- Joined
- Dec 17, 2009
- Messages
- 1,114
INTRODUCTION
There is many tutorials about Loading Screens, so i decided to write my own,
There are three sections:
-A basic, "low quality" loading screen
-A high quality loading screen
-A loading screen that shows the loading progress for all players
IrfanView is required for all of the below. I chose it because its good, easy to use and user friendly. You can get it from its official site.
see below to download
Irfan View
H1A basic, "low quality" loading screen
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
LoadingScreen.mdx
The picture you want to use
Make/find a GOOD picture for ur MAP to make it look POLISHING. Its size doesn't really matter, but its recommended that its height equals to 3/4 of its width (800x600, 1024x768). Also its height or width musn't be smaller than 512 since this is the size we will resize it to. Now you need to resize it. Open the image in IrfanView and go to Image -> Resize/Resample. Make sure Preserve aspect ratio is unchecked and select Resize (faster) on the right. Now make sure Set new size and pixels below is checked and type 512 in both Width and Height boxes (picture 1. Then click on OK and your picture is now resized.
Note: your picture will look TOTALLY WEIRD!!!!!!! but ignore that weird thing.
Save your file by pressing S or going to File -> Save As. Make sure that the file is TGA and close IrfanView.
Next step is to convert the file to BLP. Open up Warcraft 3 Viewer and press Ctrl+V. Now simply find your TGA and save it somewhere as BLP. Once you find a location the viewer will ask you about the Quality of Compression. This is very important since it might greatly reduce your file's size so choose a number between 50 and 75-100 (recommender 70-75). The WCIII Viewer will ask to add alpha channel to it...just click on Yes if it does and close it.
The final step: adding the loading screen to your map. Open the world editor, load your map and press F12 to open up the Import Manager. Now press Ctrl+I, locate the LoadingScreen.mdx file and import it. The path of mdx files is not important so we don't need to change it. Now press Ctrl+I again and import your BLP file. The path is important here(NEVER PUT THE PATH WRONG!) so double click on the newly imported BLP on the list, check Use custom path and type "FullScreen.blp" in the box. Now save your map, close the import manager and go to Scenario -> Map Loading Screen in the main window. Check Use Imported File and select war3Imported\LoadingScreen.mdx from the list.
Now test your map. If you did everything correctly, you will see your new loading screen.
QUESTIONS:
Q:Sir, the loading screen didn work!
A:You must have been putting your path incorrectly, put the path CORRECTLY through the texture provided
Q:Sir, the loading screen did NOT appear, what is happening??
A:because, the image replaces or i say the image removes the progress bar. see the last part of the tutorial to see how(recommend the part 3 tutorial ONLY for campaign and RPG.)
High quality Loading Screen
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
LoadingScreen.mdx (not to be confused with LoadingScreen.mdx above)
The picture you want to use (1024x768)
QuestIONSSSS:
Q:Sir,What's the difference between low quality and high quality loading screens?
A:The so called high quality loading screen uses 4 Parts instead of one which, combined, form a 1024x768 picture. The difference is both in the two of these is the QUALITY!
waste about 1 mb if u want i SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND THIS FOR CAMPAIGN AND PLAYED IN GARENA .
Ok now let us begin. The procedure is similar to the "low quality" above find a good 1024x768 picture and open IrfanView.
This time, however, instead of resizing you need to crop the image intro 4 parts: top left (512x512), top right (512x512), bottom left (512x256), bottom right (512x256). In order to do this, you need to play with selection. Start by making a rectangle somewhere at the middle (you can move it later) and, by checking the window title, make sure its size is 512x512 (512x512 for the 2 top images, 512x256 for bottom). Once you do so, right click on the selection you just made and drag it to the top left corner so that the title shows something like "<filename> - IrfanView (Selection: 0, 0; 512 x 512; 1.000)" (as you can see 0, 0 is important here) - picture 3. Now go to Edit -> Crop selection and save the file as TGA. This is the first out of four parts so lets continue - open the main picture again and do the same thing 3 more times with proper sizes and positions ("0, 0" for the top left, "512, 0" for top right, "0, 512" for bottom left and "512, 512" for bottom right). Take note that one pixel less/more than it should might result in your whole loading screen not showing so be careful. Once you finally finish close IrfanView and open WE (no need to convert the textures to BLP this time since the new MDX requires TGA files).
Open the Import Manager by pressing F12 and import both the MDX and all four TGAs. Now you need to change the path for each TGA. They should be LoadingScreenTR.tga for the top right one, LoadingScreenTL.tga for the top left, LoadingScreenBR.tga for the bottom right and LoadingScreenBL.tga for the bottom left. Now save your map, close the Import Manager and go to Scenario -> Map Loading Screen in the main editor window. Check Use Imported File and select war3Imported\LoadingScreen.mdx from the list.
All done. Test your map and see if it works...if something goes wrong your picture will most likely come up black. If this happens check the texture sizes and paths in the Import Manager since this is most the most common problem with loading screens.
H3High Quality with progress bar
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
The picture you want to use
A lot of people asked for something like this so here's finally a tutorial that explains it. Basically its all about replacing the original melee loading screen textures from the MPQ with your own, the similar way we do it when skinning models. Also take note that this loading screen must contain your minimap image so you should pick a good picture that will fit correctly with it (usually people put most of this loading screen in one color - white for example to match their minimap image background).
The process itself is similar to the above high quality screen since this one is also a 1024x768 picture split intro 4 parts with the same sizes like above.
Once again pick your picture and open IrfanView. You need to crop the picture again using selections intro four parts: . For more info about this, please read the above high quality tutorial since its mainly the same thing. Also take note that the minimap and the loading bars for every player are taking a special position so you might want to edit your picture a bit. To see the original 4 pictures simply open Warcraft 3 Viewer, go to File -> Open MPQ, locate war3.mpq in your warcraft directory and check BLP in the Treeview window on the right. Now find the path UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer and check out the textures in it. Every race has its own right-side pictures, but they all share the 2 left - Loading-BotLeft.blp and Loading-TopLeft.blp. Once you've created and saved all 4 parts close IrfanView.
Now open WE, press F12 to open the Import Manager and import all 4 parts. Now change their paths this way:
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-BotLeft.blp - for your bottom left picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-TopLeft.blp - for your top left picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-Random-BotRight.blp - for your bottom right picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-Random-TopRight.blp - for your top right picture
Note: if your map only uses one race, then you should change "Random" in the above 2 filenames to that race's name (Human, Orc, NightElf or Undead - for example Loading-Orc-BotRight.blp). If your map is melee or has its races pickable, then continue reading on how to fix that.
To make your game use only one loading screen for all races, do this:
-Open Warcraft 3 Viewer.
-Open war3.mpq if you haven't already.
-On the right Treeview window choose MDX and find UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer and right click on Load-Multiplayer-Random.mdx and then on Extract MDX. Remember where you saved it and close the Viewer.
-Open WE and press F12 to open the Import Manager once again. Now import the newly exported MDX in it 4 times and start changing paths (since they are all the same, the order isn't important, but make sure they all have a different path):
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Human.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Orc.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-NightElf.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Undead.mdx
AND!!!! last thing DO NOT use the Custom Loading Screen!!!! just use Default Loading Screen, that should FIx it!
QUESTIOOOONS!!:
Q:Sir, Nothing sir ehh i mean sir, yes sir, it didn't work sir, but i used the Custom loading screen and used LoadingScreen.MDX
A:stop fooling around and use Default dun use loading screen.mdx just remove it from the IMPORT manager(to lighten the weight of the size!)
Q:Sir,The loading screen is something no use for this part??? why??
A
idn you just read it?? because in the War3.mpq has the
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Human.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Orc.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-NightElf.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Undead.mdx
AND you just replaced those, if you used LoadingScreen.MDX the Imported UI/Glues/............ wont be used
Say thanks to SFLIP coz i learned ALL OF THIS from him(except the Low quality)
There is many tutorials about Loading Screens, so i decided to write my own,
There are three sections:
-A basic, "low quality" loading screen
-A high quality loading screen
-A loading screen that shows the loading progress for all players
IrfanView is required for all of the below. I chose it because its good, easy to use and user friendly. You can get it from its official site.
see below to download
Irfan View
H1A basic, "low quality" loading screen
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
LoadingScreen.mdx
The picture you want to use
Make/find a GOOD picture for ur MAP to make it look POLISHING. Its size doesn't really matter, but its recommended that its height equals to 3/4 of its width (800x600, 1024x768). Also its height or width musn't be smaller than 512 since this is the size we will resize it to. Now you need to resize it. Open the image in IrfanView and go to Image -> Resize/Resample. Make sure Preserve aspect ratio is unchecked and select Resize (faster) on the right. Now make sure Set new size and pixels below is checked and type 512 in both Width and Height boxes (picture 1. Then click on OK and your picture is now resized.
Note: your picture will look TOTALLY WEIRD!!!!!!! but ignore that weird thing.
Save your file by pressing S or going to File -> Save As. Make sure that the file is TGA and close IrfanView.
Next step is to convert the file to BLP. Open up Warcraft 3 Viewer and press Ctrl+V. Now simply find your TGA and save it somewhere as BLP. Once you find a location the viewer will ask you about the Quality of Compression. This is very important since it might greatly reduce your file's size so choose a number between 50 and 75-100 (recommender 70-75). The WCIII Viewer will ask to add alpha channel to it...just click on Yes if it does and close it.
The final step: adding the loading screen to your map. Open the world editor, load your map and press F12 to open up the Import Manager. Now press Ctrl+I, locate the LoadingScreen.mdx file and import it. The path of mdx files is not important so we don't need to change it. Now press Ctrl+I again and import your BLP file. The path is important here(NEVER PUT THE PATH WRONG!) so double click on the newly imported BLP on the list, check Use custom path and type "FullScreen.blp" in the box. Now save your map, close the import manager and go to Scenario -> Map Loading Screen in the main window. Check Use Imported File and select war3Imported\LoadingScreen.mdx from the list.
Now test your map. If you did everything correctly, you will see your new loading screen.
QUESTIONS:
Q:Sir, the loading screen didn work!
A:You must have been putting your path incorrectly, put the path CORRECTLY through the texture provided
Q:Sir, the loading screen did NOT appear, what is happening??
A:because, the image replaces or i say the image removes the progress bar. see the last part of the tutorial to see how(recommend the part 3 tutorial ONLY for campaign and RPG.)
High quality Loading Screen
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
LoadingScreen.mdx (not to be confused with LoadingScreen.mdx above)
The picture you want to use (1024x768)
QuestIONSSSS:
Q:Sir,What's the difference between low quality and high quality loading screens?
A:The so called high quality loading screen uses 4 Parts instead of one which, combined, form a 1024x768 picture. The difference is both in the two of these is the QUALITY!
waste about 1 mb if u want i SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND THIS FOR CAMPAIGN AND PLAYED IN GARENA .
Ok now let us begin. The procedure is similar to the "low quality" above find a good 1024x768 picture and open IrfanView.
This time, however, instead of resizing you need to crop the image intro 4 parts: top left (512x512), top right (512x512), bottom left (512x256), bottom right (512x256). In order to do this, you need to play with selection. Start by making a rectangle somewhere at the middle (you can move it later) and, by checking the window title, make sure its size is 512x512 (512x512 for the 2 top images, 512x256 for bottom). Once you do so, right click on the selection you just made and drag it to the top left corner so that the title shows something like "<filename> - IrfanView (Selection: 0, 0; 512 x 512; 1.000)" (as you can see 0, 0 is important here) - picture 3. Now go to Edit -> Crop selection and save the file as TGA. This is the first out of four parts so lets continue - open the main picture again and do the same thing 3 more times with proper sizes and positions ("0, 0" for the top left, "512, 0" for top right, "0, 512" for bottom left and "512, 512" for bottom right). Take note that one pixel less/more than it should might result in your whole loading screen not showing so be careful. Once you finally finish close IrfanView and open WE (no need to convert the textures to BLP this time since the new MDX requires TGA files).
Open the Import Manager by pressing F12 and import both the MDX and all four TGAs. Now you need to change the path for each TGA. They should be LoadingScreenTR.tga for the top right one, LoadingScreenTL.tga for the top left, LoadingScreenBR.tga for the bottom right and LoadingScreenBL.tga for the bottom left. Now save your map, close the Import Manager and go to Scenario -> Map Loading Screen in the main editor window. Check Use Imported File and select war3Imported\LoadingScreen.mdx from the list.
All done. Test your map and see if it works...if something goes wrong your picture will most likely come up black. If this happens check the texture sizes and paths in the Import Manager since this is most the most common problem with loading screens.
H3High Quality with progress bar
Requires:
IrfanView
Warcraft 3 Viewer
The picture you want to use
A lot of people asked for something like this so here's finally a tutorial that explains it. Basically its all about replacing the original melee loading screen textures from the MPQ with your own, the similar way we do it when skinning models. Also take note that this loading screen must contain your minimap image so you should pick a good picture that will fit correctly with it (usually people put most of this loading screen in one color - white for example to match their minimap image background).
The process itself is similar to the above high quality screen since this one is also a 1024x768 picture split intro 4 parts with the same sizes like above.
Once again pick your picture and open IrfanView. You need to crop the picture again using selections intro four parts: . For more info about this, please read the above high quality tutorial since its mainly the same thing. Also take note that the minimap and the loading bars for every player are taking a special position so you might want to edit your picture a bit. To see the original 4 pictures simply open Warcraft 3 Viewer, go to File -> Open MPQ, locate war3.mpq in your warcraft directory and check BLP in the Treeview window on the right. Now find the path UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer and check out the textures in it. Every race has its own right-side pictures, but they all share the 2 left - Loading-BotLeft.blp and Loading-TopLeft.blp. Once you've created and saved all 4 parts close IrfanView.
Now open WE, press F12 to open the Import Manager and import all 4 parts. Now change their paths this way:
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-BotLeft.blp - for your bottom left picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-TopLeft.blp - for your top left picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-Random-BotRight.blp - for your bottom right picture
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Loading-Random-TopRight.blp - for your top right picture
Note: if your map only uses one race, then you should change "Random" in the above 2 filenames to that race's name (Human, Orc, NightElf or Undead - for example Loading-Orc-BotRight.blp). If your map is melee or has its races pickable, then continue reading on how to fix that.
To make your game use only one loading screen for all races, do this:
-Open Warcraft 3 Viewer.
-Open war3.mpq if you haven't already.
-On the right Treeview window choose MDX and find UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer and right click on Load-Multiplayer-Random.mdx and then on Extract MDX. Remember where you saved it and close the Viewer.
-Open WE and press F12 to open the Import Manager once again. Now import the newly exported MDX in it 4 times and start changing paths (since they are all the same, the order isn't important, but make sure they all have a different path):
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Human.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Orc.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-NightElf.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Undead.mdx
AND!!!! last thing DO NOT use the Custom Loading Screen!!!! just use Default Loading Screen, that should FIx it!
QUESTIOOOONS!!:
Q:Sir, Nothing sir ehh i mean sir, yes sir, it didn't work sir, but i used the Custom loading screen and used LoadingScreen.MDX
A:stop fooling around and use Default dun use loading screen.mdx just remove it from the IMPORT manager(to lighten the weight of the size!)
Q:Sir,The loading screen is something no use for this part??? why??
A
idn you just read it?? because in the War3.mpq has theUI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Human.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Orc.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-NightElf.mdx
UI\Glues\Loading\Multiplayer\Load-Multiplayer-Undead.mdx
AND you just replaced those, if you used LoadingScreen.MDX the Imported UI/Glues/............ wont be used
Say thanks to SFLIP coz i learned ALL OF THIS from him(except the Low quality)
Last edited:
