Chili%3ASkins - beyond-all-reason/springrts_engine_wiki_mirror GitHub Wiki
First off this topic will probably benefit from a veterans touch. Still, I'm going to try my best to explain the ease at which chili skins can be created and altered.
Chili has been around since before I even touched lua (or any spring code for that matter) but it seems it's just finally becoming the standard. Just about every active/upcoming game is using it for their UI purposes now, and I'm kind of surprised there hasn't been more interest in custom skins from the player base. Maybe it's because they don't know how easy it is.
What is a chili skin?
Unlike previous UI frameworks, such as IceUI and RedUI, Chili can (and usually does) use textures for drawing elements.
A skin consists of 1 or more images which are assigned to chili elements through the skin.lua file. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19847614/Spring/Screens/Chiliskin.PNG
Each skin gets its own folder in "LuaUI/Chili/Skins/".
How to alter a skin?
First find and open the skin's directory. A good starting point is JK's default skin 'Robocracy' which is a very complete and well made skin (he did code chili). In that case it would be in "luaui/chili/skins/robocracy"
From there find the texture you'd like to change, open it for editing with your program of choice, and let the creativity flow.
For basic alterations it's really that easy.
Why?
Because most, if not all of your Spring games will soon come with chili. What's cooler than seeing your own bad-ass skin while playing those games?