Sprite Editor

[Ekmek]

It ended up being the background. I kept it as fuschia and set the alpha channel and got this. I have since went back and made the background 0,0,0 black and its fine. but I could of swore that I could use any color...

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
It ended up being the background. I kept it as fuschia and set the alpha channel and got this. I have since went back and made the background 0,0,0 black and its fine. but I could of swore that I could use any color...

Did you set the alpha channel of the fuschia pixels to zero. We used black as background as PSP4 has a nice alpha generator for black pixels, that makes alpha for black pixels zero. Another thing is that edge pixels of the tiffs should have also zero alpha.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


Did you set the alpha channel of the fuschia pixels to zero. We used black as background as PSP4 has a nice alpha generator for black pixels, that makes alpha for black pixels zero. Another thing is that edge pixels of the tiffs should have also zero alpha.

-Martin

that kind of went over my head. I'm going to stick to changing the backgrounds to 0,0,0 black since it works for me.

On a side note when I do hot points how do you guage where the center is? is it pixels from the bottom and right?

Martin - I may be pestering you for Citymod2 questions soon, I'm looking to convert Civ3 cities and put them in a citymod2 format but also add more city culture types like India, native america, african and may need help (I do like your cities but I tend to prefer the larger and dimmer civ3 styles...)

[Martin the Dane]

E, what Martin says is that you should make sure that all pixels at the edge of the image are fully transparent.

I must cofess that I don't remember what the hotpoints are relative to, but I think it's the upper left.

[Ekmek]

Thanks Martin,

Quick city sprite question (I have cradle installed which I think uses CityMod2) I notice that sprites GC049-GC072 are modern city spries but they are just three copies of the same graphic. I am assuming these are used as modern city sprites for the different civs. I also noticed that there are new modern sprites done later down the chain (in the 100s).

Are those 49-72 sets still used or are they kept there incase you play an unmodded game?

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
OK I've been trying to do a few city sprites. One came out fine then I did another the same way and got what you see below. What did I do wrong?

Well another thing that came into my mind with this Fruschia is that this color is a special color in CTP2, in most of the files pixels colored like this are replaced by something else. But there are some *.tga's that are displayed on the map like this icon that indicated that a city contains slaves. It has a chain with an edge around it. On the map the area around the chain inside the edge is transparent but darker, like around your city. And the pixels that are replaced are Fruschia in the original *.rim file. So I guess you forget to set the alpha channel of those Fruschia pixels to zero.

Originally posted by E
Quick city sprite question (I have cradle installed which I think uses CityMod2) I notice that sprites GC049-GC072 are modern city spries but they are just three copies of the same graphic. I am assuming these are used as modern city sprites for the different civs. I also noticed that there are new modern sprites done later down the chain (in the 100s).

Are those 49-72 sets still used or are they kept there incase you play an unmodded game?

GC049-GC072 are the modern city sprites that came with the game indeed they are copies of each other, just in one you find a different byte. They are kept, because to make sure that the standart game uses the original sprites and because I use them for my Computer Age. Yeah the computer age makes everyone equal. The difference between these modern sprites and my sprites is that my sprites are unique for each style, but I just did a set of 5 sprites for each style in comparision to the original set with 8 sprites.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

Thanks Martin!

I'm almost done with my Civ3 Graphics pack for CityMod2 but I'm looking to change one set of Euro graphics (either palace or castle) to African city styles. I'm also looking to add more city styles, I'm assuming that the limit is still 200 for city sprites too so that gives me only 188-200, but also can I use sprites less than 28 (001-027) for new styles? (I still want to add native american, Indian, and age only unique graphics for byzantines, Venice, Americans, etc.)

Thanks!

New Question: I think it was mentioned before but what causes the lines through my sprites? I haven't tested in game but in the sprite editor some images have lines running through them.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by E
I'm almost done with my Civ3 Graphics pack for CityMod2 but I'm looking to change one set of Euro graphics (either palace or castle) to African city styles.

Eh changing? Using them as a base and made from that African styles doesn't make sense, either. So I prefer adding.

Originally posted by E
I'm also looking to add more city styles, I'm assuming that the limit is still 200 for city sprites too so that gives me only 188-200, but also can I use sprites less than 28 (001-027) for new styles? (I still want to add native american, Indian, and age only unique graphics for byzantines, Venice, Americans, etc.)

It is still 200, but just because we didn't change it does not mean we cannot change it, the only problem is that we might reserve much more memory then needed. Actual it is just a number to update. And another remark programmers start to count at zero, so you can use sprites (000-027) and at the end you can only use the nubers 188-199, well maybe we should renumber the sprites and forget about backwards compartibility with mods and leave the task to restore the mod compartibility to the modders. That would have the advance to group the sprites of each style.

Originally posted by E
New Question: I think it was mentioned before but what causes the lines through my sprites? I haven't tested in game but in the sprite editor some images have lines running through them.

As I said you used the edge pixels and gave them an alpha chanel bigger zero.

-Martin

[Ekmek]

Check this out!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=1947602#post1947602

Could this make it possible to convert FLCs easier?

[Ekmek]

I got this from Cyber Dreyk

I can give to you source code of the Civ3Flc v.1,0,0,20, written on Microsovt Visual C++ (v.6). Maybe it can help you...
You can get it here: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Steph.zip (I have uploaded it a few days ago for Steph).

One remark: in case this code will be used you should make mention of Jimmyh and Cyber Dreyk and inform me about it.

[Ekmek]

no pressure Martin but I'm praying that your silence is because you are working on the TGA importing... I'll have my computer online in October I'll be ready to do some heavy converting...

[Martin the Dane]

I'm praying that your silence is because you are working on the TGA importing.

Unfortunately, from the perspective of SpriteEdit, that's not the case, the truth is that I have simply not had the time to do any programing for the last several months. I have been working ~50 hours a week. Most of my spare time has been devoted to rest, and writing and rewriting a short-storry (in Danish).

Hopefully I'll have a bit more time for programing in the comming months. As for status I have implemented part of the import functions, but unfortunately I don't remember where I left off , so resuming will requre some detective work.

[stankarp]

I noticed the problem with the shadow file above. I have had the same issue but its a bit confusing.

I had it with images extracted through sprite extractor even though I selected the background and flood filled with pure black. I also had it with images recently from sprites I made last year. At that time they ran fine. I re-did several recently to make new wonder units and fix my chariot archer which was a bit small, and now I got the same problem with some of the shadow files. I also made a couple of new goods and it happened to a lesser degre with one of them, with diagonal streaks appearing. I corrected a couple with sprite editor by deleting the offending frame.

The only thing I can think of is I am now running Win XP while the sprites were originally done on Win 98.

What OS are you using E?

[Martin the Dane]

Btw. has anyone tested the sprites with lines in the game. I havn't had the game opend in a verry long time. If the lines does show up in-game the error is in makespr (and not my problem ) if not the error is in SpriteEdit (and very much my problem).

[Ekmek]

the lines show up in game. I have since corrected them by removing the pixel. I use xp