Backgrounds fitting

Thinking about improving the Artwork in Vega Strike, or making your own Mod? Submit your question and ideas in this forum.

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tillias
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Backgrounds fitting

Post by tillias »

Hi!

Just made some specific background for star system. After saving it into *bmp format I realized, that most backgrounds in VS occupy ~100kb per image. And my 1024x1024 bitmap occupy for about 3mb...
There is a hack ( like compressing it into jpg or png and then renaming into *bmp again ) This hack works very well, but maybe someone can describe how to convert it correctly? Which dimensions are good?

I'm not an artist, just have to do different things ;-)
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

What program do you use? Why the need for hacking? :?

Most image editor programs can save in both .bmp and .jpeg.
If you want to convert your images from .bmp to .jpg, just open the original .bmp, then save as .jpg.

But... if that's not your question and I misunderstood it, then... :wink:
The higher the resolution of your image, the better. Please make sure that the original image is NOT square. The original image should be in the normal 1.333 ratio (i.e. 1024x768;800x600;640x480). After you have made the original images, you must then RESIZE it so it would become square, squashing it somewhat.

Example: from original 1024x768, resize it to 1024x1024.
then save it as jpeg. Keep an original in .bmp tho.
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tillias
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Post by tillias »

Oblivion wrote: But... if that's not your question and I misunderstood it, then... :wink:
Well, for fist time I've taken existing backround from /textures/backrounds folder. Made some major modifications and simply saved result into BMP format.

Here is original backround images:

140K bluegreen_back.bmp
140K bluegreen_down.bmp
144K bluegreen_front.bmp
156K bluegreen_left.bmp
140K bluegreen_right.bmp
68K bluegreen_up.bmp

I wonder how HiColor Bitmap image with 1024x1024 dimensions can occupy 140k ;-)
For example compressed JPEG image modified_bluegreen_back.jpg occupies 376K...

Moreover if I put all JPEG images of my backround into /textures/backrounds, VS engine do not load it into memory and I have WHITE system on my screen. Thats why this hack is needed...
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

Oh. I just scanned your post. It's for STAR SYSTEMS, not BASES. :lol: Apologies ad infinitum. There is probably some arcane rituals regarding making of star system backgrounds. Have you read any of these in the VS wiki articles?

Hmm... maybe the bitmap formats were monochrome, or 256 colored. Those are smaller than 24bit bitmaps.

Have you tried renaming the jpeg images into bmp and loading the game? How about saving them in bmp anyways?

Screenshots? Samples? :wink:
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tillias
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Post by tillias »

Oblivion wrote:VS wiki articles?
Link?
Oblivion wrote: Have you tried renaming the jpeg images into bmp and loading the game?
Yes, this is my first post in topic ;-)
Oblivion wrote:How about saving them in bmp anyways?
Also my first post :-D
Space is precious when you commit tons of things ;)
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Post by Kangaroo »

About dimensions - 1:1 scale images, 1024x1024; 2048x2048; 512x512; etc

I think you did everything right with the formats.
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

Sorry, I don't know the exact link. Click on the FAQ Wiki Icon above and choose the developer's side of the wiki. There are articles there on making star maps, somewhere... hehe :wink:

I really recommend you read all the wiki articles here first. :)
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Post by dandandaman »

Oh, must have missed this topic! Your "hack" is in fact "correct procedure" :-)

Dan
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Post by Shark »

Ermm... maybe the game should be modified to recognize the PNG and JPEG extensions?
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Post by Zeog »

I have a different theory: the *.bmp extension translates to "Background MaP" it tells the engine that it is a Vega Strike background map file. :D
It just happend to be the same exact format as jpg.

Maybe not...
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Post by klauss »

Actually, the VS engine recognizes the files too well. It looks for the "fingerprint", in some predefined order, so extensions don't matter. Much in line with unix tradition - only file contents matter.

But that's troublesome - I mean, having .bmp files that are actually .jpg. When I tried to use them with Ogre (which uses DevIL), the former blew up into pieces when trying to decode a bmp and found a jpg.

So... such practice, though correct now, should eventually be deprecated and phased out. Jpg should have .jpg extension, bmp .bmp, and so on...
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Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

I have a different theory: the *.bmp extension translates to "Background MaP" it tells the engine that it is a Vega Strike background map file.


haha. could be :D . Whatever VS's bmp extension means.
So... such practice, though correct now, should eventually be deprecated and phased out. Jpg should have .jpg extension, bmp .bmp, and so on...
I recommend jpegs tho, to save space. png's too.
hey, here's an interesting problem. Screenshots in VS. They save as .png's but I have a suspicion that they're not .png's at all. Because when I open it with 3dsmax, it returns an error saying its the wrong file extension or corrupted file or something. And yet when I open it with, say paint, and resave it as .png or .jpeg, it opens up fine. I suspect the screenshots themselves are actually bmps that were named as XXX.png

weird.
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Post by klauss »

No, they're pngs alright. Perhaps there's some library incompatibility or something.
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Zeog
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Post by Zeog »

Oblivion wrote:I suspect...
You can assure yourself by looking at the pictures's binary code with a text editor. It will print a bunch of messy characters, but right at the beginning there is a 2-4 letter code indicating the file format. For jpeg it's "JIFF", for png it's "PNG", for bmp it's "BM" I believe.
Oblivion
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Post by Oblivion »

You can assure yourself by looking at the pictures's binary code with a text editor. It will print a bunch of messy characters, but right at the beginning there is a 2-4 letter code indicating the file format
That's neat. :P I didn't know that. :roll: I really don't know nuthin about code, I guess. I'll look at the screeny png's at home. I'm still suspicious. lol. nah.. Just curious how it looks like. 8)
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Leave me be to sleep forever,
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