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Re-labelling the SPNKR

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:20 pm
by dalecooper
I'm pretty sure I won't get an answer on this one, but what the hell.

I am trying to re-label the rocket launcher. To make a long story short, a friend of mine is a total RL whore and I wanted to put his name on it as a joke. I exported the dds file using Halo Map Tools, then re-did the label in Photoshop. It looks good. However, when I inject the texture back in, it doesn't have exactly the desired effect. You can see it in preview mode in Halo Map Tools, as well as in-game: basically what seems to be happening is that there is a layer on top of the actual decal that has letters "cut out" to allow the decal letters to show through. So in this example, I replaced the decal text SPANKr with my pal's screen name, but what happens in the game is that the letters of his name are shown in glimpses through the holes cut out for SPANKr. The result is an unintelligible mess. I can't figure out where this extra layer is coming from... it doesn't appear in Photoshop as far as I can tell, so I can't access it for editing.

One other weird thing: when I saved the original dds and opened it in PS, it shows up all white. I had to actually do a screen print of the preview in Halo Map Tools and paste that into Photoshop to get an image I could edit. I assume that the deal is that there is a white decal and then something over top of it that has letters cut out to allow the words to show through, and what I SHOULD be editing is the cut layer, not the decal itself... but I'm at a loss to find this thing.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 1:40 pm
by dalecooper
Continuing the trend of answering my own questions today, the problem was the mipmap. I'm not even sure why they use one, but all I had to do was save the dds with no mipmap and it did away with the layer over the top. My label looks pretty cool now.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 2:31 pm
by M.A.C.
well i dont have anything to add, but i just want to prove your theory that you will not get a responce wrong.

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2003 5:10 pm
by Iron_Forge
Mipmaps are copies of the image created at smaller resolution intervals...From what I understand, they are an optimization...If you are 100ft away from an object, theres little point in texturing it with a 512x512 pixel image, when its only 4 pixels big on your screen, so it uses a mipmap instead...

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 4:28 am
by Bubbasparxxxv69
strage, this work you are doing is on xbox right?

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2003 5:02 am
by MR-T
Iron_Forge wrote:Mipmaps are copies of the image created at smaller resolution intervals...From what I understand, they are an optimization...If you are 100ft away from an object, theres little point in texturing it with a 512x512 pixel image, when its only 4 pixels big on your screen, so it uses a mipmap instead...
And this is why you had problems viewing the image from more than 5 feet away.

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 11:41 am
by silencer88
you should change the string when you pick up a rocket to the name of the kid. That'd be funny as hell. something like "picked up dave's pussy gun" or something

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 12:58 pm
by Bubbasparxxxv69
what does that have to do with what he is talking about?

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:46 pm
by dalecooper
silencer88 wrote:you should change the string when you pick up a rocket to the name of the kid. That'd be funny as hell. something like "picked up dave's pussy gun" or something
I thought of that, but it actually doesn't show a weapon name - it shows a picture of the weapon instead. If I can find the bitmap for that, I'll replace it. What I have done is pretty funny though. The weapon name is changed from the SPNKr to the MOJOtron (his screen name is mojo). The various bits of random, military-style numbering have been changed to "U/R/A ROCKTHOR" and "YAY/4FR33K1LL5". I almost went to the trouble of re-texturing the rocket itself to say something funny, but then realized no one ever sees a rocket long enough to get the joke.

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:56 pm
by stunna
the RL has a bunch of bitmaps... so try changin em all and if all else fails u can edit another bitmap like a vehicle in a nonvehicle lvl.

so like u can take a hog and rl dds and clone the rl to the hog then edit the hog {which now should look like rl}and edit it how u want like it was the real rl dds then u juss swap the offsets

dont make things to complicated!

Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2003 9:17 pm
by Satur09
its called an
Alpha Channel

go back and open up the rocket launcher decal then goto the alpha channel in photoshop and do what you need to do. :shock: