MCD Edit by volutar

[Hobbes]

Would it technically be possible to sample each tile on the fly and use its mean colour for the minimap?

I don't know but you'd also need a basic representation of its shape for the Scang entry, otherwise the minimap would simply display colored squares.

Allowing for additional entries to be added to SCANG.DAT is probably more practical.

[volutar]

Would it technically be possible to sample each tile on the fly and use its mean colour for the minimap?

Yea, technically we can use one of unused bytes for that, and use it like XXXXYYYYb (binary form), where X is which colorgroup to replace, and Y is with which. But these bytes should be either 0x00 or 0x11 or 0x22 etc for every vanilla MCD. Otherwise all of scangs gonna be modified.
And it's not really elegant way. Better to tie some additional custom file for the MCD/PCK/TAB triplet (SCN for instance), in the format of vanilla SCANg, working just for this particular MCDset.
In the same style we COULD tie modded "LFT" file for additional custom LOFTs. It's quite feasible.
(I reconsidered the way of making them totally free - there's no need for that really).

Volutar. would it be possible to load unit pck using mcedit's built in pck editor? Is much nicer than having to use photoshop + other stuff.

Yes and I already mentioned that. https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,2028.msg36982.html#msg36982
But it won't work for animation. Just for static frames, and without additionals like hand objects. It just isn't meant to work like that.

[jackstraw2323]

Hopefully small request, for add PCK or MCD it currently adds one frame. Would it be possible to add an additional command or have a dialog that asks how many frames? Sometimes you want to add 20 or 30 frames at a time.

It would be nice if there was some way to append a custom sprite sheet for scang, but I assume that's on warboy and subsuper's plate if they wanted to do it. Honestly the map resolution is pretty low so there are lots of close enough images that work.

[volutar]

uploaded 1.17f

About adding custom scang/lofts - afaik it's not on SupSuper's plate. battlescape is up to Warboy.
And it's not really needed until tftd is in the past.

[volutar]

uploaded 1.17f

About adding custom scang/lofts - afaik it's not on SupSuper's plate. battlescape is up to Warboy.
And it's not really needed until tftd is in the past.

[kikimoristan]

uploaded 1.17f

About adding custom scang/lofts - afaik it's not on SupSuper's plate. battlescape is up to Warboy.
And it's not really needed until tftd is in the past.

thanks volutar. also is not something necessary more like a bonus feature .

[Hobbes]

uploaded 1.17f

I can't seem to be able to export PNG sheets using the PCK viewer. They can be imported just not exported.

[volutar]

Yeah. Not only sheet but >=10 selected pcks. Error was fixed and 7z reuploaded.

[Hobbes]

Yeah. Not only sheet but >=10 selected pcks. Error was fixed and 7z reuploaded.

Thanks.

[volutar]

Any issues?

[kikimoristan]

not so far i mean haven't bumped into anything

[kikimoristan]

can mcedit edit pck files directly ? is that gonnaa be implemented? also for png sheets is it possible to make it so it automatically adds new MCDs for each of the tiles in the png sheet that are OVER the MCDs in current .mcd file

like for ex if you import a sheet with 10 and your current text1.mcd has 5 ..it should automatically add 5 more than you can erase etc

[volutar]

can mcedit edit pck files directly ?  is that gonnaa be implemented?

Just make fake .mcd file for the PCK. It's the way how I edited units.

also for png sheets is it possible to make it so it automatically adds new MCDs for each of the tiles in the png sheet that are OVER the MCDs in current .mcd file

MCD has nothing with PCKs. PCKs can be either frames from the animation, or different MCDs can refer to same PCK multiple times. It's unguessible thing, so the answer is "no".

like for ex if you import a sheet with 10 and your current text1.mcd has 5 ..it should automatically add 5 more than you can erase etc

No, it shouldn't. You do want this, others do not (because it's animation frames). You wish computers could guess what you want, without manual work but it's simply impossible. It intentionally doesn't do any guess work, because it will fail.

[kikimoristan]

i find it easier to erase mcds than to make new ones/assign each frame is more efficient to do it that way when starting a fresh mcd.. simply tun all imaged into tiles then edit them down..rather than start from zero and edit them up twice the work

[Hobbes]

i find it easier to erase mcds than to make new ones/assign each frame is more efficient to do it that way when starting a fresh mcd.. simply tun all imaged into tiles then edit them down..rather than start from zero and edit them up twice the work

Assigning PCKs to MCDs is very easy on the latest versions - you only need to enter the PCK reference number on the first frame and the other 7 frames are assigned the same number automatically. This was already a major improvement made by volutar over previous versions but you still need to edit/check a ton of other settings for each MCD entry (LOF settings, DieMCD, armor, sound, light block, etc.), so what you'd gain from your suggestion is actually minimal compared to the rest.

I had considered asking volutar so that you could do with the LOF settings the same as the frames (editing the first one changes all the others to that value) but I realized that it would actually increase the work load, since a lot of tiles only require editing a few LOF entries.

MCD editing takes a lot of work because you need to edit/check all those settings. One tip I give you is precisely not to create new MCD files but copy and rename instead the existing ones. Then you can simply recheck all the settings and edit the values you need, rather than creating a new MCD file and having to introduce values for every needed setting.