Interesting pictures!
Nice isnt it that because of this we are taking closer looks at things we used to take for granted
I stared about half an hour at the tramcatenary some time ago, while waiting for my tram to arrive
Nice to see how the buffers are done in Sydney, a bit different than overhere:
Attachment:
den-haag-cs.jpg [ 85.65 KiB | Viewed 8418 times ]
As you can see, we trust our traindrivers a bit less
Big yellow heavy metal and concrete buffers, a couple of meters away from the platforms and also with not one, but two red/white warning signs
Quote:
One of the chaps in my other forum ask if the posts that are off the platform be removed. But I thinking the beam be to long, but this I think solves that problem.
Yeah, that can work!!
Quote:
Wonder if the 2 lights for the novelty I should use the Red Cycle or yellow flash lights
You bring up an interesting issue, something I was wondering about, but did not check out yet...
And that is how do colors that are normally animated when coded as 8bpp behave when they are coded as 32bpp....
It turns out that they are then not animated anymore!!! (so when drawing in 32bpp you dont need to worry about the blinking "christmas-lights" )
But what to do if you do want them to behave as animated colors?
I figured that out:
How to use animated colors when coding with 32bpp graphics:First,
something very important, we need to change something in code-line 1
Currently looks like this:
Code:
1 * 24 14 "C" "INFO" "B" "PALS" \w1 "W" "B" "BLTR" \w1 "3" 00 00
the "W" should be changed to "D", so it looks like this:
Code:
1 * 24 14 "C" "INFO" "B" "PALS" \w1 "D" "B" "BLTR" \w1 "3" 00 00
While testing this out I realised that I am using the DOS-palette for the 8bpp graphics-templates, not the Windows-palette....
Change this for all your GRFs (I have already edited the post I made about explaining the code-header somewhere in the beginning of this thread), otherwise for example the watercycle colors will show up as pink ingame and not blue
Ok, so now what?
Well, you need to add the animated colors as an extra graphics-overlay, a mask so to say that only contains graphics that should be animated (or company-colored for that matter).
For this you need to
copy the ***_8bpp_EMPTY.png file that corresponds with that particular station
and rename it to ***_8bpp_MASK.png
Now you can draw in the colors you want to have animated at the place they are needed (for example copy/paste the buffergraphics into it, make sure the red light gets an animated color and then delete the rest of the buffergraphics again (make them transparent blue again), leaving just the red lights.
For example I did this with the 1x1-nontrack template:
Attachment:
Template_NonTrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png [ 2.42 KiB | Viewed 8418 times ]
This will eventually show up like this ingame (happily blinking away and showing the red companycolors I had at that time
)
Attachment:
Example314.png [ 39.06 KiB | Viewed 8418 times ]
But to get that we need to change the code, for the 1x1 template it looks currently like this:
Code:
118 * 6 01 04 01 FF 06 00
119 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
120 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 90 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 90 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
121 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 170 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 170 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
122 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 250 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 250 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
123 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 330 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 330 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
124 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 410 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 410 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
125 * 88 00 04 05 01 05 08 "AS03" 11 00 14 FF 15 FF 09 02
8D 0F 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 2D 84 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 2E 84 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 2F 44 22 03 80
8D 0F 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 30 84 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 31 84 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 32 44 22 03 80
126 * 7 02 04 00 00 01 00 00
127 * 7 02 04 01 00 01 00 00
128 * 10 03 04 01 05 01 FE 01 00 00 00
129 * 28 04 48 FF 01 05 "ÅTEMPLATE NONTRACK 1x1" 00
130 * 35 04 48 FF 01 05 "ÄAuzStations: Non-Track Tiles" 00
But this is how it has to be with the added animated color mask:
Code:
314 * 6 01 04 01 FF 06 00
315 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 10 40
316 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 90 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 90 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 90 40
317 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 170 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 170 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 170 40
318 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 250 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 250 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 250 40
319 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 330 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 330 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 330 40
320 c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_EMPTY.png 8bpp 410 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_32bpp.png 32bpp 410 40 64 122 -0 -0 normal chunked
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 410 40
321 * 88 00 04 05 01 0E 08 "AS03" 11 00 14 FF 15 FF 09 02
8D 0F 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 2D 84 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 2E 84 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 2F 44 22 03 80
8D 0F 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 30 84 00 00 00 00 00 10 10 03 31 84 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 32 44 22 03 80
322 * 7 02 04 00 00 01 00 00
323 * 7 02 04 01 00 01 00 00
324 * 10 03 04 01 0E 01 FE 01 00 00 00
325 * 44 04 48 FF 01 0E "ÅTEMPLATE NONTRACK 1x1 Animated Colors" 00
326 * 35 04 48 FF 01 0E "ÄAuzStations: Non-Track Tiles" 00
The change is that I added these kind of lines:
Code:
| c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_MASK.png mask 10 40
- I copied every ***_8bpp_EMPTY.png codeline, one by one and added that with the
Code:
|
symbol in each part of the graphicsblock of the code. (so just before a new codeline number)
- renamed _8bpp__
EMPTY.png to _8bpp_
MASK.png (so the name of that particular mask-graphics file)
- I changed this (focus on the change of whats in red to green):
c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_
EMPTY.png
8bpp 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
to
c:/grfcodec603/auzstations/gfx/template_nontrack_1x1_8bpp_
MASK.png
mask 10 40 64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
This is really important, that way it will compile it as a mask.
Also make sure
mask is in lowercase letters!!!
- Finally I removed the last parts of the codeline:
Code:
64 122 -31 -91 normal chunked
as those are not needed (it takes that information from the 32bpp codeline, dont ask me why, it just does and doesnt work if you keep it in
)
The two numbers in front of those are important, Otherwise the mask will be placed at the wrong spot
You could also just copy the ***_8bpp_EMPTY.png codelines, without those parts offcourse
I hope I did not overexplain this
It is rather simple, but sometimes I type to much, making it unclear...
Read carefully...
Try it out with one of the buffers, making the red dot blink, if you run in trouble, just ask.
EDIT:Apparently there are a couple of things to keep in mind with using MASK-files.
-First:
Make sure that in your 32bpp-file there is something drawn at the location where the graphics of the MASK-file should be placed over.
if nothing is there (so fully transparent) in your 32bpp-file, the graphics in your MASK-file
will not show up at all!!-Second:
Apparently the MASK-file has some sort of transparency!
This means that the graphics of the 32bpp-file have some sort of influence on how the animated colors in your MASK-file will eventually show up ingame.
Therefor I recommend to use some sort of uniform color in your 32bpp-file in the place of where the MASK-file graphics will be placed over, this color should work:
Attachment:
BackgroundColor_FireCycle.png [ 377 Bytes | Viewed 7604 times ]
To be honest, an interesting type of behaviour, this way you can get more variations in the animated colors, by using different (tones of) colors in your 32bpp-file as background.