10 replies to this topic

[Amaurea]

I'd like to try my hand at creating new inventory icons and description BAM's for some items that are already in a mod.

I can do all sorts of things in PSP to mess with images to get a satisfactory bmp for them (I think, I'm still fuzzy on transparency issues, should it be a transparent gif, or is it okay to have a bmp with a 0,151,151 background color?), but even after reading all the tutorials on line, I'm sort of lost as to how to get them where I want them to replace the current BAM's.

[Tassadar88]

I ran into something like that when I was doing animal paperdolls. To create bams, it is best to use gifs as originals and then open them in bam workshop 1 or 2. (BW2 tends to crash more often)
1)For paperdolls, you have to name the bam according to the entry in anisnd.ids for the shape (as amooinv = moose => amooinv.bam) and put it into overrride.
2) If you want to assign a bam to an item, you have to copy the bam into override and then edit your item in Near Infinity (or whatever tool you are using) to use the bam you want to use. If I am not clear, you can add me in MSN and ýýwe can talk it out tomorrow ;-)

[Jarno Mikkola]

Or ...

I'm sort of lost as to how to get them where I want them to replace the current BAM's.

you need to edit the item so it uses the bam. As for personal use(no WeiDU installer version)DLTCEP can do that, once you have run the Setup, just open the Edit Items, load up the item, and then go to Icons & item attributes heading, Browse the right icons, save and that's it.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 25 May 2008 - 10:47 AM.

[Amaurea]

Let's see if I have this right for inventory icons. I know I need two images, one for the item sitting in the slot, and a larger one for the item being moved around the screen...

1. create the gif's (aaaack, PSP really is not as good as photoshop for gifs, but I don't have photoshop atm. Will using the turquoise background work okay?)
edited: BWS won't let me open anything but BAM's. Is there some super-secret trick I'm missing????
2. use the tembg item converter to make it a bam file
And this only works if the original image is a bmp, which is causing me trouble, because BWS is NOT removing the turquoise background color
3. open bam workshop (not tempting fate by using v2) and set up a sequence for the 2 images, and save
4. Save to override file?
Okay, I think I have this down. I need to save it to the mod's icons file to update the mod, and then edit the itm file using DLTCEP. To test in the current game I have, I need to change the itm file that's in the override as well as adding a copy of the completed bam to it.
5. Open up DLTCEP and edit the item?

How do I do this to save it to distribute in the next version of the mod? I've sort of become a caretaker of sorts for a mod, and the author has requested the new stuff.

Also, is this pretty much the same for the description BAM's, just change it in DLTECP once I have it saved... where? The mod's icons folder? Are there naming conventions which need to be followed?

Being a newbie sucks.

Thanks so much for the help, gentlemen.


(Edited to make an educated guess about something.)

Edited by Amaurea, 25 May 2008 - 02:22 PM.

[Tassadar88]

Just a slight comment here, as you have it more or less right ;-)
1) Bam workshop 2 has the one redeeming quality - it opens gifs ;-)
(besides, if you open a bitmap, you can set the transparency instead of any other color - it is the white-with-a-blue-stripe colour)

after that, you just keep the itm and bam files from the override and have the setup-mymod.tp2 copy them to the game override.
As far as naming conventions go, stick to 8 characters max and try use a name that is not used anywhere else. (if it is a larger mod, you might try and register a modding prefix, but it might be considered out already )
And the last one - I have no idea about description bams - never did one...

[Amaurea]

Thank you Tassdar! I figured out my problem. For some reason, my PSP's version of 0,151,151 i s being read by BAM workshop as 0,149,149 Thanks to something you said, I've figured out how to replace the turquoise color and I'm good to go. I know from past experience that PSP's gifs are not all that, so I'm happy to have found a way to work with bmp's.

Thanks again!

[Tassadar88]

No prob :-)
On a side note, I would recommend you try the GIMP. It is starting to be pretty good these days.

[Miloch]

Thank you Tassdar! I figured out my problem. For some reason, my PSP's version of 0,151,151 i s being read by BAM workshop as 0,149,149 Thanks to something you said, I've figured out how to replace the turquoise color and I'm good to go. I know from past experience that PSP's gifs are not all that, so I'm happy to have found a way to work with bmp's.

BMPs work as well if not better than GIFs in BAM Workshop 1. Also, what you describe in PSP is specific to a type of reduction - I think it's "Optimized Median Cut" when you make something a 256-colour image (as they must be for BAMs, whether you're importing GIFs or BMPs). I don't think that issue arises if you use "Optimized Octree" reduction with "Error diffusion" and "Reduce color bleeding" which generally do a better job than Median Cut and better than Photoshop or Gimp in my experience.

If you are not renaming the BAMs (just updating them but keeping the same names) you probably won't need to change the .ITM files. If you are making new items with new BAMs, then you'll probably want to create the items with DLTCEP or NI and specify the BAM names there. If you want to test how it looks in-game, you can do several things but I usually create a WeiDU mini-installer, something like this depending on what you're doing exactly:

BACKUP ~uberitms/backup~
AUTHOR ~whomever~

//Translates automatically from .tra files
AUTO_TRA ~uberitms/%s~
LANGUAGE ~English~ ~english~ ~uberitms/english/setup.tra~

BEGIN @1 //Uber Items

//Copies all your BAMs from your mod to the game
COPY ~uberitms/bams~ ~override~

//Example of copying a new item
COPY ~uberitms/items/t-dagg01.itm~ ~override~ //Miloch's Badass Dagger
  SAY NAME2 @2 //Identified name
  SAY DESC @3 //Identified description
  PATCH_IF NOT FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~ar0100.are~ BEGIN //non-BG1
	WRITE_BYTE 0x26 4 //Minimum strength
	WRITE_BYTE 0x31 0x60 //Dagger proficiency
  END
  PATCH_IF FILE_EXISTS_IN_GAME ~fw0125.are~ BEGIN //Tutu only
	WRITE_ASCII 0x3a ~_IDAGG09~ #8 //Inventory icon
	WRITE_ASCII 0x44 ~_GDAGG01~ #8 //Ground icon
	WRITE_ASCII 0x58 ~_CDAGG04~ #8 //Description icon
	WRITE_ASCII 0x76 ~_IDAGG09~ #8 //Use icon 1
	WRITE_ASCII 0xae ~_IDAGG09~ #8 //Use icon 2
 END
//The above "platform dependent" code is only necessary for multi-platform (BG1/Tutu/BGT) installs

//Example of modding an existing item to give it new BAMs
COPY_EXISTING ~blun01.itm~ ~override~ //Standard mace
  WRITE_ASCII 0x3a ~T-IBLN03~ #8 //New inventory icon
  WRITE_ASCII 0x44 ~T-GBLN01~ #8 //New ground icon
  WRITE_ASCII 0x58 ~T-DBLN03~ #8 //New description icon
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

The good thing about this is you can uninstall it, tweak your items and BAMs and reinstall it however much you want fairly easily without messing anything up permanently (as WeiDU keeps copious backups).

I have some other BAM tips - might as well bury them in a "Total n00b" post rather than in a proper tutorial, heh. They are just rough notes for the most part anyway, on the various BAM formats and dimensions:

BG2 Desc. BAMs (1-frame - seq 0, frame 0): offset by half their dimensions
BG1 Desc. BAMs (4-frame - seq 0, frames 0-3):
- Frame 0: offset by entire dimensions
- Frame 1: offset by 0 horizontal, full vertical
- Frame 2: offset by full horizontal, 0 vertical
- Frame 3: offset by 0 horizontal, 0 vertical
Grounds BAMs (seq0, frame 0): offset by ~half dimensions
Inventory BAMs (seq0, frame1/seq1, frame0)
- Frame 0 (small): offset by ~((dimension - 32) / 2) usu. rounded down horizontally/up vertically
-- Drop decimal if > 3, round up if not
-- So for example: iboot02.bam = 31 pixels wide, 27 pixels high: offset = -1, -2
- Frame 1 (large): offset by ~half dimensions

BG2 (and Tutu/BGT) use both the BG1 and BG2 formats for description BAMs. It is easier to use the BG2 format since you don't have to "quarter" the BAMs. These can be quite large, but I generally don't go much over ~175 pixels square, depending on the item. It helps to look at existing BAMs for the item you're creating so yours aren't way out of proportion. Also, do a screenshot of a few description BAMs and reduce them to 256-colours, then export the results as PSP palettes. That way you can match the in-game colours fairly closely, otherwise they'll look quite bizarre.

Ground BAMs can also be pretty large (at least 64x64) but again, you want to compare with existing item types to get dimensions. Most are pretty small - a sword being about 36 wide by 20 high, a pair of boots averaging 16x21. There are some tricks to these involving colour manipulation in DLTCEP, since I think there's a bug in BAM Workshop when it comes to these, and it'll represent the cyan (0,255,255) that should outline the item with a pink (255,101,151) which you have to replace manually.

Inventory BAMs are 64x64 for the large frame (used when moving an item) and 32x32 for the small one used everywhere else. Again, this varies widely by item type, but most items rarely use up the full dimensions. I usually use a dark brown as my background when I'm drawing larger images, then resize them down to these dimensions, sharpen the image and mask out the dark brown as the turquoise (0,151,151) transparency. This tends to leave a darker border around the icon, which is good to prevent it bleeding into the default (brown) background in-game, or from looking choppy if it's too bright. You can also do a magic wand on the background, invert the selection and then darken the outline by hand or with other automatic tools in PSP or whatever editor you're using. When you have your bitmaps (GIFs if you prefer), import them into BAM Workshop. If you need to give a negative offset as in the example above, you'll probably need to type the minus sign in a text editor or something and paste it into BAM Workshop, as it doesn't let you type negative values (another bug).

[Tassadar88]

Well, and there is one minor thing I liked about bams - worked for both paperdolls in BGII and items in PST, so I assume it is general - if you change the bam in override that links to an item you have in your saved game, you can update it while the game is running and check it immediately ingame. You would never believe how much that can be useful ;-)

[Amaurea]

I just now saw your response, Miloch... thank you so much for all that information and wonderful tips.

I am probably being REALLY dense, but could you explain what offset means in this case?

Also, I didn't have the option of saving these particular BAM's as overwrites of what was already there since the mod used already existing generic stuff.

Now, I'm running into a problem that's making me want to pull out my hair... WHY on earth won't my description BAM's stay centered? I've tried using DLTCEP to change the BAM's assigned to the .itm files in the mod folder, then installing the mod, and ... the description BAM's move back down to the bottom right. I've tried using DLTCEP to change the BAM's assigned to the .itm files in the override folder, and that's great. Except for the fact that while that's all well and fine for my game, I've eventually got to pack all this up for the next version of the mod. And, if I simply copy the .itm file from the override to the local copy of the mod, then uninstall and reinstall the updated mod, I'm back to an uncentered description BAM.

[Miloch]

The offsets are what you see in BAM Workshop if you go to Manage Frames in the boxes Horizontal and Vertical. The same thing is in DLTCEP if you edit an animation in the two Position boxes. As you've guessed, it controls how far an image is from center, which varies by BAM type and how big it is.

I'm guessing from your other post you figured this out already, but feel free to ask if you have more questions (I just saw this now though too, so PM might be quicker).