Ask ZT1 design questions here

[Jay]

If you have been designing or configuring something for ZT1 and need a question answered concerning those activities, please feel free to ask your question in this topic. Before you ask, though, please first try to find an answer to your question in one of the designer related topics either at this site or the related Zoo Tycoon Designer Guild site (http://www.ztcdd.org/DG/). Also, this area is for those that have already done designs or configuring for ZT1. So please do not ask questions on how you can get started designing or configuring.

[maximum411]

I would have started a new thread, but I appear to be unable to do so. Anyway, I am having a bit of a problem that I am hoping someone can shed some light on.

I am trying to upload a new Zookeeper Recommendations photo for a wildcat I am working on in Zoot. When I first tried to upload the image, I got a "too many colors" error message and checked the Readme to discover that uploaded images need to be 256 colors or less. I reduced the colors in the image to 256 in an image editing program (Gimp) and the image uploaded, but now there are white pixels randomly distributed across the image. What did I do wrong? The image looks normal outside of Zoot, so this is something Zoot is doing when I upload the image. Does it have something to do with the .pal file not matching the image? I tried loading the .pal file for the Zookeeper Recommendations image into Gimp, but it wouldn't let me. Can I create a new .pal file for the image I am trying to upload? Would that help?

Thanks,

Max

[Jay]

Welcome to ZTCDD.

When Zoot converts the ".png" to a ZT image, it also creates the ".pal" file, so it would match the image. It is possible you used dithering when reducing the colors in GIMP. Or it is possible you did not set the top leftmost pixel to a unique color after all GIMP work was complete, since GIMP often changes it to black. Here are the steps I use in GIMP to reduce the colors and set the top leftmost pixel. This assumes the image is set to the RGB mode in GIMP.
1. Click Image->Mode->Indexed
2. In the Indexed Mode Conversion window, click "Generate optimum palette", set "Maximum number of colors" to 255, set "Color dithering" to None, and click Convert.
3. Click Image->Mode->RGB to set the image back to RGB mode.
4. Click the Foreground color rectangle.
5. In the Change Foreground Color window, set "HTML notation" to ff00ff and click OK. That magenta color is the color most people use for the background color of ZT images.
6. Click the Pencil Tool and set the brush to "pixel (1x1 square)".
7. Zoom the image to 800% and click the top leftmost pixel to set it to the magenta color.
8. Although those are all of the steps needed for the plaque (Zookeeper Recommendations photo) and purchase menu icons, other ZT images usually have a lot of transparent pixels. So those would also have to be set to magenta. To do that, one would click the Select by Color Tool, set Threshold to 0, click in the background to select all of the backgournd, click the Bucket Fill Tool, click in the background to set all of the background to magenta, and press the Delete key to turn it back to transparent. The Color Picker Tool can be used to confirm the transparent color used to be magenta. Neither Zoot nor APE understand transparency; they look at what the color used to be.
9. Now the image can be saved as a ".png". When saving it in GIMP, be sure "Save background color" and "Save color values from transparent pixels" are set in the "Save as PNG" window. The other things in the "Save as PNG" window do not matter, but I also have "Save resolution" set and none of the others other than those 3. I also set Compression level to 9.
10. Now the ".png" can be loaded in Zoot or APE.

Good luck with your creating.

[johnrn1]

Now you know why I told you to just try another picture Max!!     Jay's brilliant, and his gimp instructions work perfectly, you just have to have patience to go through all the steps. My good wishes too! 

[maximum411]

Brilliant is right! It did work perfectly 

Thanks for the perfectly detailed and easy-to-follow instructions- they couldn't have been more helpful. Now I can move on with this project! I've been stuck on this part for days.

[maximum411]

Oh- one last question- what size should the Zookeeper Recommendations image be? The one I uploaded is too large.

[Jay]

Except for the hippo, the plaques for all of the other original ZT animals have a size of 179x194. So I recommend that the plaque sizes be no larger than that.

Continued good luck with your creating.

[maximum411]

Once again, perfect advice! The picture looks great in-game now.

I actually have another question, if you don't mind. Does changing the animation speed in Zoot actually do anything to the animation speed in-game? I sped up the animations significantly in Zoot but they don't appear to be any different in-game.

Thanks!

[Jay]

Yes, the animation speed in Zoot works. It is a value in milliseconds. ZT will show the first frame of an animation, then wait that many milliseconds, show the second frame of the animation, wait that many milliseconds, etc.. The same millisecond value is used after each frame. Zoot's animation speed is actually more precise than APE's, since APE converts a "number of frames per second" to a millisecond value. As an example of the setting, ZT's zebra uses a setting of 83 milliseconds for most of the zebra's animations, although a few of the zebra's animations use a setting of 125 milliseconds. Zoot and APE also play the animations using this value, so one can see the effect right away. This speed affects how fast ZT plays an animation, and not how fast an animal moves across the screen. The settings for how fast an animal moves across the screen are inside the ".uca" or animal ".ai" file.

Once again, continued good luck with your creating.

[maximum411]

Ah okay- I guess that means I just need to reduce the time a bit more for a noticeable effect. Thanks! 

[maximum411]

Strange- I have sped up the animations in Zoot, and they show up as much faster there, but after I import the files to the ZTD and view the animal in-game, they don't look any faster. Any ideas?

[Jay]

The only thoughts I have is either the change was not saved in Zoot or the uca is referring to a different animation or the wrong ztd is being used in ZT.

[maximum411]

Hi Jay- I have been trying to come up with solutions to this problem for a while now and cannot for the life of me figure out what is going wrong. The animations are clearly sped up and are saving in Zoot- this change just does not show up in the game. Could I post the file here for you to look at? I am trying to get the walking, running, and trotting speeds to match the speed of the animal's movement so that it does not look like it is gliding. Right now I have sped the animations up to an extremely high speed to be sure I would notice the difference (if there was any) in-game.

[Jay]

This site does not allow members to attach files. If you are a member of some other site that allows attaching files and that fern is also a member of, you can attach it there and she can get it to me.

[johnrn1]

Max is a member at Tek Jay. He can upload his file there for Fern.