Recognition of .pcx Images

[TimeTraveler]

Hi, Everyone.

I've been working on making a mod for SMAC every now and then since last year. Much of the gameplay is complete, but part of what I want to do is create some new custom factions, complete with all new graphics of my own creation. One major obstacle I'm having is trying to get the images I create to be recognized in the game.

The art-based programs I use are Flash Professional 8 (to make the images), MSPaint (to help organize a few things), and Paint Shop Pro 9 (to both resize images and save finished files to .pcx format). The trouble is with getting the .pcx format for which I save the files to be read by the game.

So, I imagine that there's something (or multiple things) I'm doing wrong. I don't know if I need to install a certain other program, save the files in another configuration, or do some other task that has yet to cross my mind. In any case, I'd appreciate any and all help that any of you might offer in getting me directed toward making images that will work in the game.

Thanks.

[TimeTraveler]

Good news: I think I managed to figure some of the stuff out at http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...&threadid=7963 ^^ To that I give my thanks. ^^

Not so good news: The colors seem to be off between in-game and when viewing the image. Not as big a problem but still something I'll want to look into.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

You know, I was lucky. I had an old copy, v.5, of PhotoShop laying around when I started making faction graphics. I've a pronounced antipathy towards PhotoShop- it's really good at making simple functions insanely complex (and you insane and feeling simple)- but it was what I had that would open and save .pcx files...

I haven't had most of the problems I read about people having. Apparently, Photoshop mostly takes care of a lot of color issues under the hood...

Still, I paste the whole file into Microsoft Paint- and do most of the work there, backstopped by Lexmark Photo Editor. Between them, I can do most of what I want to, and more easily- except color manipulation, for which Photoshop is great. You can achieve a lot of shading effects with colors. Even for that, I start a new temporary PhotoShop file to paste into and work in, then paste back. And I load that SMAC pallette a lot...

Also, I'm becoming very fond of the smudge tool.

[TimeTraveler]

Paint Shop Pro is a nice tool to have. ^^

In any case, I think I've figured why some of my image changed colors (specifically from purple to teal). That purple was color number 252, which has the same appearance in many files as the transparent 255. Last night I made some attempts at trying to see if the colors would show up correctly had I used an alien crossfire image for a template instead of one for vanilla Alpha Centauri. The result was the bases had solid backgrounds, which were very teal.

I suppose the good news is that any image that doesn't use color 252 is okay as long as transparency is applied where necessary, but figuring out the deal with 252 would be nice.

[vyeh]

Have you seen the index thread for this forum? There are a number of threads under "Custom graphics" that discuss .pcx files.

[TimeTraveler]

Have you seen the index thread for this forum? There are a number of threads under "Custom graphics" that discuss .pcx files.

Yes, about an hour or two after creating this thread. ^^; Since, I've been looking through much of it in an effort to figure everything out.