Creating custom skins for Sbrick app IOS

After the idea for the Sbrick contest was announced, I downloaded the app for ios. Even though I don't own a Sbrick ( I plan to buy one in a couple months), I felt like playing around with the controls and seeing if modifications would be possible with a file viewer. So after some messing around I found the images and created my own profile with a custom skin, it was based off of Sariel's and it has images for the controls that will match my [TC6] entry.

Sariel's original profile

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

screenshot from Ipod 4th gen (part of it is cut off because the app recognizes it as a Iphone 5

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

my new profile

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

screenshot from the app (I didn't really bother to create new images for the joysticks, I just changed the hue)

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

Ok now onto modifying the profiles yourself.

1 download a file viewer for a IOS device, there are many different ones, I used Ifunbox to edit my files http://www.i-funbox.com

2 connect device to computer with Sbrick app installed

3 Open Sbrick app contents on file viewer

4 open documents folder

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

The profiles folder contains all the .json files for the setup of the profiles.

The resources folder has all the images for the profiles

5 renaming profiles

open profiles folder, and select the profile you want to rename. Then you can copy the .json profile to your computer, then open it with a text editor. Then change the names to whatever you want, then drag it back into the profiles folder in the file viewer.

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

6 creating new skins

open up the resources folder in the documents folder

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

7 select all files from the resources folder and copy them to a new folder on your computer.

8 open up the files with a image editing software of choice, I personally prefer GIMP http://www.gimp.org/

9 edit the photos or create a new image of the same size

After editing the photos keep the original name of them and export them as a .png file, with some cases in gimp it has a bug where it will give a error message, but to solve this export the file as a .sgi and then reopen it in gimp and export as a .png

10 Remove the .png extension

If this is not removed, the app will not use the files

11 place edited files back into the resources folder

This will replace the original images for the profile you just edited, to back up the original files, just make a copy of the resources folder that you copied from to your computer and if you want to revert to the original skins in the app, just replace the new files with old ones.

here's a video for just one file, I didn't bother to actually place the edited file back in the resources, but this covers everything else. (sorry no commentary I was using quicktime screen recorder). https://flic.kr/p/qiFBXB

other thoughts

I think it is possible to change the position of the joysticks or the skin. the coordinates for them are viewable in the .json files. the frame is where the image is located at in the corner.

Sbrick app custom skins by Tommy Styrvoky, on Flickr

It might be possible to customize the profile further, possibly by copying slider/ joystick from another profile into the new one. Though I don't know if this works so back up the .jason profile if you plan to do this as it may mess up the profile.

Edited December 31, 201410 yr by Tommy Styrvoky