Why do I have to trace images, why not just paste

[jtyler125]

I am so dumb...I am just happy to use Sci studio...I just think it would be cool to be able to hack it to put the pasted images for tracing to stay on the pic instead of having to trace them...can someone do that?

Really Dumb,
JT

[Cloudee1]

Well, but then you would be stuck trying to trace for the priority and control colors. It would be almost impossible to trace the edges around all of some leaves correctly.

One place you can use paste is in the view editor. You can always make views and then just place them on the picture with the scripts. That's the best way to go, since it's easier to edit views than the pics anyway.

[jtyler125]

I have done this but it slows the game down tremendously and it makes the cursor blink weird and I think that takes away from the game.  I know it would be difficult to trace around the tree or something but that is a chance that I would be willing to take.

Is it possible to make that happen in sci studio?

[Doan Sephim]

If you are talking about the pic editor, it would be pretty much impossible to hack into it to make pasted pics work, because the engine redraws the room in the game based on the lines and fills etc. That is, it doesn't think of it as "one picture" but as a series of lines and fills.

To somehow make it so that when you paste it it figures out all the lines and fills in the correct order would be really a very advanced programming job - one that boggles my little brain!

[MusicallyInspired]

They do have a PCX2PIC program somewhere but I could never get it to work. Must only be for simple lines and such.

[jtyler125]

I still think it would be awesome to be able to have real pictures in the pic editor...but like you said you can just paste them onto the screen as a prop or actor.  Even though it makes the cursor blinky.

[Cloudee1]

for static, non cycling, views, if you use addToPic instead of init then you won't get the blinky cursor when you mouseover those views.

[jtyler125]

That is pretty cool...but now if I take a picture and want to put somethings in front of the ego in terms of priority...not possible...but I guess I just have to give up on that dream...thanks Cloudee I will try what you said.

JT

[Cloudee1]

But if you break up that picture into several views, a view of a desk, window with tree outside, potted plant, calendar, diploma, etc. then place those views onto the page you can easily set priority just as you already know how to do except with the add to pic instead of init.

Code: [Select]

(anItem:view(800)loop(1)cel(3)setPri(4)addToPic())
I would never suggest trying to make a room sized view. I've had some issues with some overly large ones displaying improperly. For instance, while you guys were working on your New Year's game I was punching up some preliminary coding for a hero's quest knockoff.  The title is a view that stretches pretty much the width of the screen. When I had it displayed as a single view it all fell apart and I had random pieces of it scattered everywhere on the screen. When I broke the view down to one word per view, and displayed four smaller views instead of one big one everything works without issue.

You can do what you want, just on a smaller scale than you are wishing for.

[troflip]

The "latest" (old) beta for SCI Companion has support for converting bitmap images to pic resources.

Steps:
1) create new pic (button on left of toolbar)
2) choose Tools->Convert bitmap to Pic
3) It brings up a dialog when you can browse for an image, or copy from the clipboard.  The image should appear on the left side
4) Click "convert", and the resulting SCI pic should appear on the right.  If it looks ok, then click "accept", and the appropriate drawing commands will be inserted into your pic.
5) choose file->export as resource to save it as a pic.nnn file that can be imported by SCI Studio.

But a big WARNING:  large pics can wreak havoc on your game due to memory constraints.  And while my program does a better job than pcx2pic (if you can even get that to work), the resultant pic sizes are still large.  The max size of a resource is 64KB, but I wouldn't get too close to that.  SCI Companion shows how big the result is, so you can check before clicking "accept".  You can adjust the palette used, and the number of colours and "convert" again, to try to get something that may not look quite as good, but will be smaller.  I can usually get something decent of about 40KB... although of course it depends on what the original picture looks like.

[Cloudee1]

40 Kb 

That's big.

[jtyler125]

Ok Troflip is a genius...I have been playing with what he said here and this is the coolest thing ever.  I can't wait to use it to create a game.  What a huge time saver...way better than tracing images.  Awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks,
Tro

JT

[Eigen]

In my honest opinion, I think that self-drawn pictures are way better than some photo-like backgrounds. They have this personal style and I don't know .. something.



-Eigen

[troflip]

I agree... but I think photo-like backgrounds can be suitable for "static" scenes, like a title page.

[jtyler125]

We will see...I think there is a definite place for static pictures as a background...I have a few ideas that I am trying to work on but progress is slow...really slow.

Here is my new idea for this forum...just a suggestion of course...not sure if possible...but a place where we can all put some of our better views...such as different loops of actors, windows, doors, anything that we may want to put in a game.  Then we can just d/l the views and paste them into our games.  If everyone here does a few of these views we will always have a quick place to get a view to build a game?  Just a thought to increase output and sharing.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Jesse