New Graphics Frontend

[knkn]

I know some people have started them, and some [I'm hoping] have completed what they started, but I'd like to edit wa with a simple theme in mind. Any ideas on how to edit say the cursor? font? stars? Those are in .bmp in a vertical picture with them just shown..

Anything would help to get me started.

[SgtFusion]

I should tell you that if you edit the star graphics, it will change them in-game as well for terrains that don't have their own flying debris.

[Worminetor]

I just edited them by MS Paint and it worked.
Look at screen, I changed the background, cursor(on bulb) and teamsquares colours.
Remember about colour depth and graphic size to be the same as the original, or it won't work.

[bonz]

Evil Bunny made 2 completely new frontend skins from scratch.

[knkn]

Could you remove the stars by just filling them in with black? And about the cursor - can you remove the custom cursor entirely and use what your computer already uses? @bonz: WHERE!?

[Plutonic]

fusion, editing the frontend stars will not affect those in game.
Evilbunnys frontends only affected the title screen not the menus, you can get them here:
http://www.clandarkmatter.co.uk/downloads.php

[franpa]

Could you remove the stars by just filling them in with black?

yes, but as was pointed out, it only affects the frontend.

[Evil Bunny]

Evil Bunny made 2 completely new frontend skins from scratch.

Am afraid I didn't Bonz. I made a few Spash screens which run on a different palette then the rest of the frontend. I wouldn't recommend changing the frontend either. I tried, it's a PAIN!

The best way to do it in my oppinion is to stick to the palette worms already uses. It limits you to 64 colours if i remember correctly, which are predefined. Which will cause a frown on any skilled designer's face for sure. If you stay off the palette you'll be alright but I found that the limitation was too great to do anything interesting with it.

Changing the palette is what you'd ideally like to do. But that has all sorts of inhumane head crunching in it. Because each view has a different palette though parts of it remain static for common images like the background / cursors / buttons / fonts. Also colours are directly picked from the palette and used as colours in wnet and it's flags. If you change those your flags will change colour, and you're gonna have to redo those.

I don't see how that could be done by anyone manually. I've tried to set up a framework using photoshop but I never finished completed that, or even came close to completing simply because every step forward usually ment 4 or 5 backwords caused by new problems that showed up.

[knkn]

Maybe this should be a request for 4.0 [or the next update] an easier way to customize graphics in WA.

Aside from that eb, I'd be gladly to help anywhere since I do have a little graphic experience and.. OMG CS3!!

[SgtFusion]

I think that would probably be solved when (if?) they make the game non-paletted in 4.0.

[bonz]

Maybe this should be a request for 4.0
I already requested this about a year ago.
My idea is to have the new (non-paletted) v4.0 frontend made fully skinnable, so people can recreate the frontends of all the previous games.

[Evil Bunny]

Well, this topic inspired me to restart my effort on this. I'm gonna get into contact with you as soon as I've got internet at home again. I'd like to give it another shot and some help could be the one thing that could get it done. Especially if you've got photoshop CS because I think that's the best tool out there so far that could do it.

[knkn]

What we truly need for the next major update is a non-palleted, windowed [option] wa frontend. That way we really could emulate any other frontend [w2 FTW], aswell as it being fully skinnable for future skins.

[Devoluti0n]

Here is a front end I made few years ago :

Main Menu
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/1189/screen0000uh8.png

One player Menu
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/7329/screen0001cf0.png

Multiplayer Menu
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/5382/screen0002mz8.png

Internet / Lan Menu
http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen0003hv4.png

Option Menu
http://img86.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen0004jy2.png

WormNET Channels Menu
http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen0005si5.png

That's it, it's lame but funier than the original one I think :)

[Muzer]

Download link?

[Devoluti0n]

Oh, I never think that could be interesting for anyone xD.
Well it's too much pixelised, I'll try to find a way to change the palette witouth making other parts of the screen having glitches, and then I'll up it.

[olavi]

what all did you actually edit? i tried to find something from worms armageddon/graphics foldier... but found nothing :/

[Evil Bunny]

Everything frontend related is in the wa/graphics folder or any of it's subfolders. What you can do is edit the bmp files that are in there, if you make sure you con't use a different palette. If you do you'll need to change the palettes as well. However changing palettes can be tricky since colours might be used by multiple images and the image you change might be accessed on different palettes.

I'm working on a tool to make this a little easier. Though you'll need photoshop CS2 to use it. But I'm stuck with the problem of manipulating palettes, basicly I don't know how to create / update a palette file from photoshop scripts or through an external system which can be accessed by photoshop.

[olavi]

well, i AM using photoshop cs2 xD

but can you give me detailed information of this: the background image seen when you are in a hosted game?

[Evil Bunny]

I can do better; Here are some notes I took when analysing the palettes.

yer gonna have to figure out the tabbing yourself though. The first column is the position or series of positions of the colour on a palette. The background colour you're looking for is at D7 (It might help if you know hexadecimals). Oh yes and grad stands for gradient.


============ Common Palette settings ==================

C0-CF Blue grad Background

D7 Blue Wnet bg / active button bg
D8 Red Text (colour 5)
D9 White Hover border
DA Gray Passive border
DB Yellow Active border
DC pinkish scrollbar
DD-DF Blue grad ?????

E0-EA background animation
EB black
EC-EF Red grad Cursor / text (colour 4)

F0-F3 Grey grad text (colour 3)
F4-F7 Cyan grad text (colour 2)
F8-FB Yellow grad text (colour 1)
FC-FF White grad text hover (colour=white)


=== Duplicate colours
DB = FB yellow
DA = EB black\


============ Specific Palette settings ==================

00-9F Unused guispannersbluegrad, guistarsbluegrad

00-9F Custom 1 1uppalette, createteam, gameoptions
hostjoin, icons, mainmenu, missionStart
multiplay, netmenu, optionsmenu
weaponspalette

64-74 Custom 2 Map editor
80-BF Custom 2 Map editor
78-7F water colours Map editor

[Devoluti0n]

Evil Bunny, you can edit the palettes, the problem isn't here, but if you edit a palette, you'll see that all the other colors which isn't supposed to be affected by the pallete are glitchy (black etc...).

You can set indexed mode on an image and then create a palette, save it and replace a worms one.

[Evil Bunny]

I'm not sure what you're getting at devolution. Do you mean that if I change a colour in a palette file that all the images that refer to the colour on that spot in the palette change to the colour which I just changed? If so then yes I know what you mean. Which is the point of what I'm doing.

If you want a seriously different looking frontend you need to change the palettes. But to do that all image colours are effects, so they all need to be updated. And with close to 1000 images that's a lot of work, so I'm planning to automate this function so you can focus on the design aspect of the frontend without having to worry too much about palettes.