Scourge of War Boards

If I remember correctly, I created the original PSD's with alphas, but then had to convert them to PNG, which was not ideal, and made for some unwanted artifacts in the process. I'd have prefered DDS format, but they needed to be converted to PNG format for packing purposes at that time.
I was'nt involved with the packing, I churned out the textures for the maps, trying to get the best balance for everything - blimey its about two years ago now!

I've got all the originals still of course, lots of them.

cheers

David(jolly)

Glad we're able to fix this with a mod, I never knew the flowers were here:

With this mod Without this mod Thanks for permission, I'll get this mod integrated into the Grog Toolbar with it's next update.

Jace11 - Nice Work!

Reb - You can reduce the file size slightly without messing up the graphics. The size is 152x200 which is 30kb .

By slicing off the top which is just empty space you can have a file size of 152x152 which comes out to 23kb in size. That is not a very big savings but every little bit helps.

davinci

Jace11 quote:

I used the separate textures in the /Terrain folder. I took the colour channel of each (they all have backgrounds) and made a sheet, then did the same with the alphas. These were all in bmp format btw. Then I just combined the two to make the dds.

The process makes sense, but I still don't understand how to find or use the colour channel. Is this a Photoshop function? I've been working with transparent alpha backgrounds for years with Paint.net modding troop sprites, flags, fire, and terrain, and have never had to deal with cleaning up a colour channel.

My bottom line question here is: Could this issue have been caused by a Photoshop oversight?





Hey D, didn't even understand what you're referring to, but thanks anyway.

Photoshop shows you all the channels in the image, (one exception is in png files - you don't get to see the alpha channel, but you can create it as a separate channel if you want).



I've never used Paint.net so I can't comment on it. When you open a png with Paint.net, how is the alpha represented? Does it appear as a separate selectable channel or layer, or is it not displayed at all and represented by the chequerboard? - because that's how PS displays it.

I'm looking at gunships post and compared the alphas of the two.

On the second image the alpha looks way too weak to be a product of the background selection issue.



The image on the right isnt ideal for an alpha...especially when there is better one (in the terrain folder). Look at the center of the flower, its contrast suggests its been created using some info from the colour image. It should be solid like the image on the left.

Don't worry about your sprites/ flags they look completely unaffected to me, the alphas look correct (solid) and they display well in game. It might be just terrain sprites that suffer - I'm thinking people are getting them from images on the net and they don't always come with alphas, so they have to be generated as best possible. It's just in the case of this sheet better alphas were available but not used.

Here is a snap of my original psd texture for this. I spent a lot of time getting the alphas looking right - for each and every texture, and there are a lot of them. They then have to have a good balance on the map textures that I also did, taking into account the overall scemantics of the day - large flowers did'nt seem right.



It looks like for the right image you have just desaturated the colour layer?
I'm not sure what for, or what it proves.

If the packing can be improved, then that's great. The packing method we used was to try and reduce the file size as much as possible for these sprites. One idea was to leave the sprites unpacked as seperate dds files, but packing was the correct way to go.

Cheers

The one on the left is from the alpha layer of GFX_WL_Sunflower.dds that comes with the game (\Scourge of War Waterloo\Base\Graphics\Terrain) this looks like its the same as in your .psd.

The one is the right is from the alpha layer of WL_Terrain_Sprites.dds (the packed version) that comes with the game (\Scourge of War Waterloo\Base\Graphics\Packed), I haven't edited it.

They are both in the game.

The game uses the one on the right, not the one on the left. Have a look at WL_Terrain_Sprites.dds and compare it to your .psd ...

Somehow, during or prior to packing (converting formats etc), you've gone from one to the other. I don't know how exactly you process them but packing shouldn't result in this change.

Your textures are great btw, they do fit the game. Just trying to work out why the packed versions aren't appearing as nice as your source images.

Jace11 quote:

I've never used Paint.net so I can't comment on it. When you open a png with Paint.net, how is the alpha represented? Does it appear as a separate selectable channel or layer, or is it not displayed at all and represented by the chequerboard? - because that's how PS displays it.

Paint.net uses layers rather than channels. You can choose either transparent (checkerboard) or solid backgrounds for sprites, building by layers. Once the sprite design is done the layers are flattened (combined), and it's ready for dds, or other conversions.

Now included with the 5.2 release of the Grog Toolbar. Thanks Again!

New download link on the first post.