-An image that you like. (Preferably a .Png or .Bmp file, as .Jpg files are disgusting)
-A program that can edit images (As last resort use Microsoft Paint)
-Wally
-Half-Life 1 & any number of mods you want to use this in.
Before you even consider making your spray paint dream a reality consider the following.
-Will I get banned from the server I use it on for this?
-Is this offensive?
-Is this inappropriate for the average aged person at said server?
-Is this image illegal in my country?
-Will the image's source care that I used their image in this game?
-If/When Metal sees it, will he murder me, or be disgusted?
Should you have answered yes to any of these with a yes, you're going to need a new image.
Now most people in Half-Life 1's community that want a spray paint, and don't realize actually what little room the game's graphics are, in fact the largest game graphic I saw was 96 by 96 pixels*.
*Excluding model textures, and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any 144 by 80 spraypaint
Pick a green box, use that size,
Pick a size on this chart that is relevant to your image's shape. So if you have a longer image, pick say 64 by 128 or have a square image 64 by 64 or 96 by 96.
if your image is smaller center it in a BLUE COLORED BOX of that nearest size.
The engine before source can only read a texture file that's pixels are evenly dividable by 16 and under a certain amount, I saved you a lot of trouble with this step.
Step 2:
If your picture ALREADY conforms to one of the green boxes in the above chart and matches one of those sizes EXACTLY you can skip to part 3.
Alright now open your photo editing program (We're going to use CS3 in the tutorial)
I'm sure the picture you picked is massive like mine are, you want it to look as nice as possible but when you resize it it looks like $h!t.
I'm going to use THIS as an example.
First off in this picture like most pictures we have parts we can crop without hurting the image itself.
(I've already cropped this one, but there is usually something you don't need in the picture, such as extra people or scenery that isn't the subject.)
In another picture where you have more subjects such as:
You can't have the full thing usually, what a shame; Focus in on what you want the most .
Another quick rule to use when selecting your image is that text, will not work; when you resize it your text will be IMPOSSIBLE to read unless it's absurdly large to begin with (Size 64+ font).
After you've opened and cropped your image you can resize it...
Don't touch the manual resize, you disgust me if you even considered it.
We're going to let the machine resize our picture in Photoshop CS3 you have a Bicubic sharper setting when you're reducing the size of your pictures, I strongly recommend doing it.
Resize the picture in equal proportion proportion (I even included a picture of how to do it in paint)
PAINT USERS: Sucks to be you.
Press your Ctrl and W keys simultaneously or manually go to image sketch/skew (Manually as in go through the menus to open it up. don't touch the picture with the mouse, I'll stab you, I'll do it; I'm crazy.)
Do it in equal amounts of percent, we wouldn't want to have a stretched picture.
Continue resizing your picture until it meets the requirements (this tutorial uses 64 by 128).
Lets say I chose the size in photoshop to resize til its 64 high and under 128 in length.
Although this is small enough, its not going to work because of the size chart, copy paste your image onto a pure blue bar in Microsoft paint size 128 by 64 to get this fixed.
Sexy, although YOU can see those blue bars, the game cannot (unless you saved in .jpg moron).
Step 3: Finishing the job
Open up wally, I've heard day in and day out that Wally is extremely complicated and nobody knows how to use it, I'm going to make everyone who complained look like a moron.
Slick file, save-as save it once as pldecal.wad and again as tempdecal.wad
place both files in your mod's main folder (likely Half-life/Svencoop/)
And you are done, it helps to set them as read-only incase it gets overwritten.
Troubleshooting:
Problem: I see a Smallorange lambada instead of my spray paint.
Fix: The game is still rendering your spray paint, try it again in a minute or two.
Problem: I see a Largeorange lambada instead of my spray paint.
Fix: You need to save it again then, somewhere you went wrong. Remember you're saving the .wad files to your main Sven coop (or other mod)'s directory.
Problem: Wally is too difficult for me to use.
Fix: Repeatedly smash your head into the keyboard and or desk.
Legal notice: Not liable for reader death or injury.
Problem: My spray paint looks bad (Version 1)
Fix: It takes practice.
Problem: My spray paint looks bad (Version 2)
Fix: You manually resized it, disconnect your mouse and try again.
Time taken to make this spray paint and tutorial?
The spray: Two minutes, Guide on how to make a spray: Eight minutes.
Legal Notice: I am not liable for threat, murder, or death to or of the user.
IMPORTANT: earlier when I said blue, I meant pure blue, As of windows VISTA and (Unknown about Macintosh computers) but the blue featured there is NOT pure blue (#0000FF) (0 red 0 yellow/green 255 blue)
