Tutorial: Making sail emblems & flags

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

@Colossus: Yup, that is basically what my guide tells you to do (except that I did not mention the magic wand tool by its name). I'm just in the process of updating the guide, so I may put that in.

Also, be sure to check out the hints that our guide gives about single colour images, because that will also produce some nice effects.

colossus · Swabbie Posts: 68 **900 Gold** -

Thanks for your guide dude..
I had no idea how to convert the images and make them transparent before I read it. Cool

If you want, please feel free to use anything I said in my condensed version of your guide when you make your revision.

I'm not sure if I really made anything clearer or not. Confused

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Sonicsfan · Cutthroat Posts: 363 **1729 Gold** -

Looks great,now i'm curious now,what specials ships are your guys sailing???Post jpg here.

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

I edited the first post to include a link to the current .pdf version of the tutorial. It will be probably hosted by the site itself later, but it is presenly on my university server...

Also, here's a link to my wolfhead emblem:

http://www.uta.fi/~kamale/funstuff/pirates/emblemwolfhead.zip

and as an extra, my vision of the Cutlass Isle emblem (sorry, no screenshot):

http://www.uta.fi/~kamale/funstuff/pirates/emblemCI.zip

Ruffin · Powder Monkey Posts: 25 **451 Gold** -

Very good, thanks. Got a red angus bull on my sail and flag now. Now, to do the slinky slut mudflaps flag.....

Nefarious · Swabbie Posts: 119 **159 Gold** -

Thanks to this guide I now have all the sails and flags that I desired to make.

Question: Is there any way to make a 'blank' flag that one could place emblems on? I can't seem to enable a moddable 'blank' flag, as I don't think they have alpha channels. Any help is appreciated; just some ideas floating in my head. Thanks again.
Nef
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As he crawls back in his hole, under the rock, very near the cliff, overlooking more rocks.

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

Actually, there is a blank flag in the .fpk files already. It would be a copyright violation to post it here, though, but you can access it by opening the Pak3.fpk and looking for flag_surrender.dds (IIRC). It's the blank white flag that the ships raise when they surrender in ship-to-ship battles.

rupertlittlebear · Helmsman Posts: 4545 **10381 Gold** -

If you happen to have access to Corel Draw you can export TGA files from it too. They even have a decent set of stock images supplied with the their distribution disks. You can mix vector and bitmap graphics as well.

Been using Corel 10 to construct all sorts of sails and flags. Have only been able to produce solid color sails with favorite designs on them.

The edge pixels get pulled throughout the sail.

Ackwell · Powder Monkey Posts: 7 **82 Gold** -

I have a problem with the DDS files. I do Exactly as you tell to but the game shows my flag as pure black and sails has absolutely no emblem. Both show right in the selection bar but not on the ship model.

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

I've heard of this problem before, but I have not encountered it myself. Can you upload your file so that I could take a look at it?

I suspect that the problem could be an emblem that is too complicated, that is, it is a complex image which leads to a very big .dds file (in kilobytes) and the game is unable to show it. However, since I've not seen the problem by myself, this is only a guess... Sad

Are your ingame video details set to max, by the way?

Ackwell · Powder Monkey Posts: 7 **82 Gold** -

here are the files in one zip:

http://personal.inet.fi/private/ackwell/escobar.zip

Diedrech Knickerbocker · Powder Monkey Posts: 4 **7 Gold** -

Question:
I have been working on making some custom sails and flags and have gotten some to work great while others only show up as a white image in game. In the preview for DXTbmp they look fine under DTX1 & DTX3 and the alpha channel looks fine. Has anyone else run into this?

Also...I realise Im probably just not thinking about this hard enough but if I want the sail to be black what color does the main image and the alpha image have to be?

thx

Wolfwood · Boatswain Posts: 2527 **33917 Gold** -

It seems to me that you both (Ackwell and Diedrech Knickerbocker) have the same problem. I've looked into Ackwell's files and I cannot find a reason why they do not work properly in the game.

I haven't encountered this problem with my flags or emblems, but, then again, I've played around with them very little since I finished the Tutorial (holidays are over and one must work for a living...).

rupertlittlebear · Helmsman Posts: 4545 **10381 Gold** -

Gun Pierson · Gunner Posts: 809 **5053 Gold** -

Tx for the helpful tutorial! It's well explained and well written. Cheers matey! Wink