Making the [furryclan] uniform

Creating the bitmaps

This image is SWT_LEGS2.bmp, the default legs texture file. The top half of the image is mapped to the character's left leg and the bottom half is mapped to the right leg.

How do we know that the top half of the image is mapped to the character's left leg? Simple. I filled half the image in green and looked at the resulting character in the game. It was then a simple case of matching the green parts in the texture file to the green parts in the model.

The [furryclan] uniform is an all-white affair, so we took this image and applied a few colour adjustments to it in Photoshop. Then we added the barcode to the left leg. Using the code3xr font, we created a logo for each member. plus the generic [furryclan] logo for the guest skin. We then rotated this logo and pasted it over the top of the legs. The result is shown below:

in-game

We also made new leg textures for each member individually and named them SWT_fcl01.bmp, SWT_fcl02.bmp etc etc. Don't forget that you need to make a file for each entry you changed in the .gsm.

If you're feeling observant you might notice that the textures on the legs look a little "squashed." This is because the game engine expands textures when it maps them on to a model. If you don't want your artwork to look distorted in the game (it will appear elongated) you need to halve the height of the image you are going to paste over the leg before applying it. Remember to keep the width the same.

A good example of what I'm talking about can be seen in the textures we applied to [_DoNutz_]'s trouser leg. He asked for a "Don't drink and drive" logo to be patched on to his uniform. As you can see here, I squished the circular logo to half-height. In the game, it behaves like something out of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. It looks round.

The other textures

We used the same colour adjustments tricks to modify the SWT_PARTS and SWT_HELMET files, which we renamed to SWT_fcpXX and SWT_fcheXX. I don't feel that they are particularly worthy of mention.

The most interesting part of the [furryclan] uniform is probably the unique vest for every member. The vest is actually a standard vest from one of the male_swat models, coloured white and with a few enhancements. Firstly there's a flag at the front centre of the vest and secondly the member's individual logo at the back. Here's how we made them.

First we take the standard vest and attach a small flag to the front. Each member of [furryclan] has his country flag proudly displayed on his chest.

Looking at this picture, which I've scaled down by 50%, you should already be thinking about how the vest texture gets mapped on to the officer model. If the flag is bang smack in the middle at the front, that must mean that the far right and far left wrap around to meet bang smack in the middle at the back. With this in mind, let's see how we go about mapping a logo on to the back.

The next step, obviously, is to grab a logo from somewhere. Maybe you would cut it out of an existing image. Maybe you can draw it yourself. No matter. The important thing is that you scale it so that the logo is at most 130 pixels high and probably at most 140 wide. We found that even at that size the logo can look a bit silly on the back of the vest.

For [predaeus]'s wolf image

Make a copy of the wolf and select the lefthand side of the image. The picture was 118 pixels across so I made a selection that was 59 pixels wide.
Paste the left side of the wolf picture on to the vest.
Invert the selection on the wolf and paste the righthand side into the vest image. Then move the righthand side of the wolf's face to the LEFT of the vest and the lefthand side of the face to the RIGHT of the vest. The reason I pasted both parts in and then moved them is so I could line up the two sides vertically before moving them. It would have been too hard to line them up at opposite ends of the image but the effect would have been to ruin the texture in the game.
Finally, move the two parts of the image down. In Photoshop you can merge the two layers and shove them both down at once. Other paint packages can probably do the same thing. You'll have to experiment a bit to find out at which height in the image the logo works best. One more thing I needed to do here was replace the Canadian flag I'd started with (from [lakmethemud]'s uniform) with an Austrian one for [predaeus].

The clan insignia

If you cast your mind back to when we were hacking the .gsm files, you will recall we renamed SWAT_Name.bmp to SWAT_fc_N.bmp. The SWAT_Name bitmap, if it exists, is dumped on top of the character's rear vest. The officer's callsign is then placed on top of the name bitmap. The format of this image is fairly restrictive, depending on the model you use. For the Assaulter model which we are modifying in this case, it pretty much MUST be 128x64. The Operator model and some others use a smaller logo image that would not be large enough to use for a logo such as ours. In any event, each of your logo's dimensions must be a multiple of two pixels. Break this rule and it will not be loaded in the game.

The black area at the top of the insignia is 22 pixels high. This is plenty of room to fit most players' callsigns in. People with very long names might see their nick "wordwrapped."

The reason we renamed this image is simple. We didn't want officers who weren't wearing the [furryclan] uniform to have [furryclan] on their backs. It would be intrusive to other mods.

On to part four: The DEBRIEF_UI and DEF_UI pictures.

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