Tutorial+for+make+main+screens+and+edit+palette

**A TUTORIAL showing how to create MainScreens and Customized palettes**
A Jacksprat (john.mcgarvey) tutorial.

Edited and updated (links) by RAF_Dumoulin.

Paint Shop Pro MS Paint Pic-Pac Palette Tool PalEd PICPAC 48 KB DOS MicroProse Convert PCX images to TPC texture files
 * 1.1 Purpose** The purpose of this tutorial is to provide a step by step procedure for the making of MainScreens to use in the EAW game. I was always impressed by the approach to teaching that was used in the military, assume that the students know nothing and start with the basics. The tutorial will cover the following matter; differences between the 24 bit and 256 picture formats, the structure of the MainScreen, how to create a Mainscreen file, the structure of the MainScreen palette, how to create and edit a custom palette for a Mainscreen.
 * 1.2 Requirements** The following programs are needed to use this tutorial.

PicPäc GUI 1.2a, by Walter "Waldo" Knödgen

Those tools are available here…..in a pack with the executable and the GUI included.

http://www.sandbaggereaw.com/RAFDum/PicPacFull.zip

Mr. B's Super Cool Palette Editor http://home.freeuk.net/fourthwish/ PalEd http://www.alaska.net/~damon84/apps/paled.html


 * 1.3 Reference material** I am including in this package a posting from SIMHQ with notes by MOSI. I recommend that you go to the following sites and read the mainscreen and palette information found there.

VONBEERHOFEN’S page on Tally Ho http://www.sandbaggereaw.com/vb.html

Major Lee’s Site http://www.majorleesaerodrome.net/


 * 1.4 Disclaimer** I do not claim that everything that I state is technically true or factual. I am attempting to give a workable grasp of the skills needed to create credible mainscreens. If you want to get the most exact information available, read everything that VONBEERHOEN has to say on the subject, he is vastly better informed than I am.


 * 1.5 Suggestions for using this tutorial** I have set up the ZIP file so that it will extract into the C Drive Root Directory and create it’s own folder. This folder will be named MAINSCR. In the process of working through the Tutorial, you will be creating many files. Since some of the programs that you will be using are DOS oriented, it would be wise to keep the names that you use to 6 or less characters. Dos type programs abbreviate names over 8 characters. This can cause confusion when you try to open them in dialogue windows. Try to do all of your work within the MAINSCR folder. Create shortcuts to the programs that you will be using and put them into this folder. Avoid altering the original files. When you open an original file do a ‘SAVE AS’ and add a numeral to the end of the file’s name. Save your work frequently. I find it is very helpful to print out the tutorial and the important pictures. This saves jumping back and forth from screen to screen.


 * 2.1 Looking at Mainscreens** Let’s start in by examining the basics parts and attributes of Mainscreens. They are in a file format that has a .PIC suffix. They can’t be viewed outside of the EAW program. The .PIC files are created by converting .PCX files with the utility program called PIC-PAC. The PCX file must be in the 8-bit color depth. The 8-bit depth allows 256 possible colors. //**THE 256 LIMIT IS THE MAIN PROBLEM THAT WE ARE DEALING WITH**//. Most of the pictures that we work with and the programs that we use are in the 24 bit color depth. The 24-bit depth allows 16.7 million colors. In the 24-bit color depth, each pixel has a R(red), G(green), B(blue) coding that defines the color of that pixel. I think of this as ‘PAINTING BY COLORS’. In the 8-bit color depth each pixel is coded to an index number on a color palette that is part of the picture file. I think of this as ‘PAINTING BY NUMBERS’. If you change the palette, all the colors change. Sometimes this causes a psychedelic effect. We will now take a look at the DEFAULT Mainscreen in the EAW game itself. If you use OAW, it might be a good idea to do a ‘RESET COMPLETELY’. If you have any .BMP files in the EAW folder, it might be a good idea to remove them. Start your EAW program. When you get to the Mainscreen, take a look at what you see. At the bottom you will see the twinkling color effect. On the right side, you will see the Selection Menu, below that is the EXIT button. When you pass your cursor over the text in these items, the text turns red. Hold your cursor over the newsreel selection. Click on ‘PRINT SCREEN’ on the keyboard. Exit EAW. Go into the EAW folder and you should find a BMP file named Scrn0000.bmp. Double click on it and it should open in MS Paint. Look at it, there is no twinkling effect. Go to ‘Save As’, in the dialogue box, you will see that it is listed as a 256 color Bitmap. Change the name to DEFALT1. SAVE it! It should now be named DEFALT1. With the brush tool, put a BIG YELLOW ‘X’ across the middle of the picture. Save that as DEFALT2. Close the picture.


 * 2.2 Creating a Mainscreen** Open your PaintShop Pro program. Open DFALT2.BMP. You should see the screen with the big yellow X. Look over in the upper right corner. There is the 256 palette. Look at the top menu bar. Click on IMAGE. Click on Image Information. Click on Top menu bar COLORS. Click on Count colors used. Click on EDIT PALETTE. There is the Edit Palette Dialogue Box. Click OK! Click on Save AS. In the Save As dialogue box see the save as type window, click on the down arrow. At the bottom of the list is Zsoft Paintbrush (*.pcx), click on that. Click on save. Close PaintShop Pro! You should now have the file DFALT2.pcx in the MAINSCR folder. Open the PIC-PAC TOOL folder. Copy DFALT2.PCX into the PIC-PAC TOOL folder. Rename DFALT2.pcx to MAIN2.pcx. Double click on the DO PIC-PAC.bat file to convert the MAIN2.pcx file to MAIN2.PIC file. You will now have the MAIN2.pic file in the folder. Close the DOS box. At this time you might want to create a shortcut to your EAW folder. Put it in your MAINSCR folder. Click and drag the MAIN2.pic file into your EAW folder. Start EAW! The Main Screen should be your DFALT2 picture with the big yellow X across it. If you don’t have that screen, you did something wrong and you can’t go any further until you are able to create the correct Main Screen.

I will list the required steps. 1- Take a picture and open it in PaintShop Pro. 2- In PaintShop Pro, convert that picture into a 256-color .PCX file. 3-Rename the *. Pcx file to MAIN2.pcx. 4- Use the PIC-PAC utility to convert the .PCX file into a .PIC file. 5- Insert the MAIN2.PIC file into your EAW folder. 6- Run EAW.


 * 2.3 LOOKING AT THE SELECTION MENU** Lets go back to DFALT2.bmp. Open it in MS PAINT. Try to SAVE AS. You should see that it is a 256-color file, SAVE AS DFALT3. Go to EDIT pull-down menu. Click SELECT ALL, Click CLEAR SELECTION. You should have a blank screen. In the color box click on the yellow. Click on the PAINT BUCKET icon in the tool bar; Put the icon on the screen and click. You should have a yellow screen. **//THERE IS NOTHING EXCEPT YELLOW ON THIS SCREEN//**. Save and close PAINT. Open DFALT3.bmp in PAINTSHOP PRO and create a MAIN2 .pic. Put the MAIN2.pic file in theEAW folder. If the other one is still there, it will ask to overwrite, say yes. Run EAW and look at the Main Screen. What you should see is a yellow screen with the SELECTION MENU on the right side and the EXIT below that. Where did this come from? **//EAW put it there!//** The original palette is still part of the .bmp file. You have the white text that hi-lights with red when you pass the cursor over it. Each white letter is in a black box. EAW puts a palette index number into certain pixel locations that make up the selection menu. As I worked on the variety of palette indexes that were used for the menu text and background, I couldn’t understand why so many were used. The thought came to me that the pattern that I deciphered was for an English language menu and that if someone has a menu in a different language, the pattern will probably be different. We are now ready to start dealing with the 8 bit or 256-color palette. Close EAW.

Let’s try another method. Open up the PalEd 1.0 program, browse through until you find DEFALT4 and open that. The palette layout should look familiar. There are your four pink squares. Let’s try something! In index #232 put in R-240, G-240, B-000, Looks yellow! Click on #227 and drag to #232. Those 6 squares should have a black frame around them. Go to the top menu bar and click EFFECTS and then Blend. You should get a transition spectrum. This can be useful when you want to blend things like clouds and sky. Using the same technique, copy and paste pink from #227 to #254. Click and drag from #227 to #254, do EFFECTS and BLEND. You just made all the Flicker squares pink which is how we disable the Flicker effect. Save and close. Open DEFALT4 in PaintShop PRO; click Colors, Click SAVE PALETTE. In the Save Dialogue Box, give it the name of 02DEFAULT and save it in the PALETTES folder. We are now starting to build a library of palettes. Click colors again, click Edit Palette. You now see the edit dialogue box with the flicker index area in pink. Click on PRINT SCREEN. Open MSPAINT and do an Edit-Paste. If you open the save-as function, you will see that this picture is in 24-bit color. Save this picture in Palettes folder as 02DEFAULT.bmp. Use the selection tool and just select the palette dialogue box, Click Edit-Copy, Click Edit-Select all, Click Edit- Clear Selection. You should have a blank screen. Now click paste and you should have your palette dialogue box. Go to the Pictures folder, open INDEX MASK, Copy it, close the picture. Return to 02DEFAULT.bmp and Paste the mask in the picture. If the center of the mask is not transparent, click on the bottom box with the geometric shapes. Shift the mask so that the mask surrounds the palette colors. Print ‘DEFAULT PALETTE’ across the top of the box, move the image to the upper left corner and trim the picture size to about 440 X 420, save and close the picture. Open the 02DEFAULT.bmp in Paintshop pro and click on color, Load Palette, in the dialogue box click on 02Default.pal. The picture should now be changed to a 256color picture. Save it! You should now have 2 ‘02DEFAULT’ files in the PALETTES folder, one is a .pal file and the other is a .bmp file. You will use the .pal file in PaintShop Pro to change pictures; you use the .bmp file if you want to use a palette editor program. We will start to create a palette library now. Go to the pictures folder and open the file named BASICPAL INDEX.bmp and save it as 01BASICPAL.bmp in the Palettes folder. Open 01BASICPAL.bmp in PaintShop Pro and save the palette as 01BASICPAL.pal in the palettes folder.
 * 2.4 LOOKING AT THE MAINSCREEN PALETTE** Open the picture folder and look at PALINDEX.bmp. You might want to print this and have a copy so that you can easily reference a position on the palette display to its index number. The display format that you see is the usual way that the palette is displayed. There are palette files, but the usual way of viewing and editing a palette is through a 256-color picture that uses that palette. The palette files as such are used to convert 24 bit pictures to 8 bit pictures. In PaintShop Pro, open these pictures; SELECTION MENU INDEX.bmp, BASICPAL INDEX.bmp, PALINDEX.bmp. The BASICPAL INDEX shows the index positions that are required by EAW. The SELECTION MENU INDEX shows what the index positions are used for. According to that, we have 179 index positions that are available for use in creating a custom palette. Close all the pictures.
 * 2.5 EDITING THE MAINSCREEN PALETTE** Open DEFALT1.bmp in PaintShop Pro. Click on COLORS in the pull-down menu. Click on EDIT PALETTE. You will see a palette display box. This is the same palette that is displayed on the upper right of the screen. Click cancel in the box and it closes. Zoom in on the red NEWSREEL selection. Open the EDIT PALETTE box again. Click on palette index #50. At the bottom of the display box you will see the index number and the R-G-B values. Double click on index #50. A COLOR dialogue box appears. Look it over. Put the cursor on the basic colors display. The cursor becomes an eyedropper. Pick the bright green on the left side. It becomes the new color. Click OK. Look at the NEWSREEL selection. Much of the red has been replaced by the green. This is how you can find out where certain palette indexes are being used in your picture. Click cancel and you are back where you were. Index positions 224 to 254 are reserved for the FLICKERING EFFECT. We won’t be using this feature. Let’s set each of those positions to a pink color. Open the palette box again. Double click on #224, select the bottom left basic color. Click OK. Repeat for #’s 225, 226, 227. Click Ok on the palette box. The palette box closes and the changes appear on the right side palette display. You have also made these changes to your picture. Let’s save this picture as DFALT4. That is how you would edit a palette index by index. It can be tedious. Close PaintShop Pro.


 * 2.6 CREATING A CUSTOMIZED PALETTE** Open the file named FRAME. This is the base for screens that I make for the 352nd FG. It is 640 x 480 pixels in size. That is normal EAW screen size. Most of the MainScreens are composed of a standard frame and insets. The green area is 440 x 330 in size. That is the same proportion as the full screen. That is the inset area for this screen. Open the SPRAT file. This is the picture that we will use as the inset. It was originally 640x480 in size. I reduced it in Paintshop Pro. I used to rescale with MSPaint but I found that PaintShop Pro causes a lot less distortion when you rescale. Let’s open both of these side by side in PaintShop Pro. The SPRAT inset is the going to be the most important element in the screen that we are making. We will create our custom palette from that picture and let the FRAME portion be modified by the custom palette. Do a save as and call the new picture SPRAT2.This way we can alter the picture and no effect the original. Go to colors and Click Decrease Color Depth-256Colors(8bit). I use Optimized Median Cut and nearest color as my choices. You can experiment and see if you prefer other selections. Click OK, the picture is now in 256 colors. That is as good as this format will ever get with this picture. However, the picture won’t be that good. Remember that we only have 179 index positions open to use for our custom palette. I like to keep 3 positions open for later modifications. That leaves us with 176 colors for our palette. Let’s see what the picture looks like with that. Close without saving the picture and open it again and check that it still is 24-bit color. Click Color-Decrease color-Xcolors(4-8)bit Set 176 into the number of colors b window. Click OK. Look at the picture, this is what you have to work with. Look over at the palette display on the left, there is a lot of black space. Now, go to color and save the palette as 03xCUSPALpal, also save the picture in PALETTES as 03xCUSPALbmp. Go into the PALETTES folder and make sure that you have both of them there. Go into the PICTURES folder and Copy-Paste the SPRAT picture into the inset area of FRAME and save the result as JSCR1. Open the palette editing program PALETTE TOOL. On the left side, click on OPEN. Browse through until you get to the PALETTES folder and open 01BASICPALETTE. It should look familiar with the Selection Menu indexes at the start and lots of green in the center and pink at the end. First let’s do a SAVE AS 04CUSPAL.bmp on the left side. Now we can’t mess up our BASICPALETTE. Click on OPEN and open 04CUSPAL. (Palette Tool doesn’t change its file ID after a SAVE AS.) Go over to the right and open 03xCUSPAL.bmp. Now we will start to create our Custom MainScreen Palette by copying the colors from the right side to the left side. On the left side we have a block of Empty (green) indexes starting at #64 and ending at index # 223, a total of 160 empty spaces. Go to index #64 and click on it, it’s # appears in First Source Index window. Go to the right side and click on index # 0, that num. appears in 1st window. Go down to the Size window and put in a value of 160. Click on Paste. The 160 colors have been copied to the left side. On the right side, we still have indexes 160 to 175 to transfer. On the left side click on empty space #22. Click on #160 on the right. Size should be 1 space. Click Paste. We will now fill left spaces 24 to 29, 6 spaces. Click on space 24 on the left, click on space 161 on the right and put 6 in the Size window. Note that 161 to 166 are highlighted on the right side. Click Paste to transfer. The next group of empty spaces on the left is index #45 to # 48, 4 spaces. Click on167 on the right and fill in a size of 4. Do your copy thing and you will transfer # 167 to 170. The next group begins at # 56 on the left and # 171 on the right. Transfer 5 cells. When you do that you should have 3 cells that are still green, those are our spare spaces to use if we need them. Save the Palette as 05CUSPAL.bmp. Keep in mind that what we really created is a .BMP file with a customized palette in it. We will still have to create the customized palette file itself. Open 05CUSPAL.bmp in PaintShop Pro. It looks kind of weird, doesn’t it? Go to the Color Pulldown Menu and select save palette, save it as 05CUSPAL.pal.

Why don’t we take our JSCR1 24 bit color picture and convert it to a MainScreen using the default palette and compare the two? I think that the results sort of justify the effort that is expended. If I were to try to customize the palette index by index, the work would be very tedious and I am very prone to making errors. I think that the method that I have outlined allows you to quickly and easily create a palette and the resulting MainScreen that is close to as good as you can get it with the 8 bit color format. If you are satisfied with the way that everything turned out, You might want to create a 05CUSPAL.bmp with a coherent palette picture in it. You could rename both of the 05CUSPAL files to 03SPRAT.bmp & pal. That would give you 3 file sets if you wanted to start a palette library.
 * 2.7 CREATING THE NEW MAINSCREEN WITH THE CUSTOMIZED PALETTE** Open FRAME and SPRAT in PaintShop Pro. Copy Sprat and paste it in the inset area in FRAME. Save the new picture as JSCR1. Do Color Menu, Load Palette, 05CUSPAL.pal, use Nearest Color Matching. Click OPEN. There is the new MainScreen. Do a Save-As and save it as JSCR2.bmp. Take a good look at the picture. What do you like and what don’t you like? The obvious thing is that the Selection Menu Panel shifted color. Let’s restore it to the original shade of blue. Zoom in on the inset section of the screen. Pick Colors, Edit Palette. The EDIT PALETTE BOX will appear. Hold the eyedropper / cursor over the Blue Menu Panel. In the palette tool panel on the right, you will see the R, G, B values and the index # of the color you are looking at. It may be a good idea to write down the original values of anything before you change them. Find that Index cell on the EDIT PALETTE BOX (208?). Double click on it, a box labeled COLOR will appear. Put the eyedropper on the basic color that is G255 and click. Click OK. The Panel now is green, the text at the bottom is green and a few pixels on the nose are green. I think that it is safe to change the color of that Index. Double click on that index again and change the color to B255. Click OK. Now your rich blue is back. Does the nose of the plane look different? We now have edited the palette to improve one color. Let’s take a look at the 24-bit color picture beside the new screen. Open JSCR1. Compare the two pictures. I think that what we have should work out OK. Let’s see how it looks in EAW. Close JSCR1. First, save the palette as JSCR2.pal. Save the picture as JSCR2.bmp. Do a Save-As and save it as JSCR2.pcx. Take the JSCR2.pcx and copy it to the PIC-PAC folder, change name to Main2, run Pic-Pac and move Main2.Pic to EAW and run EAW. Do a PrintScreen.


 * 2.8 SOME TIPS ON EDITING THE PICTURE AND THE PALETTE** We only edited one color in the previous example. We changed the color to a value that we wanted in the palette. If it was critical that that color should not be changed, it is also possible to add the new color in one of the three blank spaces that I left. In this particular screen I am going to make all the black Selection Menu background into that shade of blue, so it won’t be necessary to change # 208. On pictures where you get a lot of what I think of as Strata effect, it may be helpful to increase the contrast between the background and the edge of the other object I.E. sky and clouds. Then take the values of the edge color and the main color and set the edge color values to be half way between the original values. Change the other values proportionately. You are really just reducing the contrast. There are no hard and fast rules for that sort of thing. Each case is a separate problem in its own right.

A Reduce your critical picture to 176 colors and save the new picture. B Open PALETTE TOOL Program and open 01BASICPAL.bmp on the left side and open your new picture on the right side. Transfer the indexes from right to left. C Save the left side as 05CUSPAL.bmp. Close PALETTE TOOL D Open 05CUSPAL.bmp in Paintshop Pro and save the palette as 05Cuspal.pal. E Open FRAME and insert Sprat into it and save as JSCR1.bmp F Open JSCR1 and reduce to 256 colors with 05Cuspal.pal. Save the new picture as JSCR2.bmp and JSCR2.pcx G Rename JSCR2.pcx to MAIN2.pcx and convert it to MAIN2.pic with the PIC-PAC utility. H Move MAIN2.pic to the EAW folder and run EAW.
 * 2.9 RECAPPING THE STEPS;**

My E-mail address is//** john.mcgarvey3@verizon.net
 * //Please let me know your opinion of this Tutorial. I will welcome any comments or advice that you may wish to offer.

**As reference...the Mosi's notes quoted at the beginning of the tutorial.**
I found all the parts. Here they are in their entiriety:

Part 1 - EAW skin-palette Warz!, version 1.01 Nov. 25, 2001 Note: Some points in this compilation are hypohetical and are not having any proof. Any attempt to give proof to these points is appreciated. EAW reacts palette-wise very different under different graphics-systems. In opposite to older explanations, the effect of getting weird skins on your system while they work just fine on other systems is related to different points: - Your graphic card - The graphic-mode you use in EAW (Glide/D3D) - The drivers you use for your device - DirectX-version (in cooperation with the drivers) First some 1. Basic Stuff 1.1. Skin-files, *tex.pcx Each slot in EAW does seem to have a own, dedicated palette as it seems at the first look. If you have a look at all planes you find out quickly that the palettes are (with a few exceptions) more or less the same, except the yellow (second versions of the Microprose-skins? Who knows) or violet palette entries, #16-79 and #176-207. As you won't use them anyway on on the skins (and you really should not use them!), you can ignore them. But what do they do? They are, as I recon, place-holders for cockpit-transparency definitions (oh, things are getting complex, hu? ). As the palettes of the tex-files are more ore less the same, I call this the "EAW standard-palette" from now on. 1.2. Cockpit-files, *v.pcx If you open the palettes of a RAF, Luftwaffe and an USAAF-plane, you will find out that they look the same except for specially dedicated rows, index #32-63. They are wonderfully blue for Luftwaffe- and USAAF-planes, but nicely green in the RAF-palettes. So the palettes of the cockpits are nationality-specific. The cockpit-palette is loaded into the game automatically. If you compare the plane-texture-palettes with the cockpit-palettes you see that the extra-colors of the cockpits are in the gabs of the plane-skins: place-holders! Hypothesis 1: You can use a cockpit-palette for the exterior of a plane, and only the one dedicated for that nationality. If you switch the nationality of the plane, you may get weird results, as the cockpit-palette has prority over the skin-palette. A popular example is the move of Emil when he switched Flying Sheep's Avenger into a British slot - yes, it was green afterwards. 1.3. Online-palettes Believe it or not, but EAW uses online different palettes than offline. I think this is linked to the very colored HUD-displays. A proof for this was delivered by Blitzer, he sent me a screenshot of one of my Spitfires before I fixed them for compatibility. Usually he had green nationality marks of the RAF, but online they were perfectly blue, as intended and like on my former TNT-card. I do not know anything more detailed about this, but I think it's an interesting point. 1.4. Screens: Objects View and Armament-Board This screens are known to load exactly the specific EAW standard-palette for the planes, not the cockpit-palettes. Therefore, all efforts to make a plane with another palette than the EAW standard-palette leads to corrupted views in these screens, not depending on the graphics-setup you use, but the severity of the effect is defined by your setup as it seems (see point 3.2). A hypothesis is that the game uses a very limited 3d-engine for this screens. 1.5. 3dz-Elements The elements coded as 6 (potentially transparent textured polygon) in the element type column (in the "Elements" section) of the dump from Converter use a different palette (seems to be similar to that used in the internal cockpit views) to those elements coded as 5 (opaque texture covered polygon) which, as we already know, uses specific palettes depending on the slot the aircraft happens to be in. So if you want to change a particular aircraft that uses a lot of blue from the cockpit-palettes in Luftwaffe/USAAF-slot to a RAF-slot, you have to edit the 3d-elements, too, or the plane will be green. So, what does the palette and the occurence of the skin have to do with your video-card you might ask. Here some points that I gathered together with the years.

2. Graphic cards and setups 2.1. TNT-based cards, also some GeForce-cards with certain Detonator-drivers (especially older ones) are capable to support full custom palettes. This means you can change your palette in whatever way you need it, and it will look fine in EAW (if you still use 256 colors, of course!). You don't have to care about transparencies, etc., but have to deal with messy "Objects View"- and "Armament Board"-screens, I will come to that later. This means you can take all palettes, also cockpit-palettes from other nations and apply it to your skin - it will look good for people with the same circumstances with the graphics-settings. On all other systems you will transform the people's EAW into a drugnest's hallucinogene studio... . 2.2. VooDoo-cards and Glide-mode setups have proven to be the most sensitive setups to EAW-palettes and do mostly limit the skins to the original palettes. You may not change or use a palette different to the cockpit-palette of the dedicated slot you are skinning for if you want to make a plane VooDoo-compatible. The use of the EAW-standard skin palette is the best (and in fact the only!) way to make a plane not hardware-discriminating. 2.3. DirectX 8 and later Detonator-drivers for TNT/GeForce-devices have shown that the ability to handle individual custom-textures "got lost" during the update process (my own system is affected by that). So all points that fit for these setups are the same as stated under the VooDoo-cards. This is a hypothesis, as I do not have a lot of precendence-cases, only RedEyes and my own machine. Any more info is appreciated.

3. Effects of Incompatibility 3.1 Sparkles We all know them: Little pixel-sized black dots all over the plane, especially in light grey areas. Where do they come from, you do surely not intend to have those! These are pixels in non-transparent areas using the color index #0, which is taken by some paint-programs as grey during the 256-color transformation. You can remove this effect easily: Take the color-replacer tool (or however it is called in your paint-program). Then switch color #0 with #110 all over the affected area and you are done. This effect does not happen with the setups stated under 2.1. 3.2 Holes This effect appears mostly with systems of point 2.2. There is a weird effect with colors with the palette-index #12-15 for example in the RAF-cockpit-palette, but especially #12, a very thick black: This will make holes into the whole plane. A hypothesis is that this is a kind of primary transparency color. Do avoid the use of this color at all costs! The effect also appears in the Armament-Board and Objects-View of systems listed under 2.2. 3.3 Opaque Canopies If you change the transparent areas in the skin to another color than #0 you will get opaque areas or blocky ones on systems stated under 2.2. Further investigation in this matter is needed, as there are interactions with the transparent and opaque. A hypothesis is that depending on these definitions the severity of the effect is defined. 3.4 Psychadelic Colors If you use a self-made TNT-compatible palette on your skin and run it under a system listed under 2.2./3., you will get a psychadelic effect. Why is that so? The palette occupies indices that are in the #16-79 and #176-207 and interpreted by the system as such - so they are yellow, pink, ugly, weird, not good - got the point?
 * tra.pcx-files, too. As far as I know, there are different types of 3d-elements: Solid,

4. Conclusions - Let's make a little calculation: We start with 256 colors. Now the entries #16-79 and #176-207 are not useable: 256-63-31=162 colors! An EAW-skin that is compatible with all graphics-systems and without corrupt screens is restricted to 162, while one is the transparency. This is what consider as a caring and skilled skinner, when he manages to do a nice skin with this restricted amount of colors and gets an unlimited compatibility. Making a TNT-skin is easy, but a "real" EAW-skin is something else. - Changing an EAW-palette has the benefit that you have more freedom for skinning - but the skin won't be compatible on all systems anymore. Maybe somewhen you will upgrade your PC with a nice groovy and expensive graphics-card and install DirectX 8 - at least then you will regrett that you ever did TNT-only skins...(don't point with your fingers at me, man! ).

This compilation does not have 100%ly correct statements and a horrible English. If you find errors, please post the real facts and maybe a couple of screenshots, showing the effect. I am only talking about skins here. Screens, ground-objects and terrains do use other palette techniques and are not part of this text.

Yours Mosi

Part 2 - EAW Aircraft models and textures Dez. 2, 2001 Note: Some points in this compilation are hypohetical and are not having any proof. Any attempt to give proof to these points is appreciated. For additions or corrections use this topic and post them, so I can update the post, thanks. There are some files not in this compilation, please list the missing ones with an explanation. 1. How does EAW use the files? EAW is a very user-friendly sim when it deals with new skins and models. The game searches for the texture and model definitions in the same folder where the EAW.exe file is located, the so called EAW main-directory, which is something like C:\Programs\European Air War, depending on your installation. The game has two priorities with the tpc-files (texture-definitions) and 3dz-files (3d models): a) It searches for such files directly in the EAW main-directory. If it finds any, it will take them with priority. b) The original models and textures are packed together in the CDF-file archives, which can be extracted with Paulo Morais' CDF-extractor (from Cord's EAW-Page). These are the default models and textures and have the secondary priority for EAW.exe, so if you don't have any tpc- or 3dz-file in the EAW main-directory you will always have the default one. This allows you to use new skins with the old models and vice versa, too. Removing an installed skin is simply done by deleting all the *.tpc and *.3dz-files of it, and it's cleaned up again. With the growing progress in 3dz-editing, it is no longer possible to use default-textures for the new models, because they have a new texture-projection, sometimes an entirely new skin-layout. Therefore you should take care to use fitting textures and models for your planes.

2. Aircraft-slots: Each aircraft in EAW does have a so called "slot", where all its definitions are placed. Each slot has a 4-letter name which appears in the files that are used with the plane. Here the list: Luftwaffe default: 109E Messerschmitt Bf 109E slot 109G Messerschmitt Bf 109G slot 109K Messerschmitt Bf 109K slot 110C Messerschmitt Bf 110C slot 110G Messerschmitt Bf 110G slot M410 Messerschmitt Me 410A slot 262A Messerschmitt Me 262A slot 190A Focke-Wulf FW 190A slot 190D Focke-Wulf FW 190D slot JU87 Junkers Ju 87B slot J88A Junkers Ju 88A slot J88C Junkers Ju 88C slot H111 Heinkel He 111H slot V1V1 Fieseler Fi 103 (V-1) slot British (default) aircraft: HURR Hawker Hurricane Mk. I slot SP2A Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I slot SP09 Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX slot SP14 Supermarine Spitfire Mk. XIV slot TYPH Hawker Tempest Mk. I slot TEMP Hawker Tempest Mk. V slot MOSQ De Havilland Mosquito Mk. VI American (default) aircraft: P38H Lockheed P-38H Lightning P38J Lockheed P-38J Lightning P47C Republic P-47C Thunderbolt P47D Republic P-47D Thunderbolt P51B North American P-51B Mustang P51D North American P-51D Mustang B26A Martin B-26B Marauder slot BB17 Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress B24A Consolidated B-24D Liberator Pretty logical, isn't it?

3. TPC/PCX Texture-Files Note: The asterics are wildcards for the 4-letter aircraft slot name. PTEX.tpc - this is the texture file, as you can see from the last part of the name (resolution 256x256). PTES.tpc - is the low-resolution texture, it is only used in Software-mode and has a resolution that is half of the tex-file (resolution 128x128). You don't need this when you are not playing in Software-mode. PTRA.tpc - the transparency definitions of the skin. PV.tpc - is the virtual cockpit view for the plane. PX.tpc - are the instruments and the cockpit-panel. P*VTR.tpc - is the transparency definition of the virtual cockpit. Bombs**.tpc - texture file for drop tanks, bombs, etc. Some of these files are artificial and called by Ord**.3DZ (see later for more information). If these files are missing, then the game will give you a crash to desktop with the message which file is missing. This happens with the Stuka-tankhunters if not correctly installed and a couple of other add-ons.

4. 3dz-Files Each 3dz-file for the aircraft-models does have in its very early code positions a so called "pointer" which shows the file which file belongs to its texture. This pointer is changeable so that the models do use other aircraft skins than the ones that are called like the aircraft-slot. Sometimes people mess this up in releases, so do not search the error always with yourself... . PF.3DZ - short distance model, how the plane looks when seen from a close distance in the game. PG.3DZ - short distance model complementary side with 2 and 4 motored planes. The game parts these planes into a right and a left half 3dz-file, so you won't have a PG-file with a single-engined plane. PM.3DZ - medium distance model, the name sais it all. Not as detailed as the short distance one, but with an already turning propellor. PS.3DZ - long distance model as the plane appears in the first moment of spotting from far away. This is a very rough model and mostly not changed. All these 3 files take their texture-information from the PTEX-file. There are areas in the texture-file which are only used for the short distance model and some for the medium-distance model. Therefore make sure to test your new plane-skin also by zooming in and out from the plane when seen from the exterior, you will notice when the model changes. A good example for this is the Bf 109E basic skin: The yellow nose-area has a close-up texture and a medium distance part, which is not skinned correctly in some textures, giving an annoying effect during air-combat. PH.3DZ - the shadow of the model. It takes its color-information mostly from some single pixel-groups in the PTEX-file, therefore sometimes strange effects appear in the game when these points are not black anymore. Geo and Cord found a method to make the shadow entirely black by means of 3d-object color designation. Usually these pink or grey shadows appear on planes that are usually not player-piloted (and therefore never tested on the ground... ). PL.3DZ - torn-off Wing (left side). PR.3DZ - torn-off Wing (right side). PV.3DZ - vitual cockpit model, definition of the gauche-needles, etc. If this one is not matching with the cockpit-files, then your cockpit becomes simply useless. Ord**.3DZ - these are underload-models like bombs, cannons, etc. As there are some artificial ones around and shipped with addons, you should take care that the correct Bombs**.tpc is in the EAW-directory, too.

Special thanks to my dear friend Cord Hartmann for all the things I learned from him about this, long, long time ago. Yours Mosi

Part 3 - EAW Screen Palettes Customization Feb. 24, 2002 Note: For additions or corrections use this topic and post them, so I can update the post, thanks. The points are written for Paint Shop Pro users, I am sure other paint-programs have similiar options./ Excerpt from e-mail written to Pilot Officer Prune, Feb. 16, 2002, with little additions to the text: "

- Edit your picture in 24bit, as usually. The size of the pciture is necessarily 640x480, maybe you even want to start with a screenshot of an existing screen (helps with the location of not moveable elements, like aircraft-selection areas, etc.) - EAW needs now 256 colors, but screens use the very first colors (#0 - #15) for the flickering effect, visible on the very disappointing original main screen. We have to get rid of them. Besides these colors, it seems as if the whole palette can be created from scratch, and that's the basis for my technique. - Reduce the colors of your picture to 240 colors as following: 1) Select Colors -> Decrease Color Depth -> X-Colors (4/8bit) 2) Set the number of colors to 240, use Nearest color for the reduction method. PSP will now generate a 256 colors containing picture in which the last 16 colors are usually all black. 3) Save the picture and save the palette! 4) Now the editing starts, with a little bit of automation it works very quickly: - Select color #0 and double-click it. Try to remember the RBG-values of the color and replace the color with i. e. pink (RGB-values 255/0/255 - except you want to do a very pinky screen! ). - Select color #240 and double-click it. Set these RBG-values to the former ones of #0 Now go on until the first row of the palette is all pink and the last row is looking like the former first row. 5) Save the palette! 6) Re-Open the picture (without saving the now pinky-looking template!) and apply the newly edited palette to it with nearest color match. Voilà. I am pretty sure there must be a way to hex-edit the palette-files with a little program to automatize these procedures. This would allow the modification in a second, but I don't have the programming skills for this task.

Good luck - and I am always open for enhancements of this method." /

As mentioned, a tool which does the color-replacement steps automatically would be very appreciated, as this would allow screen-production with a lot more speed (and less nerve-loss). Any reply greatly appreciated, especially more sophisticated methods. Yours Mosi

Part 4 - EAW Custom Mainscreen Creation March 7, 2002 Note: For additions or corrections use this topic and post them, so I can update the post, thanks. The points are written for Paint Shop Pro users, I am sure other paint-programs have similiar options. 1. Introduction Making mainscreens has become a hobby of a lot of people who want to contribute something to the EAW-community. It seems easy to do, but is depending on a palette layout that is very limited and difficult to handle. A lot of people are therefore simply using the standard palette and hope it fits for their screen colors. I was very surprised to see how complex the making of really customized mainscreens is, and I try to summarize my notes here. In this post, I will try to decode the palette-settings which are hardcoded and not changeable so far. I will only talk about the screen, not the menue-sprites, but they depend heavily on the mainscreen-palette, as we will see later on. An EAW-mainscreen is set together by 3 basic layout features a) The right "Menue"-Part with the menue-sprites, usually blue part with the menue entries for the game in white, which turn orange when the cursor is moved over them. b) The little "Exit"-Sprite on the bottom right. c) The rest of the screen, which is usually the part of customization. The position of the menue- and the exit-sprites cannot be moved by editing the picture, therefore their font and localization remains untouched by all mainscreen editing.
 * 2. Basic Stuff

3. Palette Organization 3. 1. Introduction EAW-palettes are known for thwo things: Limitation of the artistic work and dedicated palette-positions for hardcoded color-effects, like transparency or screen-flickering. The observations which will follow were made during the creation of the mainscreen for "Desert Air War", which has a first approach of a more customized and "controlled" use of the palette slots. Mainscreens have the nomenclature MAIN2.PIC, where PIC is an EAW-specific file-format, which cannot be opened by any paint program. It shares the same extension as i. e. Quicktime-files, but they are by no means editable in this state with any graphics software. To edit them, take a screenshot of the current mainscreen, remove the Menue-Sprites with i. e. the clone-brush, store the palette and edit the screen. To encrypt the screen for the use in EAW, store it as MAIN2.PCX and convert it with PicPac with the following command-line parameters: picpac -p main2.pcx main2.pic For Paint Shop Pro, the palette-files (*.pal) are a very simple file-format which can be edited with a common text-editor. It helps if you take an editor with line-count and some more features than NotePad. I recommend EditPad Lite from <[|http://www.editpadlite.com]> which is free for non-commercial use. 3. 3. Palette-Overview The palette for the mainscreen bases on 256 colors, numbered from #0-#255. If you take a screenshot from the stock mainscreen and have a look at the palette, you will notice some fairly unarranged parts and some with a high degree of color-grouping and organization. If you randomly exchange the colors inthe palette order, i. e. copy the values of #36 to #134 and compile this screen with Picpac, you introduce "phenotypical mutations" (sorry, I am Molecular Biologist... ), this means you will notice weird effects, like opaque sprites, heavy flickering of colors which worked before the transformation, etc. This gives a first hint that the position of the color in the palette has an effect on the appearance in game when compiled. The colors are arranged in "blocks", which all have a dedicated function. These blocks start with a color at a certain color-index in the palette and are extended over a number of colors until the last color of the block, i. e. #0-#10. Please note that these colors do not have to be related in their RGB-values, nor even look related. In the following, I will try to go from index to index with an explanation what these slots are good for. Please note that the startpoints of the index-groups are reliable, but the endpoints not - it is not always very obvious at which index the group stops exactly, handle these with care. 3. 4. Color-Index #0 - #10 This first group or block contains colors which are used for a flickering- or glowing-effect. As #0 is Black (RGB 0/0/0), it is very common that there are spots flickering in game when you first apply the basic palette to your screen. This block is therefore not useable for mainscreens - except you are looking for the psychadelic touch. 3. 5. Color-Index #11 On the basic palette, this is kind of Red (RGB 255/49/15) and exclusively used to color the "Exit"-Sprite red when the cursor moves over it. 3. 6. Color-Index #31 - #41 These colors are used by the Menue-Sprites as background. They are very similiar to the colors of the standard blue background which surrounds the Menue on the default-screen, but less in number. We will come back later to that point. 3. 7. Color-Index #42 - #55 Default here are some orange-red shades plus some very dark ones. These are used for the mouse-over effect of the Menue-Sprites and the "shadow"-background of the font. 3. 8. Color-Index #224 - #254 These 32 colors are set together in two groups of 16 and 15 members each. On the default palette, you will notice that they are forming a kind of blue and red spectrum - because they are intended for the psychadelic look of the EAW-mainscreen's floating font about the superior 256 colors... 3. p. Color-Index #255 The very last color in the palette is again Black (RGB 0/0/0) and its only use seems to be to color the shadow of the Exit-Sprite. So, let's make a quick calculation:


 * 11 colors for the glowing
 * 25 colors for the Menue-Sprites
 * 2 colors for the Exit-Sprite
 * 31 colors for the floating

= at least 69 colors in dedicated positions! Who said there are 256 colors... There are some gaps in this list: the colors #12 - #30, which form another group of 19 colors, or propably several little groups - or are ad libitum for use, but this has to be further investigated. But they are "entrapped" between necessary slots, which would form a big block of 56 colors at the start of the palette. Therefore - the 56 first with the 32 last colors - we have a total of 88 possibly dedicated colors. But all those colors listed are not lost or unuseable - you have to think a bit. In the following points, I will try to give a first technique about a way how it is possible to customize an EAW-mainscreen palette as far as possible. 4. 1. Preparation 1.) Make a screenshot of the basic EAW-mainscreen and save its palette as ORIGINAL.pal - or whatever. Then, take a major part of the edited screen, copy it and paste it over the blue-part of the screen, so that this is completely covered! 2.) Paint your mainscreen and decrease the colors to 168 colors (I know, it hurts!) and use dithering to minimize the "fragment"-effect of a nearest color match as a recommendation. 3.) Save now the palette as MYCUSTOMSCREEN!.pal (or whatever) and open it with a text-editor. You will see very quickly that in a Paint Shop Pro palette file the colors are kept stored by their RGB values. By the way, save the screen as Main2.pcx and in a second form as PSP-file, still with the original colors you started to work with. And be sure that you stored one copy still with the blue area! This way we harvest a palette which as all colors you will have your custom-part of the palette. Why covering the blue before we do this? You'll see and say AHA! 4. 2. Preparation Now a major copy/past orgy is taking place. What you have to do now is a) keeping a clear head b) work with system. Open your screen (the version with the full colors and the blue panel) 4.) Copy/paste the colors from your custom-palette from the start until the big 0 0 0 group starts, this should be from color #0 - #167 and paste them into ORIGINAL.PAL at the position #56 - #223 (mind that we are counting with 0 as beginning...). Save this edited palette as CUSTOM.PAL. This should generate a palette with the first part basic EAW-stuff, a big middle fragment of your palette, then a last part of EAW-stuff. Note: DO NOT INCLUDE A COLOR MORE OR REMOVE ONE COLOR BY ACCIDENT!. Here again, there is a parallel with DNA in Molecular Biology: As soon as you change one base, you'll have a complete mess if you are unlucky. And with palettes you can only be unlucky. But at least you won't have cancer after a mistake. 5.) From now on we will work on CUSTOM.PAL: Change all colors #224 - # 254 to color-value 255 0 255, which is an agressive pink (don't do so if you wanted to make a pinkish screen...bah). Note that the last color, #255 is still 0 0 0 if you did everything correctly. You can also change the colors #0 - #10 with pink, but as it is not known yet by what extension the colors after these positions behave you should leave them as they are. Save the file, of course. 6.) Apply CUSTOM.PAL to your full-color mainscreen with dithering and compile it for EAW. Now your screen should look as good as possible with the EAW-limitations of the palette. Maybe some of the colors of your custom-part are interfering with some in the dedicated slots, edit the mainscreen then i. e. with the color-replacement tool. "What a minute: Where have the blues disappeared?" - good question. Now let's sit down and think about the following: The blues are used in the definition of the sprite-backgrounds, #31 - #41. They are in the basic palette in a richer number as blue-shades after color # of about 60 or so. Why having a lot of blue in the palette if we are already having them in the necessary slots! That's the trick, the blue background will use now the colors from the sprite-positions in the palette - with this trick, we saved about 20 colors for our screen .
 * 4. Palette Customization

5. Final Thoughts As already mentioned, the colors for the sprite-backgrounds and mouse-over effects can be changed by altering the colors in the dedicated positions of the palette. I managed to make a blue mouse-over effect with this technique, and there is a lot more possible. With a bit of effort it should be possible to abandon the blue background and make it in another color, always remembering that the necessary colors for this should be stored from #31 - #41. This opens some new perspectives for Mainscreens, but as you propably noticed, a full customization of the mainscreen-palette is not that easy at the beginning. The next steps have now to lead towards techniques for the replacement of the blue areas, a path which should lead to some interesting perspecitves.

For any additional information, ideas, etc. about Mainscreen-palettes and customization, use this topic as discussion point. This post is far from being perfect, I appreciate every constructive comment and help, thanks. Special thanks to Paulo Morais for the idea with the textediting of the palettes. Yours Mosi

[ 09-05-2004, 08:37: Message edited by: Crashin' Jack ]

"The hardest thing about flying is the ground". - Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, early Australian aviation pioneer.

http://members.aol.com/brokenputer/crashin_jack.htm

http://www.sandbaggereaw.com/crashinjack.html

After release of Mosi's notes a lot more has been discovered about the screens and palettes. The most important one is that the entire palette (except the first 8 positions used for the HUD colors) is customisable as long as the text sprites used in the menu and the word exit (or any other sprite in other screens) are converted to this new palette too and your screen only uses the rotating colors for those parts which are intended for them. Even the sprites can use the rotating colors or can be mapped to other parts of the palette but if you use the rotating colors for them it means that the rest of the palette can be used for the palette of your main picture. However this means you will have to find all these sprites in the appropriate .WSP file out of 256, change em in your paintprogram, repack the entire spriteset and add them to the main screen. This will give you far more interesting mainscreen effects as you are not bound by any of the above. I have to say that this method is not easy and requires far more work then the above method and only the MAW mainscreen is done in this way sofar.

VonBeerhofen

How to make a mainscreen with GIMP by RAF_Roy 9/2008 get GIMP at: http://www.gimp.org/

additonal information for making with GIMP at SimHQ thread: http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2593294#Post2593294

the basic method for the mainscreen I used in GIMP version 2.4.6:

- get your pic done as a PCX RGB truecolors - when ready convert to an indexed palette via; - image, mode, indexed set by hand the maximum colors 212, dithering: floyd-steinberg(reduced color bleeding), enbale dithering transparencies

now edit the colors via dialogs, colormap: select first palette color, use + (copy) button the color copied will now appear added to last of the palette -still hightlighted the first palette entry now edit the first palette color change in the edit box fields; R to 255, G to 0, B to 255 leave the rest options alone now use the gimp main menu use the "select by color tool" the funky pink color (255,0,255) will show on your pic now zoom pic to 400% click on of the pink color pixels and the slect should now hightlight all those color pixels on the pic -gimp menu select the bucket fill tool, set option in "affected area" buttons to "fill whole area" click colormap the last new palette entry you just made with the + to select that color now on pic with bucket mouse a pink pixel to fill and click to dump, should have now all those pixels filled at once now do a save for backup purpose (also; save the palette via dialogs, palette, right click anywere in that little palletes box (not the colormap the "palettes" named box that just opened) to get menus to import and more options, now select source, image radio button and import, scolls that "palettes" menu you see the new palette listed, now do "import palette" from image (radio button) to make a palette from the current image, then to save that palette with a name, do "refresh" palette from that same interface menu, highlight it (we're not doing anything with that palette yet so don't double click it as you do not need to load it) instead right click to get option "copy palette location" (typically path something like: C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/yourpcsname/.gimp-2.4/palettes/somepal.gpl ) that is where the .gpl file is located on your PC (after your 'refresh' which causes gimp to save the palette as a .gpl file in the folder)

now you should see the palette's .gpl file appear in your palette folder - more on that file later--

back to the pic editing..... repeat the steps to edit the palette of the first 12 entries, + copying as the example before and editing the color to turn to pink and then color pick tool to reselect the new pinks on pic, bucket tool to select to fill them with the new entry from end that was +, etc. until the first 12 colors done and those 12 were, of course, copied to end of palette

so then you are done with that your palette index size was 212 it is now 224 now simple you can add 32 pinks to end by:(save your work) close all that close gimp completely

and open with M$ Wordpad (not notepad!); the pic's named .gpl from from the palettes location now simply add entries at the end of file to have 31 pinks 255 0 255 and last a black 0 0 0 now save it (be sure you hae exact same returns at end of each line (no spaces) and also a return blank spot at end of file)

now reopen pic in Gimp you can now load the new altered palette via menu above pic: colors, map, set colormap (the script-fu part of the program will open in a seperate window - look on your taskbar!) push the palette: button on that window to open the options, look for again another small window opens, that is the palette selection window now scroll that until you see the named palette highlight it 'close' the subwindow back on the palette: window you see it is now showing that name OK will load it to the image now now you will see it in the colormap window

assuming you have done all correct you are done! save the picture

now of course the usual EAW method to make game pic files use picpac gui is easiest to make it a main2.pic

http://www.sandbaggereaw.com/rafroy.html Cheers! -S!