24-09-2001 03:03									#1
	Sprite Editing Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Does anyone know of a tool that can be used to uncompress the game's .spr files into the individual .tga files so that they can be edited? Reason for this being that I want to create upgrades of normal units, with slight modifications, that and completely different units with similar graphics.

The idea came when I read a sample of editing the SLIC stuff, and someone had put a bit of code that would build a nuke in each city when the Sphinx was built. So I thought about making "wonder" units, such as the Titanic, the Bismark, Sputnik, etc., that would have special abilities that would make them stand out over other units of the same type. (i.e. the Titanic would be a troop ship that could carry twice as many units, etc.). But I wanted there to be some kind of graphical difference. Also, I wanted to edit attack animations of units to bring the scenario more in the sci-fi realm. At a certain point, the technology of Lasers comes up, and with that you can advance to laser rifles. I wanted to modify Marines or Paratroops with laser rifle attacks, as well as create machine gunners that were wearing standard olive green as opposed to white.

So...any ideas, other than pressing "print screen" for each frame of animation? [I've done that for another project, because I didn't have a program that could convert animated .gifs into a series of bitmaps.]

	24-09-2001 03:43									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I think I meant .tif files.

	25-09-2001 11:51									#3
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Nope, there aren't any tools available for the decompilation of the *.spr animations It has been discussed by alot of people here before, as to how useful such a tool would be. Although there is the "spritetool" for the compiling of *.tif files with minimal coding necessary, we have yet to see a utility that allows viewing/editing of compiled *.spr animations. I'm sure you could find the threads if you looked up to a year or so back, but they won't say much more than I've already noted. If you ever make any progress in this area, make sure to post it please

	25-09-2001 11:58									#4
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Oh, if anyone a wee bit more experienced decides to take on the task, there are *.spr animation viewers/editors out there, just not for ctp. The "Bobcobb" *.spr editor for "Creatures" is only 8-bit and will display runtime errors whilst loading ctp sprites as they are 24bit i think. Half-life and a couple of other programs also use *.spr animations and have editors, how compatible they may prove with adaption to ctp I'm not so sure. But anyways.....

	26-09-2001 02:02									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I'll check into both of those...but, hey, speaking of sprites...could someone e-mail me the SpriteTool that compiles .tifs into .sprs? Apparently it's no longer on the Activision site, or the Apolyton downloads list...both links are dead.
Thanks.
BreyKsai@aol.com

	26-09-2001 04:04									#6
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Scratch that...it's working now. Bah.

	21-12-2001 14:47									#7
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Maybe here is something that could help you.

In a CTP2 thread (Sprite Extractor?) there is something about Hyper Cam. That can screencapture all the animations:

Just do a search on http://www.google.com

-Martin

	22-12-2001 04:27									#8
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I used a screen capture program to make some sprites that way, and it was a nightmare - I would advise against it if you have any other options.

	15-01-2002 07:09									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Well, you can forget about sprite editors from other games too. AFAIK the sprite format in CtP1 (and certainly that for CtP2, which is slightly different) was designed specifically for that game. You might try other Activision games but other than that I don't give you much of a chance (even with other Activision the odds are heavily against you).