City Editing

[Hecate]

I'm trying to redo some cities using Paint Shop Pro 6.0. I am using what I assume is the transparent color for Alpha Centauri, but it's not showing up transparent within the game. Problem with PSP is that it has both a foreground and background color selection, I'm guessing this is where the problem is at.


Can someone please help, by either telling me for sure the transparent colors, or telling me how to set PSP to make this transparency thing work..


What I'm working on is a city set for a new faction based on the aliens in the movie Predator. I want the cities transparent, with just outlines of the edges of the buildings.


Thanks in advance for any help.

[Hecate]

NM.. I got it working.. I ended up switching to Adobe Photoshop and everything worked just fine..

[Claus]

I had the same problem you mentioned with Corel Photopaint 7. And, the same, the problem disappeared when I used Adobe Photoshop. It's a special problem with the pcx format, I guess.

But maybe you did not fish out the exact color? Its RGB value is 255,0,255 (that is: Red 255, Green 0, Blue 255) for the old faction pcx files with the light violet background color and RGB 172, 129, 81 for the extension pack faction (dark violet background color). To check if your tone is right, just use the pipette tool.

[Claus]

I had the same problem you mentioned with Corel Photopaint 7. And, the same, the problem disappeared when I used Adobe Photoshop. It's a special problem with the pcx format, I guess.

But maybe you did not fish out the exact color? Its RGB value is 255,0,255 (that is: Red 255, Green 0, Blue 255) for the old faction pcx files with the light violet background color and RGB 172, 129, 81 for the extension pack faction (dark violet background color). To check if your tone is right, just use the pipette tool.

I hope this may help you?

[Hecate]

Yeah.. Thanks for the help. It's working perfectly.

[Marukusu]

Now for my problem .
I've inserted the conical city (or what's it called ), and the smallest cities have blue backgrounds and totally transparent shadows. The colors are perfect, I checked them. Any suggestions?

P.S.: I'm using SMAC, because SMACX is not yet avaible here in Hungary.

[Hecate]

I had the exact same problem.. You might try this.. In the .pcx file you are transplanting the city pic to: cut out the existing pic, this will leave a white background.. Then paste the new pic in. The problem I had was that by pasting the new bases over the existing ones, was that I was creating a mulitple layered image.. Something AC didn't like..


Now on to another question of mine... AC does graphics in 8bit 256 color.. So tell me how I get the special features in art proggies like Adobe PS 5.5 to work with 8 bit color.. They won't now. I know the guys at Firaxis didn't build these city pics pixel by pixel. Is there some conversion method any of you use that will let you use the advanced effects, i.e., blur, textures, etc., that come with the programs? I've tried about everything I can think of. Once the city pic is pasted into the faction .pcx file, everything goes to caca. It's mass nasty pixelation...


Any help is appreciated.

[Marukusu]

My image is not multilayered. I have not used layers, but for safety I flattened it. Same result... Thanks anyway.
Convert the image to RGB, do your things, convert it back to 8bit 256 colors. It worked for me...

[Hecate]

K..thanks.. Sorry I couldn't help ya :-(

[SEE]

Originally posted by Marukusu on 01-09-2000 10:25 AM
Now for my problem .
I've inserted the conical city (or what's it called ), and the smallest cities have blue backgrounds and totally transparent shadows. The colors are perfect, I checked them. Any suggestions?

Are you sure the shadows really are totally transparent?

I had the same problem, so I applied the "shadow" color to the whole base square. My bases wound up surrounded by a large square shadow (which was, however, better than the blue.)

I don't have a real solution for you, but if you're willing to endure either no shadows or big square shadows, replace the background color with the shadow color. It'll at least be usable, if not ideal.

[Bblue]

This is how I got around it in PSP 6

The problem lies in the fact that the values for the background and shadow colors have the exact same values as other colors but with differnet index numbers. When you use those colors the program assigns them to the wrong index number, the transparent background color is index #255, play around with changing the color of index #255 to something unique that way when you paint or paste in that color it don't get reassigned to the wrong index number. Same thing for the shadow color (sorry don't remember it's index number off the top of my head, it's something odd). When you are done you can change the value of #255 back to what it originally was, and everything will keep the correct index number. Editing the graphics files are a pain! Hope that helps

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"Power does not corrupt; it merely attracts the corruptable"

[AlexanderIII]

Because of this issue, I've found PSP 6 to be too cumbersome. That's why I use Photoshop instead, does it perfect every time. The 'Replace Color' command is especially handy for getting the colors just right.

[Marukusu]

Guys, I managed to solve the problem! I took a snapshot of the corrupted city, and it's rgb is 0, 97, 235. So I made the transparent color 255, 97, 235 and it worked perfectly. Thank you anyway.