Problem polishing minimaps in PS

StixNStonz

I had a guy do my minimaps for earlier builds of Nexus, but now im doing it on my own. I'm pretty close to having it all done, cept that when i go to load the bmp's into the sprite wizard, they say that the colours aren't in 256. I cant seem to find the way to save them as such; just 16bit, 24 and 32bit. Any help please?

Kouji_San

you need to make the BMP indexed... You can do this in the menu --> Image --> Mode --> here you select it to have indexed as color system.

Now you also have to make sure that your transparent color is the last color on the index palette, also all 5 separate BMP's need to have the same palette. Now all you have to do is google something about index color palettes <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />

Merkaba

The way I make sure that all images use the same pallet is to piece together each doctored frame of the sprite into a single image (768x512 pixels - the 4 normal minimap images and the commander minimap on the side), and then convert that to 256 colours.

Then, make the last colour in the pallet an easily recognisable/paintable colour (like completely red), and fill in your current background with that exact colour.

Finally, make a selection of exactly 256x256 units for each sprite, crop the image, save as bmp, then undo back to when you have the full image again, and move the selectionbox to the next image. Then crop again, save, undo, etc.

StixNStonz

hmm, k, i think i got this. One other thing though; how do you make the commander minimap? is there a scale function or something?

Kouji_San

If you have a look at your xxx.spr file, you created using buildminimap in the console, with sprite explorer. You should have 5 frames in there. The first 4 frames make up the big minimap for first person view and the 5th frame is the commander minimap (as shown in the commander HUD)

I usually don't mess with this one, since its small and well. I don't feel like messing with it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />

GameOver

Heyo ... it think this fits the topic:

How can i make a proper outline or stroke around my location name on my minimap(like they are in all official maps)? I've tried with PSP and failed. The only result was an ugly unreadable thing <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />

Can anyone help me... pls :/?

Kouji_San

I used photoshop's layer style: stroke around white colored text.

font: Verdana, bold, 9pt


layer style -->
color: #132852
size: 2px
position: outside
blendmode: normal
opacity: 100%

StixNStonz

Nice man... i havnt mapped in a few weeks, but i just handed in my last essay of the year. Will probably finish up the next release of Nexus in the next two weeks or so, and the minimap will definitely be a big deal.

Thanks for the info <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />

GameOver

Thx for the info, too ^^