Can't get custom item description BAMs to display in BGEE

prophet1

They show up correctly in vanilla BG2, but in BGEE nothing is displayed when item description screen opens. Is this a known issue with engine currently, or am I doing something wrong or not doing something I should?

prophet1

Solved it.

Details for anyone interested:

Turns out EE now looks for BMP description image with alpha channel, rather than BAM. So if your item references P#BLABLA as their description image resref, you now need to have P#BLABLA.bmp in override.

Here's how to create an alpha-channeled BMP in Photoshop CS6 (which is what I use):

- If you already have a description image BMP file, go right to the next step. But if you no longer have the original BMP file, and only have the BAM, you need to convert it back to BMP first. This can be done using Miloch's BAMBatcher (http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/837-bam-batcher/). DLTCEP or BAM Workshop should also in theory be able to do it, but my test with the former didn't go too well when I tried.
- Open the BMP in PS.
- Change mode from Indexed Color to RGB color, if necessary
- Use the "Magic Wand" tool to select all areas with the "transparency" color in your image (normally this should be full RGB green, 0-255-0).
- Inverse selection (Shift+Ctrl+I).
- On the right hand editing panel, switch from the "Layers" tab to the "Channels" tab.
--> This should display a list of 4 channels: RGB, Red, Green, Blue.
- In the tiny toolbar at the bottom of the same editing panel, use "Save selection as channel" button.
--> This should add a new channel to the list: Alpha 1.
- Click the "eye" icon next to the new channel to display it.
- Now you just need to save the BMP in a proper format.
Goto File->Save As... and make sure the "Alpha Channels" checkbox is ticked in the dialog box. Color depth (next dialog) should be 24-bit (32 will probably work too, but haven't tested it).

That's it, drop the result bmp into override and you're good to go.

swit

bumping with a question to devs. In this topic I've read that the older versions of BG1:EE used BMP file format for description images, like in BG2:EE. In the recent 1.3 BG:EE beta I see that the game now uses BAM files instead (800 now useless bmps are still there, so you end up wasting space, but it doesn't really matter). The question is: what the 1.3 version of BG2:EE will use? BAM or BMP format for item description?

Red_Carnelian

I came across this problem recently when trying to convert my custom description BAMS into a format BGEE could understand. I had mixed results but none as I'd like. I tried using Near Infinity to generate the new type of BAMS into V2 but the BAMS did not display well at all after placing the new V2 Bam and the PVRS file inside the override folder. I tried the BMP way with some success but the images tend to bleed and is a lot of messing around to improve the transparency. I'll have to use in game graphics for now until some one can find a better solution. What description BAM graphic though can I use for a drum?