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| Thread: Town screen borders, H3 palette, etc. | |
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pellish
Famous Hero
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posted November 21, 2015 08:10 PM |
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Edited by pellish at 20:16, 21 Nov 2015.
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Town screen borders, H3 palette, etc.
Hello everyone
Lately I've been making my own Forge in VCMI and I just got to the point where I have to start fixing up the town screen. I'm basing it off the VCMI Cove port step by step.
(I know the picture looks completely messed up)
I'm using Don_Ko's old Forge town screen that he uploaded in the Forge thread. I've done the border outlines in photoshop and saved them as index images with transparency enabled. Yet they still show up like this when I test them out on my "trial and error" town screen. Can anyone tell me how to properly do them?
Here's the "border" folder if anyone would like to take a look at it. The special buildings, the shipyard and the mageguild4 are still Cove's but I did all the others in PS.
http://speedy.sh/kqFdr/border.rar
Also, when making the .def files of buildings I fail to make their backgrounds transparent as well. I read something about a "h3 palette" but I really don't know what to make of it. I know the image has to be indexed but my knowledge is limited so that's where it stops for me.
If anyone can help me out with any tips that would be really great. I'm using Photoshop for all of this.
(It kinda sucked that I did all the border outlines (the TO files) and area images (the TZ files) only to notice that I had completely failed with the transparency.)
Also please tell me if there's anything else you need to know in order to help me out.
Thanks in advance.
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Villl
Hired Hero
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posted November 21, 2015 10:28 PM |
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Macron1
Supreme Hero
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posted November 21, 2015 10:37 PM |
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Edited by Macron1 at 22:40, 21 Nov 2015.
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There are 2 ways in doing border files for VCMI.
1) I open building sprite in Paint .Net, with palette take RGB color (0,255,255) for background, then some color for border, and make "Save As" and choose "8-bit" for BMP files.
2) You can already use PNGs with transparency for borders. Just make PNG with transparent background, draw borders, and save it as 32-bit PNG.
PS Size of buildings sprite must be the same as size of border/area sprites.
One cool proposition for VCMI:
make town screen in graphic editor as 800x374 multilayer file, and then use 800x374 32-bit PNG files for each buildings. You will not mess with x,y coordinates of buildings (they will be all 0,0), only with z coordinate.
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pellish
Famous Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 12:18 PM |
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Macron1 said:
There are 2 ways in doing border files for VCMI.
1) I open building sprite in Paint .Net, with palette take RGB color (0,255,255) for background, then some color for border, and make "Save As" and choose "8-bit" for BMP files.
2) You can already use PNGs with transparency for borders. Just make PNG with transparent background, draw borders, and save it as 32-bit PNG.
PS Size of buildings sprite must be the same as size of border/area sprites.
One cool proposition for VCMI:
make town screen in graphic editor as 800x374 multilayer file, and then use 800x374 32-bit PNG files for each buildings. You will not mess with x,y coordinates of buildings (they will be all 0,0), only with z coordinate.
That's genius. Thanks! It'll make things a lot easier. Do I do this with both area and border files?
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pellish
Famous Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 01:13 PM |
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Edited by pellish at 13:19, 22 Nov 2015.
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I'm doing something completely wrong obviously when trying to do the building .defs based on Don_Ko's forge screen.
The faded parts aren't doing me no good either. I suppose my only option is to manually erase all the faded parts of each picture. It's gonna take a really long time lol.
This is what it looks like directly copied and pasted from the town screen multi layered psd file:
What options do I do? 8-bit indexed bmp images look like snow (like in the first picture). What am I doing wrong?
EDIT: Or am I supposed to save them as 32-bit? I should really write down the steps for making these graphics. It's a pain when you do them wrong lol. Still, the faded parts are gonna cause me trouble if I don't manage to erase them well enough.
Macron1, any ideas? Help a noob out lol.
Thanks in advance.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted November 22, 2015 01:40 PM |
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Hmm, thats not normal, could you upload the psd file?
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Macron1
Supreme Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 01:56 PM |
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That's because DoN Komandor layers have half-transparent pixels.
You must use 32 PNGs for buildings (preparing instead of DEF file JSON file that looks like
{
"images" :
[
{ "frame" : 0, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith.png"}
]
}
)
VCMI will first search for JSON file, if it is here, than PNGs from it will be shown.
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pellish
Famous Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 09:10 PM |
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Edited by pellish at 22:03, 22 Nov 2015.
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Salamandre said:
Hmm, thats not normal, could you upload the psd file?
Here you go http://speedy.sh/pbC3e/FORGE-SCREEN-by-Don-ko-2.psd
Macron1 said:
That's because DoN Komandor layers have half-transparent pixels.
You must use 32 PNGs for buildings (preparing instead of DEF file JSON file that looks like
{
"images" :
[
{ "frame" : 0, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith.png"}
]
}
)
VCMI will first search for JSON file, if it is here, than PNGs from it will be shown.
But what about the buildings with animations, I can't do animations without a def file?
Thanks for your help so far, really appreciate it!
EDIT: I fixed the transparency issue. No matter what I do the picture's colors become muddied when I create a def though. This is getting really frustrating...
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted November 22, 2015 10:25 PM |
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But how do you copy paste it? You must disable the cyan background first from master layer.
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pellish
Famous Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 11:05 PM |
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Edited by pellish at 23:20, 22 Nov 2015.
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I took care of the transparency issue. The problem now is that I lose the color once I create a def out of the frames. No matter what image extension I choose I end up with the same result.
Here is a frame loaded into h3deftool:
And here is the result shown in defpreview:
As you see the transparency works great. The issue is the coloring 
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted November 22, 2015 11:38 PM |
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Image extension means nothing, it is random.
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Villl
Hired Hero
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posted November 22, 2015 11:43 PM |
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Pellish When completed podelishsya ???
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted November 23, 2015 10:07 AM |
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Macron1 said:
There are 2 ways in doing border files for VCMI.
One cool proposition for VCMI:
make town screen in graphic editor as 800x374 multilayer file, and then use 800x374 32-bit PNG files for each buildings. You will not mess with x,y coordinates of buildings (they will be all 0,0), only with z coordinate.
You can do it like that in VCMI ? This will work?
This is revolutionary. This really should be in their wiki.
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Macron1
Supreme Hero
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posted November 29, 2015 12:31 PM |
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Edited by Macron1 at 13:10, 29 Nov 2015.
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pellish said:
Salamandre said:
Hmm, thats not normal, could you upload the psd file?
Here you go http://speedy.sh/pbC3e/FORGE-SCREEN-by-Don-ko-2.psd
Macron1 said:
That's because DoN Komandor layers have half-transparent pixels.
You must use 32 PNGs for buildings (preparing instead of DEF file JSON file that looks like
{
"images" :
[
{ "frame" : 0, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith.png"}
]
}
)
VCMI will first search for JSON file, if it is here, than PNGs from it will be shown.
But what about the buildings with animations, I can't do animations without a def file?
Thanks for your help so far, really appreciate it!
EDIT: I fixed the transparency issue. No matter what I do the picture's colors become muddied when I create a def though. This is getting really frustrating...
This JSON file will replace DEF animation also.
{
"images" :
[
{ "frame" : 0, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith1.png"},
{ "frame" : 1, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith2.png"}
{ "frame" : 2, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith3.png"}
{ "frame" : 3, "file" : "bastion2/town-screen/buildings/png/Blacksmith4.png"}
]
}
)
I checked, PNGs for dwellings with transparency can also be used as area files - VCMI works with them correctly, using only nontransparent pixels as clickable dwelling points.
Colors are messed in DEF files, because DEF files allow only 256-bit palette, loosing all colors after 256 colors found.
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