A command button makes War3 crash? I'm bad at this.

Pretty much what the title says, I have attempted to make a command button, and my button crashes WarCraft when it goes to display it.

I've seen several tutorials devoted to skinning models, but none to the simple act of making buttons, and I've searched for messages about buttons crashing the game and not found any, so I'm guessing I'm just doing something so horribly obviously wrong that it'll be immediately obvious to anyone here, right? <GRIN>

I didn't really do anything special:

Get image I want to use as a button, proper size and dpi
Convert image from jpeg to targa, add in the button border
Save image in targa format, uncompressed (I'm using Corel PhotoPaint at the moment)
Import image into WarCraft using Import Manager in TFTWE
Assign image to Hero ability
Run War3
Select hero, hit "Learn Hero Skill" button. War3 crashes to desktop with an errorbox.

If I change the spell back to using a standard icon, I can select and buy that skill just fine.

I've also tried making it use a normal icon for research and my custom icon for normal display. In that case, it doesn't crash until I close the "Learn Hero Skill" box and go back to my character. THEN it crashes. So I've definitely done something wrong with my icon.

Also, my image won't show up right in TFTWE, either. If I assign my image, the icon in the ability editor tree doesn't change. If I then save, close TFTWE, and re-open my map in it, my icon is a blank white square.

Any ideas?

--Chesh

I know what's the problem ,very simple though may look complicated:

Error> Convert image from jpeg to targa, add in the button border
When you do this you get no alpha channel. Add one.

Error> Save image in targa format, uncompressed (I'm using Corel PhotoPaint at the moment)
I don't think Photopaint allows alpha channels.

Error> Import image into WarCraft using Import Manager in TFTWE
You must convert to blp before importing, that's the source of your error

I suggest you to get either Photoshop or PaintShopPro. Please don't ask here in the forums how to get them ok?

PSP comes with a free trial, so its not warz unlezsss u give info on how to crack it.

I usually can't get command buttons to work ingame unless they are TGAs, not BLPs.

Aha, that makes sense -- I *thought* Photopaint supported alpha channels, but either it doesn't or I simply wasn't using it correctly (which is VERY possible, I'm a coder, not an artist).

I had thought I could use them as targa, but I'll try converting it to blp anyways and see what happens once I get the alpha channel set up properly.



Heh, of course not, if I want PSP, I'll go to Jasc's site and buy it (which, in fact, I'll probably end up doing -- had an old reg for like version 3 years ago, and I rather liked the program then, so...)

Thanks for your advice, I'll give it a try and see what happens. :)

--Chesh

KDE, command buttons can be .tgas since the war 3 enigne can show tga files as well (fade-tos and such).