Reggie Themes

Themes are plug-ins that allow the look and style of Reggie Next to be customized to your liking. Creating a theme is relatively simple, it only needs two XML files to function. Of course, you can add more custom stuff, which will be looked at later in this article.

Initial Steps and "main.xml" File
The first thing you'll want to do is navigate to your Reggie Next folder, go into, and create a new folder. This will house our theme's files. For this tutorial, we'll name the folder. The folder will be the name in the drop-down menu of available Reggie themes, so keep that in mind!

In our folder, we will make a file named. It will contain the information about our theme. Copy the following into the file. The name your theme will show on the info pane goes between the quotes in, the creator of the theme goes in  , the version of the theme doesn't show in Reggie, but it's good to have for reference, it goes in  , and finally the description of the theme goes in. Be sure to keep it short and simple so it fits nicely in the information pane!

Now we will look at the other fields in the xml, which are more technical than the previous fields we looked at. The first one we will look at next,, is the window style Reggie will use. Not all themes have this field. If using it, I'd recommend using Fusion, which is the default window style of modern versions of Reggie Next. After this comes, which when enabled will cause drop-down menus, and input sections to display grey.

Next up is the last 3 fields. links the file that controls the colors the theme will apply to the editor. and  are folders that can be added to override the default icons. For names of icons, see the  folder in. Keep in mind overriding icons is optional, so if you want to keep the default icons, don't include these two lines in the XML.

Here's an example of an edited main.xml:

Creating our "levelview.xml" File
Now that you've made the  file, we can now get to editing the colors Reggie Next will use for the theme. We will start by creating a file called. Then we will copy the following into the file. Now, test your theme. These colors will be similar as the ones used in the 'Cavern' theme (some ID fields have been added). If it works, continue on with this tutorial. If Reggie Next fails, look over this again to see if you've made any errors. It's good to make sure we have no errors before we edit the colors of the editor, to make sure errors are from color edits. Now, lets move on to what these color IDs are.

RGB/RGBA Explanation
A good thing to know is this uses the RGB and RGBA formats. RGB is color code system standing for Red-Green-Blue, which when combined in different forms, makes many kinds of colors. There are 6 characters in an RGB channel, with two being for each color. The first two are for red, the next two are green, and the last two are blue. The scale of color goes from 00 (absolute black) to FF (absolute white).

RGBA is the same as RGB, but with a new field added in, named Alpha. The Alpha channel allows for transparency. A code of 00 is completely transparent, while FF is fully opaque.

If this explanation doesn't do enough for you, or you're more interested in this color system, you can read more here.

Editing the Color Codes
With explanations aside, we can now look into the color IDs and what they do. These are only color IDs that will be edited with our theme.

Note: While you cannot remove an alpha channel from a color ID, you can add one to a color ID!

''Note 2: The provided color IDs aren't the only editable ones! See the Transparent theme (and the table below this section) for an example of many other color changes!''

The background of the canvas, the area where you see your level.

Color of the tile grid displayed on the canvas. It is an RGBA supporting color ID.

I'm not sure what this is, I've tested different colors, and no difference seems to occur. Be sure to document it here if you know what it does.

The color of the location boxes.

The color of the location when selected.

The color of the sprite box used for sprites that have no associated image, or don't use their image overtop it.

The color of the spritebox when selected.

The UI of the program, like the toolbar and menus.

Not sure what this does either, sorry about that.

The outlines of the Zone boxes.

The zone text that says "Zone x".

You can change these codes to whatever you wish to.

List of Color IDs
This list of color IDs was taken from the Theme help guide in Reggie Next (located in ).

''Note: Color codes here are in the RGB format, and not HEX. They should work the same as the HEX codes, just do .'' Here's an example of an edited levelview.xml:

Custom Icons
You can add custom icons

Getting the Icons to your Theme Folder
You will need to make two folders in order to add custom icons. These folders go in the root of your theme folder. They will be named  and. To get the Reggie Next icons, you can take them from. Icons from the  folder go in   in your theme folder. Same goes for, put those icons in.

After this, edit the icons to your liking, maybe even replace the icons with new ones if you feel like doing so!

Extras + Theme
Please note that some window styles don't work with certain themes.

You can download my created theme here.