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Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 1:59 am
by Pyro
I know that a collection has to be 256-color BMP files all with the same color table. But what other limitations does it have? Is there a limit of size for the collections file? Or a limit of how many sequences it has... or limit with total number of images stored into one collection? And lets say I have two different collections that have the same color table... can Amber or some other program simply combined it into one collection? Or would you have to go the manual way and edit one of them to import the BMPs of the second one?
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 2:12 am
by carlinho
Pyro, I'm not the most suitable source of info on this, I'm pretty sure the tech guys will give you exact answers, but I've done collections with sizes as big as 14 mb and they still play.
and 31 # of sequences.
And I found no limit to number of images in the collection, basically because I used normal animations of either 8 or 2 or max 14 frames per view.
I couldn't though combine two collections into 1...I had to duplicate it and delete or import bitmaps to create a different one...
I don't know what exactly you are trying to do, but I guess those limits are somehow pretty big, for what a unit needs to.
Anyways, I'm pretty sure somebody knows the exact limits....
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 6:19 am
by haravikk
Amber doesn't seem to support more than 100 or so sequences, though why you'd reach that number or need more is beyond me 
There's also a limit on the size of your bitmaps of 256 x 256, and the shadows I can't remember, possibly 64 x 64 or less.
Any larger for the images and it either won't work at all, or you'll end up with some really odd graphical glitches.
And unfortunately there is no way to join to collections, though it would be a really neat thing to have!
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 7:17 pm
by Pyro
haravikk wrote:And unfortunately there is no way to join to collections, though it would be a really neat thing to have!
*nudges Industry* 
I forgot to ask but in the color table of a collection the first color has to be the color of the background that will be transparent right? Does it matter what place any other color has to be in?
Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:04 pm
by carlinho
I actually did collections with bitmaps that are 390 x 280 and they work fine
you could get some lag though if you place lots of this units on a map with lots of other units together...
as for the colors I always use blue as the first one, pink as the second one and cyan as the third, it doesn't really matter which ones you use as long as there's none of them in the whole bitmap.
You could use green, red or yellow too, but their purest expressions.
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:38 am
by haravikk
Those 390 x 280 graphics, did you use them on both PC and Mac? I know big images can look fine on one platform but not the other, or they'll be fine in Loathing/Software Rendering but mess up in other rendering engines.
The first three colours are:
Background - the colour you want to remove from your images
Plate lines - used when exporting a plate image from Amber, you can actually use this in your images if you need the extra colour, just make sure you don't have any horizontal or vertical lines that span the entire width/height of a sprite =)
Transparent - used to remove parts of an image used as a texture. If you want an image to import as .raw and thus be useable as a model texture, or as an arrow or similar projectile, then you must use the transparent colour instead of the background colour or it won't let you. I don't know the reasons for this, but we're stuck with them =)
A further note on the transparent colour is that you can also use this in your images, you just have to make sure the "Has transparency" flag is unchecked when you import the image(s).
Edited By haravikk on 1144408336
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:58 pm
by carlinho
to tell you the truth I did the collection and I tested the unit in both pc and macs but for such a small amount of time(it's a new unit) that I don't know exactly if it works fine entirely or not.
it looked ok....but you never know
I'll have to test more.....
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:52 am
by Point
256x256 max or was for 1.3 macs can play with larger but pc's crashed on bits over 256 pixesl
240 colors max in color table...
sequences ive gone as high as 200 but 99 seems to be the non error limit
bitmaps ive got a tag thats over 40 meg with all the collections but after sequence 135 its jacked....
so moral of the story is to be safe instead of sorry...
use 256x256 max pixel dimmenions
do not exceed 34x34 pixels for shadows
240 colors max indexed bitmaps
max out at 99 sequences in amber
use all the hue changes just in case some one has ideas
use unique naming on sequences to eliminate confustion
name your tag _col so its a known collection
and credit any parts that are imported from others.
Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:18 am
by GizmoHB
240 colors is only for cmaps (since you need colors for blood and stuff...), collections can be 256 colors (with the first 3 colors used for background, spacer lines and texture transparency) so i guess that means 253 colors...
and uhmmm
thats all I have to say...
...Giz
Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:36 pm
by Point
i thought the 16 spaces were for the player colors.... and were needed for the hue changes in the unit tags thus the 240 colors
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:50 am
by haravikk
Nope
Hue changes are a separate piece of data like a sequence, as you can have any number of them. Plus they aren't defined colours, ie it's a range of colours so the colour table isn't all that great a place for them.