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How to do colour logos! (important parts coloured in red, information coloured in gold)

(Texture SDK)

Okay This is it.. The tutorial to making your own coloured spraypaint logo! What you need:

A) A program to edit a .bmp file (Photoshop, acdiecie and my personal favorite: Paint shop pro) DON'T edit in MS Paint!! If you do, your spraypaint won't work!! If you only have MS Paint and no other program installed, I suggest you d/l paint shop pro, check www.download.com.

B) Half-life texture SDK. This program will make a .WAD out of your .BMP. You need the .WAD to spray logo's. The file is pretty small and can be downloaded above.

Half-Life's textures are 256-color (8-bits) pictures, which are saved in a so-called Wad3 file. A .WAD file is just a picture that can be opened by Half-life. Spraypaint pictures are also saved in a WAD file. Okay.. got that? You probably know what happens with normal spraypaints.. Half-Life normally takes a greyscale BMP picture from the Logos Directory, gives it just one color, and puts the result in a file called PLDECAL.WAD. What does the PLDECAL.WAD do? When you connect to a server this PLDECAL.WAD is being uploaded to the server. Other players download it, so they also see your logo's What we are gonna do now is make a PLDECAL.WAD that has colours in it and is bigger than the plain logo's. Making the logo: You start with making or getting a 256 colour (8 bit) .BMP image. Be sure that the image doesn't have more colours than 256, and if so, decrease them with paint shop pro (colors tab - decrease colordepth), please note that sometimes the pure blue can change to black in this process, if it does, then increase the colour depth back to 16 million, put another blue blob in (0 0 255) then re-convert back down to 256 colours. The .BMP's resolution must at least 16x16. The resolution can be in steps of 16 at a time. so 16x32 is valid. and so is 80x112. but 60x50 isnt devisible by 16, and is invalid Make sure the .BMP is between of these resolutions:

If you still want to try other resolutions: the maximum pixelcount is 12288. meaning 112x112=12544 pixels (exceeds 12288 so its invalid) 112x96=10752 is valid Another important point: At least one pixel in pure blue (Thats html code #0000FF or in RGB R:0 G:0 B:25) Why is this such a big issue? well Half-life uses pure blue for transparant stuff. Meaning that everything in pure blue is transparant and won't be seen in-game. If you forget to do this, the spray will turn out to be in black n white. Check: Your .BMP is: 256 colour (8 bit) has a maximum pixelcount of 12288. and the height and width must be divisble by 16 has one or more pixels in pure blue (html #0000FF or RGB 0 0 255) when your .BMP is done save it as: {LOGO.BMP (This is just a temporary directory, so you can save it anywhere) Note the { in the {LOGO.BMP, this tells the Half-life texture SDK that the .BMP has transparant pixels in it. If you forget this, the logo's will be in black n white. Okay... now its time to download the Half-life texture SDK from the file section if you haven't done that yet. Unzip the files in any directory. The folder in which you unzipped the files, now contains a folder named LOGO. Move the {LOGO.BMP into the LOGO directory. (making sure that only ONE file is in that folder at a time) Now execute the MAKEWAD.EXE file. You will see that 2 files will be created: PLDECAL.LS and PLDECAL.WAD. If the PLDECAL.LS is created, but not the PLDECAL.WAD, then you should run the check list for .BMP images again. make sure that it has 256 colours (8 bit) one or more pixels pure blue and the resolution is divisible by 16.
If all went okay, you've got your PLDECAL.LS and PLDECAL.WAD. We need the PLDECAL.WAD for the logo's. copy the PLDECAL.WAD to:

C:\SIERRA\HALFLIFE\VALVE\ (default directory) for spraypaint under Halflife.

C:\SIERRA\HALFLIFE\CSTRIKE\ (default directory) for spraypaint under Counterstrike.

C:\SIERRA\HALFLIFE\TFC\ (default directory) for spraypaint under Team fortress.

You do not have to do anything with the PLDECAL.LS file.

Alternatively, put it in whatever other MOD's map to get your spraypaint. Now start playing. The default key to make a spraypaint ingame is T. Face a wall or floor and press the T key. You will see your spraypaint. If you DON'T see it, don't start to panic. The file had to be uploaded to the server, this may take one or two rounds.

Thanks to spraypainterz.cjb.net for the tutorial, used here without permissionand and slighly modified.