the "[b]View[/b]" tab on top and scroll down until you come across the "[i]Hide extensions for known file types[/i]" and [b]uncheck[/b] it.
Then click apply followed by Ok to exit the folder options window.
Make sure to uncheck the “Hide extension for known file types” option.
- Head back to where you had created the .zip file earlier and right click it and select Rename.
- Change the name of the .zip file to your desired skin name and the extension to .pmuskn and finish renaming.
If prompted whether you’re sure about changing the file extension, select Yes.
When you attempt to rename the file you will notice it has 2 components to the left and right of the period (.). These are the name and the extension of the file respectively.
The name can be set to the desired skin name while the extension will have to be changed from .zip to .pmuskn
Once done you will most likely be prompted by a dialogue box asking if you’re sure about changing the extension, to which you must select Yes.
If you’ve done everything right so far, congratulations! You’ve created a PMU skin package. It should look something like this :
Whether or not you’re publishing the skin package make sure to check if it works in the Skins option of your client’s main menu.
Once you’ve confirmed that it’s working feel free to revert the changes you made regarding displaying the extension of files according to your preferences [essentially undo the steps 3(A) & 3(B)].
Although do keep in mind whenever in the future you decide to make another .pmuskn file you will have to temporarily re-apply those changes.
That’s about all there is to it!
[CENTER]
If somehow the client fails to detect your skin package, don’t panic and retry the entire process right from step 1. Everyone has the tendency to make mistakes now and then. However, if it still fails to work feel free to let me know. I might not be the most knowledgeable person out there but I’ll try my best to help out & learn as long as I have time.
Hope this guide proves helpful to all you skin makers out there and probably even the curious ones!
[/CENTER]