Photoshop

stankarp · March 4, 2003, 17:30

Need Help Please.

Can someone please direct me to where I can download Photoshop please.

Maquiladora · March 4, 2003, 18:21

Search for "Photoshop" on google.com and go to Macromedia's site for a 30 day trial version, of course there are ways of downloading full versions of this software, but its illegal so i cant mention it on the forums. If you dont know where to get it by now then you havent looked hard enough.

edit: i meant adobe's site not macromedia's. thats dreamweaver, easily confused when you use both at the same time so often.

HuangShang · March 4, 2003, 20:37

how is dreamweaver, what does it do?

The Big Mc · March 5, 2003, 05:21

why Photoshop why not go for paint shop pro if you are doing spr files or tiles.

Plus

the 30 day trial version works depending on the time set in the clock in you computer so by making sure you continually stay in march you can run it forever.

http://www.jasc.com/

itsamic · March 5, 2003, 14:29

You may also try the Win32 version of The Gimp. The look and feel and the handling is a little bit different to Windows programms, but it has all necessary functions (transparency etc.) and it is for free (without any crack).

stankarp · March 5, 2003, 16:25

Thanks everyone

Maquiladora · March 5, 2003, 17:05

Quote:

Originally posted by HuangShang
how is dreamweaver, what does it do?

Its for webpage design, like frontpage but a shitload better.

Pedrunn · March 5, 2003, 18:49

For html creation I recommend Dreamweaver,
For web design I recommend Macromedia flash (It is intended for 2D animations but i love it for making layouts),
For graphic creation (units, pictures) I am not a good advicer.

Photoshops is the best only if you want to do something with a graphic that is ready. It sucks in creating anything.

MrBaggins · March 5, 2003, 23:04

For original art work, use procreate | Painter 7 with a Wacom tablet.

For anything else, scan artwork to flatbed, plus Photoshop with Flaming Pear and AutoFX plugins.

stankarp · March 6, 2003, 04:30

I am interested in doing some work with the graphics in CTP2 but I am a complete novice at this. Can someone answer a few intro questions for me.

1) What program do you use to open sprite files that already exist?

2) what is the relationship between TGA files in the graphics folder and sprite files in the sprite folder?

3) Am I right in saying that original CTP2 units pictures and sprites are on the CD, not loaded onto your hard drive? I cant find them anywhere.

Thanks in advance

Maquiladora · March 6, 2003, 05:32

1) You can only view made sprites in the game

2) There is no relation, the TGA's there are for various things like the CTP2 interface and technology/unit/goods pics (for mods) and stuff like that.

3) Its because theyre inside the 2 zfs files in the pictures folder (one zfs file for in-game colours one for normal colour). You can download a zfs file viewer from the CTP2 directory to view and export the pics inside.

Pedrunn · March 6, 2003, 07:06

Complementing Maq,

2) Sprites uses Tiff files. That are compiled into the .spr file

3) Both graphics thypes are in the hard disks open /ctp2_data/default/Graphics/

you will find folders named as 'Sprites', 'pictures', 'tiles', 'videos', etc...

The Big Mc · March 6, 2003, 08:42

Quote:

1) What program do you use to open sprite files that already exist?

no at the moment there is no spr file viewer however i have been working on one and an analysis of these files is coming together I currently know that a spr file is a series of bmp files and labels to go with them however what compression is used is still a mastery as I don't know where to find the hole code of activsion spr maker if we could gain accesses to this it would be child’s play to make one

itsamic · March 10, 2003, 04:31

If I can't view a *.spr outside the game, is there a possibility to extract the pictures in the sprite (using makespr backward)? Then it would easy to modify the separate pictures and finaly put them together again using makespr.

Immortal Wombat · March 10, 2003, 07:07

If only we could...

But we can't.

itsamic · March 10, 2003, 11:04

I found a sprite extractor for civ2. Unfortunately I can't test it at the moment. Has anyone some experience with this and can tell me if it makes a sense to extract CIV2 sprites and merge the images to a CTP2 sprite?

please ignore! what I had in mind was CIV3, If I remember right the units of CIV2 wouldn't be very useful

Martin Gühmann · March 10, 2003, 11:45

Quote:

Originally posted by The Big Mc
no at the moment there is no spr file viewer however i have been working on one and an analysis of these files is coming together I currently know that a spr file is a series of bmp files and labels to go with them however what compression is used is still a mastery as I don't know where to find the hole code of activsion spr maker if we could gain accesses to this it would be child�s play to make one

Well the compression is very similar to the *.til file format, and actual only the pixels with a alpha channel biger than zero are saved. If the pixel has a 100% alpha channel then no additional information is saved, otherwise the number of bytes that are needed to save an pixel are used to store the alpha channel, in a *.tga viewer it appears as another pixel directly after the pixel to that the alpha channel is attached. On the start of every line you have something saved that looks like information about the postion of that line in the room and its length. Even if the whole think looks with a *.tga viwer very similar, it uses another color pallete then a *.tga file format. As additional information it looks like that the sprite also contains a shrinked version of the actual saved graphic.

-Martin

The Big Mc · March 10, 2003, 13:05

yes it does look similar when I open an spr in WordPad.

Sends us a highlighted version of what you are on about please I may have an idea on opening them.

The problem is without the main code all we can do is paddle around in a big circle.

i know that activsion gave us some "code" but without the rest of it all it does is confuse people.

the only way I can see of getting the code as well is throw the use of a decompile.

if we could get one of these .