Modding Questions

[Bowlingballhead]

Still don't know what it thought was wrong, but it turned out I'd missed a " at the end of a unit name. Isn't that always the way?

It all works now, although I've discovered I have to go back and add in dark outlines around my units or they won't be visible.

[Saber Cherry]

I made 4 creatures today. And it took me ALL DAY. Sheesh... What free graphics programs are out that are more powerful than Paint, but still easy to use?

[Pocus]

Bear on me if it has already been said, but one thing which should also be added to modding is the custom name list, as otherwise you will end with out of theme names for new nations.

[Bowlingballhead]

Yeah, took me all day too, and I've got Photoshop, which IS powerful and easy to use. Of course, I managed about 12 in that time - but I've also got a little professional experience, and between you and me several of them are kinda shoddy. I got tired. More than anything, building icons requires patience, and I've always been in short supply of that.

I'm thinking of using the purple 'shadow' to mark out the outlines of my units. It's easy to see both in the .tga and in the game.

And everything seems to have more or less the power level I was aiming for. That's reassuring. After all, how do you really know how a unit's going to perform until you try?

Oh, and may I say - my work would have been vastly more difficult without your wonderful lists, SaberCherry?

[ February 02, 2004, 16:37: Message edited by: Bowlingballhead ]

[Saber Cherry]

My biggest time-consumer is defining the sprite borders. I draw in pencil, scan, and then I have a BMP of the sprite. But I cannot find a fast way to give it a solid black background, because after I use a "fill" command, there are always stray off-white pixels from the scan... especially around the border of the unit, where I have to very slowly trace a black line.

Furthermore, I cannot even imagine a way to automate this, unless there is some command in GIMP or Paintshop, "Make the picture background solid black, but don't touch pixels that are obviously part of the unit." Is there a command like this?

[Bowlingballhead]

Furthermore, I cannot even imagine a way to automate this, unless there is some command in GIMP or Paintshop, "Make the picture background solid black, but don't touch pixels that are obviously part of the unit." Is there a command like this?

Yes and no. Photoshop will perform a 'fill' command with tolerance - ie, it won't just fill in white pixels, but pixels that are *nearly* white, defined as close or as far from perfect color match as you desire. It will also give you fat pencil tips that can be easily used to brush out artifacts around edges.

You may be able to get PhotoDeluxe for free. PhotoDeluxe... is a deliberately hobbled and painful-to-use Version of Photoshop, but it's probably better than MSPaint.

[Psitticine]

I usually use Illustrator to do any kind of tracing. I much prefer it to Photoshop when it comes to image generation. I use Photoshop more for image manipulation, which is another thing entirely. Putting the two together makes for the best results, of course, but I'd choose Illustrator over Photoshop if I had to pick just one.

Is there a good freeware vector-drawing project? Like to Illustrator as GIMP is to Photoshop, IOW?

[Targa]

You can also use photshop magic wand to select the background, then use Select>modify>expand to expand your selection into those stray pixels.

I threw up a few monster icons I had laying around, just in case anyone has a use for them. You can see a picture here:
http://www.techno-mage.com/~targa/monsters.jpg

And/or download the file as a photoshop .psd file here:
http://www.techno-mage.com/~targa/monsters.psd

Saber: See if your program is using an "anti-alias" setting on the fill command. That's usually what causes you to have off-color borders. Turn off antialiasing and it should fill black right up to the edges of your sprites. Alternatively, in photoshop you'd be working with layers, and could merge the layer with the sprite down onto a solid black layer.

[ February 02, 2004, 17:28: Message edited by: Targa ]

[Saber Cherry]

I downloaded Gimp, so I'll see how well I can get that to work... Thanks for all the advice, by the way!

I decided to put up the units I've completed already; you can see them here. They're in TGAs in a zip, so if you unzip that to your mods directory, you can also see them in the game. Any impressions of which Versions of the units look better (there are 2 Versions of the eels, jellyfish, and alligators) or relative sizes are welcome...

[Targa]

Your link doesn't work, Cherry...