Getting World Ed to recognize new art

Last night I created a bit of new art for the game. It's an "African Queen" style river boat. I had found a picture of a model that's close enough to isometric to work. After converting it to 256 color BMP, I colored the background in that shade of blue that the other ART images use, resized the image using a human male for scale, then ran it through BMP2ART. After renaming it to sp_riverboat, and moving it into the art/items file, I added the necessary description to the proper mes and gave it a try.

The good news is that I had used the right MES file for the description but no picture shows up in the select or edit section, and pasting the blank image onto a map produces nothing but the red crosshatch. And even that is not visible in the saved mod.

Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Help....

 

Now when you say you put them in art\items do you mean DATA\art\items or ARCANUM\art\items?

Did you convert the new art file back to a bmp to make sure it worked?
If it didn't you'll have to fiddle about with the dimensions until it does. Strangely the dimensions that are already in the game don't always work e.g. a pair of boots in the game might be 32 x 46. If I make an image 32 x 46 it doesn't work. I have to make it 33 x 46 to make it appear in game properly.

Did you add art to all the correct mes files? The image which appears in the WorldEd menu is the inventory image. The image which appears when it is placed is the ground image.

 

You would answer this when I'm at work.

If memory serves, it was the Arcanum/data/art/item folder.

And no, It didn't even occure to me to double check the art file by converting it back. I'll do so tonight. BTW - Can BMP2ART handle multiple files? Wildcards don't seem to work with it.

As for the size, the BMP of the boat was 200xsomething. Is that too big? The ship parts appear to be far larger.

And yes, I did add the listing to right files as I have had no trouble adding artwork "borrowed" from Car-Arcanum and Sinbad's Cargo Hold Mod. All of that works just fine.

Update May 7: The problem was the software. Somehow BMP2ART got glitched during download. I'll get a fresh copy today.

 

I signed on especially to post my suggestions and you tell me you don't need them anymore.
Fine! See if I help you again.
Ungrateful....mumble mumble...

 

Actually, I still do.

I did learn from earlier posts that BMP2ART will only do single images but I'm still having the same problem with the image being destroyed. I've tried cutting the boat in half, resizing it 10 pixels (one pixel at a time) in both directions, and even starting from scratch and creating a new image to convert. Now the program no longer ruins pre-existing images - i.e. a ruby - but it still won't create the boat.

I'm at a complete loss here, - Sir. (Noticable groveling)

 

Grovelling will get you everywhere.

So you have an art2bmp and a bmp2art utility. When you take Troika art and turn it into bmp and then convert it back and forth it all works fine?

Double check it is 8-bit.

First try these sizes and see if it works:
126 x 146
146 x 126
122 x 120
30 x 58
182 x 224
218 x 189
294 x 118
62 x 36
38 x 74
142 x 62
62 x 54
62 x 58

(I keep detailed notes of what I've done and I would recommend any other modders to do the same. Helps in case of file loss and you'd be surprised how quickly you forget what you did and why you did it).

Also, you mentioned the ship parts earlier. The ship parts are a facade. So your art will not follow the same rules as it is not a facade. I don't think it is possible to add new facades.

 

Yeah, the Troika art gets converted back and forth without problems with the new BMP2ART.

As for the 8-bit doublechecking, that was one of the first things I checked. I have an old version of Photoshop, sometimes it won't hold it's settings....

And thanks for posting these sizes, they'll definately help.

As for adding facades, if I ever encounter another game laid out like Arcanum, I'm going to raid it for art and protodocs. (A crossbow, especially) If the facades can be incorporated, I'll let you know.