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


  • 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 :)