Adding skins to your machines is quite easy. Just add these resources to your machine dll:

Resource type --- name --- description

Bitmap --- "skin" --- bitmap for the machine, size must be 100x50
Bitmap --- "skinled" --- "led on" patch bitmap (if not given, default led is used)
"position" --- "skinledpos" --- x and y coordinates inside skin bitmap for the led on bitmap (two bytes)
"color" --- "textcolor" --- machine name text color (3 bytes, RGB) (optional, defaults to black)

[step-by-baby-step for people like me who don't know about resources:

1. draw the skin and led bitmaps, saving them as windows .bmp files in the my_project_name folder.

2. project menu->add to project->new->resource script. type my_project_name in the filename box. a file called my_project_name.rc is created, which you don't need to know about, and a resourceview tab is added to the left pane.

3. #include "resource.h" in your .cpp file.

4. click the new resourceview tab, and right click the my_project_name resources folder in the pane above. choose import and navigate to the my_skin.bmp file. the file is imported. right-click the new name in the left pane and select properties, and type "SKIN" (with quotes) in the id box.

5. repeat 4 for the my_skinled.bmp file, typing "SKINLED" in the id box.

6. right-click the my_project_name resources folder in the pane above. choose insert->custom and type "POSITION" in the type box. right-click the new name in the left pane and select properties. type "SKINLEDPOS" in the id box. double-click where it now says "SKINLEDPOS". in the right pane you'll see 000000 written. to the right of this text, type 0101 (it will look like 01 01, and means 1 pixel from the top and 1 pixel from the left), or whatever the coordinates you want are.

7. repeat 6, typing "COLOR"  in the type box, "TEXTCOLOR" in the id box, and typing FF0000 (it will look like FF 00 00 and means red=FF, green=00, blue=00) or whatever the colour you want is.

-jmmcd]

notes:
-quotes ("") are important in the above names!
-The panning bar goes from 2,38 to 97,47 inclusive. Make sure your skin design accounts for this
-font is between y=20 and y=30

Some advices:
- use 256 color bitmaps to save memory
- led can be redrawn quite often so keep it small
- if you want all your machines to use same bitmap, do not include same bitmap in each dll.
instead create another dll and add fo llowing resource to your machine dlls:

Resource type name description
"asciiz" "skinref" name of skin dll (for example "Geonik's Skin.dll")
this dll should be installed to Buzz \Gear\Skins dir.