Duck and Cover

http://red.homeip.net:8080/redviewer.ace
As a note if you actually read the readme in the archive you'll probably notice that it differs a bit from the one provided here. That's because I make some readme corrections AFTER i've posted the file here, and the new readme'll only be updated in te next version (unless it's something really important).
Anyhow, no one reads my readme...

Nice! I gotta get home and play with this baby some.....

Is it possible to open a sprite/tile and export the selected view as a zar?

Um, yes, that's the entire goal of the ZAR clipboard.

• Press the "Clip..." button and see the ZAR clipboard window appear. If it doesn't click again and it should appear (sometimes it's in the back of the main window and when you click on it to make it appear, since it's there but itn the back, it dissapears. I should look into that...)
• Select the sprite/tile and appropriate frame.
• Press "Add" in the clipboard window and the name of tile, with the frame appears in the list
• Select File->New->ZAR from the menu
• Select the frame you send to the clipboard in the clipboard window
• CPress "Export" in the ZAR Clipboard window
• File->Save As, select the name and path, press OK

All done!

For multi-layer sprites, it'll only take a single layer. The clipboard will use the first selected in the list of Sprite Layers that actually exists. (ie: if the graphic contains an image in layer 2 and 3, and you unselected layer 2, then export would automagically send the layer 3 to the clipboard). Course with tiles there's no layers so you needn't worry about all that layer stuff, and for sprites, most everything but the characters and vehicles have a single layer so you needn't bother with the whole layer ordeal.

Hey Red, I was wondering if it was possible to "mesh" two single-layers into one image.

Like if I want to make a tile version of the APC - I could export the two layers the sprite uses individually (IIRC layer 1 and 3), and, using your editor, put the two of 'em in one .til?

Basically, I'm looking for a workaround to your prog's inability to export two layers at once.

Any ideas?

Edit: And as a side note, I just realized that Paint Shop Pro 5 can save .raw images... if I could only remember why that matters...

Max-Violence wrote:Hey Red, I was wondering if it was possible to "mesh" two single-layers into one image.

Basically, no. Reason being that each layer uses a different palette, and I would need to recalculate a new palette and then re-render the graphic with said new palette, and probably design a dithering algorithm so it doesn't look like complete shit. On top of that I'd have to make the viewer aware of the entire frame size isntead of ingoring it as it does now, but I'm supposed to do that eventually anyway so you can export all layers in one into TGAs which I promised 2 people now...

Any ideas?

Well, export each layer seperatly, and render them in Photoshop or something so it works out (should be possible with photshop layers), save the result into a PNG (or RAW) and convert it into ZAR and slap it back whereever you need.

Edit: And as a side note, I just realized that Paint Shop Pro 5 can save .raw images... if I could only remember why that matters...

Um... to use them in Spray?

Red wrote:Well, export each layer seperatly, and render them in Photoshop or something so it works out (should be possible with photshop layers), save the result into a PNG (or RAW) and convert it into ZAR and slap it back whereever you need.

Hey, there's an idea! I just hope I have the artistic ability...

Red wrote:Um... to use them in Spray?

Spray? Oh, yea!

Well, not like it's really needed anymore, now that your "viewer" (of which you should REALLY rename to "editor") has gotten so dern handy!

BTW, you notice the .ace is now a wopping 110+ KB? IIRC it was like 60 when you first started. My, how long you've come!

Max-Violence wrote:Hey, there's an idea! I just hope I have the artistic ability...

Not really. All you need is align the different layers appropriately. You could zoom in my viewer and enable/disable layers to get a better idea of how toa lign them I guess.

Well, not like it's really needed anymore, now that your "viewer" (of which you should REALLY rename to "editor") has gotten so dern handy!

It might be quite ahndy, but it stlill doesn't edit sprites... Something Spray does do, although the fact you can't rename sequences seems VERY annoying.

BTW, you notice the .ace is now a wopping 110+ KB? IIRC it was like 60 when you first started.

Actually the thing was about 120k zipped a while ago (although ACE ususally compressed better then zip) and at some point I optimized everything down to ~40k I think and from then on features got added until it's current form. I sitll have two main things to do which I promised: export the 4 frames of sprites into a single TGA and well, sprite editing...

I have to say I'm quite happy at how the tile editor turned out though, I really like my little Flag/Attribute window. Though I wish people would verify it's veracity specially for the somewhat more obscure options (ie: ones with ? at the end of the name).

OK, I made a bad move. I exported a behemoth layer into a new zar image. Problem was when I went to save it, I typed in behemoth and for some reason it overwrote the original sprite file. So it didn't save as a zar extension but as a spr extension. Now I have to get the original sprite file from the disk.

Edit #1
My bad, I see what happened. When I do go to try and save it, it has the file name as "behemoth.spr" but it says below that "save as file type zar". Can you strip the extension so it doesn't accidentally get screwed up?

Edit #2
Well no something else weird is going on. It still overwrites the original sprite and screws it up somehow locking it. You better check this out Red - it's weird. It seems to happen when I turned off all but one layer of the sprite and added it to the clipboard. Then I open a new zar file and at that point it seems to save the screwed up sprite. Not good.

Yer trying to make a tile version of a Behemoth? Whatever for?

Interesting note: Deathclaw babies and dogs only have 1 layer - sorta. DC kids use the Base and Skin layer, but the base layer is only the lil' horns on his/her head, so if you were to make a tile out of just layer 2 (the skin), it wouldn't look like dog breakfast.

Speaking of dogs, they only use layer 3 - hair. Layer 1 (base) is only the pooch's collar (IIRC), so again, a tile version of it wouldn't be too bad.

*envisions fields of dead dogs*

Oh, the horror! :twisted:

I'm checking it as we speak, there is an issue if you select no layer (or only layers with no images) then it screws up (but doesn't necessarely crash, at least not right away). I've just fixed that.

About the rest though the save feature ALWAYS appends .ZAR if it's not already there. There's no way it should overwrite the original image (well, unless it's already a ZAR ). Keep in mind that the "save path" is not the same as the "load path", so that migth be a bit confusing. I'm trying more stuff about that just to make sure, I've modified so that the caption now updates when you save a file (since the new image just saved is now really the current image).

[edit]Notice I edited this message from "I'll update" to "I've updated" in a bunch of places...[/edit]

You da man, Red, you da man!