Attack Images

[Dave]

Now that we have an alpha channel, I think that we should make all the weapon images on a transparent background.

If we want, we can still use the wooden board thingy as a background to the weapons, but this can be drawn in-game. This should make the weapon images all simpler and smaller. It'll also allow them to be used elsewhere -- like on the panel at the right (after being scaled down).

Would anyone like to volunteer to make this conversion?

David

[quartex]

So what color should we be using for a transparent background?

[Dave]

So what color should we be using for a transparent background?

The idea of an alpha channel is to represent transparency. Ordinarily, images are made up of pixels, each of which have an R,G,B value. With an alpha channel, each pixel also has an 'A' value. If the 'A' value is at 100%, the pixel is drawn as normal. If it's 50%, the pixel is merged 50/50 with the surface it's being drawn onto. If the 'A' value is at 0%, the pixel is not drawn at all (is transparent).

So, you don't use a colour at all -- you set the alpha channel to 0.

One of the advantages of an alpha channel is it allows anti-aliasing. That is, rather than having jagged edges, at corners you can set the alpha value to be somewhere between 0 and 100, so that the pixel is "partly drawn", rather than "it's there or it's not". This is something that the person doing this would consider.

David

[Woodwizzle]

As long as we're redoing ever image, we outta make the shadows alpha transparent and anti-alias the images as well.

P.S. and I say ditch the wooden border all togethor.

P.P.S. I may volunteer if I can figure out a scrip to do all of this painlessly. Hwever, I believe anti-aliasing will have to be done by hand so it would probably be redundant. I'm working on it though

P.P.P.S. Of course this also means that all NEW attack images should be done like this to begin with.

[llogiq]

I figure that anti-aliasing can be automated with the following GIMP actions:

1. copy the picture into another layer
2. use Threshold (0, 255) to turn everything but the background to white.
3. Gaussian blur the copied layer with (2, 2) pixels
4. invert the colors of the original layer
5. Turn the combination mode of the copied layer to "difference"

and behold the beauty of nicely anti-aliased borders. Of course, the "inner borders" are still there. But that is a thing we can take care of later. Also note that some images must be converted to RGB, as they are indexed.

Btw. How about copying the copy again, blurring it some more and put it into the background to make a halo for the white mage. (Oops, this should rather be for the light mage)

GIMP-fu anyone?

Here I have some examples of the results (done manually):

[fmunoz]

IMHO automatic antialiasing doesnt look good. It makes the image blurry.
I feel that case by case image editing will do better. also better than for sprites the antialiasing will help in the attack animations (Like adding a bright halo aver tha white mage staff while using his range attack)

[llogiq]

IMHO automatic antialiasing doesnt look good. It makes the image blurry.

Hand-editing is always preferable to automatic stuff. And since the units are quite pixeled (does such a word exist?), yes, blurring the edges makes them look blurry. It also hides the black outline, and therefore hinders object perception.

Anyway, I still like the halo effect for the Light Mage. And so I fire up the gimp and try to do something less blurry, but still with halo. Tell me what you think of it.

I think the Light Mage should have this halo all the time - how else should he be illuminating his surroundings? And I also think that the light beam should be made out of shade bobs, like in the test picture I post here.

Please give feedback - I know I'm not an artist, I just like playing around.

[Dave]

I think we're going to give the Mage of Light a 'halo' but it will look a little different to that -- it'll extend into surrounding hexes.

Also, the purpose of this thread is to discuss the attack images -- i.e. the weapons that are displayed when choosing what to attack with. I'm looking for a volunteer to remove the background image and add an alpha channel instead. If they want to anti-alias the images, that'd be a bonus.

Any takers?

David

[Eponymous-Archon]

These examples look great.

So where's that gimp-image archive for these?

[fmunoz]

For new sprites I'm using a 60% opacity shado under the sprite (same colour as old shadow just moved to another layer and made it only 60% opacity)
Sometimes I started to use "antialiasing" in too dark pixels from edges (some corners) and made them 20% 40% 60% or 80% transparent , but only in very few of them per sprite.