Obtaining Skins

You have a two options available to you to obtain new skins from this site. The option that most are likely to pick is through the packages link in the menu up top. The other option is to utilize a Subversion (SVN) client.

If you can't find what you're looking for here, send an e-mail to me (Illandril) and I'll try and find it for you.

Packaging Section

When you first access the packaging section, you should see a list of skins that have downloadable versions created for them. Click the "(+)" next to one of these skins to see a list of all the versions. Each version will have a name, a date, and a download count. Click on the name of the version to download a zip file.

SVN Details

For those familiar with SVN, please feel free to utilize any SVN client you like and export or checkout the skins manually. There are some stable versions located under the tags directory, but not many. Most of the current skins in the SVN aren't ever actually modified except in a way that keeps them stable (most unstable code stays on the skin author's computer only), so you'll be safe checking out the head revision. Even if the head revision for a skin contains unstable code, you'll be safe... you just won't necessarily be able to use that skin properly.

If you just want to check out any older, non-tagged versions, feel free to do so.

See the SVN Paths page for more details.

Using Skins

So you've got your skin, but don't know what to do with it?

If your custom UI doesn't have instructions with it on how to install it, that means it's probably a "complete" mod - one that doesn't need to get merged with another one to work. If it comes with instructions, you'll want to follow those instead of these ones (see security concerns below).

Inside your UO: Kingdom Reborn folder you will notice another folder - UserInterface. If you used the packages section, the skin you got should have come in a zip file, containing one folder with a bunch of files (and folders) inside that folder. You'll want to extract that folder into the UserInterface folder. If you used subversion, you want to check out or export the folder that has the skin name (/trunk/skin_name/) to the UserInterface folder.

Double check to make sure the structure looks something like...
c:\UOKR\CustomUI\skin_name\<files>
c:\UOKR\CustomUI\skin_name\source\<files>

and not like...
c:\UOKR\CustomUI\skin_name\skin_name\<files>
c:\UOKR\CustomUI\skin_name\skin_name\source\<files>

After you do that, open up KR (if KR was already open, restart KR). In the top-left corner of the login screen, you'll see a "Custom UI" button. After clicking that button, you'll see a list of all the Custom UI's you have installed, as well as one "Default" option. Select the name of the folder that your new skin was in, and then press "Ok". Log in and you should see the new skin!

Security Concerns

There is a very low security risk with installing KR skins, so you shouldn't be worried about trying out new skins. The number of capabilities that are exposed through the Custom UI in KR is very limited, so the damage anybody could do without your help is very limited. Also, everything within a skin is easily examinable by other authors, since you need to release the source in order for people to even use it. If part of the instructions for any mod ask you to open a file within the skin, however, you should be very cautious. You shouldn't need to do anything to a skin for KR aside from put the files within the Custom UI directory.

If you have a concern about any skin, don't hesitate to send an e-mail along to Illandril, or any modder that you think you can trust.