That's amazing. What a great idea. I don't think the potential of this idea is limited to just sporepedia snapshots, though. I bet you could work large-scale art like that into an adventure pretty nicely.

Thank you, everyone, really.
It is a picture of a beautiful girl I came upon while browsing through deviantART. Though I don't remember her screen name. And I can't post the full picture here, since I would probably be banned.

The process to create this image is as follows:

Resize the image to the 90x100 square you want.
Desaturate it, since the gray scale is the only one in Spore that is complete, and it is the best one for the job.
Posterize it into 49 levels, since that is the number of shades of gray that are available in Spore.

Then you need to figure out what shades in the picture correspond to what shades in the game. It seems that every time you posterize something into 49 shades (in grayscale, and in photoshop), you get the exact same shades, it does not matter what picture you use. And these are the shades, the numbers are their RGB value:

Ingame row 1, from the darkest black and downward

0
5
10
15
21
26
31

Ingame row 2

37
42
47
53
58
63
69

Row 3

74
79
85
90
95
100
106

Row 4

111
116
122
127
132
138
143

Row 5

148
154
159
164
170
175
180

Row 6

185
191
196
201
207
212

My picture never got brighter then the sixth shade of row six, so I didn't get any more shades than that.

After that it is only a matter of recreating the image one 9x10 square at a time.

would you mind if I move and sticky this thread to the Hint forum? I think it'll go great there!

SporeMasterDog wrote:would you mind if I move and sticky this thread to the Hint forum? I think it'll go great there!

Sure! Go ahead. I've never had one of my threads stickied before.

Out of curiosity, who is it in the picture?

Or, just a random girl who was the subject or your melora-like-artistic-insanity?

Ryuujin wrote:Out of curiosity, who is it in the picture?

Or, just a random girl who was the subject or your melora-like-artistic-insanity?

Answer:

Nethellus wrote:It is a picture of a beautiful girl I came upon while browsing through deviantART. Though I don't remember her screen name. And I can't post the full picture here, since I would probably be banned.

Though actually, I just managed to retrace my steps. Her username is Miss-Tschirhart.

It's funny that you compare me to Melora. They say writers only write about themselves really, every character has parts of the writer put into them, which is true of course.

I'm beginning work on an 8 colours, 32x32 image of a mario kart ds emblem. Do you have any tips for me as I go?
I thought I would start simple. (I also doubt my patience is as great as yours :S)
Edit: The image I picked turned out to be only 8 colours instead of 16.

Mysteryem wrote:I'm beginning work on an 8 colours, 32x32 image of a mario kart ds emblem. Do you have any tips for me as I go?
I thought I would start simple. (I also doubt my patience is as great as yours :S)
Edit: The image I picked turned out to be only 8 colours instead of 16.

You are using your own pixel prop then I assume? Since mine would not really be compatible with a 32x32 image.
You should know that disguised gates are only half as complex as a building prop. If you only use disguised gates you should be able to place about 1000 total before the complexity meter explodes. Though that would only be necessary if you use only one prop for each pixel, which would be extraordinarily tedious, I think.

Nethellus wrote:If you only use disguised gates you should be able to place about 1000 total before the complexity meter explodes.

I heard rumour that gates were less complexity than building props... any caveats about gate props besides the fact they don't blow up/arn't targettable? - Do they behave any different with AI line of sight? Block weapons?

Just curious as that's an important fact =D

Ryuujin wrote:I heard rumour that gates were less complexity than building props... any caveats about gate props besides the fact they don't blow up/arn't targettable? - Do they behave any different with AI line of sight? Block weapons?

Just curious as that's an important fact =D

As far as I know, nothing blocks weapons. Except maybe the ground? I've been able to shoot straight through buildings at least. Gates can't be used for certain objectives, like give for example. I use them for props that I will never interact with, other than with inspect, which works. I'm not sure if they can be talked to.

Nethellus wrote:[...]You should know that disguised gates are only half as complex as a building prop.[...]

THIS I should have known earlier, holy Spode! *Changing-most-buildings-into-disguised-gates*

Ryuujin wrote:[...]Do they behave any different with AI line of sight? Block weapons?[...]

No, the AI behaves in the same way as far as I know.

Nethellus wrote:
As far as I know, nothing blocks weapons. Except maybe the ground? I've been able to shoot straight through buildings at least. Gates can't be used for certain objectives, like give for example. I use them for props that I will never interact with, other than with inspect, which works. I'm not sure if they can be talked to.

Nothing will block weapons, although it is difficult to aim through a gate. And gates accept only "walk to" as valid goal.

This kind of creating a pic is quite interesting. I'm kinda insane myself in creating sometimes; I believe, I will give this a try

EDIT: Yeah, I have my 100 picture parts now, now I only wonder how you placed them in the adventure without distortions cause of the limited viewing options there. Or how you achieved this pink background on your planet. I'm new in the adventure editor, I would be pleased, if you could help me.

Nethellus, this is amazing! You've blown me away here. I'm passing this along to the team, and I saw that Parkaboy created an adventure using this tutorial, but I wish there was an easy way to find more.

I suggest you encourage others to tag their adventures with something like "pixelpicture" after following your tutorial so that similar adventures can be easily found in Sporepedia.

-MC

...
WOW
Congratulations Nethellus, you are officially playing this game waaaaaaay too much.
When you explained how you did this, I thought you were kidding at first. I would NEVER be able to do something as time-consuming as that! To actually make different squares and then put them together, one at a time, to create an image made out of hundreds of those squares and have it look just like a real person is REALLY amazing! I'm guessing you had to make them really small, otherwise the picture would be rounded from the curve of the planet?

Rantalia wrote:EDIT: Yeah, I have my 100 picture parts now, now I only wonder how you placed them in the adventure without distortions cause of the limited viewing options there. Or how you achieved this pink background on your planet. I'm new in the adventure editor, I would be pleased, if you could help me.

The background is achieved by changing the thickness of the atmosphere and the color of the atmosphere. You would probably have to have your graphics set to high to get the full effect of it though.

And when it comes to aligning the parts, you can focus the camera anywhere you want by right clicking on any building prop or object, which helps when you are trying to align things perfectly.

MaxisCactus wrote:I suggest you encourage others to tag their adventures with something like "pixelpicture" after following your tutorial so that similar adventures can be easily found in Sporepedia.

That is a good idea. Though at first I seriously doubted that anyone else would ever do this.


ChaosStar95: Yes, I made them as small as possible. But the curvature of the planet does not need to affect the picture if it is aligned correctly. It does make things more difficult though.