Good RLE programs?

@guy, on Sep 27 2007, 07:05 PM, said in Good RLE programs?:

It would be great if it could just treat all grey pixels as white.

That seems reasonable — the current version treats anything below 0.25 Value as transparent.

@mumbling-psycho, on Sep 27 2007, 07:09 PM, said in Good RLE programs?:

It would be crazy cool if it could treat all non-black pixels as white. Then it would be great if they did the same for EVNEW Then I would hardly ever have to create a mask file, except for those that have pure black pixels.

Auto-generate masks from the sprite, you mean? I don’t think that’s a good idea, as it would encourage people to make RLEs without understanding the format; if you really want to do this, you can create your mask very easily with a graphics editor.

Here’s the new behaviour I’ve developed: Everything that isn’t perfectly white is treated as black. If the image you supplied contains any pixels which are neither black nor white, a warning message is displayed; if you supply a greyscale (or colour) image with contents that are perfectly black-and-white, it doesn’t complain.

Sounds good, though I still think it should treat grey as white. If the supplied image isn't completely black and white then it will likely be an 8-bit mask, in which case you would want all the grey pixels to be white. Otherwise the user has to manually select all the black out of the image themselves, which is tricky for ships with 'holes'. I just don't see why you would ever prefer grey pixels to be treated as black.

@guy, on Sep 29 2007, 07:31 PM, said in Good RLE programs?:

If the supplied image isn't completely black and white then it will likely be an 8-bit mask, in which case you would want all the grey pixels to be white.

I suppose so — I’ll swap this around.

I'm not going to pretend that I know the first thing about programming, but could you have a toggle option to go between the two?

Heh, I nearly suggested that. But then I thought, as I said above, why you would ever prefer grey pixels to be treated as black?

@archon, on Sep 30 2007, 05:49 PM, said in Good RLE programs?:

I'm not going to pretend that I know the first thing about programming, but could you have a toggle option to go between the two?

This is too trivial a choice to be user-configurable — that path leads to the monstrosity that is Linux. Besides, properly you ought to supply a black and white mask anyway, so there’s no need to allow such fine control over what happens if you supply incorrect materials.

@david-arthur, on Oct 3 2007, 06:48 PM, said in Good RLE programs?:

This is too trivial a choice to be user-configurable — that path leads to the monstrosity that is Linux. Besides, properly you ought to supply a black and white mask anyway, so there’s no need to allow such fine control over what happens if you supply incorrect materials.

Me at McDonalds: "C'mon! Wadda you mean you don't accept euros?! There should be a toggle button on that cash register if we don't have the right kind of cash!"