Matrix Games Forums

OK, I can't figure this one out. I've added my own artwork, and the transparent background ships that show up normal for the official artwork end up showing with the purple background on the ones I made.

The purple color is an exact match, the size is 200 x 60 pixels, and it is saved as a bitmap image. The only difference I can seem to find is a resolution of 1000 pixels per inch versus 96 pixels per inch for the originals, so I tried changing the pixels per inch with no luck.

Any ideas what is causing the problem? I mean any ideas, I've tried everything I can think of. [:(]

If the original artwork was created @ 1000 ppi then a 200 X 60 pixel image would only have been one-fifth of an inch in width, which is much smaller than the correct size. How did you re-scale the image to 96 ppi, and in what art package? In what way does such re-scaling affect the original artwork? How do filesizes compare between (a) the artwork's original 1000 ppi resolution, (b) 96 ppi resolution, and (c) standard size in the game for ship images (36KB)? If different, is this a clue?

If you're using Photoshop then I probably can't help much, as I know nothing about that package [:(]

What happens if you take an original 1000 ppi image and paste it into a 200 X 60 image blank scaled at 96 ppi? I'm guessing you may then have to stretch the pasted-in original to fill the whole canvas, but if you do that, does it then appear correctly in game?

In what way did you establish that the purple background is an exact match? By taking a sample pixel from a stock art shil?

I'm assuming that you've started with a larger picture and resized it down? What happens in some programs is that the pixels around the edges get merged, so one that appears to be entirely transparent will actually be slightly coloured. When that's put on top of the pink combat background then it causes those pixels to become a new colour which then causes them to show as a pink mess in the combat screens.

There are two options, either you need to go around the edges and manually sort all of those pixels.

Or the easier (quicker) option is to do this (done in paint.NET but the theory is the same for any program that can support multiple layers).

It looks rough when viewed on it's own, but it's a lot better when viewed in game where the edges will blend with the combat screen.

ORIGINAL: Dixie

I'm assuming that you've started with a larger picture and resized it down? What happens in some programs is that the pixels around the edges get merged, so one that appears to be entirely transparent will actually be slightly coloured. When that's put on top of the pink combat background then it causes those pixels to become a new colour which then causes them to show as a pink mess in the combat screens.

There are two options, either you need to go around the edges and manually sort all of those pixels.

Or the easier (quicker) option is to do this (done in paint.NET but the theory is the same for any program that can support multiple layers).

It looks rough when viewed on it's own, but it's a lot better when viewed in game where the edges will blend with the combat screen.

And that seems to be what happened.

After doing some rechecking, there is a 1 pixel wide 'border' around the shils that is actually 255,30,255 instead of 255,0,255. I couldn't tell at all (my eyesight being what it is), but that is easily enough for a computer to say that it isn't transparent. I've already managed to fix 2 of them easily just by using my fill tool with the correct 255,0,255 color right on the edge.

I'm still a bit confused as to how this happened, as I converted all my artwork to .png on transparent background before reloading them to merge them onto the background, but no doubt that is how it happened. Also, I'm was using PSP 8.0, and with that being an older program, it might have had some issues.

Thanks for the response, once I checked the very edge it was exactly as you said it would be. [:)]