Extracting Sprites for Editing

[Madd_Mugsy]

Is there any way to extract the tif files / sprite script from the .spr files so you can edit them?

[Locutus]

No.

[Chris B]

darn!!!! thats a rude awakening.

[XMon]

No you can't...but here's an idea I had. I haven't tried it yet and it will probably be a lot of work but if you MUST tinker with that existing sprite...

I was going to try this: First off, you need a screen capture program...there are several around to choose from. Paint Shop Pro 7 has one built in, I'm not sure about Photo Shop. Open up your cheat box and make an area on the map with one of the more uniform looking terrain types (glacier, plains, grasslands etc) and then use the cheat box to place the unit you want to copy on this field of...let's say glacier. Walk him around and use your hot key to snap caps of the unit in all desired positions and animation frames (walking, shooting, resting). Of course, you'll have to give him something to shoot at for the battle scenes but hey, that's what the cheat box is for. Take your captures, crop 'em down, resize if necessary and make the background a perfectly uniform color not present in the unit. Then d/l Harlan's guide to making sprites and take it from there.

Like I said, it's probably a lot of work but I may be doing it eventually because I really want the old CTP paratrooper unit without those red stripes on his uniform. There may be easier ways but it's an idea.

[Harlan]

Indeed, we don't know how to extract things from the sprite files.

The screenshot thing sounds pretty difficult. How can one possibly take all the screenshots for an action sequence like walking- the pictures change every 1/32nd of a second or so. Also, you'd probably lose a lot of info, like the shadows would need a lot of work after.

One other option: use the video files and extract all the individual pictures from that. The problem with this is that all you'll get is pictures of the unit from every angle, but nothing of it moving. Still, for some units like ships or airplanes, you could just slide the still image along for movement, tack in an explosion for firing guns, etc... The fact that the videos lack shadows on the ground also wouldn't matter for ships. I wonder if there's a program that can take multiple pictures of a single object, and create a 3D object out of it? Then, once you have it in 3D format, getting it to walk around, cast shadows, or whatever would be easy.

If someone could figure out how to do that, that would be phenomenal! Once you did it for one unit, it would just be a matter of plugging in the other units into the same routine, and we'd get 3D models for all of CTP1 and 2's units! A nice dream, anyways.

Also, unless I'm totally on drugs (a real possibility: note the pipedream in the previous paragraph!), I recall someone making several versions of the Musketeer unit in CTP1, differing only by the color of the clothing (so there was a red one, a green one, etc). Maybe go into the CTP1 database, figure out who that was, and ask them how they did it?

[Steph]

The muli colored musketers had no animation. So I guess the guy simply made a screenshot and changed the colors.