Tutorial Map Skin Switch

Tutorial: Play on a different map skin

Goal: play a normal game on a map skin Riot ships — for example Summoner's Rift in its winter look — safely, with its music and ambience. You need: a map project for the map you want to change, with the map open. For Summoner's Rift that is a Map project with the Map11 WAD, as in Your first project.

What a map skin is

Riot ships several looks for the same map: seasonal and event versions of Summoner's Rift, the different bridges of the Howling Abyss, and so on. The game picks one per match. The Map Skin Switcher makes your game load a different one than it would normally pick.

Why a dedicated tool? Renaming a map file is not enough. The game's server still asks for objects by the identities of the normal map skin, such as the shopkeeper or the placeables. If those are missing, the game crashes while spawning. The switcher builds a map skin that looks like the one you chose but still answers to those identities, and it checks both files it writes before saving.

1. Open the switcher

Tools ▸ Map Skin Switcher…

2. Choose what to replace and what to show

• MAP — the map to change.
• CURRENT / BASE SKIN (left) — the map skin the game normally loads, for example Default - Base_SRX.
• FORCE THIS ENVIRONMENT (right) — the look you want, for example Milkshake_SRS for the winter Rift.

The result takes the chosen skin's visuals, and its music and ambience where it has its own.

3. Units: decide whether to carry them

A map skin can also change the look of turrets, minions and the nexus. Also carry the source skin's turret, minion and nexus skins takes those along. It is off by default: the map's surroundings are safe to swap, but those units are spawned by the server. If you tick it, check the result in game before sharing the mod.

4. Create it

Click Create Skin Override. The RESULT area reports what was routed and validated. The two map files the switcher rewrites are backed up first under .reyengine/backups in your project.

5. Test

1. File ▸ Save Project.
2. Project ▸ Send to LTK Manager (or Project ▸ Export .fantome…).
3. Enable the mod and start a Practice Tool game on that map.

After a game patch

The switch is remembered. When Riot ships a new patch, ReyEngine performs the switch again on the new map files, including any map-skin slots Riot added, instead of copying today's values over the new patch. If Riot stops shipping the skin you forced, the saved copy of its environment is used and the update asks you to check it in game. See Projects for how patch updates run.

Limits

• TFT arenas (Map22) are excluded on purpose. They are paid cosmetics, and the tool never modifies a TFT bin.
• A map skin's look can depend on game states (dragon terrain, for example). What you see in the viewport follows the game's own visibility rules; Maps and Viewport explains the layers.

Next

• Place a prop
• Tools and Mod Health — more on the switcher and on validating a mod.