Prior to this tutorial, I would like to suggest several tools to use to create your own custom Tibia skins.
In order to create and extract the .pic file itself, I suggest using Tibia Pic Editor v3.0 by Trooper which I have re-hosted here http://www.bassguitartech.com/picparser.zip
In order to edit the resulting PNG files (Explanation of PNG here) I suggest the use of GIMP which can be downloaded here Gimp Download Link (Linux and Windows supported)
The final tool is the Tibia.pic itself which can be obtained by downloading and installing just about any version of the Tibia client.
So, after downloading picparser.zip, you will need to extract to a fairly easy to access folder. My suggestion is to extract it to “C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAMEONYOURCOMPUTER\picparser” if using Windows XP or “C:\Users\YOURUSERNAMEONYOURCOMPUTER\picparser” if you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7. If you are using Linux, you probably know how to recompile this so it’s an executable for a *nix OS and how to handle directories. The reason for this suggestion is for ease of use later on as you will see.
I have taken the liberty of including the most recent Tibia.pic file in the version I am hosting and also taken the liberty of extracting it for you. If you open the folder called images after extracting the picparser.zip (as long as it’s the one I uploaded) you should see 8 images labeled as follows: 000.png, 001.png, 002.png, 003.png, 004.png, 005.png, 006.png, 007.png. The only two files you should really concern yourself with are 000.png and 003.png.
Under NO circumstances should you change the resolution of these images. Doing so will cause the .pic to not be compiled correctly. 000.png should be 640×480, 001.png should be 480×480, 002.png and 007.png should be 256×128, 003.png should be 352×288, 004.png should be 512×128 and 005.png should be 256×64. These dimensions are width by height represented in pixels.
Although the only two you should really worry about are 000.png and 003.png, I will explain what all of them are for. 000.png is used for the background or the main screen when you first open Tibia. 001.png is the hints for users first entrance in to Tibia, it’s not really necessary to modify these. 002.png is the primary font file showing upper case and lower case letters, it’s in your best interest to not modify this file. 003.png controls the overall user interface including the account control bar on the bottom left when you first open Tibia, the login window and the interface when you have logged in. 004.png is the outlined font, and 005.png is a minifont, don’t worry about modifying these. 007.png is also font related, ignore it. 006.png is an easy way to provide yourself with a built in light hack, I do not recommend modifying it.
The next few steps are only required if you did not download the version I provided and got Trooper’s Pic Parser directly from another source.
On to the fun part! First, copy the Tibia.pic file from where Tibia is installed on your computer to the place you extracted the pic parser. Look at your keyboard, you should notice you have a key that looks very similar to a flag.
Hold down that key and push the letter R on your keyboard. This should bring up a “Run” dialog box. In here, type in “cmd” without the quotation marks if you are using Windows XP, Vista or 7. Anything earlier and you want to type in “command” once again without the quotation marks.
Now, as long as you followed those instructions above, you can type in “cd picparser” without the quotation marks followed by hitting enter. You should now see something along the lines of C:\SOMETEXTHERE\picparser>” followed by a blinking cursor. As long as you are seeing this or something very similar, you are perfectly on track.
To extract all the PNG files out of the .pic, you will need to type the following in to the command prompt “picparser -x Tibia.pic” once again without the quotation marks. After typing this and hitting enter, the command prompt should drop down a few lines and then go back to the prompt you had before. As long as no errors came up, everything should be successfully extracted to your images folder.
If you extracted my picparser.zip, you can continue starting here.
So, as long as you have GIMP installed, you can start by opening whatever image you want to use as the default background (IE 000.png) and resize it to 640×480 and put whatever text you want on it. Before closing out or saving this image, make sure that when you flatten the image by clicking on “Image” and then “Flatten Image.” Also, right click on the layer in the layers pane (it’s a free-floating window called Layers, Channels, Paths, Undo – Brushes…etcetc) and make sure that you have the option to “Remove Alpha Channel” and it is not grayed out. Do NOT actually remove the Alpha Channel, if the option is grayed out and “Add Alpha Channel” is clickable, do so otherwise the .pic will not compile.
Congratulations, you have now successfully created your own custom background for the first image seen. Now, say you want to modify some color schemes. Open up the 003.png in GIMP. Below is an image numbered to match the explanation below of what each part of this PNG controls. Whenever I modify this image, I always zoom in at least 300-1000% so I can see very easily what it is that I am modifying.
1) This is the default pane for everything after you have logged in to the client.
2) These are the equipment icons, they are what’s shown if you are not wearing anything in that slot.
3) To the left of this number are all the icons represented (obviously)
4) This is the pane that is directly behind each piece of equipment (2)
5) This is the compass in the top right
6) These are the buttons that are those respective sizes, just on the otherside of 5 are two buttons used for Skills, VIP and Battle
7) The pane below 7 and to the right are the two chat tabs, should make the one underneath 7 match the rest otherwise it looks funky, or put a border at the very bottom
This one is for header text on login panes
9) This section here is for modifying the panel in the lower left for logins
After you have completed all of your editing, go back to the command prompt that we opened earlier. As long as you are in the same directory you can use the picparser command to recompile the image. You can call the .pic whatever you like, but in order for Tibia to load it it must be called Tibia.pic so in the compilation example I will use Tibia.pic as the last word for ease of use, although it could be anything.pic. Type in the following “picparser -c Tibia.pic” once again without quotations. As long as you followed the directions above, it should show something like this below.
Now, if you called your .pic Tibia.pic when you compiled it (unlike my picture right above this) then you can just copy and paste it in to your Tibia folder and open Tibia. Voila! You now have your own custom background! Below are a few pictures of the one I made.
