Help needed with dmextract

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 11:10 pm

I want to use the dmextract tool for modifying the graphics.dat of csback for linuxandwindows/csbuild.

However, i just cannot get it working right, there are graphic glitches in most of the pictures. There seems to be something wrong with the command line.
what should i type(or what should be in the batch file) if i use the standard directories (specified by the .bat file, my computer has to use windows)? (-for extracting the graphics.dat and back again.)

With a dungeon master for pc the resulting .bmps are somewhat more usable, but i think they are wrong ones, too!*cough !!*

again, could someone please give me a detailed step by step guide for changing the graphics for csbuild...with dmextract; i looked into the .txt file but that is, i am sorry, not helping much.
e.g. how do i specify big or little endianness? with -e <BIG> or is it -e big or just -e <big> or even -e -big i just do not know if this is even relevant since it should make that automatically!!!
oh well!

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 12:19 am

This is the command line for etxracting graphics from CSBWIN:

Code: Select all

dmextract -x graphics.dat -d outputfolder -i 4

And this is the command line to recompile into a graphics.dat:

Code: Select all

dmextract -c graphics.dat -d outputfolder -i 4

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Mon Jul 19, 2004 5:42 pm

That is much better! Thank you very much, Gambit ! : )
The dragon is orange but that does not matter.

I´ll take a look into charlatan´s notes on file 558 i think, for color issue ect...

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:40 pm

When i look at my modified monster the graphics is NOT displayed correctly. somehow black strokes are in the upper third region whereas the downward part is all ok.

I´ll go on and make some more, nevertheless; hopefully this can easily be remedied...

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:59 am

Have you changed the size of the images from those you extracted? If so, you also need to edit 0558.dat so that it has the new sizes and coordinates specified. If you don't want to get into all that, then you need to make your monsters the same size as the originals. Changing the size in any way and NOT updating the 0558.dat file will result in distortion.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:31 pm

It is true, the new monster is not as tall as the one before. --> I took the original skeleton bitmaps (3 views and one attack) and have drawn into these my new monster, you know.

So i did not change the size of the "skeleton bitmap" as is, only stuffed more transparent colour in it .(which is NOT light purple, rather blueish...)

Have to make a second one, and see again.

I just wanted to try out how it would "feel" like with new monsters.

If the problem persists, i´ll either

a) forget all about dmextract
b) or find a way (web/email) to let someone else create a graphics.dat (if it is worth it, for this one new monster is rather sketchy..but again, there are not much pixels at your proposal)

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:00 pm

I got the problem.... it was the purple colour...
Somehow it produced a linebreak*shrug*

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:58 pm

Yeah, I don't understand why dmextract uses an extra pink colour -- it's never used in anything, and information in 0558 controls which colour is transparent for each monster anyway. Avoid the pink and just use the normal DM colours and you should be OK.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:31 pm

It seems that there are combination of colors that mix up the picture

If i use !orange! with grey, at the spiderpic, it gets split in two and side flipped and the lower part is cut and placed on top again...
If i do not use orange, it´s just fine..

There seems to be colors that cannot be displayed with each other...
Apparently it has sth. to do with the size, too....

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 2:15 pm

ok. now i have found out that the flipping and mixing up of images results in two things(three)
Most likely this was dealt with in the notes of Charlatan58 on file 0588.dat??!
1: there has to be a transparent colour on the lower rim; most often lightblue00ffFF for monsters.
2:you cannot use all 16 colors together, bcs some are not compatible.

(3:do not use color ff00FF purple at all)

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 2:50 pm

Aaargh! I posted a response to this earlier and it has disappeared! I wrote in my reply some of the things you've discovered.

I don't think that it's necessary to have transparent on the rim -- I've never had problems with that.

As you discovered, you can't use all the colours in a monster (well, you can but it'll look very strange). The orange and flesh colour are changed to other colours depending on the monster -- which colours are used is defined in 0558.dat. Also, the transparent colour for each monster is in 0558.dat -- so some use cyan, some grey and some yellow for the transparent colour. It depends on what colours the monster uses. If you use ALL colours in your monster, it would not have any transparent areas -- ie, a big solid square!

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 3:03 pm

Somehow i think there may not be ANY full transparent color line on the upper rim...

I edited my post many times , maybe that had some bad effects on posting??

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 3:43 pm

All right, i think i got it.
Take the knight for instance: has four views ; one for the side(s) and one for the back and one for facing and one for attacking.

You know the effect of the knights when they attack. it is not just a "still"picture it is moved from left to right and so forth.

For the attacking picture, where the image is mirrored on the y - axis(flipped vertical), you need on the right rim (for the mirroring) a transparent color(maybe for the programme to know where the image is located)
as well as on the lower rim, bcs it gets moved a bit downward and upward if displayed.

For the back you have just to have a transparent colour on the lower rim, or sth. like that, because it does not move right left(no vertical flipping)

if there is no transparent color on the the possible sides for flipping/moving(left and down) the image gets split in half. The programme assumes the middle. not the rim ...
kind of...

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:59 pm

That's not right at all.

Have you read Charlatan's notes? You may have missed a very important point:

Widths of monster images must be a multiple of 16 pixels

If your images are not multiples of 16, you will definitely get distortion. If your creature is 87 pixels wide for example, you need to "pad" it's background transparent colour to the next boundary, 96 pixels in this case.