Having Problems With...

[Gen. Rommel]

I've been lately playing around with the TerrainBuildings.pcx file for a scenario I'm making. I'm trying to change certain buildings on the palette or rather, I'm trying to make brand new buildings. However, once everything seems like it'll work, I open the editor and see everything like this:



The same goes for when I open up the game. Does anybody know why these stupid pink and green boxes appear.

To make identifying my problem easier, I thought I should probably give a step for step explanation of what I did:

- I opened the TerrainBuildings.pcx file in Adobe Photoshop

- I went to Image---> Mode---> RGB Colors (I did this so that I'm able to edit the picture and so that none of the pictures I paste into the file get distorted or tainted as they would, were the file still set to Indexed Colors)

- I paste in the image I want for my new forts and position it inside the square

- I merge the new layer which was created through pasting with the original TerrainBuildings layer and go to Image---> Mode---> Indexed Colors at which point I'm prompted to flatten the image (the setting is at 256 colors, the way it should be)

- I save and overwrite the old file

- I start up the editor and get nothing but crud

Can someone help me?! I had the same problem when adding resources.

 

[WildWeazel]

The easiest thing to do is not mess with the color mode. That way you won't change the palette. If you have to work in RGB mode, you need to make sure that the first 2 colors in the palette are the ones to be transparent- in this case pink and green. Whatever colors are in those 2 entries will be transparent. (If you use something other than Photoshop it will be the last 2 colors.) The same applies for ALL PCX graphics in the game.

 

[Gen. Rommel]

Well, if it's obviously the easiest to just avoid switching the color mode, how the hell does everyone else edit or alter the palettes? If there's a simpler method than the one I've been using, I'd love to hear it. I want to stop feeling like a complete and utter duts.

 

[WildWeazel]

Editing the pallette can be done from within your graphics program or with a utility like PEdit (check the utils subforum). PEdit can usually make a better palette, but takes a little time. One trick that people sometimes use when converting from RGB to indexed is to index your file to 254 colors, add the 2 transparent colors, and replace their previous instances with 2 other unused colors. You lose 2 potential colors, but it's usually not a noticeable difference. I don't know if this is possible in Photoshop, since you would have to add the colors to the beginning of the palette.

 

[Mirc]

RGB doesn't work in Civ3, you have to use Index colors.