Sprite Editor

[stankarp]

Line show up in game and only started happening since I started runing makepsr in XP. I did not have lines and shadows when using win 98.

BTW Martin, not having your ctp 2 installed and not opened in recent times could be an offence:-)))))

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by stankarp
BTW Martin, not having your ctp 2 installed and not opened in recent times could be an offence:-)))))

It turned out that I did have it installed (and still do), but I'm guilty as charged with regard to playing the game.

But back to the subject.

I have implemented half the tga-import routine for combined images. There is still some work to do before it will be useful though, as it is now I can change the images of single frames, as long as the image-size is correct that is.

This brings a question, witch of the three image systems do you artists prefer?[list=1][*]One image per frame. Shadow is a distinct color, and mask is placed in the alpha channel.[*]Two images per frame. Shadow in separate image, mask is placed in alpha channel of pix-image.[*]Three images per frame. Pixel, shadow, and mask in separate images.[/list=1] I will implement all three, but unless I get to many protests I’ll do it in the same order as listed above.

[Ekmek]

Martin! great to see you back in action. I hope work is lightening up (but not the pay)

I'd prefer one image where you can set the shadow color etc to allow easier conversion of flics. And also an easier way to create units. Multiple frames slows down the process from my stand point. So I hope this is in your first build for me to test!

I saw you "correct size" comment. I do hope that TGAs of different sizes will be supported (again making conversions faster and creating stuff easier)


THANK YOU FOR YOUR WORK!!!!!

[Martin the Dane]

I saw you "correct size" comment. I do hope that TGAs of different sizes will be supported (again making conversions faster and creating stuff easier)

That's partly what I mean by "still some work to do before it will be useful though" Another important thing is that I have not made the half-size sprite conversion yet. And the interface... well it's utilitarian at the most. No explanations very little functionality.

[Ekmek]

sounds great Martin. I'll be willing to test it out and help with any help text or a how-to readme if I can (but probably not until late october when I get my home computer out of storage)

[Ekmek]

not sure if I whined about this already, and its a low priority, but how difficult would it be to later allow all eight directions instead of just 5?

[Martin the Dane]

Originally posted by E
not sure if I whined about this already, and its a low priority, but how difficult would it be to later allow all eight directions instead of just 5?

Well, only the five directions are stored in the file, so I don't think it will be possible to add the last three, at least not without changes to the code in the game. We'll have to ask the code people about that.

[Ekmek]

thanks Martin. I hope progress is going well

[Ekmek]

Martin
out of curiousity how are you going to handle the alpha-transparency? are you setting up some function that selects all of the back ground color to black and everything else to white or do you have some other magic planned?

[Martin the Dane]

The short answer is yes.

The slightly longer answer is: That depends on the images used for imput.
Each pixel is a sprite has a transparency value in the range 0 to 255 (0=background and 255 is opaque)
[list=1][*]If the image has an 8-bit alpha chanel, I use the value here.[*]If there is a seperate mask-image, I convert the colors in this image to the range 0 to 255.[*]IF there is neighter an alpha-chaenl or a mask image I use a flat model. Transparent or opaque.[/list=1]

[Ekmek]

Martin,
how goes the sprite editor? if you have something that loads singleimage frames I'll be happy to test it out

[Ekmek]

Martin, I hope all goes well and the holidays give you time to put a new beta out

[Martin the Dane]

Hi E

I have been working some on SpriteEdit this week, but have run into a problem that I can't seem to locate. It seems that SpriteEdit will save the edited spritefile correctly, if it contains more than one frame, but for some reason it miscalculates the size of a data-block (by 4 bytes) when the sprite contains only one frame, so now I'm going to let it rest a day or two and se if some rest, and maybee a swim in the sea, will bring some unexpected insight.

[Ekmek]

Thanks Martin! I guess as a work around we make all sprites have two frames (if your swim doesnt yield any insight)!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR GREAT WORK!

[Ekmek]

Martin,

If your current build is working (except for single frame sprites) any chance you can post it. I have a week off coming up and would like to use the time to start converting some Civ3 Units...I could wait for full functionality later.

Thanks