Masking in general
One of the final steps of making a tileset is doing the mask. If you don't save this for the end, then you'll have to update your mask each time your want to compile your tileset.
The mask is the part of the tileset which tells JJ2 what the player (and the enemies, etc...) can bump into and what they can walk past.
You do not need a mask if your tileset is very basic with tiles that are squares, triangles, and other smooth shapes. If you made a tileset like that, then you can use automask.
The simpleist way to make a mask is take your image file and save it to something like mytileset_mask.bmp in your jazz2\tiles directory. Then erase everything that you want the player to be able to walk through. By erase I mean color over with palette colors #0 and/or #1. Also you can draw onto it with any color except #0 and #1 to make smoother edges and corners for the player to walk on and even invisible-wall type stuff ;) The more rigid the edges are, the more of a chance that the player will get stuck in them (remember the spike in the earlier versions of JJ2? It was for a different reason, but you get the idea, eh?)
blasteria.gif
blasteria_mask.gif
What is brown in the bottom picture is what the player will be able to walk on because it is palette color 78 (Non-0 AND Non-1) - The player can walk through the white stuff because it is palette color 0 (and/or color 1).
Added on: 2 June 2001 13:52. Made by Ice M A N.
