HOW TO CHANGE THE GRAPHICS IN SASTEROIDS

I've included the color bitmaps I created for sasteroids in this
distribution. The files ending in '.raw' were drawn using photostyler under
ms-windows (boo-hiss), xpaint under Linux/Xfree, and Deluxe Animator II
under dosemu :-).

If you want to change the bitmaps and use them in the game, you should grab
image alchemy, a wickedly useful shareware program for DOS, available at
wuarchive.wustl.edu and most of your other favorite MSDOS ftp sites.

0)	Look at "sast.cf-list", its a list of the graphic files used in
	sasteroids.  This file is also used to generate the sast.cf file
	when you run 'make cf'.  Keep reading for more info on this.


1)	Edit the .raw images using any method you want. For the files in the
        "bitmaps" directory, just edit away, as long as you save them in
        .raw file (using image alchemy) in the end. Keep these images 320x200

	For the files in "bitmaps/sprite", there are crazy issues of palette
        management, etc. So the best thing is to convert the sprite files to
        whatever format your paint program likes (using image alchemy), edit
        away, then run the MAKEPAL.BAT and MAKERAW.BAT files (these are dos
        batch files in bitmaps/sprite) to generate the .raw files again. You
	need to run MAKEPAL first, then MAKERAW second.
 
        You'll have to edit the 2 .BAT files to point to where image alchemy
        is, and for whatever file format your paint program uses.  I use
        .bbm since thats what Deluxe Paint likes.  So I edit the graphics as
        .bbm files, then run MAKEPAL and MAKERAW to create the .raw files
        that sasteroids loves. Note that image alchemy works great under
        dosemu.

2)	You can change the size of the sprite bitmaps if you want, though I
        won't gaurantee everything will work fine :-) Try to keep the images
        'round' because the collision algorithm I used in sasteroids is
        dumb.

3)	Your ship, the enemy ship, the asteroids and the bullets are all on
	screen at the same time, so they will all share the same 256 color
	palette, so try not to introduce too many colors. The MAKEPAL batch
	file mentioned above will force all the sprite bitmaps to use the
	same 256 color palette, so you really don't have to worry too much
	about the colors.

4)	run 'make cf'
	and do that anytime you change a bitmap or change the 
	"sast.cf-list" file.

6)	run 'make install'
	This installs the new .cf files into /usr/games, where sasteroids
	will look for them. Unless, of course, you changed all that by
	editing the 'config' file.

If your bitmaps look good, email 'em to me!  (I'd loved it if someone could
draw the asteroids in about 16 rotated positions with the shadow in the
lower right corner.  Then the asteroids could 'spin' in the game. cool.  I
tried it but my drawing skills are a little, umm, lacking)


--brad
