New skies for Quake 2

[Derimok]

since im back at work after 2 months off due it being in a off season, i'll have no time what so ever to do any mapping , so i decided to stop trying atm and do something i enjoy more and have more fun doing so in the process . I was told its probably not worth all the effort making these as noone will use them , but here they are here for a look at anyway ...
they are at the top of the page under "sky boxes"

www.chilledout.net/

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

kold,
I'm always looking for new sky files. I downloaded all of them and may use them in my contest map. Thanks for creating these for us. They really look great! Good job!

[Stah]

very nice skyboxes there, ive downloaded them all

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

kold, I tried all of them, very nice work!

Got a question for you, maybe somebody can answer this, I noticed you only included the "tga" files in your zip. Aren't you supposed to have "pcx" files with your zip. I always end up with 6 tga's and 6 pcx's in my zip. Do you have to have "pcx" files in the zip for the sky to work?

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

kold,
when I call up my map using your skies, I'm getting an error message, that the server doesn't have the pcx files. Could you add these to the zip files?

[Derimok]

sorry about that Leray , but for some reason i cant save any images to .pcx's even in photoshop , or in quake 2 they look all seriously mucked up , thats one reason i only released .tga versions on these skies . In the weekend when i have some time i'll try and figure out whats causing them to look all weird on me :(

[grieve[Q2C]]

Ohooo .... Kold, that sounds as if you've forgotten to translate the pictures into the Quake 2 palette before making them pcx.

I guess that's the problem.

[Derimok]

could you please explain how i convert into the quake2 palette Grieve ? , im not sure how i do that

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

Yes, please help him out Grieve!

I would like to use one of those skies for my contest map if possible.

[grieve[Q2C]]

I always did this with GIMP, but I got Photoshop installed too. I took a glimpse on how PS does this, and is even easier and more intuitive than in GIMP.

First you need the Quake 2 palette. Since Quake 2 uses only one global palette, you will find it in any picture that is used by the game, skins, fonts, textures ( except the tga's for the env maps )
So lets say you open an existing pcx of another Q2 skybox with Photoshop. Then drop down the "Image" menu and go to the "Mode" section. (This is very similar to GIMP). The color mode for an image can be RGB, indexed ( palettized, 8 bit color ) or greyscales, these are the most important. Go down to "Color Table" and click. It will show you the palette which is used in this picture, this is our Quake 2 palette. You will see a save option on this menu, so save the color table / palette externally and call it "Quake2".

Photoshop stores palettes in files that are called .act, in GIMP they got no suffix.

Now you load some of the tga's you want to convert and go to image / mode again. RGB is checked since they are in RGB, change this to Indexed Color. The Indexed - menu appears and asks you which color table to use, use "custom", then when the custum palette dialogue appears use the "load" option and load the Q2 palette you have saved before.

As far as I've seen you only have to load it the first time, then it will continue to use this one until you tell the program to use something else.

There are some other options like dithering (simulating colors that are not on the palette), but I would not recommend this. When I palettize pictures with GIMP I turn these off.

But you have to test for yourself what looks best.

[grieve[Q2C]]

I'm not completely sure about dithering, I tried several conversions of koldspring_ with GIMP and Photoshop. The ones without any dithering looked completely like poop, though they worked.

So using dithering could be okay.
And then there were other errors which occured in all versions.
This will most likely have something to do with the "forbidden" colors in the Quake 2 palette. The last 32 colors are ( in a somewhat unclear way) "reserved" for player skins exclusively, these include nearly all bright reds and yellows and greens Quake 2 has.

Using these colors will cause no errors in opengl mode, but if you use software rendering they will cause graphical glitches.
Like in this - otherwise not so bad - pcx conversion of koldspring.



Therefore it might be necessary to correct these pics manually after converting them.

Here is the Q2 palette in Photoshop format, with all colors in the right order. Any of the final 32 colors that can be found in the pcx files after converting must be replaced with a more or less similar color on the palette.

cuco.dyndns.org/users/grieve/files/photoshop_palette_Q2.zip

And here is a tutorial that covers that theme, only for Quake 2 textures (they use the same palette)
Theoretically you could also use Wally to edit the pcx pics manually. But you will have to try that out.

ricebug.qeradiant.com/custom.htm

It only has to work in Quake 2 after that.
Hope that helps.

[grieve[Q2C]]

Okies, last addition: The Q2 palette I used in GIMP was screwed up. I made a new one and converted koldspring_ another time, now it looks reasonable.

(Considering this is only software rendering )




If you think it through, it is unlikely that you find the last 32 fullbright colors of the Q2 palette in an env map because they are more unnatural. But impossible it is not.

[Derimok]

wow they arent too shabby in software , when i first tryed doing it they were in rainbow colours everywhere ; )

really great writeup Grieve !!! i'll start making some .pcx versions right away
btw , thanks for the help i really appreciate it ! : )

btw , i nearly had a heart attack when i found out i didnt save my textures i used for my skies , but lucky i had high res .bmps at 512x512 still hanging around : )

[Le Ray [Q2C]]

Yes, very good tips Grieve.


kold, can you let us know if and when you update your zips with the pcx files? I would love to use one for my contest map, so if you get them updated, please let us know.

Thanks.

[Derimok]

im working on them as we speak , should have most of them done tonight . I'll let you know when they are all done tho and thanks again Grieve for the info on .pcx's as i was baffled to why they looked weird .