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Advanced Half-Life mod Spray Creation

Courtesy the [BZ0]BattleField Zer0 Clan Archives
submitted by [BZ0] Smudgepot

Part One: Restrictions and Tools

So you have made your first spray using Wally, Ez-spray or one of the noob tools and are ready to move on to better things, then you are in the right place. In this tutorial I will instruct you on how to make a high quality spray using the tools from the Half-life SDK, Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.

Restrictions: Design Size

As with any good design you must first decide on what restrictions are imposed. The main restrictions with custom sprays are size and color depth. A chart of acceptable sizes is commonly available on the internet but I suggest restricting yourself to 128x64 and 64x128, although any size under 256x256 which is divisible by 16 is acceptable.

Restrictions: Color Depth

There is a difference of opinion on color depth but I suggest working with 24-bit images(.bmp) and reducing down to an individual palette of 256 colors before wad creation because according to the SDK readme, "No two textures need to share the same palette, and nothing is gained in performance or memory by having textures share the same palette."

Restrictions: Color Palette

It is important to remember that any pixel of pure blue( 0 0 255) will become transparent in the engine so to quote the SDK again "it is vital that you not paint the image with the blue in it from the beginning: more than likely, your visible portions will anti-alias to the background, and your texture will have a blue halo around it. Apply the blue as your last step."

Tools: Wad Creation

To actually create the wad files pldecal.wad and tempdecal.wad required for sprays to work in Half-Life mods I recommend the SDK tools, Makels.exe, Qlumpy.exe and Makewad.bat. The included readme.doc contains all the technical specifications for wad and texture creation, as well as, details on the tools themselves. If you can edit a batch file you are in business. Its that simple. The 3 files used are mirrored here and here.