For those who like to dabble with digital images, Stu’s Quiz Boxes offers the exciting feature of having a total makeover done by you, the user. And it’s ridiculously simple to do now – just follow this step-by-step guide.
So, what do you need to make a Stu’s Quiz Boxes Skin? Basically, it’s just a folder that contains just three JPEG images named a specific way and formatted to specific sizes. If you can do that, you’ve made yourself a new skin. You can use any photo editing tool to produce the necessary image files – from top-of-the-line Adobe Photoshop to any number of free tools like PhotoFiltre or The GIMP.
Quiz Boxes skins you create should preferably follow some kind of theme. Sure, you can have a whole bunch of random images that make up your Jeopardy game, but what’s the point? So, let’s go through the images that you’ll need to create to make your own skins -
The Background Image:
Name: background.jpg Size: 891 x 598 pixels
This image sits behind the game board and is slowly revealed as the game progresses. Your task – find or make a good quality picture of at least this size and resize/crop it to exactly 891 x 598, then save it as background.jpg, preferably as the highest quality (not compressed).
The Foreground Image:
Name: foreground.jpg Size: 780 x 585 pixels
This image will be used to create the 30 separate buttons that make up the Quiz Boxes Game Board. Your task – find or make a good quality picture of at least this size and resize/crop it to exactly 780 x 585, then save it as foreground.jpg, preferably as the highest quality (not compressed). It is recommended that you avoid a foreground image with large areas of white on it.
The Quiz Boxes Breaker Button:
Name: final.jpg Size: 386 x 265 pixels
This button is displayed before the last question of the game and probably should encompass the overall theme you are trying to get across with your skin.
OK, so as far as organizing the images goes, that’s all you need to do. Three pictures, cropped to specific sizes and named specifically. Once you have those three images, you need to create a new foldr inside your QuizBoxes\skins folder and call it whatever you like. In this example, I’d probably call the folder “Sydney Harbour“, so the overall path would be QuizBoxes\skins\Sydney Harbour. Once you’ve made the folder with an appropriate name (keep the name short!), drop your three images into that folder.
The Magic: Quiz Boxes Skin Builder:
This is the tool that makes the creation of Quiz Boxes skins ridiculously simple. The skinbuilder folder is located inside your QuizBoxes folder, at the same level as the quizzes, skins and sounds folders. Open the skinbuilder folder and COPY the file called MakeQuizBoxesSkin from the QuizBoxes\skinbuilder folder into that new skin folder you created and put the three images into. Make sure that you COPY the file and don’t MOVE it.
When you are ready, double-click MakeQuizBoxesSkin in your new skin folder. A few seconds later (literally), your skin will be ready for use in the Jeopardy game. It will have automatically sliced up your foreground image into 30 boxes and placed the correct dollar labels on each new “button” with translucent text. As well, it added a “QUIZ BOX Breaker!” text lable to your final image.
To check your new skin, start Quiz Boxes, load up a quiz and then select your new skin from the Skins menu. If there are any problems, go over these steps. You must have done something wrong.
I told you it was the EASY way!
Sharing your skin:
Now that you’ve made your own skin for Quiz Boxes, maybe other Quiz Boxes users would like to use it too! If you think it’s a really good looking skin and you’d like to share it, all you have to do now is ZIP that folder you made and then email it to stu_hasicATyahoo.com (replace AT with @) as an attachment and I’ll add it to the list of skins at the site for others to download. If you send me your name, I’ll credit you for creating the skin as well. Please – NO inappropriate skins – they will not get published.
How do you “zip” a folder? You can use WinZip that you have to pay for, or you can use 7-Zip for free! You basically run the program and select the folder you created and it will make a single zip file out of that folder and all its contents. When people download it from the Quiz Boxes site, they just unzip it into their QuizBoxes\Skins folder and it will be available for their use!
So what are you waiting for? Start making your own cool Quiz Boxes skins! Tell us all about them below, or if you have any questions, just ask in the comments box at the bottom.
[...] Skins: Step-by-Step 15 08 2007 PLEASE NOTE: These are the OLD instructions. There is now a MUCH SIMPLER WAY. Don’t waste your time looking here any further. This is ridiculously difficult in [...]
Hi Stu,
Jeff again. I decided to update my version of Quiz Boxes. I just downloaded version 4.1 and did have the skinbuilder folder. I am now getting an error message simialr to what others have gotten as I read through some posts here. It says :
ERROR! For this process to work you must provide three jpeg image files:
-background.jpg – 891 x 598 pixels in size
-foreground.jpg – 780 x 585 pixels in size
-final.jpg – 386 x 265 pixels in size
Please correct this before running this process again.
I have saved each image as a jpg, in the proper pixels, and renamed the files as directed. I would be happy to send them to you through email to see waht I am doing wrong. Help!
Hi Jeff,
OK – Verify all of this for me:
1. You have a Quizboxes folder
2. Inside it there are quizzes, skinbuilder, skins and sounds folders
3. You opened the skins folder and you created a New Folder, called whatever you’d like your skin to be called – eg. football
4. Inside that folder are the three jpg files you mention above
5. As well as those three files, there is one other file – MakeQuizBoxesSkin.bat which you COPIED from the Quizboxes\skinbuilder folder
6. When you double-click THAT MakeQuizBoxesSkin file in YOUR folder (not in the skinbuilder folder), you still get that error?
If you answer YES to 1 through 5 and NO to 6, then it will work – providing you have not modified ANY of the files in the skinbuilder folder.
Hi STu,
Thanks for getting back to me.
1. Yes. I locate Quizboxes by going to My Computer>local disk. It’s there.
2. Yes. The 4 folders are there in addition to 2 other files- Quizboxes (the app) and Setup Shortcut
3. Yes. I did create a new folder in the skins folder with a short abbreviation, cpi.
4. Yes. Using Irfanview, I opened three jpeg image files, resized them to the exact specs, renamed them as directed, and moved them to the new cpi folder within skins folder.
5. Yes. I did copy and paste the MakeQuizBoxesSkin file into cpi also. There is no file extension (.bat) showing after it but if I hover over it it says the file type is MS-DOS Batch File, size 3.58 kb.
6. Yes. I now double click the copied MakeQUizBoxesSKin file in my cpi folder which contains the 3 renamed jpeg images and I still get that error. I did not alter any other files in the QuizBoxes folder.
I love both the Jeopardy and QuizBoxes programs and hope them use them frequently. I was also excited to learn that I could create my own skins and that the process was easy. What could I try next?
Zip the folder called CPI (right-click on the folder and choose Compress files) and email me that zip file to stu_hasic”at”yahoo.com.
I seem to have a problem…when I use the “MakeQuizBoxesSkin” button, it does not split up my foreground into squares, so I end up with my custom background and the default box styles. Is there any way to fix this without me needing to individually customize the 30 boxes?
nevermind. problem solved. I had everything installed under Program Files, and windows 7 won’t save pictures there for some reason. The security permissions are all weird. I reinstalled under My documents and had no problems.
Yes, in Windows 7, Program Files is a protected folder and you must “Run as Administrator” to allow the program to make changes in the folder. Fortunately, QuizBoxes is completely portable, so you can run it from any folder – it’s usually best to do so from a folder where you have read/write and modify access.
Hi Stu
I followed your directions to make the skins, but for some reason the dollar amounts are not showing up on the buttons. Any idea how I can fix this?
oops! Figured it out – something wrong with my image size vs canvas size…
Well done Laura. I like peole who persevere. Hope you like QuizBoxes.
Hi. When I downloaded the quiz boxes, it didn’t come with the MakeYourOwnSkin file. How can I get that file?
If you don’t have a skinbuilder folder inside your QuizBoxes folder then you must have an older installation. Just download a fresh install from the downloads page. There is no “MakeYourOwnSkin” file, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to there.