Devona's Guide

[JohnRN1]

Hello Fern,

I downloaded some icon backgrounds I like. Am ready to put my croc on one.

Did you mean for me to redo the croc too?

--JohnRN1--

[fern]

No We will use zoot to fix your croc. But we will also use Ape but your finished croc will not be going near Ape.
Have I confused you yet.
If you do not have Zoot, you can get it from the Designer Guild or Zoo Admin.
Do you know how to use Zoot?

[JohnRN1]

No, I haven't used it

[fern]

Create a folder somewhere safe and call it FreshiecrocbyJT. Extract the "animals" from your ztd into this folder.
In the middle of eating dinner. Back soon

[fern]

Read and follow the instructions from Here only use your FreshiecrocbyJT as the focus. Open animals, click on the + beside the "m" folder, click on the + beside "stand". click on the blue/green patterned square beside "e" This looks like the position used by the ingame croc for their icon. Have a look at the other directions just to get familiar with them anyway.
Ohh goodie there is only one frame which makes this easier.
To see how many frames are in a direction, you would use the "Edit the currently selected image" button. Check "shake" and you see 16 frames that make up the animation. Anyway we only want one.
So back to "stand" and "e".......click the save file image next to the blue "?" button.
It will bring up a "save as" screen. name it what you like as this is just a starting point.

m = male
e = east

You now have a nice but large image of your croc.
Next start Ape > Create new project > Scenery. Choose the bighorn statue and click Create. Click Icons_Images button. In the top row (Icons) click the first folder image, locate your croc image and click open. You should now see your croc in that first frame. Now just click "manage" and save this file. I usually just label it icon since that is all it is for and will be discarded later. So now you have a "icon.ztd" Open it and extact Objects into your croc folder. Reopen or Refresh Zoot in this folder and look in the obects folder and find "ne". Open this and there is your resized croc suitable for an icon. Save this image using zoot. You could use this image as is. Many user made animals are like this. Others like me like to put my icons on backgrounds.
Normally this would be done once the icon is completely done but so as you can see this so far.....
To replace your icon with this you use zoot.
Now I am used to doing this with scenery, so if I get this wrong I am sure Jay will correct me.
It looks like the icon is required in 2 places - lsmswcro and icswcroc
Open one of them and click on the "n" to bring up the image. Click on "Edit the currently selected image" button. Click "Add frame". Find your image and click open. Then click on your old icon and click the "Delete Frame" button. click the save to file and close window button at the bottom.

Now as to placing your resized croc onto a background I will have to leave that for tomorrow. It is late night here and I am coughing more than I would like which does not make for logical thinking. Maybe Jay will cover this part, as he knows how to do this using Gimp and zoot. now it might help if you let him/us know which back ground you have chosen from what pack by who. Part of this is most icons that are out there are not quite the right size.

[fern]

several edits into above post

[JohnRN1]

Hi Fern,

I followed your instructions on the icon croc (of course, they were perfect), and I had no trouble in making a new icon.
I have tried out Gimp, but don't know how to get the croc into the new background.
--JohnRN1--

PS-Hope your coughing has subsided and your feeling better.

[Jay]

Here are instructions on how to use GIMP to put an image on a background icon. If I remember correctly, APE creates icons that are 44x35 pixels. But ingame purchase menu icons are actually 44x32 pixels, so that is the size I use for my purchase menu icons. I also assume that the icon background you chose is using a different color pixel in the top left corner than used anywhere else. We usually set that pixel to a type of pink.

1. In GIMP, click File->Open and open the image you want to put on the background icon.
2. If the image does not have a background of its own, go to the next step. Otherwise the background needs to be cleared. To do so, click Tools->Selection Tools->By Color Select. In the Toolbox window, there is a Threshold setting. Set it to 0. Then click somewhere in the background of the image. The background will now be selected. Click Edit->Clear to clear the background. Click Select->None to get rid of the selection lines.
3. The next step is to remove unnecessary space around the image. To do this, click Image->Autocrop Image.
4. I leave a 2 pixel border around the image on the icon. Since I use an icon size of 44x32, that means I do not want the image to be any larger than 40x28. If my image is larger than this, I resize by clicking Image->Scale Image. Then I use the arrows next to Width and Height to set the size so that the width is no larger than 40 and the height is no larger than 28. There is a little chain link next to these numbers. That means when 1 of the numbers change, the other will change automatically so that the image will still keep the same shape. For Interpolation, I usually use Cubic, but sometimes I have to experiment if the image has thin lines that I want to see. When ready, click Scale.
5. If some thin lines were eliminated, such as legs of an observation area, I might need to edit the image at this point to add them. Hopefully, you will not need to.
6. Click Edit->Copy.
7. Click File->Open and open the background icon.
8. In the icon window, click Edit->Paste Into. Then click outside the icon area to say the paste is done.
9. The number of colors needs to be no more than 255. To have GIMP pick the optimum set of colors, click Image->Mode->Indexed. The "Generate optimum palette" should already be set with 255 colors. Set Color dithering to None and click Convert. Click Image->Mode->RGB to put the image in RGB format, which tends to work better with programs like Zoot.
10. Save the icon by clicking File->Save As in the icon window. Type in a new name for the icon. Make sure the name ends with ".png". Click Save, which you might have to do twice to get the "Save as PNG" window to appear. The only boxes with checkmarks should be "Save background color", "Save resolution", and "Save color values from transparent pixels". The Compression level should be set to 9. Click Save.
11. The GIMP windows can now be closed.
12. Zoot can be used to load the icon. You would select the ZT image file where you want to load it, click the "Edit the currently selected image" button, click "Add Frame" to load the new icon, click the old icon image, click "Delete Frame" to delete the old icon image, and click "Save to file and close window". You might need to use the "Adjust positions" button to make sure the icon is centered. For animals where the male and female look alike, there are 2 icons. .../ic.../n is the icon for the purchase menu. .../ls.../n is the icon for the animal list.

[JohnRN1]

Thanks Jay, I will go back over the Freshie croc icon because in the game and in Zoot it shows up with the usual black background, but the croc icon has a pink background around the croc,

I did another another of my uca's, and it came out perfect. So, I guess I must have done something wrong there with the croc. I should be able to correct it, and then I'll work on your instructions for Gimp.

Thank you,

--JohnRN1--

PS- I really want to get this right as I really like ZTCC.

[fern]

I am glad you were able to follow my instructions.
I asked Jay to do the background instructions because I tend to use a combination of Gimp and a very old version of PSP which came with a magazine as a promo for a later version. Current versions of PSP (Paint Shop Pro) are not cheap.

I tend to get a bad throat in winter. A few years back I ended up voiceless for over a month. It was frustrating.

Now here is a thought for you. DG has the base graphics for info signs like Genki, Sundance and Toodlepops did for all the official animals. Now, you could do a sign for your croc...... Or you could do a statue for outside the exhibit. I think ZA has statue bases. I would suggest checking out genki's animal garden statues for inspiration.

[fern]

I did another another of my uca's, and it came out perfect. So, I guess I must have done something wrong there with the croc. I should be able to correct it, and then I'll work on your instructions for Gimp.
--JohnRN1--

My fault I forgot to tell you to put the same colour pink pixel in the top left corner. The game ignores the colour in that corner pixel.

[Jay]

I will go back over the Freshie croc icon because in the game and in Zoot it shows up with the usual black background,  but the croc icon has a pink background around the croc

That is a common problem and why I mentioned in my previous post that the top left pixel has to be a different color than any other color in the image. ZT, Zoot, and APE assume that the top left pixel color is the color to make invisible. So if the top left pixel is the same color as the rest of your background, your entire background becomes invisible.

[Jay]

I see fern and I answered at the same time. As you can see, the answers are similar. But with a pink background in your icon, you do not want pink in the top left pixel.

[JohnRN1]

Maybe I'm confused, but the main background is black. There is a small rectangular area in the middle of the icon background. This is a pink area and the croc is in this pick triangular area.

Do I make the top left corner of the entire background pink or just the top left corner of the pink triangular area?

--JohnRN1--

[JohnRN1]

Well, didn't say that right. Do I just make the top right corner of the black area pink, and that will get rid of the pink area around the croc?