Mutant Smoke Trails

I bet it makes you wonder.

Ok, while messing with EVNEW and paint, I tried making smoke trails. After much screwing up, I came to the conclusion that they need to be 16 colors bmp files and B&W bmp for the masks. So far so good. Finally got to make pictures that EVNEW would take and imported them.

Now, somehow, as long as I don't close the file, I can re-open the cicn resource and everything seems fine. Now, when I launch the game, or re-open the file, my icons' shape goes squishy ugly, pretty much squished to a 1 pixel height and widened, but the masks remain correct. What's up with that? What'd I do wrong? Wrong file type or something? Bug with EVNEW?

Note : after exporting one of EVO's smoke trail, I found the format to be palleted bmp. Paint can't seem to save in that format, but EVNEW takes the 16 colors bmp and nothing else I tried.

I can't seem to recreate the problem. Perhaps some screenies might help in my diagnosis. I did notice an unusual amount of crashing trying to load images into the cicn resource. I'll have to try it some more.

With pleasure. Here's example one. Which remains like this as long as I don't close the .rez file:
Attached File SoFaSoGood.PNG (5.27K)
Number of downloads: 27
Then after saving, closing and reopening:
Attached File SoFarNotSoGoodAnymore.PNG (5.32K)
Number of downloads: 24

Like I said in the original post, the mask seems to remain fine. The icon, however, as a 16 colors bmp looks like it hated its life and jumped from a skyscraper, even though EVNEW uploads it successfully, even after closing the cicn window and re-opening it ( which did show changes with faulty RLEs ) without closing the entire .rez, it remains fine. As soon as I close the file, splat.

After quite a bit of trial and error testing I think I found the problem. Apparently EVNEW does not like icons and iconmasks with odd number dimensions (16X16 worked fine but 17X17 (like yours) messed up.) Also I found an interesting bug. EVNEW does not like it when you try to re-import icons and masks and crashes if you try it (at least it does for me anyway.) To re-import an icon you have to delete the current cicn resource and start over from scratch.

Starting over from scratch isn't painful at all for smoke trails. All it takes is a few clicks. None if you like your keyboard a lot. I'll try making it an "even" size and see if it splatters all over or not. Too bad it means I can't make them perfectly centered down to the pixel.

I'll edit if I get further issues. Thanks!