Importing?

[Nureru]

I've been trying for a little while, but I can't figure out how to import pictures for use as sprites. Help please?

[Espo]

I'm not the best person to answer but since no one has gotten to you yet i'll do my best to lead on the right track (and hopefully not the wrong one).

Go to: Quest -> Graphics -> Tiles

Press PgDn on the keyboard until you get to a blank area where your imported tiles will be placed. Click the Grab button. Here's where I start to lack expertise. First there only certain types of files you can grab from. These are *.qst, *.til, *.zgp, *.bmp, *.gif, *.jpg. When you grab these files the coloring will most likely be all wrong. You can click the Pal button in the Grabber window to see the actual files color but this is the very reason I never grab files from images.

I hope this was at least a little helpful and maybe someone with more grabbing knowledge can clear some things up for you (and me).

[automatic]

Yeah, the coloring is a real pain. I just created a custom Link in photoshop, and even though I used the same colors as the screenshot in zquest, they were still all messed up. A couple of the colors were actually registering as the same color in zquest, so I had to change them in photoshop just so I could recolor the sprites in the editor.

I know that in the new private betas there's a color correcting function in the editor (where it tries to match with the closest color in your cset). But who knows when that'll be out public...

Until then, are there any tiling experts out there who have any suggestions for us noobs regarding this? Any "easiest way" to grab graphics with a minimum of recoloring headache?

[4matsy]

Best tip I can give is to grab only from 16-color gfx.

Since there's only 16 colors in a ZC cset, when you grab from a 16-color bmp/gif/etc., the program will not grainy-up the graphics or assign areas of two or more different colors to the same color slot in the cset. Instead, it'll assign each different color in the original pic to a different color in ZQuest.

At which point you need do naught but move in for the kill with ZQuest's almighty Ctrl-S color switcher. :D

[Espo]

I noticed that when experimenting with grabbing jpeg files. There seems to be a severe compatibility issue between high res graphics and zc's 16 bit glory.

Can you go into a little more detail about the almighty Ctrl-S color switcher. is this the privately owned color correcting feature that automatic was talking about?

[4matsy]

I noticed that when experimenting with grabbing jpeg files. There seems to be a severe compatibility issue between high res graphics and zc's 16 bit glory.

Can you go into a little more detail about the almighty Ctrl-S color switcher. is this the privately owned color correcting feature that automatic was talking about?

Uh, yeah, you most definitely don't want to go around grabbing jpegs, as the lossy compression causes them to end up using thousands of colors, most of which are so like each other they're nearly impossible for the naked eye to tell apart. :sweat:

As for Ctrl-S, its a relatively new feature...I think it's in the 182/183 ZQuest. In the tile editor, you can press S to switch the colors assigned to the mouse buttons...if you hold down Control and then hit S, the switch is applied to the tile itself instead. Makes it easier to swap large/many areas of certain colors without having to use the flood-fill dozens of times. :p