Hi Lord Flasheart, glad to hear you want to contribute! The biggest thing for formatting the images is going to be using the palettes that are required by the game engine. Next is that we try to use all PNG files for images since those cause the least issue with compatibility between operating systems. Each art asset has to be indexed 256 colors, with one of the following palettes based on where it is used in the game:
- Battlescape: Unit sprites, map tiles, sprites for items on the floor or in units' hands.
- Battlescape, not using the last 16 colors: Weapon inventory sprites and 'paperdolls' for the inventory images of armors.
- Geoscape: Globe textures, markers, and interception window images of craft.
- Basescape: Base facilities, sprites for crafts in hangars, armor/HWP previews in the craft equipment screen, most of the codex articles' background images.
You can download the palettes as
PAL files for photoshop and many other programs here, as
GPL format for using GIMP (my preferred image editor) here, or as JASC format from the common/Palettes folder from your OXCE installation.
The image size also depends on what type of thing you're drawing. For the things on your list, you'd have:
- MC Heavy Bolter: Inventory sprite - 32x48 px, Hand sprite - 8 32x40 px frames, one for each direction, Floor sprite - 32x40 px
- Terminator Apothecary: Inventory sprite - 320x200 px, Unit sprite - many 32x40 frames
- Other Armors: see Apothecary
- Other Units: done as armors, see Apothecary
The easiest method to start out would be to pick a base image from the mod to change, as it already has the proper size, shape, and palette, then change it a little in your editor and see if it works in-game. For example, take the Terminator Armor inventory image, save the unaltered version somewhere as a backup, copy some Apothecary bits onto it, export over the original file, then check in-game how it looks. If you have trouble with some of the specifics of the formatting, feel free to contact me and we can work it out.
As for the usefulness of the MC heavy bolter, I feel that it might disrupt the balance of the higher-power AP weapons, as with MC bolts it might overshadow the Assault Cannon, a Terminator-level weapon, or the IG's autocannons, which should be their best long-range AP weapon.
