Post from new patron

[KukriKhan]

Bringing this is on behalf of Mithel:
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I was guided here to introduce myself. I'm a software developer (and game developer). I took an interest in modifying Medieval Total War and noticed the troubles dealing with lukmap.LBM files. So I wrote a program specifically to help people who want to create their own maps.

My program is written in Java so you'll have to download and install the Jave Runtime Environment too. You can find my "ImageConverter" program on our secondary website at:
http://www.mnstarfire.com/download/ImageConverter.html

Enjoy it And let me know if you find any problems or have a suggestion to make it better.

- Mithel
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[fenir]

oooooh http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[barocca]

looks very nice
:-)

[Postino]

WELCOME MITHEL

thanks for the contribution unfortunate for me, i do not make maps. would you have any interest in making a formation editor? you see i am in a bit of a bind:1) i am in school and this being the last 3 weeks of the semester i have no time for anything. 2)my wealth of knowlege only covers VB(you too can program computers) C++ and fortram(dammed requirements). 3) i cannot get my hands on VB Pro.

anyway, i thought i would try.

for such a contribution, i think you should get a promotion to senior patron right off the bat, but i am not the sons of Dan.

[PanthaPower]

Very cool and usefull tool. With a few minor additions this tool could be the only thing you need.

[KukriKhan]

Further from Mithel:
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I've updated my program (now version 1.1) with a major addition of being able to load and save color tables. Thus you can now get your color table in the order you want it, save it and then use it again after editing your image without the need to recreate your carefully crafted color table order to make a new LBM.

- Mithel
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He'll be senior patron soon, and reply on his own.

[Kraellin]

mithel,

welcome.

i've looked at your web page and am wondering if this solves the problem we were having with paint shop pro. the problem, as i read it, was not in the palette, but in the manner in which psp saves an .lbm (or loads it). you'd load the lukmap and even if you then re-saved it, without any changes at all, you'd end up with a different file size which would then screw up its use in the game...maybe. you also couldnt save it as a compressed file because, according to one user in here, the game couldnt read psp's compressed .lbm files.

i experimented with this briefly on my own and noticed that a 263k file loaded and then saved with psp would alter the file to something like 623k. i tried different things to try to get this file smaller without changing the color bit and without compression, but couldnt get it to anything smaller than that 623k size. quite odd, as psp is normally quite good about file conversions.

so, my question is, is your tool going to help with this? does it retain the original file size if all you're doing is swapping around the palette color indexing, and do i even have that right, that what all you're doing is swapping the color indexing around?

also, i think it was barocca, was converting files to .bmp's and loading them into Paint, which he said retained the original palette, then doing his editing and converting them back again. could you therefore include the .bmp protocols to work in your tool as well?

hehe, yer gonna find that we're going to harrass you to death in here, so, welcome to the dungeon; it's aptly named ;)

K.

[barocca]

Reponse from Mithel
(from the Entrance Hall)

Quote[/b] ]
In response to Kraellin (from his response in the Dungeon):

My program does seem to alter the file size a little (if you load an LBM and then export it with no changes) the basic lukmap2.lbm that starts as 701K becomes 702K. There is a little ambiguity in the definition of the compression method used for LBM format files and hence my compression routines may not get exactly the same compression. However files generated by my program can be read by Medieval Total War with no apparent trouble.

By using the color palette saving feature of my program you could use any other graphics program and/or file format as long as your conversions didn't alter the actual RGB color data. I have no intention to directly support BMP (there is no reason for it).

The procedure would be thus:
1) Load the original LBM into my ImageConverter program.
2) Save the color palette.
3) Export to your favorite format (PNG would be the best). Your only choices would be JPG or PNG but JPG is lossy and thus would alter the image - very poor choice for this type of work.
4) Edit the image with your favorite graphics package (PSP, Photoshop, Fireworks, etc). (you no longer need to worry about the order of the color table being scrambled)
5) Read your edited image back into my ImageConverter, reload the original color palette.
6) Export as LBM.

- Mithel




MAKE sure you read and understand the documentation
Documentation and File Link (http://www.mnstarfire.com/download/ImageConverter.html)
:-)

[King David]

Very Nice
http://webpages.charter.net/brueggeman/time-distance-new-2-colored.gif