Transparency.

[Monkeyboy_McGee]

I AM GRAPHICALLY CHALLENGED, OK?

How do you guys set transparencies on your images, and how do you get images to be transparent on graal, and is there a certain colour that graal always reads as transparent?

Stop laughing ='(

[marcoR]

I...already.. told..you HOW!!!

[--Chris--]

With .gifs you make where-ever you want transparent by using RGB 0 0 0 (like plain black) then turn into a .png (if it's a still image) by dragging it on gif2mng.exe and it would turn it into .png with the transparency. If it's animated it can stay as .gif or you can turn it into .mng the same way.

[GoZelda]

Make it .GIF, then get the little tool in photoshop to make any color YOU want transparant.

[--Chris--]

Not all people have PSP (like moi :x)
Alternatively though...yeah, you can use it if you have it but I don't see a more suitable color than rgb 0 0 0 anyway =p

[VeX_RaT_Boy]

I use Macromedia Fireworks for all my transparency needs You should check it out, it got a 30-day trial.

www.macromedia.com

[LordZen]

I would avoid using pitch black for your transparency color. If you have to go back and edit the image later for whatever reason, it can become a pain if you have other colors in the image close to pitch black. Especially if you had smaller isolated areas that you had transparent.

Also, in the past there had been problems with pngs which had pitch black as the transparent color when used in Graal. (When the image shows up one place it might look fine, but then you use it another way and you see the black negative area in-game) That issue may be resolved now, but I still frown apon the practice of using rgb 0,0,0 for that purpose.

Also, never use ms paint to save any image other than as .bmp, it has less-than-perfect support for everything else...

My system, is I make big bmp images where I will have the sprite I'm working on and all the work related to it scattered all around in that bmp. Then, when its finished, I make a red square around the finished product and fill in the empty spaces with bright green or something, then i highlight all the area within the red square and copy-paste into a program called "Animagic". It can be found using google. You cant actually use Animagic to draw (I dont think), but its excellent for setting transparency with ease and creating good animated gifs as well, and some other features which have been useful in the past for me...

[--Chris--]

I have no problems with ms paint :x

"I would avoid using pitch black for your transparency color. If you have to go back and edit the image later for whatever reason, it can become a pain if you have other colors in the image close to pitch black. Especially if you had smaller isolated areas that you had transparent. "

Only if you stink =p

"Also, never use ms paint to save any image other than as .bmp, it has less-than-perfect support for everything else..."

How so?

[Scott]

MS Paint on WindowsXP supports PNG and better quality for JPEGs and GIFs. (FYI Zen)

[LordZen]

Hehe.

Well I did start using a Windows 98 machine.

Isnt there still a color depth issue when trying to save as gif in ms paint for winXP?

[thrashsoul]

Yes it gets all fuzzy when you save it.

[Monkeyboy_McGee]

Thanks a lot guys! I'll try out the .gif -> png thing with rgb000, and if that doesn't work then i'll go search for this animagic thing.

And yus, mspaint distorts non-bmp files for me horribly XD

[LordZen]

haha I knew it :P

[thrashsoul]

I found a program called giffy, it is great for GIF Transperancy.