See video tutorial at bottom of page for more details!

• First of all a texture needs to be saved with an 'alpha channel' included. This extra channel indicates where to make objects opaque, semi-transparent or totally transparent/invisible.

• Objects are opaque when the alpha channel is not present, or the alpha value at a specific pixel is black (has a value of 0). On the other hand, fully transparent parts are marked with white pixel (a value of 255). Grey values make the objects partially see-through.

Changing .txf Files

• The game does not know by default what it should do with the images alpha channel. This is because the values may be treated in different ways. To solve this ambiguity we use .txf files.

• *.txf files are text files. When changing the contents of those files, a plain text editor must be used. Winword is not a text editor and saves extra formatting data i files that will screw thins up.

• To change the contents of .txf's use notepad (or any other the like) and make sure when saving the file after editing it has .txf extension and not .txt.

• The game recognizes various .txf file settings. The most important one's are (please note the quotes)

→ “RGB_888” “Opaque” → “RGBA_8888” “AlphaMask” → “RGBA_8888” “AlphaBlend/WriteZ”

What do those settings mean?

• “RGB_888” “Opaque”

Textures are uploaded to graphics board using 24bit depth. The alpha channel gets totally discarded, no transparency is used at all. Use this mode when 'no transparency' is wanted.

• “RGBA_8888” “AlphaMask”

Textures are uploaded to the graphics board using 32bit depth. Alpha values below 128 indicate that the object is visible, values above mean full transparency. Use these settings values to hide parts of normally opaque textures. This is recommended for textures that do not have an alpha channel by default.

• “RGBA_8888” “AlphaBlend/WriteZ”

Textures are uploaded to the graphics board using 32bit depth. The alpha value indicates see-through intensity. Use this mode to make textures partily transparent.

Important Notices

* Semi-transparent objects need to be drawn in a specific order (from back to front). Sorting groups of objects is partly done automatically, but mostly artists need to sort them by hand (assign engine specific layers, etc). Thus, objects that are not transparent by default will sometimes behave a bit odd in regards to drawing (flickering, disappearing parts,…).

* At the time of writing this guide, there's an issue with reloading .txf's. .txf's are only loaded once when a modded texture is applied, Alt-R will not work for them.

Learn More

To learn more about textures and alpha channels please watch the following video tutorial!