Space Scenario

[Pedrunn]

Ooops, forgot to attach the pic.

[Immortal Wombat]

Its riddled with black pixels, that you need to change to almost-black for it to work. If you repost it as a tiff then I can sort it, but the jpg loses the image quality.

[Pedrunn]

I did some work on it already. But there was no pure black pixel inside the city. I just made it less pure black.

Yet it isnt working. Something else happened
Now it appears a windows error message.

This time i think it is a text prob.
I direct copied the one you attached and set size to be 96 x 72.

So why it isnt working?????

Please, give it a try. I am going crazy.
the Tif is here:

[Immortal Wombat]

Its wierd. If someone else doesn't get there first, I should be able to look at it properly when I get home, I only have Paint here

[Martin GĂĽhmann]

Your problem is the missing alpha channel Pedrunn, once I added it, it was no problem using the sprite maker, even with Ben's original gg01.txt with the wrong image sizes. Unfortunatly I don't know how to create the alpha channel with Photoshop. Maybe it will help you if you load this modified image into Photoshop. Images with alpha channel have a size of 28kb at leats my PSP4 files.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Martin GĂĽhmann
Unfortunatly I don't know how to create the alpha channel with Photoshop.

It's explained in Harlan's documentation.

[Pedrunn]

Thanks for the tif, Martin!

one less to go!
The problem i have several others pics done to convert into sprite. thats why i want so badly to learn how to make goods.

I dont even know what a alpha channel is But i will take a look into Harlans documetation. I didnt read yet because i thought it only would help me to do cities and units.

[J Bytheway]

This is how I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong):

The alpha channel is the "fourth colour" associated with each pixel (in addition to RGB) - the sprite maker (and many other similar applications) uses it to control transparency - I guess alpha 0 means transparent, alpha 255 opaque but it may be the other way around. Since the transparent pixels must be exactly the black pixels I don't know why this is necessary but I guess it's just another peculiarity in what is, after all, most likely a rushed program... I think better use of the feature is made in the new sprite version used in CTP2, some sprites like the helicopter appear to have partial transparency.

Modifying the alpha in a graphics application is usually fairly peculiar compared with just changing the RGB because it's used less frequently - most picture formats don't support it.

[Pedrunn]

Wooohhooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Aleluia, my friends!!!!

I read Harlans documentation.
It was there how to make a alpha channel.
And finally i am making my own good sprites.

Thank you all.
today i will sleep peacefully

[Locutus]

Alpha channels are extremely useful for experienced graphics makers: they can be used for things like shadows, smoke, water, backgrounds, animation, etc. Tom Davies played around with it quite a bit and his later sprites do make use of them more and more. I don't think alpha channels necessarily have to black, or even just one color (although this might be a CtP specific constraint), but I admit I don't understand the details either. Simple (web-oriented) file formats (bmp, jpg, gif) don't support it but from what I understand it's a fairly important and common feature in the more advanced formats (png, gif, tiff, tga), used more by (semi-)professional graphics artists.

[Martin GĂĽhmann]

Originally posted by J Bytheway
The alpha channel is the "fourth colour" associated with each pixel (in addition to RGB) - the sprite maker (and many other similar applications) uses it to control transparency - I guess alpha 0 means transparent, alpha 255 opaque but it may be the other way around. Since the transparent pixels must be exactly the black pixels I don't know why this is necessary but I guess it's just another peculiarity in what is, after all, most likely a rushed program... I think better use of the feature is made in the new sprite version used in CTP2, some sprites like the helicopter appear to have partial transparency.

You are right about the extremes but you can also use partial transparency, using the grey tones in between. See good number 4 the beaver example that comes with the sprite tool you will see that the edges are grey. This partial transparency on the edges has the effect the good (or object) does look like it belongs to the surrounding and not like a sticker pinned on a wall. They look smoth instead of hard. You see the different if a sprite don't use this technique (except the city sprites) and don't have shadows. Here is another example of a one frame good sprite the lobster. It has the partial egde transparency and of course shadows. In my opinion for a city expansion graphics it isn't necessary to use tranparent edges as the city sprites don't use them either.

-Martin

[The Big Mc]

pedrun I am off line for a bit at the moment but will be coming back in September I have already made some new cities based on some I found in the ctp1 cd

[Immortal Wombat]

Pedrunn, can I borrow your fictional universe for an RPG scenario to follow up your one?

[Pedrunn]

IW,
Sure you can!!!
To tell you the truth, i feel flaterned with this request.
What RPG is it?
Big Mc,
I really want to see those!!! where are they?????

[Immortal Wombat]

IW,
Sure you can!!!
To tell you the truth, i feel flaterned with this request.
What RPG is it?

I don't know yet, I was thinking of doing a star wars scenario (as Dave's doing LOTR ), but I'm waiting for the Civ3 Star Wars project to make me some units first, so I thought I could use yours to get back into the swing of scenario making.

Probably some sort of resistance scenario where the First Ones betray the winners, and kill them too. Then the 4 defeated races of the universe have to ally and kill of all the First Ones to reclaim the galaxy.