DDS Converter and the Battle Academy engine

[Philippe]

This post is probably directed at Jomni, but anyone else who is familiar with the issues involved is strongly encouraged to chime in.

I need a free (and safe) DDS converter that will convert DDS to bitmaps, and then back again.  And if there's another way to do what I'm trying to do, I'd love to know about it.

I bought the Battle Academy games a while back because Bill Peters designed the Metz campaign and I wanted to support him. 

The first thing I noticed was that the flags were terrible.  Not just bad, but verging on vexillological illiteracy. 

The German flag was a fantasy flag, which was to be expected.

But the Italian flag was from the wrong era and missing the coat of arms of the house of Savoy, and the American flag included stars for Hawaii and Alaska which didn't become states until long after the war.

Even my artist girlfriend, who is not interested in such things, can tell the difference at a glance between a 48- and a 50- star American flag.  The modern flag has its stars arranged in a checkerboard pattern, the flag used in WW I and WW II had its stars in straight rows and columns.  This is useful to know if you're doing a critique of a painting by Jasper Johns.

The first things I fixed were the German and Italian flags.

I had (and still have) Photoshop 7, and some kind of DDS converter.

I never finished the mod.  I made two versions of the first of the three American flag images in the game and bought a new computer.

I'd been playing Pike and Shot and becoming increasingly fond of the Battle Academy game engine, when I decided to see about finishing that Battle Academy flag mod.

I'm running Windows 7 Professional.  I'm still using Photoshop 7, but haven't a clue what kind of DDS converter I was using.   

I just downloaded a free one from CNET that does half of what I want it to do very well, but I'm sure there are others out there that go both ways.  I don't want to just look at DDS files, I need to convert them into a format I can work on (usually a bitmap), alter and manipulate the image, and convert it back to DDS again.

My budget is tight and I need to stick to free software, especially since I wasn't planning on making a habit of manipulating DDS files and this may be a one shot deal.

Converting a 50-star flag to a 48-star flag and making the conversion undetectable is going to be tricky, especially since we're not talking about a flat flag image.  Normally when I want to make a waving flag I construct a white waving flag, layer it over (or under) the target flag, and play around with making the different layers more or less transparent.  That won't work here.  I think I'm going to have to build the non-checkerboard starfield by moving most if not all of the stars around and repainting.  A lot of work, but I've done worse. I'm pretty sure the answer is no, and even if it's yes I probably wouldn't want to use it, but are there any templates for waving flags in the BA engine, or am I going to have to do this the old fashioned way?

I'm also curious about how one should go about setting up the Alpha channel in a DDS file.  I don't remember exactly what I did a year ago on my old computer, but I remember having trouble with it until I came up with a workaround (which I've also forgotten because I don't do it very often).  Transparent fields in bitmaps are easy, because anything that's clear in Paint can be set to become transparent.  Making transparent fields in Photoshop 7 is almost as easy,  but this installation of Photoshop 7 doesn't seem to do anything with DDS files.  I'm pretty sure it was never an option, and I really don't want to reinstall Photoshop to confirm that.  I have a neat little program that I use for making desktop icons (Iconsushi).  It's very good with transparent channels, but doesn't work with DDS files. I know I can figure out how I used to do it by poking around a bit, but I was wondering if there were some more efficient trick to it that I should know about.

[jomni]

Here you go.  I use DXTbmp to paint FSX aircraft and my Pike and Shot mod.  ^-^
http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

This is what I do:
1. Open the original dds using dxtbmp. 
2. Save the alpha channel as bmp.   
3. Save the main image dds as bmp. 
4. Work on the image bmp on your image editor.
5. Save the finished bmp (I think only 24bit works, don't try to use 32bit bmp for Battle Academy).
6. Open the edited bmp using dxtbmp.
7. Apply the alpha channel.
8. Save as DDS (DXT5)

[Philippe]

Many thanks.  I didn't recognize the name of that program, but I was staring at the desktop icon and suddenly realized where I'd seen it before: the desktop of my old computer.

I guess now I'll just have to get to it and start painting.

[Boggit]

@Philippe :)
Are you planning to finish the flag mod?

BTW, I'm a great fan of the mods you've done for the John Tiller titles, and I recommend them to all members of Grogheads who play John Tiller games. O0

[Philippe]

Not sure which flag mod you mean, but in all cases the answer is yes.  It's just a question of timing.

The flag mod for Battle Academy is probably at the front of the list now that I've finished my Pike and Shot period music mod. Can't give a time estimate though, because the repaint is going to be fairly tricky.

The Peninsular War Tiller mod will get finished, but I've shelved it until after the next official patch.  I need to update several of the Napoleonic games.  The easy part of those updates is the terrain fix (accomodating the new terrain elevation hexsides).

The Middle East mod is essentially done except for the victory music.  I've got a great sound clip from a really good klezmer band for Israeli victory, and I bought an Umm Kalthoum cd from Italy, but it turns out that it didn't have the song I wanted (which I used to have on an old vinyl record that my brother brought back from Egypt in the '60's).  I'm going to have to scour YouTube to see if I can either find the Umm Kalthoum piece that I remember (and her songs tend to be over a half hour each), or perhaps I can find a Persian New Year's piece that I used to own on a vinyl record that sounds really festive.  If I find what I'm looking for the mod will be released shortly thereafter, but finding it is going to mean hours of listening to Middle Eastern music.  Fortunately I like it (and my next door neighbor plays music until four in the morning next to my bedroom so...).