Balance and realism issues with RT3 v1.06 locomotives

[Gumboots]

DDS uses 25% of the VRAM used by a TGA, so it's better for performance (which is why it was invented).

You could use GIMP to convert DDS to TGA and back, since it will import and save either format.

[sbaros]

Corel doesn't support DDS at all, so I used my Xmas leave of absence to try and learn DDS operations with GIMP. However, GIMP doesn't seem to recognise the masks that come with the supplied Tycoon skins. When saving my modifications to DDS format, the only thing I get in the Tycoon environment is blur, the transparent areas are non-existent.
Any trick to make masks work in GIMP?

[Gumboots]

I haven't messed with Gimp for ages but I found these two references:
https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-How-t ... ha-channel
https://killerskins.com/yoru/tutorials/ ... dds-files/

If those don't make sense I'll download and install Gimp, and see if I can get the DDS skins working.

[sbaros]

I guess these instructions concern adding a mask from scratch, but what happens with already existing masks?
Whenever I take an original DDS out of their respective PK4 locations, the masks are neither visible nor editable in GIMP. The ones in TGA form don't need GIMP, they can be properly loaded and processed in Corel. So far, I have found no utility correctly converting a DDS plus its masks into TGA. I wish I knew how PopTop produced the distributed TGA skins in their "Skinning Tools" out of the prototype DDS ones.

[Gumboots]

I guess these instructions concern adding a mask from scratch, but what happens with already existing masks?

The alpha channel is still in the image, but you have to perfrom the mask tricks to get GIMP to recognise it.

I wish I knew how PopTop produced the distributed TGA skins in their "Skinning Tools" out of the prototype DDS ones.

They would have made the skins in Photoshop (or something similar) and then saved the finished images as both TGA and DDS, direct from their graphics app.

How many images do you want converted to TGA? If you want every image in the game, that would be a drama. If you only want a dozen or so, I could do them in Photoshop pretty easily.

[sbaros]

Ah, that's a clue, it's obviously these "mask tricks" I am missing to get GIMP to recognise them masks.
The particular files I have been targeting at this occasion are various font bitmaps, namely the larger typefaces of the "Arial" family (such as "Arial3D_60_1600_A.dds" and "Arial_60_1600_A.dds".
At a general level, I do have a problem of principle with having to purchase multiple competing programs in order to get a full project done. I possess a legitimate issue of "Corel", which does everything I need except reading the DDS format. Judging from the above post, I understand I have to buy Photo-shop as well, hoping that I'll be able to do the missing part of the desired job, if I dedicate more or less the countless hours I have spent to learn Corel (not all of it, just things I specifically need) in the first place. Brilliant...

[Gumboots]

Ok, let's do it the easy way. There are a stack of free online image converters these days. I just tried this one (as a random choice): https://onlineconvertfree.com/convert/dds/

It converted the default AdlerL_A.dds to TGA, with alpha channel intact and functional. They have some restrictions on free usage, which look to be fine for occasional use, or you can buy a cheap package to remove the restrictions.

There are several other converters around. I haven't tested them but I expect most of them work. Examples are:
https://convertio.co/dds-tga/
https://anyconv.com/dds-to-tga-converter/
https://www.aconvert.com/image/dds-to-tga/

Go nuts.