Own Landscapes

Own Landscapes HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN LANDSCAPES

You can create new landscapes (or "skins") for all levels using a paint programm like Deluxe Paint or PPaint and saving the IFF-ILBM files into the subdirectory PATTERNS. Say you want to do a new landscape called "rocks". Then you need:

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.pattern"
This is the basic pattern which the polygon is filled with. This has to be a pattern style image like a wallpaper on a website.
You have to use the colors that cause collision (see table 1). This image also defines the palette of the whole level. Be careful here so that the toadies and the weapons have the right color.

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.up"
The upper texture of the polygon. Color 0 is transparent. Use colors that cause collision.

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.low"
Same as rocks.up but for the lower side of the polygon. It overlaps 3 pixels with the background-pattern so you can use the transparent color here to have a smoother gradient.

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.bridge"
Defines the bridge. It should behave like a pattern at the horizontal direction so that the bridge can be endlessly long. Use colors that cause collision for the floor, and other colors for things at the top of the bridge.

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.item1"
Some items that are randomly placed on the landscape. You can do what you like here.

"Toadies/patterns/rocks.item<x>"
More items can be added up to 10 items, just name them rocks.item<x>.

The new landscape will be detected automatically and used. Be sure to supply ALL files above, otherwise the programm crashes !!!

The palette has 5 bitplanes (32 colors). Some colors can be changed, some not.

color #	collision	may I change it ?	comment
0	no	no (transparent)	transparent, set it to black
1-6	no	no	used for water, you may change it slightly but keep the lightest to darkest order
7-15	no	no	used for explosions and weapons, don`t change them !
16-18	yes	no	colors of toadies, don`t change !
19	yes	yes	free
20-21	yes	no	bright and dark brown, only change slightly
22-24	yes	yes	free
25-27	yes	no	for some stuff, don`t change !
28-31	yes	yes	free

table 1 - color definitions

Tips:

It is a good idea to start with an existing landscape and change only the colors you need to change.

Don`t use extreme small or big sizes for the graphics. This could lead to low performance or even to crashes when there is not enough memory.

If there are questions or you have created a nice landscape, contact the author so it can be included in the official archive

If you want a skin to be more sticky, then make the ???.pattern image more rough. (compare the rocks skin with snowloand !)