need bkgrds.big help

[bravesj858]

i modded about half of the pics in the bkgrds.big file (the one that has the cts and menu screens) and it runs fine, but evenutally crashes becuase the files are too big. do you know of any way of cutting the size down to get them close to their orginal size?

also, any way to get manny's transparent off the screen right after the cts screen? i heard it had to do something with alpha images, but im not sure how to do it.

thanks for your help.

i need an answer soon.

[fizzjob]

When I did my White Sox Uber Theme, I just left all the images in the bkgrds.big at 512x512. I had tried them at 1024x1024, and MVP kept crashing on me.

As far as resizing them, you can just export them and resize them in Photoshop, Paint, Irfanview, or whatever you used to create them in the first place, and then just re-import them.

As far as the transparent Manny, you don't necessarily need to deal with Alpha channels. Just create a transparent 24-bit PNG file and import it using FSHed - again, that's what I did for the Uber Theme.

[bravesj858]

all of mines are at 512X512, but they crash. it's problay becuase i imported about 50 photos into the game. i need to reduce the size that they take up in the bkgrds.big file, becuase i'm sure that is what is crashing the file.

[fizzjob]

You might need to compress the files inside the .big file (you can do that with biggui). You may need to re-build the .big (again, you can do that with biggui), but I don't remember 100%.

[bravesj858]

tried to compress the files with biggui, they won't go any further.

wouldn't rebuilding the file make the mods all go away? i'm running out of ideas...

[bravesj858]

heres something i may try....i may shrink the files to 256X256, but i really don't want to becuase alot of the quaitly of the pics will be lost but i will resort to it if nothing else works...should i try that?

[fizzjob]

Rebuilding a .BIG file doesn't blow away changes. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what it actually does, but it can make the file smaller. But, to be honest, I don't remember if rebuilding the bkgrds.big will screw up the game or not.

Ah, well, if it's crashing anyway, what's the harm in trying to rebuild, right?

You can always pull the original bkgrds.big off the CDs if worst comes to worst.

[bravesj858]

i aldredy have backups btw, this won't affect gameplay for me in mvp, becuase i'm not actually using it persay. it's for the college mod and i had to replace all the mlb players with college players. i think if i shrink the file, it may go, but quailty may suffer, and will take me several hours to do again.

if i rebulid, i'm afraid that i'll lose the college stuff, that's the main thing. i'll try again in a bit, first i'm working on some overlay stuff.

[bravesj858]

i almost forgot to tell you this, but the game froze and crashed at the same time, i had to restart the computer. i'm defiely putting bkgrds.big at it's limit. any way to downsize the files, becuase a modded file would come up something like 103,456 and the orgianl was 93,234. i tried rebuliding and compressing it, did not shrink it. i'm thinking about putting the images at 256x256, but i don't want to becuase they may lose tons of quality.

any ideas? :help: