The Key to BMP2ART

For all the people who prefer to use BMP2ART over Artview to create new stuff but are frustrated by it's seemingly constant refusal to convert your bitmaps, I've found the pattern that'll make things go a lot smoother.

1) All width values are in multiples of four starting from 2.
2) Total number of pixels that can be converted is approx 65,000 max.
3) Divide 65,000 by the width you want to use to obtain the maximum height.
4) Minimum height is 1 pixel.

For example:

2 X 1
2 X 2
2 X 3
2 X 4
2 X 32
6 X 1
6 X 2
6 X 32
10 X 1
10 X 32
10 X 52
10 X 62
14 X 32
14 X 64
14 X 126
18 X 24
18 X 30
18 X 32

Edit: The examples show even numbers, but odd numbers work equally as well. 14 X 127 or 10 X 11 will work.

And 350 X 180 is no longer the maximum size. You can create .art files as wide as you (reasonably!) need, but you sacrifice height to do so because of the 65,000 pixel limit.
If you really need to push the limit, round up any decimal values and try it - ie: 185.71 rounded up to 186 works with 350 width but it is close.

Examples:

350 X 185
350 X 186 max
354 X 182
354 X 183 max
358 X 180
358 X 181 max
362 X 179
362 X 180 max
366 X 177
366 X 178 max
370 X 174
370 X 175 max

Here's a listing of numerous sizes you can use as a general guide, and it has game item examples listed to aid you in your creation.
It does not contain all the available sizes, but it no longer needs to.

http://rapidshare.com/files/131133845/BMP2ARTSizes.rtf

Happy modding!

 

That's a great decision to use a program that just slaps a header from one of original art files on uncompressed bmps, so sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The author of artview has actually cracked the format, and the program works the proper way, and allows creating any kind of art files--I've easily made a 1024x768 compressed art menu background for my hi-res mod, for example.

 

Yes, but you also have to hex edit. Not a big deal if you really need to add a new .art fie with dimensions bmp2art can't handle, or if it's in common dimensions you can easily find an existing piece of art for, but not everyone knows how to hex edit these. Some people might have no knowledge of hex editing but just want to add or tweak a tiny bit of art. So, bmp2art still has some usefulness, even though it can be frustrating and make one want to roll one's eyes.

What's most frustrating is that it probably wouldn't have taken that much effort for bmp2art/art2bmp to work on every set of dimensions and file size, or for artview to just allow the user to edit the header, but the functionality was never completed. At least DJ_Unique is the exception, although I'm not discounting the tremendous amount of work I'm sure went into the .art editing tools.