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To begin with, you are going to need an image that you would like to use for your decal. Before you start, you may want to decide what kind of image you want to use. Do you want it to reflect an aspect of your handle or clan's name? Would you rather display a message or taunting image? Perhaps you're simply looking for something the looks cool. In any case, don't be afraid to tap your creative juices.
Alternatively, you may just want to begin drawing (if you have access to a scanner) or searching, to see what you come up with. You may find just what you're looking for, or you could find inspiration for an idea of your own.
If you have a scanner, you can design the image by hand before scanning it in. Simple images with thick lines work best; remember, the decal must be a greyscale image, so any colors you use will show up only in shades of grey. Otherwise, you may want to find an image from a book or magazine, or have a friend (preferably one who can draw) design your logo for you.
If you can't use a scanner, you can still design images yourself. Using a paint or drawing program to design your graphic may offer you less freedom (anyone who has tried drawing with a mouse will agree), but you still can get very creative. Also, using pre-made fonts often looks much cleaner than lettering done by hand. Simple designs can be made using the Microsoft Paint accessory, while more fully-featured programs (such as Paint Shop Pro, which is very handy for converting images to decal format) may help you to add a some more elegant touches.
The Web is also a wonderful source for images. Again, line art usually looks best, and you can often find tons of it at clip art sites. Detailed images and photos tend to lose much of their quality when used as decals, but images that are already crisp in greyscale may be usable.
Look for images that may be used freely; it's better not to have anyone angry with you for
license infringement, isn't it?
Of course, you could simply look for pre-made decals (like the ones on this site). But if that's
what you want to do, why are you reading this? Again, make sure it's OK to take the decals
for your own use.
Don't forget that the decal must be a 64x64 greyscale bitmap. Large, detailed pictures may become unrecognizable blobs when changed to this format. Simpler is usually better, though some more complicated images may translate well. Remember that high-contrast images generally look the best.
Once you have the image you would like to use, you will need to convert it to a decal.
Half-Life requires the image to be
a 64x64 pixel greyscale bitmap . You will need an image-editing program (such as Paint
Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop) to transfer your image to this format.
If you don't have an image editing program, you can download the
Paint Shop Pro shareware at
www.jasc.com.
For detailed instructions on how to create a decal of your own, read the tutorial.
Half-Life/Logos directory, or
X:/ThisFolder/Logos
where X is the letter of your hard drive, and ThisFolder is the directory Half-Life is in on your hard drive.
To select your decal to be used in the game, from the
Half-Life main menu, select
Multiplayer, then Customize.
This is the screen which allows you to indicate your multiplayer handle, player
graphic model and colors, and most importantly, your decal. Scroll through the selectable
decals by clicking Previous and Next below the box which displays
the active decal. The program will display all the valid bitmaps in your
Half-Life/Logos
directory(including the default decals included with the game, if you have not removed them). You can also select the color that your decal will be displayed in via the
pull-down menu adjacent to the display box. Click Done, and the decal
you selected will be available in the next game you join.
To use your logo in the multiplayer game, press the key
mapped to Spray Logo in your Half-Life control configuration.
The default key is T.
I'm not sure of this, but it's probably not a good idea to keep several hundred decals
in your logos directory. While this may cause no side effects, it
may slow down your multiplayer game (where usually every frame counts). You are most
likely better off choosing and handful of favorites to put in the
logos directory, and storing the rest in a separate directory. Always
better to err on the side of caution, right?
