Promotion buttons

[need my speed]

Yesterday, I managed to create six promotion buttons (with that buttonmaker2.xcf thingy and the tutorial accompanying it on this forum). They all work perfectly fine, with a border around them and an alpha channel and all.

Today, I tried to create another one. I switched the names of the Morale and March promotions around; marching is rather obviously extra movement (how is this even related to healing while moving?), and morale can be interpreted like... To be tough enough to move while healing, confident in your army's skills, willing to suffer a bit for victory.

So, I wanted to add the healing + symbol of March to the Morale icon. Which I did, exactly how I created my other six promotions.

Initially, nothing showed up. After some random stuff, I now have most of the icon working, except that it has no alpha channel, as can be seen. Which, according to GIMP, it does have - but I know practically nothing about GIMP. All I know is that this worked yesterday, but didn't work today.

However, there is one thing I did differently. With the six promotions, I did this:

1) Delete all the background layers except for the blue one meant for promotions and the white one.

2) Select the 'Paste Graphics Here' layer and paste my button.

3) According to the tutorial, now I only had to export it as DXT3 to work. However, the tutorial was wrong. I also needed to do the following.

4) When I looked at only the 'Paste Graphics Here' layer, the image I had copied had a black border around it, as can be seen. I had to erase this black border in order for the button to show up correctly.

Now, with the Morale / March thingy, there is, of course, no black border, so I couldn't remove that. And yet, it doesn't work correctly; the alpha channel isn't applied, I guess.

But how do I fix this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Erm if I understand the issue correctly, with march and morale you have improted a whole button and played around with it?

My advice would be to (using gimp) select and cut out the promo graphics (the yellow image) using one of the selection tools, depending on which one gives you the best result. either select by colour, select by shape, or draw round it by hand. Then cut/paste it into the button maker version, with the needed border/deletable bits, etc. then you should be able to get a working button.

 

[need my speed]

Well, for all of my promotions, I used already existing icons and modified them ever so slightly. For example, I have used the first six icons from here, but modified the stars a tiny bit, to make them fit more.

With the March / Morale thingy, I found the March and Morale icon on Google, copied the Morale icon, cut out the + from March, and pasted that on the Morale icon.

The procedure was the same as with my other promotions, yet the other ones all work and these do not. The only difference was that the six linked above had a 'black border' when viewed with only the 'Paste Graphics Here' layer turned on (as you could see in my first post, as well as in the topic linked to in this post).

But, I've managed to get it to work a few hours ago, coincidentally. I don't fully understand why, so maybe I'll have problems in the future again, but it works, for now. Still, thanks a lot!

One thing though; the borders included with this are wrong, so I kind of want to redesign all my buttons. Any idea where I can get the actual borders (and alpha and all) most of the promotions use (Medic III is one of the few exceptions, but Shock or Medic I or such use the normal borders.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

wrong how?

 

[need my speed]

Different. You can see it in your own game; go to the Civilopedia and compare the border of Medic III to the border of Medic II (for example, open the Medic III's information page; it contains Medic II as a requirement so you can see them both on one page). Medic III's border is slightly larger.