I n d e x
Introduction
About this Tutorial -
How can I contact the Author?
Additional Credits
Getting Started
Why won't EditArt run?
List of EditArt keys and their uses
How do edit tiles within Editart
Editing tiles in another art program
Importing and Animating Tiles
How to import graphics
How to animate your tiles
Importing Weapons
Adding new weapons
Centering weapons
Problems when making textures
Floor Textures
Paralaxed Textures
Problems with invisible areas
Solutions
Tips and Tricks
Copyrights and Permissions
Distribution
Official Distribution sites
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O n l i n e...E d i t - A r t...T u t o r i a l
Written by Minion
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Due to the fact that 3DRealms made a very crappy EditArt Tutorial/FAQ people are STILL having problems getting EditArt to run, import tiles, whatever. I used to help out in the Dukeworld Editing and Hacking Forum, and I find that nearly everyone had a problem with EditArt at one point or another. So I scrapped together all my knoledge of EditArt and so this Tutorial was born. If you've discovered a small bug in EditArt then email me at The_1_Minion@Yahoo.com. I do not play duke anymore, so do not email me with Build problems or anything to do with the game itself.
You can download the text file of this Tutorial here -
Edit-Art_Tutorial - 6k
A b o u t . t h i s . T u t o r i a l
How can I contact the Author?
If you have any questions or comments , please feel free to email me at The_1_Minion@Yahoo.com
Additional Credits
I guess what they say is true,"No success is made alone"... or at least... it's true in my case =] ...Anyway, I'd like to thank the following people who helped me with various things -
Asbestos - For making my EditArt Tutorial availible at his site, and his HTML help
Sitiffie - For the Tips and Tricks section
][ce]Pick - For the HTML help, and for listening to me bitch to him about various things :)
Amy - For helping me out with numerous spelling errors.
G e t t i n g . S t a r t e d
Why won't EditArt run?
EditArt has got to be one of the *worst* programs I have ever seen. Seriously. EditArt should not have even been released. But since it was and most of use were baffled by the fact that it is so buggy, people like me are there to help or at least try to help. One of the most common problems as to why EditArt won't run is because you are missing the .dat files. This is for some incredibly odd reason, not metioned in 3DRealms tutorial. Here is a step by step way to fix your problem.
NOTE: ALL OF THIS IS DONE THROUGH DOS!
(1) go to your MAIN duke3d directory
(2) type the following -
kextract duke3d.grp *.art
(3) The once that finnishes, type the following -
kextract duke3d.grp *.dat
EditArt should now run fine.
List of EditArt Keys and their Uses
page up/page down : lets you scroll through the tiles
a : this will animate the tile
' or ; :alters the brightness of the tile that you are working on
F12 : takes a screen capture of the tile you are working on
u : loads a picture into EditArt
g :lets you go to a certain tile by number
m : copies tile that you are working with
p : pastes tile that you copied
v : lets you view a set of tiles as it would look in build
ctrl+[ : Exits EditArt
del : this will delete the tile you are working with
; : Creates a 3d image out of the tile you are working with (dosent appear to work well)
' : Creates a 3d image out of the tile you are working with , opposite of ;
ARROW KEYS or MOUSE: Moves the cursor
SHIFT+ARROW KEYS : Moves the color cursor
~ : This is mostly used to center the weapons but can also be used to center sprites
BACK SPACE : this changes the current color to the trnsparent color
T : This turns the drawing trail off and on
+ : this increases the speed of animation while a tile is being animated
R : rotates tile in the specified direction
N : This allows you to name a tile , it is saved in names.h
F : Flood fill a certain area with the selected color
How to edit tiles within EditArt
EditArt is pathetic when it comes to editing tiles within itself so,It is not recomended
that you do this , but if you do there is a small dot on the screen then is what you
will be using to edit the tile all you do is point to the spot you want and click to
change the colors use the arrow keys to choose the colors wich apear at the bottom of the
right hand corner.
Editing tiles in another art program
If you have Windows 95 then you have agraphics editing program , is called Win Paint or
something like that , anyway all you have to do is go into editart , find the tile you
want to edit hit F12. Now close editart and find the file capt0000.pcx and load it into
your favorite graphics editing program and when you are done editing it save it as a .gif
file and go into editart and find the same tile, once again and hit u , now browse for
the .gif file you edited and saved, and hit ENTER.
I m p o r t i n g . a n d . A n i m a t i n g . T i l e s
How to import graphics
Alright , now you're starting to get into more complicated things, but in reality this
is not complicated at all , it just seems that way at first . Now first , load EditArt
and you should get that gray brick texture , now hit F12 ,exit editart and load the
capt****.pcx into your graphics editing program ( I would download Paint Shop Pro for
this , because it works the best ) now go up to colors and click on save pallet , browse
to where you want to save this pallete and save it, now we will begin to import our
picture , make sure to resize the picture so that it is smaller than 320 X 200 if it is
already smaller than 320 X 200 then there is no need to resize it , now save reduce the
color depth to 256 colors , now save it as a .gif file , if you are using PSP then when
you save the picture as a gif it will automaticaly reduce the colors to 256 , so you
dont have to , now open EditArt and go to tile 3584 ( this is the start of the user art
section ) when you are there resize the blank spot to the size of the picture , you can
do this by hitting S and entering the size , once you have resized the picture to the
right size hit U and browse for the picture you want to and and hit ENTER twice , the
picture should appear in the new spot, sometimes the top of the picture will get messed
up, just keep on coppying the picture untill it looks right.
How to animate tiles
This is very simple yet seems quite complicated at first . First you have to know what
the different types of animation are
oscil-This type of animation will go from the first frame to the last then back down
to the first.
anmbk-this type of animation will play the last frme down to the first frame
anmfd-this is normal animation , it will play the first frame up to the last one
Note:the animation type will appear at the bottom of the screen
Note:you can change the type of animation by hitting the - key
To animate the frames pick the type of animation you want then hit the + key to tell how
many frames it will animate not including itself, the number of frames it will animate
is shown at the bottom of the screen next to the animation type.Thats it, to change the
speed of the animation hit the A key and while it is being animated hit the - or + keys
to adjust the speed.
I m p o r t i n g . W e a p o n s
Adding new weapons
If you have ever used the Uzi weapon patch I'm sure you noticed that the artwork was
great but the wepon was in the center of the screen so it didn't look right , if you have
ever downloaded and played the M16 weapon patch then you would know that the weapon was
perfectly placed in the corner of the screen just enough so that you could not see the
BK ( it stands for Bad Karma who created the weapon patch ) in the actuall game but can be
viewed in EditArt . In this section I will teach you how to place your new weapons
correctly in the corner of the screen.
Centering weapons
When you import your weapon tiles they almost always apear in the center of the
which makes your weapon not look right while in the actuall game , here is the solution:
When in EditArt hit the ~ key which is located above the TAB key , now use the arrow keys
to place the weapon in the corner of the screen , sometimes you have to consantly switch
between EditArt and Duke3d to check to see if you got it perfectly right if you are
on a replacement for the RPG then it might take a lot of switching to get it right.
P r o b l e m s . w h e n . M a k i n g . T e x t u r e s
Floor Textures
If you have a texture you have made to be placed on the floor , and it comes out all
distorted when you actually place it on the floor in build , then the textures size
contains an odd number ( ie: your texture is 129 X 129 or 6 X 9 ) , if you want your
texture to look right when placed on the floor it has to be competely even numbers ,
it dosent have to be a perfect sqaure it just has to be an even number by an even number
( ie : 128 X 128 or 128 X 64 ).
Paralaxed Textures
Sometimes when you have made a paralaxed texture it will come out as a bunch of lines in
Build and in the actuall game , as of right now I do not have a solution to this problem.
Sorry. If you do have a solution to this problem then please contact me, my email adress is The_1_Minion@Yahoo.com
P r o b l e m s . w i t h . I n v i s i b l e . A r e a s
When making a sprite, people often use any random chade of pink and expect it will come out invisible while in the game... this doesn't work...
Solutions
Sometimes you can just turn all of the invisible parts to a really bright shade of
white and when you import the picture it will automatically switch the white to the
invisible pink , but this dosen't always work. If you are using your own art program and
still see the pink then you are using the wrong shade of pink , the correct shade of pink is
R-255 G-0 B-255 , but if you are using Paint Shop Pro then it's R-252 G-0 B-252. And last
with some art programs it will alow you to take the color from an image and use it in
another , in this case then all you have to do is take a sprite from Duke and save the
invisible part as a color and use in your own picture.
T i p s . a n d . T r i c k s
This section was written by Stiffie
When you make an image you want to be a sprite, usually you fill the
area around it pink so that you have a reference point to use the
"invisable" pink in Editart. But it isn't till you either have it
animated or in the game itself that you realize the art image has little
colored dots on the outside makingh it look cheesy. Here is a way to fix
it:
In Editart, change the pink to something bright and not used in the
image itself (ie yeloow or bright green). Once you do that you can see
the little dots that don't belong! If your sure they are on the outside
only and not in the image itself, you can move the dot over the unwanted
color and hit C which makes all the other dots of that color go away.
Before you save your image, you can change the color back to the
invisable pink and it should look allright. I found this to save a TON
of time.
Also....
Duke's pallet tends to alter an imported pic into a crappy looking image
(ie you can take a pic of a car, run it through Duke's pallet and it's
covered in colors you didn't want, plus those annoying green dots!) Here
is a way to somewhat fix that, it isn't a cure all bt can help:
Take your pic, run it through Duke's pallet but DO NOT save it as a GIF
yet. For example if your using an art program and your painting BMPs,
save your art back to a BMP, but under a different name. Then open the
new image up and look to see what changes need to be made. Beats the
heartbreak of finding out too late your image was thrashed.
C o p y r i g h t s . a n d . P e r m i s s i o n s
This site is copyrighted to me (Minion) as of November 1998. No area of this site may be reproduced or copied in any way without my wiritten permission. The Tutorial on this site was written by me (Minion) with additional help from Stiffie. This tutorial is copyrighted to me (Minion) as of January 1997.
Distribution
You may distribute this Tutorial on your site provided that my copyright stays intact and no section of the text or HTML files included in the zip file are altered in any way. It is not required but please notify me before distributing this file so I can send you updates and such as I release them.
Distribution Sites
This site is the official distribution site of the EditArt tutorial. The following is a list of distribution sites -
Asbesots' Duke 3D Site
Official EditArt Tutorial Site
and soon to come -
www.IamDuke.com (get it? I am Duke? hehehhe :)
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