A Plea To All Server Operators
Wither
A Bugged Life Join Date: 2002-12-24 Member: 11513Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation
A Bugged Life Join Date: 2002-12-24 Member: 11513Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Concerning icons</div> With the coming of Beta 5, the NSGuides finally have a new icon. Custom icon support is also in and this will allow server operators to make and use their own icons on their servers. I would like to ask all server operators please not to touch the new Guide icon, since all it will achieve is confusion for new players. The old Guide icon will remain, however, and since it is unused at this time it is free for anyone to use.
Thanks,
Wither
Thanks,
Wither
Comments
But if you people would like to try to figure it out, heres some info:
Icon names can be as long as 32 characters.
To issue an icon to a player:
1. Change thier auth mask to 512 (PLAYERAUTH_CUSTOM).
2. Hook the WRITE_STRING from ns which sends down a string of "0", and change it to the icon name + RGB (000 thru 999).
Here's a quick code snippet to convert a 0-255 RGB color to some number between 000 -> 999:
<!--c1--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->void GetIconColor(int *pOutColor)
{
if(pOutColor)
{
pOutColor[0] = (int) min(this->Red/255 * 9, 9);
pOutColor[1] = (int) min(this->Green/255 * 9, 9);
pOutColor[2] = (int) min(this->Blue/255 * 9, 9);
}
}<!--c2--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
The client will then display the icon with your specified color, to use a colored icon I recomend that you send down the color white (999).
Icons must be placed into the "gfx/vgui" folder, in order to send them down to the clients you'll need to do a PRECACHE_GENERIC on them.
To make an icon, make a 16x16 TGA image and put it in the gfx/vgui folder.
The icon names must look something like this:
640_voogru_donator.tga
When you send down a WRITE_STRING, it would look something like this:
<!--c1--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->WRITE_STRING("voogru_donator999");<!--c2--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
Thank you <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Thanks,
Wither <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sounds like your like your icon. lol
Selfish!
hah
I've updated my version of the <a href='http://www.modns.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=168' target='_blank'>AMX Icon plugin</a>, and I've removed support for giving players all standard icons (with the exception of server operator). There are ways around it, but I'm hoping nobody will do it.
As an attempt to offshoot people from reverting to going around my "block" on these icons, I've provided a few icons converted from these forum's emotes. The skulk, gorge, onos, lerk, turret and hive were provided.
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
sawce, thanks a lot <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
It's horrible, but some people have no decency.
PS: Hopesfall is the win.
if somebody actually TOLD me how to make one, im sure people using these icons would be cut down dramatically.
If you don't know how to do this, then read a tutorial from photochop or something.
If you don't know how to do this, then read a tutorial from photochop or something. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I thought it was that easy, but when I make them they just don't show up at all. How do we do transparency, fill the background with white - or black? Compressed or non compressed, what resolution (bits/pixel), and I'm guessing something needs to be done about the alpha channel, what do I do there? A guide for this all would be nice if anyone wants to put one together.
edit: I believe I got it working but if you don't make a pixel perfect alpha channel it looks ugly, this is pretty tedious doing it the way I am (magic wand).
The current system isn't easy, alot of serverops will not know how to do it correctly. The only way to preserve your icons is to make it easy for a serverop to make/import these icons. This maybe through a special program or a clear, simple and easy to follow guide.
You cant tell people to not to do something when they have no idea how to do it any other way.
Not easily. The old icon plugins worked by intercepting a message telling the clients who had what icon. Short of adding some type of checksum, it wont happen.
Then I know another way around it, if that happened.. but I'll wait until later to post that <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Here we go. (This is for photoshop)
Ok, make a new image 16x16 rgb color with a black background
Draw your icon in white with varying degrees of opacity if you wish..
Select only the artwork you just made , Go to your Layers windows and click channels
Click Save channel as selection. This will make an alpha channel. Whatever is white in this channel will show up in game and whatever is black in this channel will be transparent.
Now comes saving the file.. go to file > save as, and save it as a tga file with alpha transparency checked off.
A box will pop up, this is the important part.
Save it as 32bit and check off compress RLE
That's great and all, but I don't think that answers the question that was asked, which was HOW do server operators enable custom icons on their server? Where do they store them? What do they have to be named?
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's explained in the amx plugin's config file. If a metamod version is created also i'm sure it will also be explained there.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->How do they get their own server op icon (the one that hasn't worked in ANY 3.0 beta) to work without a metamod plugin?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They don't.
Thanks,
Wither<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm sorry, but the post above makes it look like they fixed the icon. If it's only available from a plugin, then why the "NOTE TO <b>ALL</b> server operators"?
Perhaps, but this particular plugin was causing my server to crash regularly.
PF_WriteString_I
Called with no active message
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
When I attempt to save as a tga file, all Save Options are greyed out.
Consequently I cannot select alpha transparency (it's not even a greyed out option) and my black areas are not transparent in the finish product. What is causing this?
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When I attempt to save as a tga file, all Save Options are greyed out.
Consequently I cannot select alpha transparency (it's not even a greyed out option) and my black areas are not transparent in the finish product. What is causing this?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I was actually playing around with icons last night, trying to follow his instructions. What works better than his instructions is this: Create a new image, transparent. Paint your image in greyscale (this assumes you're not doing a fancy colored icon. I assume you would just paint in different shades of the color you want, but I haven't tried it). The darker areas will be a darker version of the color you assign in icons.conf, the lighter areas will be lighter, and the transparent areas will be transparent.
When you save, save it as a copy. It'll automatically uncheck the layers box, but that's okay.
<img src='http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~hunsley/img/bolt.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
<img src='http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~hunsley/img/bolt-ingame.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
When you save, save it as a copy. It'll automatically uncheck the layers box, but that's okay.
<!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll give this a shot later. My next question was how to create these in color.
There's now a metamod version of the plugin available. I wasn't planning on doing a MM version, but it doesn't seem like the original metamod icons plugin author had the time to update his, so I decided to give it a shot.
It's configuration is very similar to the AMX version's, and it supports giving admin mod admins access-based icons, similar to how ServerOps did. But note it's not an updated Server Ops, it's configuration is entirely different than that of ServerOps.
The metamod version is available here: <a href='http://www.modns.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=901' target='_blank'>http://www.modns.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=901</a>
Any and all bugs related to these admin icons plugins please report in their appropriate forums (The metamod version listed above, AMX and AMXx 0.16 version <a href='http://www.modns.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=168' target='_blank'>here</a> and AMXx 0.20 version <a href='http://www.amxmodx.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6010' target='_blank'>here</a>) and I'll try my best to help.
If anybody would like to create any icons available for inclusion with the standard packages, email them to me (stevedude@gmail.com) and I'll include them, with proper credit, of course.
Lastly, while I did add certain blocks for assigning standard icons, some server operators felt the need to get around it to assign themselves and others developer, guide, etc icons. To you, I say **** you.
I guess that is the downside of having open source software.