[FOT] Weapon/Item Portrait (Sprite) Editing Help

salvadorc17 said:
Is there a way to extract all the spritesheet for the game?? i want to have all those, with all animations...
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Hi salvadorc17!

I just made a simple tool for you to quickly get all the spritesheet you need after you extracted the .BOS files. I hope this could be of good use to you or some other people. The tool uses Odin spr2gif, til2gif and zar2gif alltogether (why having three apps when you can have just one?). The idea here is to create a "BOX" folder in C:\, move "AutoConverter" folder to C:\ too and then call the program to convert all files you may have into C:\BOX into .GIF.

There is no limit to the number of files you can convert at the same time, and they can be a mix of .zar, .til and .spr. For Complex sprites files (like characters animations), the converter will create a folder with ALL the animations in it. The program automatically delete all .spr, .til and .zar in "BOX" folder after the job is done and you can convert files even if the "BOX" folder is getting messy, with other types of files or with previously converted files in it.

Here is the download link. Follow the instructions in Readme.txt : http://www.moddb.com/mods/thesum/addons/spr-til-zar-autoconverter

Enjoy!
 
Thanks for help but i think you have not understood something, that fallout tactics files are gif animations and not bmp sprite sheets like fallout 2, your tool do a great job for auto extracting those gifs, but converting to sprite sheet will need transform gif images to get something like fallout 2, my problem is those does not have 8 directions like i wanted.
 
fallout tactics files are gif animations
Click to expand...

Nope they arent. FOT doesnt use .gif image encoding anywhere in its engine. From my experience editing there are two types of images that FOT deals with, which it has converted to its own internal formats.

That being .PNG files (for other things besides sprites and tiles)

And for sprites and tiles it uses a .RAW format with an 8 bit Alpha channel interleaved.
In order to make sprites (be they inventory, projectiles, or characters) for FOT you've got to be considering this approach, and its almost invariably going to require some extensive Photoshop experience (if you're using gimp, you're probably going to have to get PS from somewhere like torent).

I havent gotten a chance to use the Sprite Creator program yet (requires 1024x768) so I use an older program called Spray. In order to import images into Spray to make FOT sprites I have to...

* Make sure the image has an 8bit Alpha channel (256 levels of transparency)
* Reduce the color of the image down to 8bit, using a 256 color palette (I tend to use a single palette for reducing mine for consistency, usually I use the Fallout 2 color palette).
* Save the image as .RAW with alpha channel interleaved (the default in photoshop).

* I make sure to save the image with a filename that has the pixel dimensions in the filename (eg 132x54).
* Save the Palette for the image if it doesnt use the one I normally use.

then I load up Spray, load up the sprite I want to use as a base, then Import the raw file as well as the Palette that I used for it (since Raw files do not hold palettes inside them, only indexes).

And then have to manually enter in the Width and Height (pixels) of the sprite, because otherwise the program doesnt know what its dimensions were (other people erroneously believe that Spray isnt working for them if they see garbled pixels, but this isnt the case).

And then (huffing, puffing, and panting here) . . . have to change the Alignment of the image so that it is drawn on the screen correctly. Spray has convenient options for this for Inventory graphics but beyond that its exceedingly difficult if its something like a ground sprite or character.

And this is for Every Frame.

Now I dont know if the new Sprite Creator or the sprite maker in FT Tools 2 does it any easier . . . but I think you're starting to get a grasp of how involved modding for FOT is.

GIF files are primitive compared to what FOT does with its graphics.
Graphically, FOT was ahead of its time, these features were rare for a couple more years to come afterward.

Edit:
====

And by Every Frame WE MEAN IT.

I tried to create an Explosion sprite once, and realized right away that for any measure of sanity I would have to set the size of every frame to a standard value (like 128x128) and then manually align the explosion in each frame in photoshop.

Because its hard as hell to begin with to have the explosion aligned properly on the screen, but to have to align each frame of different sizes would be madness.

And since I was using one of the default explosion sprites in the game as a base I had to manually change the alignment of every frame I was replacing - which since each one of mine were a standard size all I had to do was enter in the same 4 coordinates over and over again (then recheck to make sure I didnt mess up because of the repetition).

In the end I produced an explosion which was . . . generally okay . . . but I had to run the game no less than 3 times checking the alignment of the blast and had to correct it by guesswork based on my extensive experience with pixel-level editing (since FOT characters dont necessarily toss a grenade or rocket into the same exact place every time they shoot it).

This sprite was lost when I moved later on, not that it could have been saved, but it wasnt that remarkable because the explosion itself just didnt fit in stylistically in FOT.

But thats alot of work to put into something man.

And that explosion was like 18 frames long TOTAL.
Nothing even close to being a Character sprite.
 
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Ah sorry for the misunderstanding! I think with enough knowledge of "Actions" in Photoshop, you COULD achieve to automatically create sprite sheets from the .gif that my tool can extract. After you created a photoshop action that :

1. Take a converted .gif animation with a grey or other color background
2. Change it to RGB
3. Enlarge the file to X times the original .gif, based on the number of layers. I am not sure that photoshop actions can know the number of layers and do something with this accordingly, but you could create different actions that deal with a fixed number of layers you have.
4. Move the X layers horizontally or vertically to the right places, creating a simple sprite sheet of one animation (tricky part)
5. Merge all the layers
6. Save to .bmp (same filename as the original)
7. Close the image

You could then do something like :

2. Open Photoshop
3. File / Automate / Batch...
4. Select the special action you made or one one the actions with a fixed number of layers
5. Select the folder that contains all the .gif you want to convert
6. OK

At the end, you will have a large number of simple sprite sheets already in BMP. You can manually bring them together (one animation at a time) to make bigger sprite sheets (like bringing together the 8 directions). there must even be a way to automate this last part too.

I think it could take you some days to program and test the automation, but once it is done you will be able to create as many sprite sheets you want, even mapping every FOT sprites sheets and you will not have to work frame by frame and loose all your sanity in the process!
 
Nerver really heard of FT Tools 2 Sprite editor, it must not be very impressive... Anyways, managed to do about everything without it.
 
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