How to get BAM files to show dark colors in-game?

[gamemaster76]

I'm working to get an acid breath animation for a Dragon Disciple mod and I wanted a dark color to appear..... unfortunately it seems black = 100%transparent in-game since no matter how dark the BAM is, it ignores that part of the animation and is completely bright. If I make it completely black, its invisible in-game.

Is there a way for dark colors to work?

[Sir-Kill]

what bam files are you working on?

[Sam.]

2 hours ago, gamemaster76 said:

I'm working to get an acid breath animation for a Dragon Disciple mod and I wanted a dark color to appear..... unfortunately it seems black = 100%transparent in-game since no matter how dark the BAM is, it ignores that part of the animation and is completely bright. If I make it completely black, its invisible in-game.

Is there a way for dark colors to work?

Are you using a PRO (projectile)?

[gamemaster76]

18 minutes ago, Sam. said:

Are you using a PRO (projectile)?

Im using the Dragon Disciples ddbreat.PRO

 

1 hour ago, Sir-Kill said:

what bam files are you working on?

at the moment im using cloudka.BAM with ddbreat.PRO. 

 

its an acid breath do i wanted to go with something dark and sickening but every BAM looking like a mist instead of globs of acid.

[Sir-Kill]

DLTCEP can modify the pallet of the entire bam, unfortunately is does not come with sliders or anything user friendliness.

I don't have ee so I can't tell for sure. but I took spcloud1 and ran:

pallet- edit pallet-

from the pull-down 'half red'- click modify RBG, then 'half blue'- click modify RBG

this gave me a greenish color to the bam

Can't help with the pro file

 

 

Sam you still working on CA?

Edited February 9, 2021 by Sir-Kill

[Jarno Mikkola]

The simple asnwer is that you copy the .bam file, and recolor it's palette(s)...

Probably by converting it's frames into .bmp's, and then opening those in a picture editing tool, armed with the knowledge that the palette color 2 is probably the black aka the transparent one, utilize a different palette and you get a very different picture.

[Sam.]

1 hour ago, gamemaster76 said:

2 hours ago, Sam. said:

Are you using a PRO (projectile)?

Im using the Dragon Disciples ddbreat.PRO

I'm thinking you need to adjust the flags in your PRO file.  For starters, turn off "Translucent (7)".  It has this effect.  You may need to play around with the other flags as well.  My second guess is if you created the BAM yourself with DLTCEP, I think it might interpret pure black as the transparent color (which is a bit odd IMO).  That could be throwing you off too.

 

28 minutes ago, Sir-Kill said:

Sam you still working on CA?

Sadly, no progress has been made in many years.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Sam.

[temnix]

The answer: if blending is enabled, black will always be transparent and dark colors to the degree they approach black. Don't use blending. If the animation has areas that are overly dark and not looking pretty, you have to edit the BAM by hand and eliminate those parts or extract the frames and redraw them. If this question were about a visual effect, it would be possible to use the "Transparent" option instead of blending, and there are a couple of boxes to increase the intensity of colors in a VVC, but for a PRO, no blending is the only way.

[gamemaster76]

On 2/9/2021 at 5:58 PM, Sam. said:

I'm thinking you need to adjust the flags in your PRO file.  For starters, turn off "Translucent (7)".  It has this effect.  You may need to play around with the other flags as well.  My second guess is if you created the BAM yourself with DLTCEP, I think it might interpret pure black as the transparent color (which is a bit odd IMO).  That could be throwing you off too.

On 2/9/2021 at 6:00 PM, temnix said:

The answer: if blending is enabled, black will always be transparent and dark colors to the degree they approach black. Don't use blending. If the animation has areas that are overly dark and not looking pretty, you have to edit the BAM by hand and eliminate those parts or extract the frames and redraw them. If this question were about a visual effect, it would be possible to use the "Transparent" option instead of blending, and there are a couple of boxes to increase the intensity of colors in a VVC, but for a PRO, no blending is the only way.

 

Unfortunately I've tried every combination of Translucent and Blending they do literally nothing and make no difference.

 

On 2/9/2021 at 5:31 PM, Jarno Mikkola said:

The simple asnwer is that you copy the .bam file, and recolor it's palette(s)...

Probably by converting it's frames into .bmp's, and then opening those in a picture editing tool, armed with the knowledge that the palette color 2 is probably the black aka the transparent one, utilize a different palette and you get a very different picture.

 

On 2/9/2021 at 5:30 PM, Sir-Kill said:

DLTCEP can modify the pallet of the entire bam, unfortunately is does not come with sliders or anything user friendliness.

I figured this was what I had to do... was hoping there would be a simpler solution.

[temnix]

Disable both Translucent and Blending.

[gamemaster76]

2 hours ago, temnix said:

Disable both Translucent and Blending.

tried that.... does nothing

[kjeron]

50 minutes ago, gamemaster76 said:

tried that.... does nothing

Does that include disabling BIT13 and BIT14 in the PRO field at 0x240. (Blend area/ring animation and Glow area/ring animation)

Also, are you running the game at least v2.5 or higher.

Edited February 12, 2021 by kjeron

[temnix]

Maybe he is fiddling with those things instead of looking at the Projectile flags.

[Sam.]

One of four things must be happening:

1. Your BAM was malformed when it was created (e.g. the transparent or shadow colors got messed up).
2. Your BAM is good but the palette contains semi-transparent colors, thus your BAM renders differently in-game than it does in legacy editors which do not support the alpha channel.
3. Your PRO has been incorrectly configured to display the BAM the way you intend.  The flags mentioned above are the most likely culprits.
4. You aren't actually testing the files you think you are (e.g. you're testing on SoD but haven't installed a version of Modmerge, you aren't closing and restarting the game between testing changes to the files, you aren't running the same game you're saving the edited files to, etc.)

If you upload your BAM and PRO, we can help you narrow down the list of possible issues.

 

[gamemaster76]

3 hours ago, Sam. said:

One of four things must be happening:

1. Your BAM was malformed when it was created (e.g. the transparent or shadow colors got messed up).
2. Your BAM is good but the palette contains semi-transparent colors, thus your BAM renders differently in-game than it does in legacy editors which do not support the alpha channel.
3. Your PRO has been incorrectly configured to display the BAM the way you intend.  The flags mentioned above are the most likely culprits.
4. You aren't actually testing the files you think you are (e.g. you're testing on SoD but haven't installed a version of Modmerge, you aren't closing and restarting the game between testing changes to the files, you aren't running the same game you're saving the edited files to, etc.)

If you upload your BAM and PRO, we can help you narrow down the list of possible issues.

 

Heres a link to a drive with them, they surpass the limit im allowed to put
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EXe5tEuLNxdXhPIJPH3Ee66IKdlQHM7u?usp=sharing

 

Edited February 13, 2021 by gamemaster76