Help with Sprite creation

[Richard_III]

In anticipation of the upcoming patch, I decided to finally get around to making some new sprites. I downloaded Harlan’s instructions and followed them to create a one-facing image of an archer (which bears an amazing resemblance to AOE’s archer). Having created and saved five copies of the image into a ‘96’ subdirectory, and copied the text file, I get the ever so informative error message:

D:\games\CallToPower\CTPSpriteTool\Units>makespr -u 96
Processing 'GU96.txt'
[MoveCould not locate .\96\GU96MA1.0.tif. Aborting.

Now, substituting cow images with identical names creates:

D:\games\CallToPower\CTPSpriteTool\Units>makespr -u 96
Processing 'GU96.txt'
[Move.....]
Conversion completed successfully.

so there nothing seems to be wrong with the directory structure or executable, so I assume that something is wrong with the TIF. I used Corel Photo-Paint 7 to alter the BMP image, saving it as a TIF file (using Harlan’s blank diamond TIF). Comparing a cow TIF to my TIF I can see no differences (both show as 24 bit RGB color TIFs). The alpha channel looks fine; and seems to match that found in the cow TIF. Any ideas???

TIA
[This message has been edited by Richard_III (edited August 16, 1999).]

[Harlan]

Hmm, I recall getting that message when I plain forget to include an alpha channel at all, if I recall correctly, which is a very shaky proposition.

Also, is it 24 bit or 16 bit, I forget. Do you have the opportunity to use Photoshop- I recommend that (since it works for me!).

[LittleWing]

Maybe you have just made a typing error (it happened to me and I spent a long time trying to find why it didn't work ; I just typed GU05MA1.O.tif instead of GU05MA1.0.tif, you see the difference ?
[This message has been edited by LittleWing (edited August 17, 1999).]

[Richard_III]

Well, I opened the cow TIFFs with Photo Paint and them re-saved them, only to find the same error message. I guess the sprite editor doesn't like Photo Paint's interpretation of the TIF format. There is an alpha channel (or default mask in Corel parlance). I'm downloading Past Shop Pro now. Hopefully that will yield correct results.

Thanks anyway....

LittleWing-

Argh! I hate it when I do stuff like that!