Tutorials - How to Use Tinker
I originally wrote all this up on the VLForums, but decided that it might be of help to some other people. :)
What This Is:
This is a basic guide to using Tinker to edit toys. (In this tutorial, specifically Babyz toyz, but you can use Tinker to edit Petz II, 3, 4 and 5 toyz as well and can follow this tutorial since I chose a simple toy for each.)
What This Guide Will Cover:
- 1. Let's Get Started! - Opening files in Tinker
- a. Backup? I didn't know I had to have no backup!
- b. Pallette? What's that?
- c. Pictures don't grow on Trees...they grow in them!
- 2. Export? Is that anything like Deporting? - Taking the pictures out!
- 3. The Three Big Don't's - Respect the Don't's. (I heard they break kneecaps...)
- 4. Edit! - Changing the pictures
- a. The Beauty of a Nice Folder
- 5. Import? I just got here! - Putting the pictures back into the toy!
- 6. Here I come to save the day! - Saving your new toy!
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What you'll need:
-Tinker by the Marvelous Nicholas! (Available from Sherlock Software)
-Babyz or Petz II, 3, 4 or 5
-An image editor of your choice
-Your imagination!
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1. Let's Get Started!
So, you've downloaded Tinker and now you want to edit your toys. That's great. I'm here to help. :)
Editing toys with Tinker is a real breeze. However, we aren't going to start with Tinker right off. There are some things you should do to prep yourself in case of accident.
1. Backup? I didn't know I had to have no backup!
So, lets go through this thing step by step together, alright? Alright. First we have to pick out a toy to edit. Say you want to edit...oh...
The Blue Picture Frame. (Since it's really just one picture in a couple of different positions...I won't do anything like tell you to edit the duo ball since it's got probably a hundred images.)
So, you go to your toyz folder and right click on your Blue Picture Frame.toy and select 'Copy'. Now, make a new folder, by right clicking on an empty space in the window and selecting "New>Folder". I suggest you name this new folder "Toy Backups" or something similar. This will keep it safe should anything happen while we're working with Tinker.
This doesn't mean that something will happen, but one of the things I see most often is "Can someone send me xxx.toy (or .cat/.dog or any other file)" because they didn't back it up and accidentally messed up their original.
* If you can't see the extension .toy, don't worry about it. At this point it's not important, but if you're bothered, read the "Special Notes" section at the end once you've finished the tutorial.
Now that you've backed up your precious Blue Picture Frame.toy in it's cozy new folder, let's move on.
Opening Files in Tinker
And now, the moment you've been waiting for, you get to open Tinker! (Just double click Tinker.exe)
Since we know we're going to edit the picture frame, you'll need to open it up. You'll probably have to browse around to find your toy folder. (But you should know where it is since you copied the .toy file)
Usually, depending on your game it's C://Program Files/Mindscape/Babyz/Resource/Toyz (The exact name will obviously change if you have Petz 2, 3, 4 or 5. I believe the Program Folder changes to "PF Magic" for Petz 2/3/4 and "Ubisoft/Studio Mythos" for Petz 5. If you can't find it under that, check Mindscape. I don't own Petz 2/3 so I don't know for sure)
Now that you've gotten into the folder and opened the .toy by double clicking it, there will be a box that has two options in it, the first one says "PICT_B1", the second one says "PICT_B1_AWAY". The first one is the frame on the wall, the second is how it looks on shelf. Since we want to change the way it looks out of the case first, click the first one then click "Edit".
b. Palette? What's That? (A special note about Palettes)
The palettes, or colors if you prefer, are different for the Petz games and Babyz. Since the tutorial deals with a Babyz file, you'll need to go to the "Settings" Menu and check "Babyz" under the Palette option. If you don't it will show up very wierd looking. As for Petz, the games use the same palette. However, just a wierd note about Petz 5. It being the wicked stepsister, it supports 24-bit color. So, you can pretty much use whatever color you like on your toys in Petz 5. The others are limited to their original color palette.
Just for those curious as to how 24-bit/8 bit comes out in an image editor:
8-bit = 256 colors
24-bit = 16.7 million colors
That's quite an advantage in the color ranges. However, Babyz and Petz 2,3 and 4 can only have 256 colors (and only the ones in their original schemes) so don't try to put 24-bit images into them.
Enough about palettes! :D
c. Money doesn't grow on trees, but pictures do!
When you click 'edit', that will open a 'tree' that has lots of names in a list. (GrabbedA, DroppedA, etc.) Go ahead and click on GrabbedA.
The only images you want to play around with are the "A" images. The "B" images are 'hotspots'. They show where you can click to put an image into the frame or where the clock face should show up. Since we won't be changing where the picture shows up, don't touch them.
2. Export? Is that anything like Deporting?
Now, if you just want to change one part of the frame, you can open the 'tree' and pick the one you want to edit. In this case you'll probably want to edit them all. So a quick way to do this is just to click on the group name "GrabbedA" for example, and choose "Export" Just keep doing this for each group until you reach the "B" section, then stop.
I highly suggest saving all these images into a new folder called (guess what?) Blue Picture Frame (or whatever toy you're editing), so that you'll know what they are later on.
Now, great. You've got your images. Now what?
3. The Three Big Don't's
This is just a note that will help you. There are three things that you really shouldn't do at this point.
1. Don't increase the color depth from the original or the game won't be able to see it. (At best...at worst I believe it will crash your game when you try to take it out...I haven't tried it myself.)
2. Don't change the file type from .bmp or the game can't import it.
3. For the sake of your sanity, Don't rename the files. (They should be something like "GrabbedA-000.bmp, DroppedA-000.bmp, MountedA-000.bmp, MountedA-001.bmp, etc) If you do you'll have a difficult time figuring out what goes where and it may even mess up the file...
OK...Now that we've got that over with...
4. Edit!
Well, now is the fun part! You get to open your favorite image editor and do all kinds of crazy things. I'll just assume that you wanted to turn the frame...oh...green. (You don't have to make it green, I'm just making an example.) I'm not going to try and tech support all the various paint programs out there. If you need help with that you should look for tutorials in a search engine.
a. The beauty of a good folder
I highly suggest making a new folder called something like "Green Picture Frame" and saving your edited pictures there (so you can save the original blue ones to work from again).
So, you change all the pictures so the frames are green and saved them into their new folder. Now what?
Now you go back to Tinker, and (hopefully, you still have the .toy open, if not, open it back up) you get to import!
5. Import? But I just got here!
Just a note here, I've discovered that you have to import them one at a time by opening the 'tree' in the list (say GrabbedA again) and clicking each picture and hitting "import"**.
Now, if you listened to me and kept the original file name, this'll take a little while, but it'll be cake to make sure that the images match up.
Now, once you've hit 'import', it'll open a screen that asks what you'd like to import. Go to your "Green Picture Frame" folder and click on "GrabbedA-000.bmp". Now click OK. You should now see a green picture frame instead of a blue one. Keep doing this for all of the images, making sure to match each ones numbers. (MountedA-000.bmp coming before MountedA-001.bmp, etc.)
6. Here I come to save the day!
Now, you've got all that done? Now you get to save it. If you just want an overwrite of the blue picture frame.toy, just hit save.
If not, (I haven't tested this yet!) I believe that if you play with the Sprite Settings under the 'File' menu you can make it show up separately...however, I've not tried this yet, so no promises. (If you do decide to try it, make a copy of your edited Blue Picture Frame so if it doesn't work you can put it back and you don't lose your hard work!)
I hope that helped you a little and that I didn't end up making it more difficult. :\
I did everything step by step while I was writing so I knew what the screens asked and everything.
Have fun making new toys. :D
--Special Notes--
* To be able to see the file extensions on Windows XP you have to go to the top of your folder window (Such as the toyz folder) and click "Tools" then "Folder Options". Once you have "Folder Options" up, click the tab that says "View" and uncheck the box that says "Hide extensions for known file types" and you should be able to see the .toy extensions.
**You can import them all at once, but it doesn't overwrite the old files like it should. So if you do them all at once, you'll have to copy the x/y coordinates from the old ones. It's just easier to do it one by one for now. :D