New Trick I Just Found Out

posted on May 24th, 2005, 10:24 pm

I just found a way of using a Map Editor bug to make button making alot easier. I decided to share it here. Everyone feel free to spread the word.

Getting a ship icon quick and easy

1) Go into your map edior and place your ship.
2) Move the camera so it has the right pose, set lighting accordingly

...Now comes the sneaky part...

Go to the Ctrl-R menu and locate the Background tab, make this blank. When you click OK, the background will go bright white, as if your ship was on paper, but the game will still work. Now simply remove the grid and Printscreen.

Now open up a photo editing program like Paint or Photoshop and paste the image. The white is one solid color, so you can fill it black, or make it transparent. This will leave behined the ship image, which can then be simply pasted onto a button.

There, easy, huh? My first contribution to the AII modding world! ^_^

Is there a smiley for ego inflation

posted on May 25th, 2005, 2:33 pm

lol nice!

posted on May 25th, 2005, 4:37 pm

Thats always nice to know

posted on May 26th, 2005, 5:02 pm

umm where are the buttons i aspent about an hour last night going through every folder in fo looking for the god dam buttons? where are they?

[Ozymandias]

posted on May 26th, 2005, 7:10 pm

Last edited by Ozymandias on May 26th, 2005, 7:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

They are in the Textures/RGB folder they start with "gb_" i think or it could possibly just be "gb". anyhow you would be better off using the blank template buttons that come with westworlds big book of modding as you dont have to mess around with what was on the button prieveously.

posted on May 26th, 2005, 8:59 pm

thanks, umm theres a few files i found like borgbuttons1 &2 which has them all in is that what i am looking for and if so how do i edit them?

[Ozymandias]

posted on May 27th, 2005, 1:13 pm

Last edited by Ozymandias on May 27th, 2005, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ok so someone correct me if im wrong but, each ship has its own button. For the borg base (bbase.odf) the button is labled gbbase.tga now you need an editing program like paintshop pro or someother program that will edit tga files. Now you can either use a blank button if you have one e.g. the ones included with the BBOM or you can just use on of the buttons that came with the game as best you can, once you've finnished editing it save it as a 64 by 64 pixel .tga file. Now you can name the button whatever you like, personally I like to keep my buttons labeled in the same way to the rest so its gb*ship/station name*.tga now go to the gui_global.spr in the sprites directory and place theese lines in at the bottem

@reference=64
@tmaterial=default

b_*ship/station name* *gbship/station name* 0 0 64 64

You should be able to see how its laid out if you open the gui_global.spr file and do a search for gb it will have all the build buttons there, the reference line at the top is important but if you scroll down the build buttons until you find @reference=64 you can put the line in under there, by the way this line just tells the game the size of the build button.


That should now mean that your ship (*ship/station name*.odf) has the build button (gb*ship/station name*.tga).

I hope I havent confused you, if you do want a better tutorial theres a few around that are quite good or just ask here and ill try to answer you. I still recomend westworlds big book of modding because it really does have everything you need to know about this in there along with alot of other things and can probbably explain things better than I can.

Hope this helps,

Moose

[Cpt Ryan]

posted on June 17th, 2005, 9:58 pm

Last edited by Cpt Ryan on June 17th, 2005, 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i've looked for ages but still cant find anything labelled gb in a any way

i've looked on the global sprites thing and from what i can tell its using the files called borgbuttons1 &2 etc.. how can that be????

example of what it says in gui_global

b_federation_sovereign federationbuttons01 0 240 80 80

posted on June 17th, 2005, 10:03 pm

good, i am not the only one, i felt like a moron, people saying they where doing it and i could'nt, i kind of just shut up, lol welcome to the moron club ryan!

posted on June 17th, 2005, 10:18 pm

WHOOPY

posted on June 17th, 2005, 11:51 pm

I think that to make it more organised (and perhaps to save space) all the buttons for a side are on the same sheet(s), and the numbers (0 240 80 80) somehow tell the computer to "cut out" part of the image and use it. In this case, the cut out would the the Sovereign's build button.

That's just my theory anyway, i have no proof. You'd have to ask the team.

[Cpt Ryan]

posted on June 18th, 2005, 2:13 am

Last edited by Cpt Ryan on June 18th, 2005, 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

FO team, or just anyone who knows,i (and probably Eufnoc) need help, can you lend a hand plz

posted on June 20th, 2005, 9:08 am

yes i do need help!