The Dragon and Chips series

Freeware pdb, text, html and rtf ebook reader software
by Spacejock Software
Runs on all versions of Windows, 32- or 64- bit and Wine on Linux & Mac

AboutScreenshotsDownloadyBook2


yBook custom textures guide


Important: When you update yBook all texture files (Tile1.jpg to Tile4.jpg) will be overwritten. Therefore it's vital you keep a copy of your work outside the yBook program folder.

You need yBook version 1.5.19 or later to use Tiles!

Having got the warnings out the way, here's how to create yBook texture tiles.

First, yBook will automatically repeat the textures to cover your pages, so it doesn't matter how big they are ... and they don't even have to be square. I suggest a minimum size of 200 x 200, otherwise the texture-choosing section of the settings page will look funny, and I wouldn't go larger than 1000 x 1000 or you'll eat up a load of memory unnecessarily.

So, where do you get your textures? I just scanned blank pages from a handful of books. I used 600 dpi, then saved the approx 40mb TIF file and cut out a 1500 x 1500 square. This square went into my image editing program, where I touched up any obvious marks and blemishes before resampling it to 96 dpi and 400 square, ending up with something like this (not actual size):

ybkTexHow1.jpg

Now I selected the image and copied it to the clipboard. Then I altered the paper/canvas size to 2 x the height and width of the image, and ensured the image was placed in the top left corner. You need precision here - one pixel out and the result will be a mess.

ybkTexHow1b.jpg

After resizing, I pasted the image from the clipboard as an object, then flipped it horizontally:

ybkTexHow2.jpg

After lining up the edges, I pasted another copy of the image and flipped it vertically. Then I pasted a fourth and final copy, and flipped it vertically AND horizontally:

ybkTexHow3.jpg

Now I had four images, and I moved them pixel by pixel until they just touched in the middle and were precisely aligned around the outside of the paper:

ybkTexHow4.jpg

Then I combined the objects with the background and used the clone tool to remove any obvious mirror images from the joins. It's VITAL that you don't touch the outside edges, since they must match the opposite edge exactly.

Now I saved the image, then resized to 200 x 200 and saved as Tile1.jpg

You can either repeat with other scans, or just play with brightness/contrast/intensity and hue to generate more tiles.

How does yBook use them? It loads all four tiles, and when you pick one in the settings that tile is pasted over an image the size of your entire screen. Then, that image is copied onto each page before the text is drawn:

ybkTexHow5.jpg

Best of luck, and if you come up with some nice textures to share, please send them to spacejock at gmail dot com - if there's any interest, I'll include optional texture packs with future yBook downloads.