I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem.

I made a panel, had 32bit depth on, and inserted the bitmap in. At first I thought I was doing something wrong with the setting of the colordepth (I was getting color banding), but then tried a tga instead of the bitmap. My results:



Tga on the left, Bmp on the right. And so you know, I made the TGA from the BMP that's visible there. In my image editor both look identical.

To be honest, I REALLY don't care that much. They're the same filesize. I just was in a habit of using .bmp's for the longest time (current "save as" default on my editor), and I thought I was doing something wrong with my color settings. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this problem, and just making sure anyone might be aware of it.

BMP and TGA just have different compression methods. TGA just does a much better job. When you're making a fairly large image though, TGA file sizes can get very huge. BMP on the hand likes to butcher the images the best it can. Unfortunately this make the images look awful.

I should also add, that BMP has three channels (RGB) where as TGA has a 4th (RGB and Alpha)

Wha? They have different compression methods for gamestudio??

The images look exactly the same in the image editor. It's only in gamestudio they look different. In that picture I showed, both are from gamestudio. In fact I made the left image from the right one.

I've never had bitmaps "butcher" any image in any other software, and they always are the same size unless I compress my TGA's, or add the Alpha Channel.

EDIT: I just did a test, and the bitmap output is the same in 16-bit to 32-bit modes. I'll ask around on the bug forum and see what's up.

no no.. the BMP and TGA formats have different methods for image compression. It's not A6 related. The BMP is a fairly old compression method. JPEG was then invented to compensate. However JPegs did not support animation. So, Gif was formed, but people didnt like how Gif compressed a series of images, so png was made. Also, each of these formats had their own variation of competition...

BMP, JPEG, TARGA, etc
Gif, png, (cant remember, but i know theres more)

The two formats look the same in an image editor because the both images are uncompressed in the program. What is being displayed is "Raw" data. The reason it uncompresses it is so that you CAN save it under another format.

Uhmm... I think you are confusing your terms and image format information.

Bitmaps usually aren't compressed. They are an older file format, however. TGA images can be either or, hence why my images are almost the exact same filesize when either in TGA or BMP (sans tga alpha). Also, quality loss via some forms of compression (lossy) is usually visible in image editors, while sometimes not being that apparent. Try opening and saving a Jpg repeatedly at a low compression factor, and you might slowly see a "checkerboard" pattern start to emerge.

Trust me, I know alot about my image formats. I've been working with them in windows since the good ol' 486 and MS Paint.

But besides that, this has nothing to do with the file format. I tried running 3dgs at 16 and 8 bit modes, and nothing changed with the tga's. I had to alter my actual desktop color to 16.. and then the tga and the bmp looked the same.

For some reason the tga's are at 24-bit, and the bmp's at 16-bit in gamestudio.... at least for me. This has nothing to do with the image itself.

Crap you're right, I did screw up when i said compression... It's been a while since i learned these things. Have pity for my weak mind.

In any case, check out this page http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/mxr/gfx/2d/BMP.txt

and can find more about other formats here http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/mxr/gfx/2d-hi.html

I've been there before, nothing new. I know alot about image formats already. I've been working with them for almost 10 years now. My question was more on how Gamestudio is handling the images themselves.

But even if there was an image using lossless compression, it wouldn't look like that. That's color-banding brought on by 16-bit display, and is caused by Gamestudio.

My problem was I don't know if that's a bug, or just the way they set it up.

It doesn't really matter. Tga's are more versatile, and work well with their lossless compression if I decide to use it.