How to use RedViewer

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 6:56 am

Since Red's RedViewer is somewhat required to make new tiles n' stuff, I thought it'd be a good idea to make a stickied topic here.

The bad news is that it's been so very long since I've used it, I don't have a clue as to how to use it (i.e. make a .SPR -> .TIL conversion, TIL -> SPR, new tiles from scratch, new sprites from scratch, etc.).

So, if ye enlightened ones would be so kind as to share*looks at Requiem, JJ86, Senor Deluxe, Stevie D, OTB, Flamescreen, et cetera*

Note: Has anyone seen/heard from Red lately? Hey, Red! Feel free to share! icon_mrhappy

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 2:41 pm

There should be a tutorial on making tiles on my site created by Flamescreen. I also have some tutorials that touch on some aspects of using it. I saw Red logged on here at DAC last week but am sure he is mostly busy at home!

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 7:42 pm

Yeah, you can try my tutorial there. I think JJ86 updated it a bit which is good. Also feel free to experiment with it. I found ways to do nice tiles with peculiar methods. My weak poimt is still the floors however.

Observation: When you make a tile, it might have some white areas surrounding it(you can notice by placing it in a map). The solution is to go back to the tile creation steps and cut these areas of the tile(happens most with wall tiles)

Cheers,

Flamescreen.

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 8:38 pm

I find that in photoshop that after you make the original selection, go to the menu and modify that selection by making it smaller by one pixel. This will give you a better edge and may get rid of the white border around it.

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 8:55 pm

Yeah I have to do that in Corel as well, though I still sometimes, as with the blue water tiles, need to go through each tile and individually recolour the border pixels. Occassionally reducing the mask can cut off more than you want especially when the image has a lot of delicate parts.

BTW JJ DaC has a newer version of Redviewer, 1.6.0.18, than you have on your site.

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 11:44 pm

Hi! Not dead, almost but not quite (:

About any "white borders", you shouldn't have any of them... I don't see why you do -- that is if you maintain the alpha layer.

I clearly remember trying this with photoshop 7.01: taking a transparant TIL exporting to TGA, loading in Photoshop, applying some lame filter on it, saving it to PNG and finally converting to ZAR in the FOT editor - and no white borders were there.

My memories are fuzzy at best now though, but I'm quite sure this is a problem in the wya you handle the file, not the viewer or photoshop - although I remember photoshop 7.0 (not 6 nor 7.01) having some issue with TGAs and alpha layers...

Posted: Mon Oct 27, 2003 11:59 pm

Hey Red how's life.

Well I'm not using photoshop, but I mostly a halo effect after resizing a new image, but it's not something I'm bothered about, it's reasonably easy to get rid of and just the price I have to pay for not splashing out for a better graphics editor icon_sad

.

One question though before you disappear, I could of sworn that in an early version of your viewer you could alter a sprite's bounding box and save it, was I imagining things because the save option isn't available for sprites in 1.6.0.18. (I was altering the bounding boxes on the deathtraps).

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 2:24 am

Life's keeping me busy with my three lil' ones...

No, sadly, you can only change the bounding box for tiles for now, since you can't save sprites.

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 11:30 am

Try this in Spray, it might work.

Cheers,

Flamescreen

Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 11:49 am

Yeah I did it in spray, but I could of sworn that the first time I did it was in an earlier version of Redviewer. Oh well just going quietly mad over here. Ignore me. smile

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 3:33 am

Nah, only tiles. Old versions of Red!Viewer allowed you to select a "clip rectangle" which allowed you to copy/paste the proper area of an image and slap it into a graphics editor - albeit it didn't support alpha... Good for web pics at best. I think I still have a version, however it's quite slow and doesn't support compressed SPRs (read: doesn't support characters and vehicles of the full game).

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 6:31 am

Red - any plans on making your program able to save multiple layers at a time (to make tile versions of actors, vehicles, etc.)? Pretty please?

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 7:37 pm

Dunno. Thing is that I have to reimpliment the clip-rectangle (which was a pain) then on top of it take the surfaces and merge them together (to preserve a proper alpha output). I've been thinking about it for quites some time though never gave it deep thoughts as I though saving sprites would be of greater priority.

I added it to my "Official list of Requests" (which hasn't seen anything done in it for... Well, almost a full year now.

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 9:07 pm

Don't worry Red, Rome wasn't build in a day(chhers you up, ain't it! smile

)

Greetings,

flamescreen

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 11:04 pm

Well, yeah, saving sprites is #1. #2, though, would be "multi-layer saving" as I've unoficially termed it just now.

DO let us know when you start workin' on it, okie? icon_wink

Posted: Thu Oct 30, 2003 3:23 am

Nah, I'm the type of person who'll let you know when it's done... This way you don't end up with another "Duke Nukem Forever"....

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 10:03 pm

Hmmm, it keeps crashing on me when trying to make a zar on Windows 2000. Arrggggh. Also need a list of ocx files and VB files needed to get the thing working on another computer.

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 10:27 pm

Sounds like you need to download the msi, here.

Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 10:47 pm

thanks!

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 1:55 pm

Hi Red,

Hopefully you're still lurking around, are you still willing/able to do a tutorial on making animated tiles? I still can't get it to work, no correction if once I've set up all the frames and click on the animation preview it works fine, but as soon as I hit save all the sub frames go to hell. It might be my graphics editor, I'm using Corel Photo-Paint 8 to make the pngs, and have pasted all the frames into one to make the palette which I've used for each seperate frame, but I just can't get it to work. icon_sad