Problem with GIMP

[EmpressOfNona]

Hi! It's been a while since I've posted anything, but I'm still alive and still modding. So... yeah.
So, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that I'm making actual progress on the mod I'm working on! The scenario file was crashing the game for a long time , but I finally got it to work! Plus I've finished some of the graphics, and a fair amount of them actually work properly!
Unfortunately, that progress has been slowed down by this stupid problem with GIMP. Basically, when I save a picture, it adds all this black at the end of the pallette, essentially making it impossible to make Civ 3 graphics that work properly.

So, basically, I was wondering if anyone else has ever had this problem and, if so, has any idea how to fix it.

 

[Blue Monkey]

How many colors (ie 256) do you have the original set for? Try setting it to millions, then indexing to 254 (not 256).

Or - post the image (zipped) & I'll take a look at it.

 

[EmpressOfNona]

I don't know what you mean by what I have the original set for, but I index it to 256. I'm not doing it any differently that before, and it USED to work, but now, suddenly, for no apparent reason, it doesn't. I mean, at first it gets the pallette right, but when I save a picture, it doesn't work properly in the game; then when I open it back up with GIMP, there are a bunch of unexplained black squares in the Colormap.
I suppose I'll try 254 and see if that works (though it probably won't), and if not, I'll post the image. But the truth is, I think the only way to fix this is probably to reinstall GIMP.

 

[Goldfool]

Don't reinstall gimp.

Can't you just click on green and pink on the colour map and edit them black, then click on the last two blacks in the colour map and edit them green and pink.

Select a colour on the map, then press the edit button at the bottom.

 

[EmpressOfNona]

Well, in that case, it wouldn't be 256 colors. Plus it would probably just add more black. I suppose I could give it a try, though...
EDIT: Oh, wait... I guess it would still be 256 colors... nevermind. Anyway, thanks! I tried your idea and it worked.

 

[EmpressOfNona]

Heh... actually, I figured out that there's nothing wrong with GIMP at all...
Basically, my terrain graphics aren't working properly, so when I opened them up again with GIMP and saw all those black squares in the colormap, I assumed that was the cause. But I've been able to make other graphics that work just fine without editing the pallette more than once, so I think I have an entirely different problem on my hands... which is simply that I don't know how to make terrain graphics.

 

[Balthasar]

Correction: you know how to make terrain graphics, you just don't know how to save them properly. When you index an image, even though you might have asked for 256 colors, you don't always end up with that many in the pallette. It looks like you experienced this then changed the last two tiles to pink and green as you usually would, then saved. Trouble is, the program still wants 256 color tiles so it added them, creating your problem. To avoid this, do this: after you index, if you have fewer than 256 tiles, click the last tile and then "+" (Add) which will add a copy of that tile. Repeat this until there are the proper number of tiles (you don't have to count them each; it stops at 256). Then change the last two as you usually would.
Do that and you'll never have this problem again.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Trouble is, the program still wants 256 color tiles so it added them, creating your problem. To avoid this, do this: after you index, if you have fewer than 256 tiles, click the last tile and then "+" (Add) which will add a copy of that tile. Repeat this until there are the proper number of tiles (you don't have to count them each; it stops at 256). Then change the last two as you usually would.
Do that and you'll never have this problem again.

Thank you! I wish I had known that before making the Steampunk Techs.

 

[EmpressOfNona]

Trouble is, the program still wants 256 color tiles so it added them, creating your problem. To avoid this, do this: after you index, if you have fewer than 256 tiles, click the last tile and then "+" (Add) which will add a copy of that tile. Repeat this until there are the proper number of tiles (you don't have to count them each; it stops at 256). Then change the last two as you usually would.
Do that and you'll never have this problem again.

Well, I realized that it's been doing that the whole time, and that it's never caused any problems with my other graphics. For some reason, though, most of the terrain graphics I've made still have magenta triangles and whatnot. Is it just different with terrain? But two of the images I've edited, or possibly even three of them, work fine.

 

[Balthasar]

The deciding factor in whether the pallette is a graphics issue probably depends on whether the neon green and pink appears in the finished product, so sometimes you notice, sometimes you don't.

This enters into your magneta triangles issue as well. Those are neon pink tiles that were altered in some conversion process and are no longer the right color. There are two ways of dealing with this: you could meticulously change the HTML value of each tile back to ff00ff (the neon pink), or you could use my favorite little tool, the color select tool, and highlight all of the neon pink and neon green in the image and eliminate it all before you index it.

Now, in order not to have the default white background appear as you do this, you have to do a little trick first: {Select All->Edit->Copy} the image and then {File->Acquire->Paste as New}. The result looks just like the original. Yeah, but now when you remove pixels there's no background behind it, save for a grey and black grid. The grid isn't part of the image, it's just a guide, and if you can see it, it means you have no color in that spot at all; it's transparent.

If you remove all of the almost-neon pink pixels, save a copy of that, and then index the image, you end up with a pallette without any near-neon colors. Then (after adding in missing tiles, if necessary) you change the last two colors on the pallette as usual and click on the neon pink on the pallette before closing the Dialog box. Using the Color Select Tool, click on an "empty" area to highlight all empty areas. Right click to get a drop down menu and click {Edit->Fill with FG Color} (if the FG -foreground - color isn't neon pink, go back to the dialog color box and click on the pink tile again). Finally, paste in the copy you made of the image before you indexed it to get rid of neon green (usually) or pink that may have replaced colors in the image. Now save as (file name).pcx It should work fine in-game.

Two things it's useful to know: All of the neon green can be replaced by neon pink without any perceivable difference in the result on all files except (apparently) the resource and Units_32 files. Also: Sometimes you have to click on a non-selected area with the rectangle select tool to make a selection go away. And you can use the Shift key to highlight more than one color at a time. Control-Z (or Edit->Undo) undoes anything, as many times as you like.

This may seem like a lot of extra steps, but it actually goes fast once you get the hang of it, and has an added benefit: once you learn how to remove the backgrounds from your images, you can start working with layers, which is how I do all of my stuff these days.

Now, if I haven't confused you thoroughly (or told you alot of things you already know), I'll be glad to answer questions...if you have any....

 

[zo-zo]

Well, I realized that it's been doing that the whole time, and that it's never caused any problems with my other graphics. For some reason, though, most of the terrain graphics I've made still have magenta triangles and whatnot. Is it just different with terrain? But two of the images I've edited, or possibly even three of them, work fine.

The thing with terrain graphics (opposed to maybe a wonder splash or tech icon) is that they are overlaid over other graphics and you only want the selected graphics to be overlaid and the rest to be transparant in order to show the underlying graphics.

Edit: As for the ones that worked fine, maybe the palette was not changed during your editing, if you were just cutting and pasting into an existing working file.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Edit: As for the ones that worked fine, maybe the palette was not changed during your editing, if you were just cutting and pasting into an existing working file.

When I made the LM Hills that look like mountains, so that Mountains themselves could have the impassable flag I found that I had to increase the palette to "millions" for good results with CnP between files, then do the reduction/indexing once I had something finished. Is that a possible issue in this case?

 

[Balthasar]

When I made the LM Hills that look like mountains, so that Mountains themselves could have the impassable flag I found that I had to increase the palette to "millions" for good results with CnP between files, then do the reduction/indexing once I had something finished. Is that a possible issue in this case?

No. The only two possible causes of this problem are that either a) the last two tiles in the pallette don't look like this:


Or that b) the pink tiles in the graphic weren't that exact color. I'm betting on the latter.

Doesn't the default RGB mode already have an unlimited pallette?

 

[Blue Monkey]

Doesn't the default RGB mode already have an unlimited pallette?

Yah, it defaults to "millions". I was talking about learning the hard way not to cut & paste from one 256 indexed to another - bad color shift effects when the palettes differ. I was thinking that maybe if the palettes were close enough the most notable effect would be in the transparencies. But probably not.