photoshop desperation crisis

[loseless]

If there's one thing that I utterly hate, it has to be editing images and working with image software. I suck at it and it drives me to the edges of throwing my pc out of the window literally. I'm on the verge of breaking something, so I decided I would ask for help before killing someone by accident.

I spent the last 6 hours trying to make a faction symbol for my new faction. A whole crap load of problems began to appear from every corner of the space continuum, but I still manage to finish it.

But NOW, something went wrong (again). You see, despite having those symbols the size of the ones that the default files uses, mine appear bigger on the game menu. But that's not the end of it. How I wish...

Aparently, the symbols are round, and some of mine are squared. So they have with or black triangles on the corners, and no matter how many times I try to remove them with photoshop, they're still there.

But what's extremely amusing is that they only appear on two or three symbols, out of the 8 I've created.

So please, for God's sake, help me, as I am close to uninstall the damn game and bid it farewell.

[Conqistador]

Check the alpha channels

[Ussaid_modder]

Well that's a problem I was having too...

For this you must have alpha channels in your symbols...

Open the symbol you are having trouble with Photoshop then you will see white and grey blocks on back of the symbol.

Now tell me if there is one or not.

[loseless]

Thanks for you support, but my problems run deeper than that. I managed to get past beyond that and moved to the .dds files. That's when things came apart. Not only did I managed not to edit a single file of those, but when I changed the symbol of a faction (the ones that appear over the settlements) something went so wrong that during the campaign some territories had the wrong ownership.

Just for you to see how ** up this was, roman territories with roman settlements were considerer seleucian or gaulish provinces. And while you may thing "that's not too bad if you still had the settlement", the map begged to differ and so the did the controled territories counter. Plus, I couldn't build watchtowers on them and when I defeated an enemy army, they retreated right to one of my territories (and this happened with several factions, not just my own.

Never in my years of playing and tweaking RTW had I seen such messed up things. I ended up reverting most alterations I did to the height and terrain .tga maps and my ideas failed miserably. Also, my tries to import and create units also encountered met failure.


So I give up. I can pretty much handle all the text files but I cannot work with the image editors for sh!t. I can move regions around, make a few rivers and land bridges, but hell no, I can't for the life of me do anything about skins, cards and that crap.

Thus, my frustration culminates with my acceptance that I wont conclude what I set forward to do. Plus the two guys who wanted to help make the mod disappeared without word. So fudge it. I'll just go to my room, close all the lights, put on some My Chemical Romance CDs and watch the crow or post something emo on facebook, while I cry to Ian Curtis photos (and I managed to offend half of the worlds internet geek community with this post, nice).

Have a nice weekend

[Ussaid_modder]

Thanks for you support, but my problems run deeper than that. I managed to get past beyond that and moved to the .dds files. That's when things came apart. Not only did I managed not to edit a single file of those, but when I changed the symbol of a faction (the ones that appear over the settlements) something went so wrong that during the campaign some territories had the wrong ownership.

Just for you to see how ** up this was, roman territories with roman settlements were considerer seleucian or gaulish provinces. And while you may thing "that's not too bad if you still had the settlement", the map begged to differ and so the did the controled territories counter. Plus, I couldn't build watchtowers on them and when I defeated an enemy army, they retreated right to one of my territories (and this happened with several factions, not just my own.

Never in my years of playing and tweaking RTW had I seen such messed up things. I ended up reverting most alterations I did to the height and terrain .tga maps and my ideas failed miserably. Also, my tries to import and create units also encountered met failure.


So I give up. I can pretty much handle all the text files but I cannot work with the image editors for sh!t. I can move regions around, make a few rivers and land bridges, but hell no, I can't for the life of me do anything about skins, cards and that crap.

Thus, my frustration culminates with my acceptance that I wont conclude what I set forward to do. Plus the two guys who wanted to help make the mod disappeared without word. So fudge it. I'll just go to my room, close all the lights, put on some My Chemical Romance CDs and watch the crow or post something emo on facebook, while I cry to Ian Curtis photos (and I managed to offend half of the worlds internet geek community with this post, nice).

Have a nice weekend

Feeling sorry for you.

But still there are many mods to play.

[Raritу]

According to what you described, I think I've seen that problem in RM3.1 when installing it's hot fix and open an old save game. I thought it was some sorts of mapping problem, didn't know changing symbols can cause that.


Try starting a new campaign and see if everything's back to normal.

[loseless]

It was on a new campaign. The symbols dont really matter that much to me, anyway, as from my new tries, I could revert some changes to a point where this particular problem doesn't happen anymore. Either that or it was just a fluke.

My biggest issue is and will always be the units part. I just cant spent 6 hours on photoshop to create a dumb faction symbol that doesnt work, let alone create new units. It would take me months to do it and now matter how much I travel around the world, there are no plane travels that could give me the time I need. I just suck beyond repair at photoshoping.

The rest seems fine right now. I'm still in the process of balancing some factions, but everything is working as it should, so the work until now is functional and stable.

One more year and the mod may go into beta...

Thanks anyway

[Ussaid_modder]

ONE MORE YEAR!!!!!!!


Dude what kind of mod are you making?????

[loseless]

A simple mod that an good modder would make in two months. But I'm not that good nor do I have that much free time. Granted that I spend 10% of my life in planes, there's just not enough plane travels that allow me to do everything I need.

I tried to make a mod that felt like vanilla, in both textures and feel, but with a lot more units, different factions, different recruiting system and things like that. Most of the work went to balancing the game details. For instance, since the cost of units is so high, you won't be able to wage war on many fronts at the same time. You'll need forts and defended cities along borders more often and I also edited the land (rivers and bridges) so that it could be easier for one to defend.

So far things worked great. More strategy needed and no blitzkrieg style gameplay. The times for buildings also were extended, so now it may take 200-220 turns for a city to have all it's buildings.

Other than that, I based the mod in the XGM version 4. Mundus Magnus n stuff.


I had other aspirations for units and buildings, but many require image editing and crap like that and after this thread, I won't even go near photoshop again for the next few weeks... I'd rather sit at home reviewing financial reports (which I am doing right now. Funny fact: an hospital that serves 280 000 people spends 250 thousand € per year on gloves. That's about 6 million gloves per year. No wonder this country spends so much with health-care...)

[Ussaid_modder]

Ok, Good Luck!!

[aqd]

Never in my years of playing and tweaking RTW had I seen such messed up things. I ended up reverting most alterations I did to the height and terrain .tga maps and my ideas failed miserably. Also, my tries to import and create units also encountered met failure.

That's why you need version control systems, even for game modding. They track every lines of text and every image files you added or changed, so you can always know what you up...