Problem editing TGAs....

[hellenes]

Ive been trying to create greek fonts for my greek localisation attempt BUT the ulimate paint when i save the tga file after editing it saves it sized at 359kb when the original is 3442kb (approx i can rembr now) wha can i do to make u.p. to save at same size????????

HELP

Hellenes

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (hellenes @ Nov. 07 2003,15:11)]Ive been trying to create greek fonts for my greek localisation attempt BUT the ulimate paint when i save the tga file after editing it saves it sized at 359kb when the original is 3442kb (approx i can rembr now) wha can i do to make u.p. to save at same size????????

HELP

Hellenes

There are 4 types of TGAs using in MTW/STW.

- type 1
- type 2
- type 9
- type 10

The differences lie in both resolution (8-bit or 24-bit images, and compression algorithms uased.

In MTW types 2 and 10 are predominent (type 9 TGAs in MTW all appear to be unused). STW uses types 2 and 10 and also type 1 (specifically for tilesets).

1st question is 'What type of TGA are you using?'. 2nd question is 'Does UP cater for this filetype?'

File sizes may be misleading as it all depends on what you started with and what UP changed it to.

You'll have to provide detailed into - file names, location folders etc: if you want specific details.

Alternately MTTM (which is soon to be released deals with TGAs for MTW/STW. It can read types 1/2/10 and write types 2/10. This tool will enable you convert from files BMP->TGA and visa versa.

Welly

[hellenes]

Thanks for the reply Welly the files are the TGAs in monofont folder i dpnt know what type they are and is there another program that will change the files without downgrading their size?

Hellenes

[Wellington]

H,

Ok, I've just looked at these font TGAs. They are TGA type 10's (which some graphics tools may have problems with as they use a none-standard compression technique).

A TGA type 10 is a full colour (24-bit) image that is compressed using a special form of RLE (run-length-encoding) on 128x3 bytes; as opposed to normal RLE which compresses on 128x1 bytes. The reason is normal RLE work on paletted (8-bit) images (hence 1 byte) whilst the type 10 is not a palleted image (hence 3 bytes).

The original font TGA's are between 70k and 200K. When changed to BMPS they become 3.8meg (1280x1024in size).

If you change them and save as a TGA type 10 again I would expect it to increase in size from it's original TGA size.

The fact that the original is 70-200K whilst the BMP is 3.8 meg is totally irrelevant.

I dont quite understand exactly what your problem is. You seem to imply that the change in size means in no longer works ok - but you havnt actually said that.

Questions -

1)Are you only 'bothered' about the change in size or is there a another problem you hav'nt mentioned?
2)Have you actually tested the changed font in MTW? DOes it work?
3)Have you used the same shades of pink for your new letters in the font as the original shades?
4) Have you changed (even if by mistake) the blue alignment line and/or the white alightment pixels in the font TGA? (this would probably screw things up for MTW if you chnaged those colours also).

If you are really stuck E-mail me the changed TGA (if it's only 300K or so - NOT the 3.8 meg one&#33 and I'll take a look at it and see what UP has done to it.

Welly

[Wellington]

H,

I got your E-mail.

Looks like Ultimate Paint cannot handle type 10 TGA's correctly - which is hardly surprising as they use such a none-standard compression technique.

From the files you sent UP had actually converted the type 10 to a type 2 when saving it. Therefore, it had got totally confused as it did NOT understand that type 10's are compressed (type 2's are not).

It also tried to decompress the file using standard RLE decompression, which is why the file is 3.8 meg when it should only have been 70k-200k (or a bit larger accounting for amendments - say 300-400k at max).

The header it created for the TGA was also silly. It was type 2 header with an invalid body length field (not surprising really).

When I release MTTM it deals with type 10 conversions correctly. In themeantime, if you can convert the original font TGAs to BMPs and amend them as BMPs (outside of UP - using Windows Paint or something) you can at least be making your changes until MTTM arrives.

Don't use UP for type 10's - it just does not work. How do you know whether a TGA is a type 2 or a type 10 (or a type 1 or 9 for that matter)? MTTM tells you

Welly

[hellenes]

Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Nov. 08 2003,19:03)]In themeantime, if you can convert the original font TGAs to BMPs and amend them as BMPs (outside of UP - using Windows Paint or something) you can at least be making your changes until MTTM arrives.

Ive tried and it still saves the bmp in the small format

Btw when the MTTM arrives?

Ps:If you have seen the first crusade mod it has some very cool campmap 3d like faction shields is there any way (apart from usin MTTM) to create such nice shields my flat shields are makin me sick...

Hellenes

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (hellenes @ Nov. 08 2003,13:14)]

Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Nov. 08 2003,19:03)]In themeantime, if you can convert the original font TGAs to BMPs and amend them as BMPs (outside of UP - using Windows Paint or something) you can at least be making your changes until MTTM arrives.

Ive tried and it still saves the bmp in the small format

Btw when the MTTM arrives?

Ps:If you have seen the first crusade mod it has some very cool campmap 3d like faction shields is there any way (apart from usin MTTM) to create such nice shields my flat shields are makin me sick...

Hellenes

I don't quite follow what you mean by 'small format', but I presume UP does'nt change the type 10 TGA into a correct 24-bit BMP - if it did the BMP would be 38meg (1280x1024x3 + 54 for the header).

MTTM - ASAP - within a week hopefully, but it really is so comprehensive now in terms of what you can do with it testing everything takes so long.

Faction shields and 3D images. MTTM does this for the elite shield folders. Creating a 3D image from a flat one is merely a case of merging (with transparency) a black/white gradiated image over the shield. You'll see what I mean when MTTM is released.