Image Converting

[DaChicken Incorporated]

I use Adobe Photoshop CS2 and I can save images in .psd, .png, .jpg, .gif, et cetera, but I don't know how to save it so that you can open it in GameCore Indie (that's the version I have).  Does anyone know anything about converting images so that it will be compatible with GameCore?  Thanks.

[pixel_legolas]

gamecore can open many images, especially psd files. But keep them to a power of 2 all the time, like 256x256, 512x512 etc

[Architex]

Just a quick tip, if you have a ton of images that need to be converted, you can use Irfanview ( http://www.irfanview.com/ ) to convert all images in one format into a size you specify.  It's free, it's great.

[gekido]

In most cases, it's best to keep the files in the original PSD format - it is very rare that I save files out as anything but the original PSD files.

There are 2 caveats with PSD files:

1) you MUST save the files with 'compatibility mode' enabled - when you save the PSD, you will get a dialog with a checkbox for this.  What the compatability mode does is save a preview image of the PSD (ie a flattened preview) which is actually what GameCore uses when loading PSD files.

2) if you do NOT have a locked 'background' layer in your PSD file, the file is saved with alpha channel / transparency enabled, even if the image isn't / shouldn't be transparent.  This can potentially cause strangeness when using PSD's. 

There are 2 ways to resolve this

first is for non-transparent textures, simply make sure that you have a flattened background layer in your PSD - this may or may not be easy to do with existing textures.

second method is in gamecore itself - on the surface editor, on the 'basic' tab you will see a 'blend mode' drop down that is set to 'alpha' by default - simply change this to 'none' and the surface will be rendered as non-transparent whether there is an alpha or not.  If you have a ton of existing psd's that are showing up as transparent, this is the simplest way to 'fix' them without having to manually modify textures.

I second irfanview as one of the 'must have' utilities for working with images - whether using gamecore or not.  One thing to note:  irfanview doesn't show transparencies properly (just shows black), which can be a bit misleading, and secondly, if you do any kind of processing in irfanview with psd files, it doesn't manage them properly and you'll likely lose the layers and/or transparency that the psd had, so be careful working with psd files in irfanview.