Makespr.exe error message

[Tellius]

Hi,

My first three cities were created without a problem by makespr.exe, but all of a sudden, it doesn't seem to work as smooth anymore.

After having created the necessary image with alpha channel and black background, I get the error message "pixel with no associated alpha channel".

Does anyone have any idea what exactly this means (does the alpha channel cover some non-black, or is the opposite occurring, is there still some black that should be covered by the alpha channel?) and how to circumvent it?

Thanks a lot

Tellius

[BureauBert]

Hopefully E can provide you with more specific information -- I haven't much experience using MakeSpr myself. As far as I remember there shouldn't be any pure black pixel in the graphics and even one forgotten "0 0 0"-pixel will prevent the sprite creation. Maybe there's something useful in the manuals .

[Ekmek]

did you use 0,0,0 black anywhere?

the other thing. I think I ran into this. it was over two years ago thoiugh it might be your shdow file missing the alpha channel. not so sure. honestly I prefer spritedit makespr is very buggy

[Tellius]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

I wish I could get spriteedit to import graphics, but it just won't work. All items under "Edit" remain grayed out, whether I have tga's, 16-bit tifs, 24- bit tifs or 32-bit tifs in the list. Tileedit is so much easier, you can import with just about any alpha color (no need for an actual alpha channel either).

I already consulted the readme that came with makespr, no help for this specific problem there

I'll keep on trying

Greetz

Tellius

[Ekmek]

in spriteedit you don't need an alpha channel or a shadow file. just one tga. not sure why its grayed out though. I'll have to relook at spriteedit to help there. makespr i didn't like at all.

[Tellius]

Hi,

Success! It seems you must turn off the anti-alias option of the magic wand tool when selecting all black, otherwhise Photoshop also takes some 'in-between' transition colours with its selection. Once reversed and the alpha channel made, this alpha channel then blocks out a few pixels that aren't 100% black.

Thanks

Tellius

[Ekmek]

Good Job.

If you can do a favor in your learning process. Jot down some notes as you go a long. I'm thinking I should of done that and then created a FAQ. I think if you go through it and write your questions I can do my best to answer (or someone else) and we'll make a GAQ for any future CTP2ers

[Tellius]

Hi,

Will do E, a faq is really needed for a pain in the butt like makespr. The biggest side effect of my solution, is that all city graphics now have a black 'outline', small but noticable. Your city graphics do NOT have this, so you must have chosen another path - with better results.

The most obvious solution would be to have a lighter color as an alpha mask - in tileedit, I always use light grey, not 'ghost outlines' there. But again, spriteedit does not seem to have any option to import (I have version 2.0.8 which came with AOM3).

E, have you had a chance yet to read the email I sent you a few days ago? The new goodie hut graphics (very small settlements with a small patch of water to make them instantly recongnizable) work great, I attached pics in the email. I stopped work on city graphics for now, all I seem to create is too big (and has black outlines), your cities are right on the mark. Only the modern cities could use a few more styles (you now have 2 I think). This is the main reason for my wish for bigger tiles. The fact that you can't create even middle sized cities frustrates me to no end

And I already created some stuff, just to see what CtP2 would look like with bigger tiles. I created three terrain types, put some cities on them (using stuff from Civ3, Anno 1503 - which has great renaissance buildings, Age of Empires etc), and sat back and imagined that stuff being possible in AOM. I just need more room to work on if I am ever to get this in the game. But one can dream, right?

See you

Tellius

[Ekmek]

Yeah the goodie graphics look great I'll add them in. are you looking to replace the goodie huts I used from RoN and the Civ3 Africa huts though?

feel free to use spriteedit to take a tga of my modern cities (I think I have 5 sets) and add to them as you seem fit. Hell, I'd like to see more modern city graphics too.

how far on the bigger tiles are you? did you import into tileedit with bigger tiles? whats the size anyways?

[Tellius]

Hi,

Thanks for the support. I made several tiles using the nature rendering program Bryce 4, and added a few different things, just to see what it would look like. Well, with this size of tiles (four times bigger than they are now), things look a lot better and bigger, I suspect players will switch to a higher resolution, the result being more detail. The tiles look more like "real" terrain now, detail that would simply have been lost with the current tile size.

I haven't tried to load them in tileedit yet, due to Martin's response ("it'll crash!"), but I'll give it a try and report back. Curious to see what'll happen.

Greetz

Tellius