Re: [Ddmodd-developers] Score!!

[<ddm...@li...>]

> oops.. gotta go.. I'm at college. I'll send some more details about
> the graphics formats to you when I'm at home.

ok, here goes..

(feel free to correct me when i am wrong).

First, you should download the CVS repository. NOTE that you have to
have the original dink game installed as well for it to work. just
install the original game, then install the cvs repositories to a
subdirectory of the original game directory. When i release a version i
will include all the executables, and so avoid this dependency issue.

Now, under the repositary, there is a folder called "graphics". check
under here for some of the old graphics. most of these are going to be
replaced with newer, spiffy ones.

Size and Resolution:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The game plays at 640X480 resolution, but with all the status bars and
such, the actual game play window is 600X400.You can look at the
original graphics to get a feel for size, APART from the original "stone
and thatch" houses, which were ridiculously small in the first place.

on top of this, the game uses a fixed palette. It is a set 256 colour
palette, which can be extracted from the tiles\Splash.bmp file. This is
rather important, as any images which are not in this palette look
really wierd. However, depending on your artistic methods, you may want
to create the artwork first, then convert the palette, or you may want
to work with the palette to begin with...

One more thing. Just because a screen is 600X400, does not mean that a
sprite (such as a building) cannot cover more than one screen. Having
said that, if a building is going to cover more than 1.5 screens, it is
probably better to split it into two files, but even I can do that...
 You will also notice that none of the buildings  in the original
artwork have doors. some don't have windows either. That is because they
made the windows and doors seperately, so that they could combine
different buildings with different windows, allowing for a larger
variety of buildings within the game. I strongly suggest we adopt that
approach, as it makes a lot less work for everyone in the nd (everyone
except the artists!!.....maybe...heh...).

Transparency:

OK, this is really simple. white pixels are counted as being completely
transparent. Black pixels can also be used, but white is the default,
and unless there is a good reason for changing, I suggest that we stick
to the white. To do shadows, simply crosshatch black and white pixels.
looking at the original artworks will show you how this is done.


soooo... any questions??

-- 
The software required Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.
Thomi Richards,
th...@im...