photos

[Darkslide820]

Can I do that in Paint?

Does it matter what # I use for Audio/Photo? Right now it's at 1, but so is my friend's character and the default blank face.

[Darkslide820]

In a post earlier in this thread comp said he doesn't think you have to put in an alpha.

[redsox]

I don't think that number matters. That is just for audio. As for as the alpha image, I have never tried it with paint and frankly I think it is going to be really hard. I use Photoshop to do mine.

You may want to give GIMP a try. Many have said that the software is pretty close to Photoshop thought not as powerful.

[Darkslide820]

I made a white box that was 256x256 and used that as the alpha. Still doesn't work.

[redsox]

You alpha image needs to be a greyscale 8-bit .bmp. I am not sure how you would be able to set all that in paint. You would need a better photo editing tool than paint for this.

[Darkslide820]

Do the picture and alpha have to be located in a certain folder?

I see that the alphas included in the game are black backgrounds surrounding a white figure. I'm going to assume that any black area becomes blank and any white area becomes the portrait when the 2 are combined in MVP. Since I don't care about having the transparency, can I make a 256x256 white square and use it for everyone?

As for the file type, you say it has to be "greyscale 8-bit .bmp?" I see that one choice Paint gives you is "monochrome bitmap" and it is located above 16-bit and 24-bit BMP in the selection screen. Maybe this is another name for that?

[redsox]

Do the picture and alpha have to be located in a certain folder?

I see that the alphas included in the game are black backgrounds surrounding a white figure. I'm going to assume that any black area becomes blank and any white area becomes the portrait when the 2 are combined in MVP. Since I don't care about having the transparency, can I make a 256x256 white square and use it for everyone?

As for the file type, you say it has to be "greyscale 8-bit .bmp?" I see that one choice Paint gives you is "monochrome bitmap" and it is located above 16-bit and 24-bit BMP in the selection screen. Maybe this is another name for that?

To be honest with you, I am not sure as to how to create the alpha in paint. Maybe someone else might be able to let you in on that.

In regards to the alpha image itself, it doesn't have to be in the shape of the player. Like you said, you could just have a 256x256 square and have that as your alpha image.

Here is a portrait that I did for my dynasty and you can see that I didn't create the general alpha image. Hence I have that square background.

[Darkslide820]

OK, so now my problem is:

1) Find out how to save something as a grayscale 8-bit BMP

2) Save a white square as such a file because I need an alpha just to have one. It doesn't sound like this alpha thing actually does anything, at least in my situation where I don't care about the background.

Gotcha. Thanks.

[Edit] Since this sounds like an easy step, would anyone feel like making me this? All I want is 2 180x180 squares (1 black, 1 white) and 2 256x256 squares (1 black, 1 white) in the grayscale 8-bit BMP format. If anyone with Photoshop/GIMP feels like taking 3 seconds out of their busy schedule to do this so I can shut up and let this topic die, please let me know and I'll PM you my email address.

Thanks to anyone who does this for me.

[redsox]

You could give the monochrome 8-bit a try and see if that works. If it does then all your problems are solved. Just have some background the size of 256x256 and save it as the 8-bit .bmp. See how that works out for you.

[redsox]

I will do that for you. Just give me couple of minutes.

[redsox]

Hope this helps.

[Darkslide820]

Yeah, I was thinking of giving the monochrome thing a try, but when I thought of that my PC that I have MVP on was off.

I'll try your stuff and hopefully it works.

[Darkslide820]

Thanks a lot! I tried the white 256 square with my 256 size picture and it worked! I didn't try it in-game, but I see me in MVPEdit next to my ratings. However...

I'm pretty sure that you have to do something with the Audio/Photo number. I made my friend in MVPedit and he has the same A/P number as I do (1), so now he has the same picture of me as his portrait. Any idea how to assign a picture to a different number?

[pistonj92]

I have the GIMP and when you open a new image, one of the advanced options is to do it in greyscale.

[Darkslide820]

I got it to work. Almost perfect now. I had to find an Audio/Photo number that was not taken. I used 2 for myself and 7 for my friend. As someone said before, each picture needs its own alpha. I used the same white 256 twice, I just made 2 copies of it and gave them each a unique name.

Our faces come up looking a little skinny. I'll try and figure this one out.

This thread should get stickied so that anyone else trying to figure this out can see all the small steps we touched on.

[kgbaseball]

Take a screenshot so I can see how skinny the faces are and give a fix for them.

[Darkslide820]

OK, I'll try and take a picture with PrintScrn later. I'm not sure how I'll post it, though. Is there some code, like one of these things [stuff][/stuff]?

It's strange because it's supposed to be a BMP sized 256x256 and when I give the game what it wants it screws it up and stretches it all funny.

[Darkslide820]

OK. I figured it out, I think. What I did was I saved a picture from the internet, in this case Christy Mathewson. I opened up the picture of Matty in Paint and I squeezed it so that the vertical was 81% of the horizontal. (I did some math for this number; I'll tell you what if anyone cares) I then cropped it so that it would fit within a 256x256 size area and saved it as a 24-bit BMP. Right now poor Christy ain't lookin' too sharp, but it's OK. I made another copy of the white 256x256 sized alpha file and named it appropriately. I went into MVPedit, clicked on the picture I currently had of Matty, and selected the new flat Matty picture and the new alpha I made. I knew it should work because in MVPedit, the picture of Christy looked stretched horizontally and this is how the pictures that work look for normal players. So I exported the MVPedit to database, loaded up the game, reset the rosters, and checked it out. The picture of Christy Mathewson looks pretty good now. To my overcritical eyes, it still looked just a little bit skinnier than perfect, but it was a lot better than before.

Thanks to everyone that helped out, especially redsox for making me those alpha files.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Saving something as a "Monochrome BMP" in paint is not the same as saving something as "Grayscale 8-bit BMP" in Photoshop or whatever. Therefore you do need one of those programs to make an alpha.

[kgbaseball]

The portraits will definitely look weird if the only step you take to resize them is put them at 256x256 right away. There's a certain way you have to do it so the game stretches it out correctly.

[Darkslide820]

Well, yeah, that's what I said I did. I skewed the picture so the height was 81% what it should have been, and THEN cropped it into a 256x256 square.

I just wish someone told me that first before I started this. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think it said that in the eamods.com link on page 1.

[Darkslide820]

More problems.

I wasn't able to download the file that homer posted in the "MVP edit" thread, so I went and installed the MVP2005 CDs. This was the second time that was installing the game since I have already installed MVP 2007. I was doing this so I could use the unlockable HOFers that were replaced in 2007 for my historic rosters.

Here's where the fun starts. I did what homer told me in copying a team from one database and then importing it into another database. I had opened up the "MVP 2005" database in MVPedit, exported the Legends team, Heroes team, and other HOFers, and then imported them to my "MVP 2007" database in MVPedit. I put them in the free agents list. I then exported this database in the proper manner in the "MVP 2007" folder. When I went and tested it in-game (the 2007 version), things were very screwy. Satchel Paige had a white cyberface with no eyes. Jimmie Foxx had a face on the side of his head. Any portraits that I put in myself (me, my friend, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra on the Yankees) were replaced by that blank silhouette face.

OK, so I go back and open up the 2005 game to see if that's screwed up. It's going fine, with all the HOFers looking normal. So I go back to MVPedit, create myself as a free agent and give myself a portrait and alpha. I again export the database in the right way to the right folder and load up the 2005 version of the game. Again, all the HOFers are still OK, but my portrait is still replaced by the blank face.

This whole thing is really starting to get me frustrated now. Do the picture files have to be in a certain folder? I uninstalled MVP edit and reinstalled it, but it still didn't help.

Thoughts?