Updated

Now that we're done with the episode titles, we have to deal with the little status graphics that pop up in the corners during attack animations. They look like this in their native form, and there are 30 in total:

We're unable to diverge from the source image in either color palette or dimensions, so I opted to recreate the gradient by hand, followed by drawing the letters manually and merging everything together to end up with the following:

I can't help but feel that I'm doing this in the most time-consuming and potentially inconsistent manner possible, and with a fairly ugly font, to boot.

I guess what I'm wondering is: is there an easier way of doing this that doesn't require the hand-drawing of an entire font? A more attractive font would also be nice, but that's probably something I'll just have to experiment with on my own. I'm totally open to any suggestions you guys may have, though.

Basically, don’t let blue into the picture.

The Japanese version has a very thin outline. I’m not entirely sure they didn’t just make it as white text on a black background then set black to the alpha color.

The real issue here is indeed that you don't use a transparent background so when you flatten the image, the colors will get mixed because of anti-aliasing. Transparency will have a color associated with it, even if you don't see it and even if the same color is used on the actual image. It shouldn't matter as long as you insert it properly so the same color index is the 0th index for the gba palette.

EDIT: Ok, it took me a while, partly because I'm artistically retarded.



Basically, I used GIMP for all of it.

• Create a new image with transparency and fill with transparency
• Write your text onto a text layer
• Create Path from text
• Do whatever you need to that to be an outline and fill it with solid black
• Chose appropriate background color
• Flatten image
• Change mode to indexed and reduce to 16 colors without dithering

The text above looks somewhat greyish/blurry because I had text hinting on off. I didn't like it without hinting, but it will make those greyish colors go away. I accidentally turned it off.

cYa,

Tauwasser

I already said I'm artistically challenged... I turned hinting off, but then I Ctrl+Z'd it back while experimenting. So yes, this is without hinting.

cYa,

Tauwasser

umm....not to sound like an idiot but shouldn't the title say episode 2? or was the example picture of the japanese episode card just an example?

It's not really a bad thing, y'know? Like, when you're the whiny kid whose school gets demolished by an awesome robot, your initial thought is "that sucked," but then a couple weeks later you're like what the hell was I thinking man (this is coincidentally what happens in the game)

It's that kind of "Calamity."

Also thanks a lot for all the ideas, guys! We're uh, still trying stuff out.

Awesome. Thanks a lot for the help, guys! The transparency suggestion worked like a charm.

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October 07, 2009, 08:34:32 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

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Bump for changes to the first post.

Go easy on me, okay :<