Duck and Cover

Hi!

Im new to the forum but ive been lurking to get info on how to modd FOT, and i want to say thanks to everyone here !

I was wondering if anyone know the proper format for creating/saving png's to use as fonts. It seems to be a nonstandard format.. if i open a original png in acdsee i get the (255,0,255) demarkationlines on white BG.

If i open it in photoshop i get transp BG and the chars as white.

ive had some luck with select opaque pixels then keep transperancy and fill with color.. that changes the color of the font in the game but thats not enough

has anyone made new fonts?

Thanks

Basically the fonts in the game actually use the alpha (transpanrancy) value. Simple as that. If you don't now what alpha is, now that's another matter.

Hi Red, (and thanks for your exelent tool! if your THAT red other wise thanks for reply)

i know what alpha is, modding FOT would be very difficult without it LOL

i spent the evening testing ALOT of ways to export it from photoshop...
I think the problem is that photoshop doesnt export the alpha channel as transparancy when saving the png... the real way to use it i think would be to have a layer with both the text and the demarkation lines, and then have an alpha channel revealing the text only.

photoshop exports png with "transparancy" derived from the visible layers... not the alpha channel...this makes the demarkationlines visible...

if anyone know a PNG editor that saves the transparancy from the alpha channel and NOT from layer transparancy or to trick photoshop into using the alpha ....please let me know....

Newer versions of Photoshop do not save the transparency of pngs, however I believe 5.0 does. There is a freeware graphics program that is good called Gimp. I now have Fireworks and I think that works better than Photoshop for this task.

Photoshop supports alpha (5 and up anyhow). I don't recall exactly how you use it/enable it but it's there.

There's a big difference between alpha and Transparency though, and it doesn't support indexed images with alpha (which GIMP does) which is the same format as ZAR.

In the transparency mode all it is is that the background is transparent. You can't set any values as to how transparent a pixel is, even though Photoshop itself uses anti-aliasing techniques to smooth out up to the transparancy (and saves it properly in PNGs and TARs).

And yes, I am that Red! and you're quite welcome.

I wish we had Senor Deluxe here. He could speak with his experience of photoshop 6.0.

Problem Solved!

I checked the photoshop forums for som angles to this and found that they indeed changed their implementation of PNG support after PS 5.0.
Due to a "not perfectly clear" standard specification on PNG, PS uses only _layer_ transparancy ...

PSP 7 (Paintshop Pro) does have a much nicer implementation of PNG support

ok .. first problem , using 255,0,255 delimitors without making them visible is not possible in photoshops PNG so we have to take som extra steps...

in Photoshop:
create the font and the delimitors in two separate layers then layer select (ctrl+click) the fontlayer
and SELECT->SAVE SELECTION (use new channel) this saves your alpha info.

now layer select the delimitors and save this selection into the same channel as subtract
(this removes any overlap that could make the delimitors show up in FOT)


now make sure only delimitor layer and font layer are visible (checkered pattern everywhere else)
save as TIFF , alpha and layers ON

in the dialog that follows i use :
NONE / IBM PC / SAVE TRANSPARENCY / RLE (other settings might work but this did it for me

open PSP 7
open your tiff
SELECTIONS->LOAD FROM ALPHA CHANNEL select alpha channel 2

you should now see your font selected

!IMPORTANT!
COLORS -> POSTERIZE set to 64 levels

it seem FOT is not entierly happy with truecolor in fonts.. i had a hell of a problem with this, a font could work fine in one color
but if i tried to do a gradient..it looked no good in FOT... higher levels might work but 64 is fine for me

FILE -> EXPORT -> PNG OPTIMIZER

under COLOR tab, choose "16.7 m colors"
under TRANSPARENCY tab choose "alpha channel transparency" and "outside the current selection"

thats it!

Now its time for the rest of the Interface to get a facelift

I have hardly the time to read it but I'm sure it is helpfull. I have PS 5 and PSP 5 personally but I know someone with PSP 7. I hope he will not mind sharing...