TheSacredPhoenix's Custom CSS Layout, Images, and Compiled User Textures (+Questions)

[okamifire]

VERSION 1.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0uz16HGO_s
Check it out, tell me what you think!

VERSION 1.1 done!
What's new : Strap loader, 4 Ways to Play, Game and Watch colors and CSPs, and some stages that I liked from others put on. Also, Auto Ruleset code implemented to 3 Stock, Infinite Time (yeah, yeah), Stock, Turn Stage Choice, and then other "normal" options. NO GAMEPLAY CHANGES MADE. I am kinda against that. I am considering No Tripping, but I probably won't do it.

Wanna see it in action? Sure you do! See first video for all characters, this is just a video of additional changes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixk5JXnwNTw Enjoy.

This is my CSS arrangement too. See the first video for textures on the CSS, and also in game images too.

Version 1.1 Available for download!
- Includes code file, a list of the codes I use, all textures, CSP and CSS changes, Strap Loader, 4 Ways to Play screen, and for kicks I even threw in my TGA files that I spent like, 30 hours working on.

Sorry it's not Megaupload or something, it kept getting part way and then stopping. This site seemed to work just fine.

Enjoy!


Oh, and still looking for that non-Pink Silver the Hedgehog. Anyone? Or can someone tell me how to do it? I can look into it.

Thanks!

 

[Naucitos]

Your CSPs are well made, but i don't like alot of the textures you used
Especially some of the DK ones like the hulk, i don't think its worth using low quality textures just to fill up spots, ill be sticking with my half completed pile of textures for now


Also, i know i saw a CSS like that a while ago, but don't know wher it is now (it was on smashboards)
and theres a whole bunch of other texture places , check dasdonkii and the forums on kitty corps

 

[dessert fox5]

Wings or other) made a CSS where the player spots are in the corners instead of lined at the bottom?
QUOTE]
Phantom Wing's CSS Organizer?

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=249286&page=4

Read through that whole thread, though, because I know other people had quite a few problems in some places.

 

[okamifire]

Yeah, some characters did feel like I put them on there just to fill up space, (Wario, DK), but I figured if I was going to replace them, I want to replace them all. I completely agree with you though.

And yeah, that CSS Organizer does allow the rearranging but doesn't seem to support have 45 Characters on Screen, but thanks for the reference. I'll be looking into that more.

Thanks for the replies as well, I'll be scouring the forums the next week to find some better textures to replace the subpar ones I ended up with, haha. If worst comes to worst though, I'm happy enough with the results =P

 

[Eldiran]

Nice work on those csps. Where is that strap loader found, by the way? I'd like to use it.

 

[Alphatron]

Fitartifex. It's in the mofo's compilation of textures in the texture database sticky.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LCRX1OW6

 

[Eldiran]

Sweet, thanks!

 

[okamifire]

So, out of curiosity, how hard is it to make a Custom Strap Loader? I have found the board that helps someone with troubleshooting but doesn't ever say if it's practical to make them or not.

 

[Eldiran]

So, out of curiosity, how hard is it to make a Custom Strap Loader? I have found the board that helps someone with troubleshooting but doesn't ever say if it's practical to make them or not.

It's super easy with BrawlBox. Incredibly easy.

All you do is, with BrawlBox, open up StrapEn.pac. Open up the directories and subdirectories until you see pictures resembling the strap loader pictures. Then, use right-click to either Export or Replace those.

I could explain in more detail if necessary -- the above is just from memory without looking at it.

 

[MK26]

The 'corners' CSS doesnt work. The presence of 'none' boxes messes with the game's memory and causes everything from a group of 3 boxes to half of the CSS to be unselectable...and it's completely random whether or not a problem appears.

As for the CSPs, it looks like you definitely put a lot of time and effort into your textures. Are you planning on releasing your pack for download?

 

[okamifire]

Oh, nice! Do you know if the indexing is important, or more so just the sizes? I think I'm gonna work on something that looks decent and has humor as well. This'll be fun, haha.

Thanks a lot for the info and quick responses!

 

[okamifire]

@MK26 : If people express interest in it I can. I did put a whole lot of time in making the CSS pictures and in-game pictures, but I didn't make any of the actual textures. So the least I can do for the Homebrew Brawl Modding Community is to provide what I've done with the amazing work of talented artists and developers.

So yeah, are people interested?

 

[A17]

yes you gotta index them to a certain amount of colors as you cannot go above their colour limits.i'm not sure how much each character is, but i've exported original CSPs and brought them back in, and they read on average 200+ colors. I've been doing 72 in order to avoid getting that freezing beep.

size wise, 128x160. I'm not sure if you need to have transparency on it. I've recently finished a whole list of CSPs in which all characters have a backdrop on their CSP, and I got freezes again. So in order to fix that i erased the top and left side a bit to have some transparency to it. and now it's given me no problems

Surprisingly I got a CSS that's made in that fashion as well; "no corners"

EDIT: I watched more of your vid and noticed that your CSPs look pretty clean, what steps did you take to make them that clean edged? For me portraits get edgy because I use 72 colors and I index them with no matte either. You used magenta as a background?

 

[Kei_Takaro]

lol put take this guy to a friggin Texture Site and let him join! he's pretty good +1 Intarwebz 4 u my friend

 

[okamifire]

@Kei : Haha, thanks, but I just know how to use Photoshop clean up some images, I'm no artist. I don't think I could make something that anybody would actually want, haha.


@A17 : Yeah, my .tga files are actually very clean (not to brag or anything), I made sure that I could get off as many stray pixels and any sort of edge grain or noise as possible. Here's how I make mine:

1) Open up Photoshop with 3 New Documents; 1 the size of the picture I'm using of the model to be made into a .tga (in my case in-game pictures off my SD card, so 640 x 480), 1 for the Big TGA (128 x 160), and one for Small TGA (48 x 56).
2) Use the magic want tool with the highest level of tolerance possible and select the background of pictochat without actually selecting the character (because no one wants their character erased, haha). Sometimes the tolerance can be as high as 50, or sometimes with characters with greys if you pick a bad area to take a picture you might have to set it to 3 or something. In that case, the following steps are more time consuming.
3) After having deleted all the non character stuff, using the Marquee, select the character and copy pasta him to the Big TGA. Resize using Ctrl + T, and Shift Click to resize them.
4) At this point, different people do different things. Here's what I do:
- If there are remnants of left over stray pixels, delete them.
- If there are pieces of your character that are gone, either redraw them using Eyedropper and Brush or just go back and re-Magic Wand them.
5) Index the colors. There are guides that tell you what you can put, but my experiences tell me that CUPASH decides what it accepts with individual pictures, so like you said you can normally get away with 72. However, I use 120. If CUPASH rejects it I go down in increments of 10.
6) Go into the color palette after having indexed it. Select the Transparent spot and change it to 255, 0 , 255, or Magenta. So yep, I use Magenta. IT IS IMPORTANT TO DO THIS IN THIS ORDER, ELSE YOU'LL GET PINK BORDERS. The indexing will average the pixels by proximity and gie you many pore pinks than you ever wanted.
7) Here is another step that I do that eliminates some noise and off colour pixels. Select Magenta (255, 0, 255) as your foreground, Zoom in so you can see the pixels at a fairly large size, and go through and take that to any that stand out a lot. If there are a lot, select the Eyedropper and instead of Magenta'ing them, try to fix them.
8) Save.

Now, normally, if you Magic Wand efficiently and fix up problems before you index and move them, you don't have to do any post editing. It generally took me about 3 to 5 minutes a character on a run to resize and clean them up, with some characters taking 15 minutes on a choppy or otherwise noise interference run. It honestly may be easier just to get another picture somewhere to start with. Since I took EVERY picture (except Shadow, I liked his online Stock Photo) on Pictochat on my own Wii, I knew how to quickly get the images I needed.

Oh, and I made the strap loader and 4 Ways to Play loaders.

They can also be seen in the initial reason for this post:



VERSION 1.1 done!
What's new : Strap loader, 4 Ways to Play, Game and Watch colors and CSPs, and some stages that I liked from others put on. Also, Auto Ruleset code implemented to 3 Stock, Infinite Time (yeah, yeah), Stock, Turn Stage Choice, and then other "normal" options. NO GAMEPLAY CHANGES MADE. I am kinda against that. I am considering No Tripping, but I probably won't do it.

Wanna see it in action? Sure you do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixk5JXnwNTw Enjoy.


Sooooo, many people have asked if I can upload it all. Answer : yep. I'll do it after classes today.

Keep shooting me questions and feedback so I can do other stuff and see what people like and don't like too!

-------------------------------------

One last disclaimer for people just stopping by and didn't read my tl;dr post:
I don't make Textures, I do make CSP, and I do arrange CSS using spunit262's code as a base.

-------------------------------------

Enjoy!

 

[okamifire]

Oh, and A17, my code is adapted from spunit, I don't know if yours is or not, but I didn't have any freezing on my screen with his anti-glitching codes. I don't take credit for the code, only how I arranged everything on the layout.

For those who don't know what we're talking about, here is my CSS for those not wanting to look at the videos:

 

[okamifire]

Sorry for the chain posting, but the actual game is a heck of a lot more crisp. My Screen Capture device isn't the best for taking stills. The video is alright I think, but the standing images not so much.

 

[A17]

i make my CSS's from following a post someone made centuries ago. But i first make my CSS by taking a base CSS screenshot and then move the actual images around to have a good visual. then i look at this while punching in char IDs in order. Speakig of a base CSS image, is it okay if I use that screenshot you got 2 posts above this? It's slightly cleaner than the one I use. and got every character out.

Don't know about this anti-glitching code, but mine doesnt freeze either so that's good too

I see you've got a theme to it. Relevant games kept together.

Mine on the other hand are characters which my friend and I use to those we both don't. Center are the most used characters (that we share), moving left are characters only I use, and vice versa on the right side.
Top and bottom row are characters none of us use.

 

[okamifire]

Haha, yeah, I was looking at yours and couldn't figure out any sort of pattern at all

My CSS is more or less the default Brawl with the additional characters inserted as well as it could be. There were some other ones online but they either grouped them on weight, recovery, some that I didn't mind but grouped series in horizontal rows instead of vertical columns, so I felt the need to do a little rearranging.

And sure, you can use it!

 

[A17]

Sweet thanks.

Have you tried doing an alphabetical order CSS? i thought that would be hilarious.

Edit: And here's what it'll look like.

if you would like to have a Photoshop file (psd) of this for visual brainstorming, here's a link to that CSS Visuals.psd - Megaupload

 

[mofo_]

why is the 4ways 2 play warped?

can you make one that shows an xbox 360 controller instead gamecube?

 

[okamifire]

@mofo : The images that I used in the .pac file were not warped, but perhaps there is some sort of vertical boundary wrapper that I was not aware of. I can try sliding the images down on the original file before compiling with BrawlBox, that might fix it.

Oh, and yeah, I could easily make an XBox controller instead of the gamecube ones.

 

[okamifire]

@ A17 : I have thought about different layouts, and while Alphabetical is interesting, I find that really anything but a close adaptation to the original (like the one I did too), really makes finding the correct character difficult, haha. I actually don't foresee myself changing the layout at all, I'm content with what I have =P But thanks for the visual, haha.

 

[Kei_Takaro]

@thesacredphoenix, I have a lol request ^_^
Can you make a 4 ways to play screen?

Wherein:
-Top left is PS3 Controller
-Top right is 360 Controller
-Lower left is Keyboard and mouse
-Lower right is Gamecube controller
-Everything except the Gamecube controller has a symbol similar to the "no-parking" sign (just without the P)
-Gamecube Controller has a Green Check below it
and finally either of these two:
-"Only 1 Way To Play" or "You're Doing It Wrong"

 

[okamifire]

@Kei : I should be able to, yeah. Gimme a little bit and we'll see, currently a little busy with assignments but I'm sure I'll find some time to do it. Just to confirm, you would still like the hands visible, right? How do you want the keyboard, just the hands over it or something?

Oh, and....

Version 1.1 Available for download!
- Includes code file, a list of the codes I use, all textures, CSP and CSS changes, Strap Loader, 4 Ways to Play screen, and for kicks I even threw in my TGA files that I spent like, 30 hours working on.

Sorry it's not Megaupload or something, it kept getting part way and then stopping. This site seemed to work just fine.

Enjoy!

 

[Kei_Takaro]

Better of without the hands I guess since it might look abit messy as well as we all want it Clean and Crisp
^_^ kewl, I can't wait to see it

Correction on the last statement: its actually "The Only Way to Play" or "You're Doing it Wrong"

 

[okamifire]

Without the hands I can have one of those out in about 10 minutes. I'll make one and upload it for ya'. You know, I never thought about just removing the hands, it's a good idea, haha.

 

[zephyrnereus]

whoah WTF with captain FalconLink! where did you get that texture?

also, I like Kei's idea for the "4 ways to play" screen. I'd totally download it! but when you finish it, could you make a separate download? I dont want to download so much stuff and end up using only one texture...

 

[okamifire]

@zephyrnereus : To be honest, I don't remember where I got that texture as I have not run across it again since I downloaded it the night I was compiling textures. I almost feel that it was on a KittyCorp-MeowMix forum, but I'm not too sure...

And sure, I'll upload it by itself. Should be done by the end of today. (College classes, work, etc, or else it'd be done by 1:00.)

 

[MK26]

i am insulted that you dont consider the classic controller a legitimate way to play this game...

 

[okamifire]

I consider it, and even the Wii Remote with the Nunchuck with the right settings seems alright.

 

[A17]

nunchuk is alright, would have liked more buttons for the right hand to work with.

 

[okamifire]

Alright Kei and others, here ya go:

and

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mzimcmjnjnn

 

[Kei_Takaro]

WHOOO!!! You're AWESOME!! THIS IS JUST TOO PERFECT!! =D

 

[okamifire]

Kay everyone, here's my Custom 4 Ways to Play without the stretching:

and the file:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?gjjihetlt2i

 

[Kei_Takaro]

oh lo, I forgot the directory for this? where does this go again?

 

[okamifire]

Haha, menu > controller > Controller.pac

 

[Captain L]

So if I wanted to use some of my own textures with this instead of the ones that came with it, how do I change the pictures that appear on the Character select screen? As an example, I'd like to replace the pedobear Pikachu with his goggles outfit, and the green captain falcon with a green lanturn texture.

 

[A17]

not exactly the right place as there are many FAQs for this. but replacing CSPs is done by editing Common5.pac, i use smashbox, and suggest you use this before someone else tells you to use cupash.

 

[okamifire]

Haha. I used CUPASH >_> But I fully recommend BrawlBox now if I were to start it all over. I will say though that once everything was set up for CUPASH and I got the kinks sorted and the code changed to output the right names, it was pretty smooth sailing. Just saving the file to the directory and clicking an .exe is relatively mindless.

But yeah, listen to A17, especially for changing only a few like you said, BrawlBox is fantastic. That's how I do all my straps / menus / loading screen stuff. And how I would do changes as well.