LBM creation question.

[cusbut]

Not a problem these are a few random lbms

[DRG]

While I applaud the work you have done but I wish, for your sake, you had asked about this when you first started and I would have given you a couple of suggestions that would have saved you some problems

Most of the pics do not use the correct, abbreviated PIC palette I provided in the games \Game Data\Design\Palettes folder for WinSPMBT. The one you need for B&W use is JASC_WINSP_PICPAL.pal. If you use any other palette for B&W you risk the a "shimmering" effect when the game is run on some systems. These are shades of grey used by the game for smoke etc and if they get into an LBM you will see twinkling. When I find a PIC that does this I fix it but they are not common but all pics should use JASC_WINSP_PICPAL.pal to elliminate any chance that may happen. The reason I have not done this for every PIC in the game is there are now 4,390 in the game and redoing each one is, as you know, a bit tedious

However, I think for the most part you may be OK with the "red bands" palette you have used for most of them but I found two in that sample that use the entire palette so those "smoke" greys are included in your PIC. PM23107 and PM23109 both have the full palette and both pics contain a number of pixels that come from the last row of greys that are used by the games for colour cycling

This is quite a project you've taken on. Good luck with it

Don

[cusbut]

Thanks for the tip, I was aware that some would shimmer, because I initially started with the old DOS SPMBT pallette and didnt realise the palette had changed until about 1000 odd pics later, but never fear I plan on testing and redoing any pics on completion. A labour off love as they say, lol

[blazejos]

I made some color intro Lbm's . Moust of them are with "western" equipment and soliders. So I made with "eastern". Here are pic from war in Chechenia , Iraq with Warsaw pact equipment and from rusian intervention in Afganistan. Pic are from range 1500 to 15117 is that posible to coded this range for use as intro pictures in game?

[blazejos]

next pocket of color lbm's range 15118 to 15152

[DRG]

Blaz......wouldn't it make more sense to ask if this can be done BEFORE creating 152 colour PIC's? I wish I had your spare time.

Yes, I *could" change the code to open up those numbers as potential colour LBM's pics for the screens that use the colour pics but it's not a trivial code change ( there are over 1 dozen colour pic lists in the code ) and it is WAY too late for this patch and, as I said in another post.... not all colour pics look good when converted to the palette we have to use when displayed in the game and although there ARE a number of the ones that you did that look fine there are a number that don't and while I don't claim the ones we do use in the game now are the crème de la crème of colour pics I culled them down from 4 or 5 times the number of ones you do see because most simply do not turn out well when converted

Also, I noticed in some of the pics something I've seen other people do as well and that is resize the existing photo to fit the game PIC's 2:1 aspect ration without maintaining the original photos aspect ratio which either stretches or squashes the original photo and distorts the image when turned into a PIC. 15020 is one example 15067 looks like another and a few other pics just look a bit "compressed" as well.

I'm not trying to discourage you from creating items for the game but if you'd asked about this first I could have explained a few things that would have saved you a lot of work. For example. I like the pic 15128 but I would have liked to have seen the original photo. Sometimes colour pics have to be done twice, once using "error diffusion dithering" and once with "nearest color matching" then the two cut and pasted together but I don't know until I see the original. Sometimes the best pic is square and simply won't fit a 2:1 ratio and in that case I use the square pic in a 2:1 frame then fill in the background using cut and paste from the original photo then reduce it to 160x80 ( and sometimes that doesn't work and the whole thing has to be tossed out and start again )

Don

[Richard_H]

Don

Strange you don't like my attitude but Ian's (Cusbut) is OK.

Ian, last I saw you were doing colour as well. Have you changed to b/w?

Don, if I had the time, I'd be delighted to instance every b/w flickering shot, but I don't. That's one issue. I guess what really gets to me is that the game is so accurate in so many respects, so why skimp on the graphics? And if you're going to rubbish my efforts, please don't copy (some of) them, as you *appear* to have done with the modded Polish oob. I may be flattering myself, of course, & you may well have thought of the new units all by yourself.

You want specifics re lbms? OK. 23800, 25019, 25154, 34064, 34078, 34601 - all wrong size, & that's just in a sample of about 500. 36190 - I think it's probably the last of the 'white borders' - at least I hope so. Anything duplicated - although I can understand that, with so many people involved. *Any* missile graphics.

Most of the shots are there somewhere, whether on the net or in books. I'm sorry - and this is *not* intended personally, but not to find them = sloppy research. I repeat, why be so accurate in some ways but not others?

Richard H

[DRG]

Richard, it's quite obvious you do not pay the least bit of attention to what's said on this forum. The " modded Polish oob" HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPCAMO. Any "modded" OOB HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SPCAMO unless we specifically endorse it and the Polish mod is not endorsed by us. You might want to contact the guys who did the mod and ask them about it. If any of your work has been used in the OFFICAL OOB's issued with the game I want to know which pic if it WAS used I want to know about it becasue I issued specific instruction that NO PIC from third parties was to be used without their express permission and if that was the case their names would be in the credits. "Modded" OOBs are NOT my problem.

As for "23800, 25019, 25154, 34064, 34078, 34601 all wrong size," If I could get people to follow simple instructions I would have less crap like this to deal with months or years after the fact. Yes, they are the wrong size. One is 1 pixel too short, 3 are one pixel too tall and one is two pixels too tall and neither error make the least bit of difference when displayed in the game and yes..... they all should be 160x80 as I have explained repeately to anyone who makes them but people screw up and I simply don't have the time to check that every PIC sent to be during development is 160x80 unless it shows up incorrectly in the game. And 25154 isn't even used by a unit in the game and there are lot's of "old" PIC lurking in the files that are no longer used as well.

Don