Vlatitude Archive: Making Decals Last edited 5 years ago2019-04-25 05:59:18 UTC

Decals are images that you can "spray-paint" on walls to...um make a statement. Making decals is extremely easy, so let's get to it.

Definitions of a true decal:

• 64x64 pixels in area
• 8-bit greyscale (no more than 256 colors)
• BMP format
• pixels that are completely black are transparent in the game
• all pixels that are not completely black are colored according to their shade in the game

That's it! There are several ways to go about making a decal. I prefer to start with a 64x64 image in Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. I make the background white, because in my opinion it's easier to draw on white. Then I write, draw, or insert whatever i will in it, resizing the new objects accordingly. After I'm done, I change the image to greyscale, and most importantly: make it a negative (interchange black and white colors). If you start with a black canvas, you don't make your picture negative at the end.

Another way go go about making decals, is to start out with a square canvas (blank drawing field) of any size, draw, write, or insert whatever you want into it, then greyscale it, resize it to 64x64, and if you drew black on white (recommended), make it a negative.

With your picture at 64x64 pixels and a black background (remember, black is transparent when the decal is used in Half-Life), just save your new decal in BMP format in the \logos\ directory of your Half-Life directory. To use decals, go to the multiplayer menu within the game, select customize, and browse through the decals. Then select the color that you like, and get ready to paint on walls!Here is a decal that took me very little time to make, to serve as an example. Warning: It's in GIF format, so don't download the image. If you want the decal, click on it and it'll link to the BMP file. Keep in mind that within Half-Life, decals are much larger than 64x64. To be more specific, the scale of the texture on a given wall determines the size of the decal. Actually, don't keep that in mind, that doesn't affect how you make a decal! Here are the steps taken to make the "logo" decal.

1. I made a 64x64 new image in Paint Shop Pro, and made its background white.
2. I took our logo pic in a separate window, and resized its biggest dimension (heigth) so that I would have space for writing on top.
3. I took the new small logo and pasted it on my 64x64 image.
4. After making the small text, I pasted it over the globe logo.
5. Finally, I flattened all the separate layers into one, made the image greyscale, made it negative, and saved it in my half-life\logos directory in BMP format.