DOD Sprays - Do It Yourself

DOD Sprays - Do It Yourself

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Overview:

Let me start by saying that I'm not a graphic artist. I'm more along the lines of being a graphic "mechanic" or "manipulator". I mostly use existing digital image resources and modify them to be used in my sprays. I also believe strongly in keeping it "simple". I avoid most of the bells & whistles of graphic software and attempt to get the job done in the most expedient manner possible while keeping "quality of work" as my first goal. With this in mind these instructions will be an attempt to show you how to create a spray for Day of Defeat (DOD) only. If these techniques work for other Valve games, such as Counter-Strike and Half-Life, then so much the better.

The bottom line is ... to create a WAD file to be used as a personalized DOD sprayable logo (spray) . A WAD file is a collection of game images. It's like a ZIP file that contains nothing but images of varying types for the game to use.

Tools:

In order to create this WAD you will need some basic tools ...

A paint program, such as Paint Shop Pro, PhotoImpact, Photoshop, etc., which will be used to create a totally original image or to modify a pre-existing one.

Wally, the best conversion program around, which will convert your graphic image to the needed WAD format.

Download Wally by clicking here ...

Note: I use PhotoImpact as my paint program, and Wally as my preferred conversion program. Yes, I have tried DecalConverter, but Wally, in my opinion, is the better conversion program. Accordingly, these instructions will be geared to those software choices.

Image Rules:

Width and height dimensions must be evenly divisible by 16.

The multiplication of width*height must not exceed 10752 pixels (Wally requirement).

All color pixels corresponding to pure blue ("R:0, G:0, B:255" or "#0000ff") will be transparent.

The last color of the indexed color pallet (#255) must be pure blue ("R:0, G:0, B:255" or "#0000ff"). Note: This requirement is taken care of automatically in Wally as long as you use its Half-Life Color Decal Wizard.

Here's a table of possible spray size choices that you can use:

pixels 16 32 48 64 80 96 112 128 144 160 176 192 200 224 240 256

16 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

32 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

48 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no

64 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no

80 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no

96 yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no

112 yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no

128 yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no

144 yes yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no

160 yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no

176 yes yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no

192 yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no no

200 yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no no

224 yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no no

240 yes yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no no

256 yes yes no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Let's Get Started ...

Image Creation:

Since I have no idea what paint program you will be using I will not focus on that topic in detail. However, I will pass along some "universal" tips that should be of some help.

Tip 1. Start by creating a folder in your root directory for your spray creations. I named my folder "C:\DOD Sprays". In this folder create sub-folders for each unique spray.

Tip 2. Keep image selections and creations as simple as possible by avoiding complicated image textures and backgrounds.

Tip 3. If using an already available image make sure it's of good quality with minimal "noise" and a "sharp" overall appearance.

Tip 4. Use the "high color" graphics mode (usually 24 bit) of your graphics software when creating or modifying an image.

Tip 5. When reducing image sizes to fit into your spray size choice try to resize your original image in 50% reduction increments. Before performing each successive reduction step first sharpen (focus) your image. This may, or may not help, but it's worth a try. The final resizing step, if the 50% does not work exactly, can be done in something other than 50%.

Tip 6. Make sure you "layer" your image (text and image) and save the "working" copy in the editable native format of your paint program. This makes future changes a snap, such as changing clan and player names.

Tip 7. Save your final spray image, as a BMP file, to your previously created spray folder.

Tip 8. Never save your spray images as a JPG file, it screws up the image's color and texture detail quality.

Tip 9. Wally, the WAD conversion program, will "lighten" your original image during the conversion process. Therefore you may want to "darken" it a small amount as the last step before saving it. Note: It will take some experimentation to determine the best overall brightness & contrast settings.

Image Conversion:

Wally is actually a very capable multi-function program. However, I do not recommend using its paint and image editing features, this function should be performed externally in your more advanced paint program. Wally will only be used to perform the image-to-WAD conversion in the spray creation process.

Start Wally, click on "Wizard", then click on "HL Color Decal"

Click the "File on hard drive:" button.

Select the spray folder you previously created and click "Open". Then select your spray sub-folder (if you created one) and click "Open".

Now select your spray BMP file and click "Open".

When presented with the next screen click on "OK".

When presented with the next screen click on "File" and then "Save as".

Now type "tempdecal" in the "File name" entry box and click "Save".

You have now completed the WAD creation process. All that's needed now is to write protect this file and then copy it to your DOD directory. Click here for these instructions.

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