GlasWolf on 18/6/2006 at 15:36
I want to use custom readables, so I need to create a scroll background that I can pop up using the "Popup a window with text from the file..." action. I've taken a screenshot of the scroll and removed the blue background ((
http://www.glaswolf.net/thief/blank-scroll.gif) 285K) so I just need to save it as a DDS with the background transparent. I'm using PSP with the nVidia DDS plugin but I have no idea what (
http://www.glaswolf.net/thief/nv_dds.gif) settings I need to define the background transparency. Can anyone assist?
Ziemanskye on 18/6/2006 at 19:46
PaintShopPro and the nvidia's?
You're screwed - save it as a tga or masked gif or something and use DDSConverter or something.
Unless you have PSP-10, which *might* be able to do it. (I use 8, and it *always* screws up the alphas with the nvidia thing)
nomad of the pacific on 18/6/2006 at 22:43
Would Gimp work?
GlasWolf on 19/6/2006 at 18:15
I've had limited success at least, but it's opened up other issues. The screencapped scroll is chopped off at the top so unless I can get it to fill the whole screen just like a normal book then I'm a bit stuck. Not sure how game resolution will affect that either, but I suspect it won't be pretty.
Another possibility is to use a normal book and make all the text an image. Converting from PNG to DDS as Z suggested did retain the alpha channel (:thumb:) so I need to work out how to manipulate the alpha to show text on an invisible background. I think this will be a plain black image with the text actually on the alpha channel.
I've always avoided GIMP because I'm at least reasonably familiar with PSP and GIMP has an... umm, "interesting" UI. I think the time might be getting close, however.
Cheers guys.
nomad of the pacific on 19/6/2006 at 23:57
You're quite right about the Gimp UI! :joke: It gets me by, though.
GlasWolf on 9/7/2006 at 03:47
Hmm, very frustrating. I've worked out the transparency and can get nice looking text for half a page using a 512 (w) by 256 (h) .dds image. However, a 512x512 file (which makes up a full page) crashes the game when I try to read it. Presumably the image file is too large for the screen. Putting two 512x256 images on the page to make up a full sheet results in the top image on page 1 then the bottom on page 4 (!). If only dds size wasn't limited to powers of 2.
This is all using the normal book method, popping up the 512x512 image using a script command actually works but it doesn't resize it to fit the screen and has problems at lower resolution. Bah. :erg:
Ziemanskye on 9/7/2006 at 11:18
I thought how it resized them was based on schema and ini files, so we could override/control that (but it might be messy)
Ziemanskye on 9/7/2006 at 17:51
I don't know exactly how you're doing it, but I know with normal books you can include images in their schema thingys, and I think there was a doodad for controlling how it displayed you could add...
okay - one quick dig later and not the way I thought:
insert a picture, l = left justifed, r = right, c = center -
Code:
< img=METAbutNO_D c >
maybe in T3UI.ini, under the headings?:
Code:
[ReadBookBackground]
[ReadBookWindow]
[BookPageWindow]
[BookWindow]
GlasWolf on 9/7/2006 at 18:03
Yeah that's exactly what I'm doing:
Code:
lang_english 2004-01-21 12:08:20 " < img=test16.dds > "
Simple as that. The image file just contains the black text on a transparent background.
Looking at the ini file a lot of the stuff is set to 640x480, which might explain the 512 height crash...
