Q2 Skin Help:
How to get your skins in the game:

First, your skins must fit a certain image size and format before they will work:

Skin Specs PCX format (Zsoft Paintbrush, Version 5)
8 bits per pixel
Quake 2 palette
Male size: 284x195
Female size: 252x195


Your Quake 2 directory should look something like this:
Quake2/baseq2/players/male          (male skins go into this directory)
Quake2/baseq2/players/female    
(female skins go into this directory)
Quake2/baseq2/players/cyborg     (cyborg skins go into this directory)

Now, your filenames should look something like this (skin will be my default name here):
skin.pcx                 (you can name your skins anything you want, I just used "SKIN" for this example)
skin_i.pcx
             (you MUST have you skin with the same name and a "_i" tagged on the end with the 32x32 head picture as that file)

Now if you do all of this properly, you should be able to go into quake 2's multiplayer player setup, and scroll through the skins until you see your own. If not, something is wrong.


The Palette: (for all Q2 skins to work they must be in the Q2 palette)
The Quake 2 Palette
meant to update this...there are no full bright except for index 255, the last color on the right side end.

Download the Quake 2 palette

Quake 2 Palette
7.71KB
Here are the Quake 2 palettes that I use. several files both are in PAL format:
q2No_Full.pal: the q2 palette with no fullbrights.
quake2.pal: the normal q2 palette...and many more...


Dissecting the Skin:
Male                                                                 Female
outlineM.gif (6401 bytes) outlinef.gif (6456 bytes)
This is as basic as it gets, showing what each part of the skin is. With these, one could easily decide how the parts should be skinned without having to test and retest the skin.
Also, all parts that go on the back are inverse in-game, so if you wanted to put text on them, you will have to write is backwards just like the Quake player skin.


The Wire Frame:
MaleTri.gif (7744 bytes)FemaleTri.gif (7362 bytes)cyborgwire.gif (7520 bytes)wirehor.gif (6040 bytes)
This is the wire frame skin of the male, female, cyborg, and crackwhore player models, these should be very useful.