Not a bug
 

Ok, let me explain the issue with the power of two. Psycho was right about it being because of the bit translation but it serves a very good purpose.

It is a basic game developement concept. data that is stored in this sort of constriction can be a whole heck of a lot faster when running through the memory and CPU because of the way they read and write data. If they allowed any size, the caching would be horrible, and the lovely lag fairy would kill us all.

Game programmers even take it as far as to write their lines of code so it fits this type of constraint (down to the number of characters). Even if the few lines of code that they write take up a little more space, it will run a whole lot faster when processed by the CPU.

So, it's not just that they want to inconvenience everyone, it's just that they would like their game to run well (and isn't that something that we all want? )

Call me stupid, call me in-experienced, call me what you will, but I am still having trouble figureing out exactly how to make graphics from scratch for EQ.

I can, with some frustration as I am more skilled with pen and ink than with a mouse, create the graphics I want to use. What I can't seem to do is set the transparency...or alpha channel as it seems to be referred to here.

I am referring to all the black surrounding everything. When I do the graphics, they end up being encased in a black border or such.

The programs I have are MGI PhotoSuite III(sucks, the graphics are transparent and the black shows up in that one), PhotoShop 5, and PaintShopPro 7.

How do I set the alphachannel in these with the Targa format? exactly? I can't even see where I can do that in photoshop, but I might be missing something.

This is the biggest thing holding back my re-skinning of the UI. the xml part I have down for the most part, it's the graphics that are frustrating me.

Thanks for the help in advance :)

Kiriani

If you have PaintShopPro 7, this is the easiest method I've found for making transparent images (using the Alpha Channel).

http://www.eqgui.com/showthread.php...d=8813#post8813

-Cormanth

Thanks much! Haven't been reading here much due to constant server busy messages....can't wait till it's fixed :) this is my fave message board these days :)

I was starting to make a metal skin (all tga files) for the ui and I couldn't figure out why my background wouldn't work...so I was reading through this thread and what I did was I not only changed from 32 bit to 24 bit but I also REMOVED the alpha channel and bang my background works like a charm...

Okay, here's the deal on alpha transparancy. The cool thing about this is the fact that you can have partial transparency, as already noted. So, in addition to being able to define your graphic object piece (i.e. a 128x128 pix image inside your targa file), you can also set the transparency of the piece.

For example, in Photoshop 5.0, here's a picure of the channels tab.


In addition to the RGB channels, the alpha channel sets the transparency for the image file, which in this case is the window_pieces02.tga file.

Note the transparency for the spell bar window.


If you edit the alpha channel and just put black where the spell icon background should be, then an empty spell bar would be completely transparent.

Oh, and as a side note, the graphic for the spell icon that is in the foreground, the oval with a square cutout, is sort of special. In the interface, there is a color layer that is applied to it to give the spell icons their respective colors. So, for a red spell, spots that are white in the image will show up red and black spots will show up. The more white the pixel, the more red that shows up.Try it with a gradient sometime to see.

Hope I made some sense.

Ok, I think I've got the hang of adding graphics using the animations.xml. One thing I'm wondering is, it seems kind of a pain to play with that file as it constantly gets written over when adding new mods or pieces. I've seen people do graphics without editing the animations file, do you just declare you texture and UI2d's in the file your working on in that case?

Indeed

I am basically king tweak with others work...now I want to start my own....Unfortunately everytime I attempt this method My UI crashes to old default. I'm gonna give it a try later tonight but if you could post the most frequent crash problems encountered I'd appreciate.

Photoshop Alpha Channels
 

Alpha channels in photoshop are actually usable for a lot of things, probably the most common combined layer transparency.

Basiclly, alpha channels are a masking technique. Imagine an alpha channel as a cutout you are using to airbrush/spray paint through. If you wanted a partial cutout you could use mesh or a patterned cutout etc etc.

One technique that is really nice about alpha channels is the ability to make tranparent from one layer to another. say you have 10 layers in an image and you wanted to cut through a shape from the top layer to the 6th layer down in one section, you could do that with an alpha channel rather than trying to clear the space on every layer from the top down. I'm no pro so I wont go and try to teach the technique, but I think those of you who understand what Im saying can figure it out.

The immediate application would be for 3d visual class animations... cut through the shadow knights helm to a blood red layer and shade it right and you can make it look pretty damn cool without going to some crazy headaches of clearing space.

Kirbol

wow that stuff is really good information..... I know I will be reading this thread like a million times b4 I get it right, but I understand whats going down. one thing, I did not know is that alpha channel. Wow that is really sweet. I was using that channel to great the nifty rock look from the clouds,diffrent clouds, lighting effects combo, and when I loaded it up in EQ it as all transparnt, well all the black was and it kicked ass, I guess most of the really nifty things come from mistakes :nana:

Ok, two things.

1. Can anyone tell me if it is possible to use the spell icons in place of the spell gem icons? I like the tking icons, but they are too small for a friend of mine to see. What I'm looking for is a way to make the icons in the cast window the same size as the icons in the spell book. I'm guessing it's not as easy as cut and paste the bigger icons (in the proper order of course) and rename the tga file. I know the bigger icons won't fit in the gem holders and this is fine with me. All I want is the spell icon and the spell name with a transparent background anyway.

2. Can anyone point me in the direction of good (easy to use) graphics editor so I can play around with making my own?

If anyone knows of a larger set of gem icons let me know. I've found a bigger set, but the icons are very grainy as tho someone just enlarged the smaller gem icons. If someone is willing to give this a try for me, what I'm looking for is the larger icons on the left and the spell name on the right with no border, no window name and a transparent background.

Thanks
Scott

I would love to do the same thing (change spell gems to spell icons) if it's possible but I haven't figured out how to do it.

As far as good, easy-to-use graphics editor, I don't know of any widely available...Photoshop is by far the best, but also hideously expensive and not particularly user-friendly, Paintshop Pro is slightly less powerful, significantly cheaper, and about equally unfriendly, and the GIMP is as powerful as Photoshop, freeware, and as hopelessly difficult to use as you would expect from a program originally developed for UNIX.

Help! I am trying to make my own UI since I have not found one that I really like for my cleric characters. The problem I am having is that I am not sure how to create a file for the dimensions. Could you u plz help me with this.

Unsure what program to use to edit/create these graphics.
 

Just wondering what program i should buy to create and edit my own custome graphics that isnt 300 bucks lol, srry cant afford that much to play with a EQ GUI, perhaps i may even have somethign on my computer already that cna do this, thatd be even better : ) .


K well if any of that made sense great if not srry its late and im falling asleep at keyboard here NIGHT ALL !!! thanks for any replies or /bonks for askign such stupid questions Lol