NiceSlice v0.5 (Slice60 replacement)

[Gamer121]

This should be usable on MTM2, and my original post about it disappeared with the forums. It's available in the downloads section of www.4x4evolution.com, oddly enough I used a fax viewer as the basis for this. While the color accuracy isn't as good as slice60, it does offer much more in terms of flexibility.

What it does:
-Slices tiles into multiple sizes (64, 128, 256)
-Can output to multiple formats (RAW/ACT, BMP, TIF, jpg, GIF)
-Outputs in 8 or 24-bit color
-Applies needed padding (detail area is 60,120,240)

[Phineus]

I'm interested in this for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, however, I do not have .NET on my computer and probably never will. Anyway, a couple thoughts for you.

The single most important development of evo over mtm2 is the elimination of the track palette. If the mtm2 track palette was not restricted to a single 256 color palette the game would be infinitely better, but such was the technology at the time it was created. Having said that, finding ways to make things work in mtm2 in ways it was never designed for has always been a fun challenge. So.......

For MTM2 tracks, one way to improve output quality - in terms of in-game color anyway - is to take the original template/image and decrease it to 8-bit color. Next save the palette. Then undo the color reduction. Finally, load the saved color palette into your image thereby reducing it to 8-bit once again - using nearest color matching to apply the palette. What you are left with is an image that uses fewer overall colors and it will render more favorably to the palette restriction MTM2 uses. Slice that image for use in the game.

Depending on your template color-scheme, sometimes it's helpful to plant colors that are not dominant in your layout. For example, I often loaded a bigfoot texture onto the image to be sliced for the sake of getting blue into the track palette, then just not place it into the terrain. This would permit the trucks to be displayed more properly.

If I can free up a bit more time, I'll try and come back and add to this topic.

[Kmaster]

I have always used Traxx image slicing tool, not sure if it's the best tool (probably not, palette wise, im not sure) but it really helps me dealing with the 2 pixel overlap

[Gamer121]

Forgot about the fact mtm2 uses a single ACT file, does make this rather useless. I need to release the source to it at some point, I'll see about adding mtm2 color pallette support if I get around to working on overhauling the color accuracy.

[Phineus]

The Traxx image slicer is excellent. Bill was a palette master. The only short-coming, if you can call it that, is that the outside edges were not adjusted for the overlap.


That said, a new slicer would not be a waste of time. The process I described above deals with the limitation nicely since tiles are identical once the ad hoc palette has been applied to the overall image.