Creating a new sprite

To create a new sprite, you must use File->New sprite (Ctrl+N) After you click it, the Wizard window will pop-up. From that point you can create sprite in two ways:

1) From scratch - you must have ready a collection of bitmaps
2) from .qc file - you must decompile a sprite in order to get a collection of bitmaps and .qc file, or you can always make that by yourself

Next stage - adding bitmaps to your sprite file. You'll see here a list with the buttons: Add/Remove/Up/Down/Sort near it. If you selected the 1st option in the first wizard’s page, the list will be clear and you must add bitmaps to it (Add button). If you selected option 2, the list will be filled with paths to bitmaps, all that information will be parsed from .qc file. Adding frames to that list is very easy, you can select multiple files in select dialog, then sort all them in list. Also you can select multiple items in bitmaps list in order to move down/up or remove. Remember that bitmaps order is very important, because sprite frames will be compiled in that order. Now you can press the next button and you'll be prompted to select the output sprite name in the Save dialog box.

The next wizard window will allow you to change the sprite's transparency mode and sprite type if needed. Detailed information about transparency kinds can be read directly on the wizard’s page. Also here you can change active frame for sprite compiler, which will be used to build global palette for sprite. When you finish, pres Next to proceed to the next stage.

This is the final page before sprite compilation. Here you can see a text box with information about the sprite. Here you can view all your settings and if something is wrong you can go back to the previous set-up stages. Also you'll see Sprite Explorers statistic on errors checking. If any problems are found they can be read here. Warnings can be of several kind - for example the image's dimensions are not multiples of 8 or they are bigger then 256 pixels. The sprite will be compiled even with these warnings, but in Half-Life there is some possibility of problems. When you are ready - click Next and your sprite will be compiled. That wasn’t too hard was it? ;-)