(From the README) =================================== .-'^'-.-'^'-.-'^'-.-'^'-. ( Hl TagConverter v0.14 ) '-._.-'-._.-'-._.-'-._.-' ==================================== * ReadMe * ==================================== Hl TagConverter Version 0.14 Copyright © 2002-2003, Marc Richarme All rights reserved. You may distribute this software freely, provided you distribute the original, unmodified package. My web page: http://devix.cjb.net My e-mail: devix@devix.cjb.net NB: The "mfc42.dll" library is required to run this program. If you get error messages regarding this, you can download it at: http://devix.cjb.net/progs/mfc42.zip and unzip it to your system folder. ==================================== * Description * ==================================== Hl TagConverter was created because the other programs I found out there to create Half-Life tags either didn't work or were more or less buggy / complicated to get to work properly. With Hl TagConverter you don't need any special knowledge of graphics, palettes and stuff to be able to create nice working transparent tags: Paint-Brush is enough if you don't have anything else. Some neat features: * Support for bmp, jpg, gif, png and tiff formats (thanks to paintlib). * Automatic sizing (if you wish) to the maximal allowed size that doesn't deform the original image. * The resizing algorithm makes sure not to blend any areas of the image with blue (the transparent color) so that the borders of the image get sharp - this prevents the creation of blue halos around transparent images after resizing. * Automatic conversion to 8 bpp (256 colors). * Automatic reordering of the palette indexes so that pure blue becomes the last entry (required for working transparency). * Feature that can make any color in the image transparent (if you forgot this while creating it). * Transparent areas of gif-files will automatically be converted to blue. * Transparent preview of tag (if you enable the "Transparent View" checkbox). * Doesn't use the qlumpy utility as most (all?) other tag creation programs. (I'm not saying qlumpy is bad... but build-in support is better ==================================== * Quick Instructions * ==================================== 1. Press the "Open" button and choose the image file you want to use as tag. (The image should appear in the main window once loaded) 2. Press the "Adjust" button and then the "Apply changes and convert to 256 colors" button. 3. Click on the "Save" button and choose your destination file. (check point 6 of the detailed instructions if you dont know where you should save it) 4. Tada, there you go... one nice potentially transparent tag in no time =) ==================================== * Detailed Instructions * ==================================== 1. Press the "Open" button and choose the image file you want to use as tag. (The image should appear in the main window once loaded) 2. The "Save" button should be grayed at this point, because the image is not in the proper format & size to be used as a tag Press the "Adjust" button to bring up the dialog used to convert the image to the proper format. 3. Select the tag size you want in the adjust dialog. By default this is set to the maximal allowed size that wont deform the image, so you normally wouldn't want to touch this, however if you wish to set your custom size, you must obey the following rules: - The width and the height of the image must both be a positive number divisible by 16. (e.g. 16, 32, 48, 64, 80, ...) - The surface of the image (the width multiplied by the height) must be strictly less than 12288. 4. If you want to make one or more colors of your image transparent, you can use the the tool provided for this purpose by clicking the "This tool will allow you to make a specific color transparent"-button, and then clicking on a color in the image. All areas of the image with the color you select will become blue (transparent)!! Note: If you change the size of the tag after using this tool, all color- changes will be discarded! 5. When you're done, click the "Apply changes and convert to 256 colors". (Or click "Cancel" to revert to the image you had before clicking "Adjust") 6. Now you should be able to press the "Save" button. You will then be prompted for the file to save the tag to. The tag should be saved in the directory of the half-life mod you want to use it in, and should be named "pldecal.wad", for example if you installed Half-Life in "C:\SIERRA\Half-Life" and you wanted to use the tag in Counter-Strike, you would save it to "C:\SIERRA\Half-Life\cstrike\pldecal.wad". If you want to use the tag with Hl-Tweaker (not yet released at the time of this writing, check http://devix.cjb.net for updates) you should save it in the tags folder of wherever you installed Hl-Tweaker. The file can be named what you want, but it must have the ".wad" extention. (e.g. "C:\Program Files\HlTweaker\tags\mytag.wad") 7. That should do it ==================================== * Credits * ==================================== - The *paintlib* graphic library (http://www.paintlib.de), that was used (and abused) extensively in this project. - The "Wally dudes" (http://www.telefragged.com/wally) for distributing the WAD3 source, which helped me fully understand the structure of Half-Life WAD3 files. ==================================== * Version History * ==================================== * v0.14 (25-01-2003) - added new save functionality: You can now simply choose a mod, and the WAD file will automatically be saved to the proper destination (only works if HL is properly installed). You can also choose to export the reshaped image to an image file, and of course you still have the possibility to simply save the generated wad file to what ever destination you want as in the previous versions. * v0.13 - fixed minor paintlib bug(?) in palette generation when converting to 256 colors - added some more exception handling - some more minor fixes/improvements I don't remember * v0.12 (08-06-2002) - fix in resizing algorithm - fixed memory leak - improved the behaviour of the adjust dialog - removed progress reporting while loading image (too slow) * v0.11 (27-05-2002) - bug fix: (jeez, a few hours after first release) during each tag creation C:\test.bmp got written with the tag content. * v0.1 (27-05-2002) - initial release ====================================
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