1996 R. Christopher Wright (cwright@uclink4.berkeley.edu)
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~cwright/
What is it?
This is a small utility to interconvert Dark Forces BitMap files and PICT files on the Macintosh. It started as my attempt to make an editor for BM files, but, as I soon realized, that would have been a huge undertaking and a waste of time, seeing as there are already great paint programs available. Thus we have this little program.
How does it work?
This program will automatically switch to 256 color mode on start up to prevent strange crahing problems. The first time you run the program, it will want to know the location of the Dark Forces Data folder so that it can read from the Textures.GOB and Dark.GOB files. There after, this location is saved in the Prefs file.
Saving a PICT as a BM:
To save a PICT as a BM, simply load the PICT, select the palette you want to use from the Palette menu, and save it (either as a BM, or as a BM in a GOB). When you save a BM in a GOB, it will not overwrite a BM with the same name that is already in the GOB. Thus, you should only save a BM in a GOB if you are certain that that is the BM you want in there. If you ever want to remove a BM from a GOB, use an ungobbing utility to ungob the file and then regob it without the BM in it. Also, the name of a BM must be DOS friendly for DF to recognize it, so the name should be no greater than 8 characters long, followed by .BM . I sometimes had problems with names despite the name checking, so if DF crashes on you when you try to load the BM's, try renaming them with shorter names or capitalizing the first letter.
Saving a BM as a PICT:
To save a BM as a PICT, load the BM, pick the proper palette, and save it as a PICT. Why would you want to do this? Well, it is useful if you want to edit an existing BM. Another great use for this is that BM's make excellent desktop patterns. At this very moment I have CFWATER4.BM as my desktop pattern.
Making a Multiple BM:
Multiple BM's are the signs and animated textures in DF. To make a multiple BM, you must have a PICT file for each frame, named "name.#", where name is any name that every file has, and # is a two digit number, such as "01". The program will ask you to find the file you want as the first frame and then ask you for some information. It will want to know the number of frames in the mult BM, whether it is a sign (in which case it can only have 2 frames) or an animated texture (in which case you should supply a speed greater than 0 that will be the textures frame rate), whether it should be transparent or not, and how it should be saved. Multiple BM's are limited to a size of 64k.
Compression:
DF supports two compression formats for BM's. Scheme 1 is almost always better than Scheme 2, so if you are going to compress a BM, use Scheme 1. None of the BM's in the retail game are compressed, but in the PC demo there are two compressed BM's. This program supports loading and saving of compressed BM's, but most BM's are small enough as it is, so that there is no real reason to compress a BM unless you really want to save space.
Other Attributes:
There are a few different attributes that a BM may have. If it is opaque, it appears exactly as you see it in DF BM Converter. If it is transparent, it will appear the same except that color 0, which is black in all the Game's palettes, will be transparent. For a BM to have either of these attributes, it must follow the "power of 2" rule. The other two attributes are for special BM's only. If you are making a BM to replace one of the weapons, it should have the weapon attribute. If you are making a load screen to replace WAIT.BM, it should have the load screen attribute. A note on load screens: since DF on the PC is only 320 x 200, the load screen on PC's is that size. The Mac load screen is 640x400, however, since the Mac version of DF has higher resolution than its PC counterpart. So, if you are going to make a load screen, you should consider which size you want to use.
DF Screen Capture:
The program Snapz by Ambrosia can take screen shots of DF, but the colors will come out messed up. You can use DF BM Converter to fix the colors of the PICTs Snapz produces by simply loading them and resaving them with the proper palette selected. Viola! Screen captures from DF.
Improvements and Bugs Fixed:
- DF BM Converter will now allow you to select the DF Data Folder from the CD-Rom.
- DF BM Converter now supports the standard Apple Events so that it will automatically
open files that are dragged onto it.
- DF BM Converter is now FAT, so that it will run native on 68k and PPC machines.
- Added a progress bar when openning BM's from large GOB's so that you can tell that the
program hasn't frozen.
Known Bugs:
- When saving in a GOB, doesn't replace BM's with the same name.
I'm sure you'll find other bugs, so please send them to me at cwright@uclink4.berkeley.edu.
Future:
I think that I'm finished with this program. If there is something that you feel should be added, let me know. Around the end of June or July, hopefully I'll have an initial release of a FME/WAX application available. It is being tested now, though it is not totally finished.
Thanks:
- Owen S. Good and ArchTx for input and suggestions.
- Allen G. Newman for the great splash screen in the About Box.
- Alexei Novikov for clearing up a few things on multiple BM's.
- Brad Oliver for responding to my annoying emails and lending me some code.
- Todd Weber for letting me borrow his books and his Inside Mac CD and for his
encouragement.
- The people from the comp.sys.mac.programmer newsgroups for generously answering
questions.
Disclaimer:
I claim no responsibility for anything, including lost data, trashed hard drives, etc, unless it is something good.
