[SOLVED] Creating GUIs

[chocolatepie33]

Okay, Leo did this once, I was thinking about trying it. How do you make transparent colors for the cursor (which is also partially translucent), and the guioverlay?
I have MS paint and Gimp.

[Leo_V117]

I do all mine on Adobe Fireworks. But using Gimp is almost the same... Ill look into it for you.

[chocolatepie33]

Okay, thanks. I found this nice flame picture, wanted to edit it and see what I could do. How much did you have to pay for Fireworks?

[graphitemaster]

Well before you go spending money on programs to do things, remember this is a free game , and their are a lot of free better alternatives then fireworks.

First and for most creating the actual graphical user interface content to be transparent you need to follow a layout, since the engine has some
scary way of creating the layout from a single image.

If you are only looking to create a cursor and some widgets icons for the menus then just copy the layout from the existing ones,
all good image composition software support layers. Which means you can adjust the transparency usually via a slider or an input box,
then it's just saving the image as a format that supports alpha channels and that the engine can load I suggest using .png,
it's portable hence it's name (Portable Network Graphic) and small in size, and has a loss less compression so saving the file
will not result in weird anti-aliasing/pixelated effects that occur when using .jpg's

PS: I know for sure GIMP supports layers and can be used to create transparent images, so therr is no need in buying 3rd party
propitiatory software, that sucks back system resources and only works on certain operating systems.

[Leo_V117]

uh... fireworks works on all operating systems... and I didnt pay for it... school did... I Havent yet installed CS4 on my computer.