Dungeon Master Forum

Is there a utility that mimics the portrait editor in the original CSB utility disk? I know you can edit portraits in MSPaint and similar programs, but a "port" of that portrait painter would be good for keeping to the correct palette, and... well, I just enjoyed using the old editor. If there isn't such a program, does anyone fancy taking a shot at it? Don't ask me, as I'm utterly hopeless at programming.

P.S. That's an editor that'll produce useable portraits for RTC, btw. Thought I should mention that.

I dn't understand why you would have palette problems with RTC - it uses the full palette. Surely CSBwin is the one with the issues?

I think that was his problem-- RTC lets you use any color you want, so you're not assured of keeping to the correct palette, which makes the look slightly less "authentic."

Lol, I see : )

Yup, that's it. When I was making portraits with the CSB editor, I relished the challenge of using the limited number and range of colours provided to get the desired effect.

You can limit the colour depth with paint programs and chose exactly the toolbrush colour

A better method would be using an original palette picture extracted from the graphics.dat of DM or CSB which would give you the correct limited colour palette. I've created graphics to fit back into
CSBwin that way.

You can use the DMute editor to edit portraits then take a screen capture - not perfect for CSBwin (you need to then improt the correctly ordered palette) but would be perfect for RTC

I like draconic's suggestion and 2nd it. I was actually thinking about making the same request myself.

The main problem with trying to maintain an authentic colour palate in paint is that you can't save a custom palate, so you would need to build your DM palate from scratch every time you want to do a custom portrait in the authentic DM style. I tried experimenting with what you suggested a couple of days ago but found it way too time-consuming and clumsy trying to get the colours just right in Paint.

A simple graphics editor with the right dimentions and palate would be the best solution. Armed with that I could prabably start creating some new dungeons with custom characters to share with all of you before long.

Another tool that also could be done in s similar way is an image editor for items, which includes the correct dimentions for items (ie: one size setting for items like food, weapons, cloths, etc, and another for dungeon objects, etc.)

Hopefully these wouldn't be too much trouble to program...

A nice idea, but as there are plenty of good free image editors out there that will give you what you want, I don't see this being implemented any time soon.

Try GIMP: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

thanks, I'll take a look at it and see if it meets my needs.


...

Yikes!

It's a 16 mb file! ... and I'm on dialup...

I found a graphics editor that's just as good as the old csb editor. I was able to recreate the classic 16 colour dm palate and save it and create a teplate that's pre-sized to the correct portrait size.

and the best part is it's free. I downloaded a free version of Ultimate Paint and it does everything I needed an rtc graphic editor to do. this could be used as the original csb editor was and even used to make authentic dm style graphics for monsters, objects and all sorts of awesome stuff.

I've already made about 4 custom portraits using it.

Needless to say, I'm impressed!

I just did a very basic one, if someone wants to try it:

http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=Q11ZGVBT
(for GNU/Linux Debian/Ubuntu, and MS-Windows)

Usage:

drawing: left mouse button
erasing: right mouse button (=drawing with background color)

keyboard shortcuts:

#"^L" : load
#"^S" : save
#"^Z" or #"U" : undo/redo
#"P" or #".", then mouse button: picks a color
#"F", then mouse button: fills an area
#"M" / #"B" : changes the mirror frame

hmmmm, a little off topic but close enough i think. My portrait editor does not work in CSB DM, is there no way to make it work?

I wanted to give the game to my Dad, altering the portraits of 4 champions to resemble fantasy versions of Myself, my brother and sister and dad. as we all used to sit around and watch him play when we were young i thought he would get a kick out of it. Is there any way to accomplish this?

The portrait editor was not included in CSB Win. You'd have to make a very good case to Paul Stevens to get him to include it

It's a round about way, but...

1. Get hold of a PC DM saved game with four champions
2. Get DMute and edit the portraits of a saved game
3. Open the PC saved game in CSBuild. It will complain, but offer to alter the file format for you
4. Change the name of the saved game to csbsave.dat
5. Use the make new adventure through CSBwin to create a new save with the converted champion portraits (I believe)

This theoretically should work!

hmmm, step one looks to be the hardest part.... I ll have to research DMute more.

Some custom dungeons like the L Bridge ones (Poison springs to mind) are already PC DM saved games. DMute should have a link either at the top of this page, of through the encyclopaedia too!

well it worked!.. now I need an original DM file that has beginning level stats on the characters. I tried all L Bridges modules and the character stats are too high to play original DM with....... and I just discovered I can alter the stats in DMute too lol Thanks for the help, I would have never figured that out on my own.

It's the gift that just keeps giving

If you need thr actual stats to edit to, they will be listed on the encyclopaedia forum. Remember that stamina is actually 10 times higher than as displayed!