Lesson Two - Masking the Main Bitmap


You should know how to edit the Main bitmap which is the background fields of the opponents. Now we are going to use masking in the main bitmap. Masking is used to make images that are not square. When you create an image on your computer and save it, it is always some form of square or rectangle. By masking an image you can create images that appear not to be a square or rectangle. Masking is seen in the default bitmap to make round special blocks. Lets get masking!

1. Open your first theme from the last lesson.
2. Click on main bitmap in the left hand menu.
3. Click on the two floppy disks in the upper mid.
4. Save the main bitmap as main.bmp
5. Save the mask as mask.bmp
Note: The main bitmap will be in color and the mask will be in monocrome(black and white)

6. Open main.bmp in a graphics editing program
7. Edit the blocks to how you want to make them
8. Open mask.bmp in another window
9. Paint the areas of the blocks that you dont want seen in mask.bmp
10. When your done with mask.bmp, try copy and pasting the picture to main.bmp and see if it lines up.
11. If it does undo the copy and paste, and save both files. If not fix mask.bmp and try it again
12. Go back to the theme editor and load the two files with the folder buttons
13. Save your theme

Now you have successfully implemented masking!
Try different things with the mask and the main bitmaps to create some interesting results

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