If you'd like to make a standard spray logo (one color scale, and sometimes better than color logos if done right) head on over to the tutorial at Wavelength, it's all you need.
If you've made a multi-colored spraypaint picture and someone else asks you how you did that, then refer him to http://connect.to/deviln or this page.
Important note: Don't use MS Paint! If you only have Paint, then get Paint Shop Pro from http://www.jasc.com!
The Principle
First of all it's important that you know the principle of Half-Life textures. The process of making a multi-colored spraypaint picture is fairly simple if you know this principle. Therefore I will explain this here.
Half-Life textures are 256 colored (8-bits) pictures, which may have any palette by the way, which are saved in a so-called Wad3 file. So WAD files are simply files in which there are a couple of pictures, which can be opened by Half-Life (duh! :).
Now, spraypaint pictures are also saved in a WAD file. What Half-Life normally does to make spraypaint pictures is this: Take a greyscale BMP picture, give it one certain color (this is a process most people will probably know), and put the result in a file named PLDECAL.WAD. This PLDECAL.WAD is the file that will be uploaded to the server and that will be downloaded by everybody next, so they can also see the picture.
But, like I said, a picture in a WAD file can have any palette you want. Standard spraypaint pictures have only one color becuase Half-Life makes them that way.
But, naturally, you can also make such a PLDECAL.WAD yourself, with a picture of your own. Besides that, you can also define the size of the picture yourself (normal HL spraypaint pictures are 64x64 pixels, my Dopefish picture is 80x112 pixels in example).
Make sure you understand exactly what has been described above. If you don't understand it completely, then read it again until you understand the system. This will prevent a lot of confusion later on when you're busy making and using a multi-colored spraypaint picture.
So, what I did: I downloaded the Half-Life Texture SDK (Software Developing Kit), I read the tutorial included with it, I converted a 256-colored BMP picture of my own to a PLDECAL.WAD, and I replaced my old PLDECAL.WAD with the new one.
Making A PLDECAL.WAD Yourself
First, make sure you have an 8-bits (256 color) BMP picture. The palette, like I said, doesn't matter.
Make sure that there's at least one pixel in your picture that is pure blue (in RGB that's 0 0 255 or #0000FF). This is because pure blue pixels become transparent in Half-Life. If there are no transparent, pure blue pixels in the picture, then for some reason the picture will be drawn in greyscale in Half-Life.
If you don't want any transparent parts in your picture, then just make a pure blue border around your picture.
The BMP picture has to be at least 16x16 pixels and at most 256x256 pixels. Width and height may differ, but the amount of pixels, in both cases, MUST BE DIVISIBLE BY 16!!! So, a picture of 80x80 pixels is allowed, a picture of 32x96 too, but a picture of for instance 67x130 WON'T WORK.
256x256 pixels is the limit for normal Half-Life textures. With spraypaint pictures it appears that the server won't accept PLDECAL.WAD files that are larger that about 15 kb (exact value is unknown). This means that a picture of 96x96 pixels will work, but a picture of 128x128 pixels won't.
Call this BMP picture {LOGO.BMP and put it somewhere temporarily.
Mind the { in {LOGO.BMP. If it's not clearly visible, that token is an accolade. That accolade tells Half-Life that the picture contains transparent pixels.Download the Half-Life Texture SDK now.
This file is only 169 kilobytes, and contains everything you'll need to make a WAD file.
Next, unzip this Texture SDK in any folder. Now go to this folder. Here, you'll find the files MAKELS.EXE, QLUMPY.EXE, TEXTURE TUTORIAL.DOC, MAKEWAD.BAT and the folders Samples and Source. The folder Source is not important.
Make a folder called 'MyDecal' (without quotation marks of course) in the Texture SDK folder and go to this newly created folder. Now copy your own made {LOGO.BMP to this MyDecal folder. Go back to the Texture SDK folder, and open the file MAKEWAD.BAT with a text editor, like Notepad. If it's right, then this should be in
it:
Make sure that there is only one BMP picture in the MyDecal folder. If there are more BMP pictures in it, then these will also be taken into the PLDECAL.WAD file, and then PLDECAL.WAD will become much larger than 15 kb!!!
Execute the MAKEWAD.BAT that you've altered just now. If all goes well then two files are made now, which should be PLDECAL.LS and PLDECAL.WAD.
If this doesn't happen, and only PLDECAL.LS is being made, then there is something wrong with your BMP picture. Make sure that it's an 8-bits (256 colors) BMP picture and that the width and height in pixels are divisible by 16!!!
Okay, if all went well, you should've gotten your PLDECAL.WAD by now. Right below is how to instal and use, have fun!
If your just going to use one spray logo, (and I highly recommend the PlanetFortress logo) follow these instructions. If you wish to have
multiple logos to sort through, check out the Half-Life Color Spray Manager, a sweet utility in managing mutliple sprays.
Copy PLDECAL.WAD, and go to your Half-Life folder (for instance C:\SIERRA\HALF-LIFE). From that folder, go to the folder of the Half-Life type in which you want to use your spray paint picture (in the case of Counter-Strike this is the CSTRIKE folder, in the case of Team Fortress this is the TFC folder, and in the case of standard Half-Life this is the VALVE folder). Now paste the PLDECAL.WAD file you've just copied in this folder. You're ready to use the spraypaint picture now!
Three more things:
1) Do not click on OK or Cancel in Customize in the Half-Life menu. Exit Customize by pressing the Escape key. If you do click OK or Cancel, your old spray paint picture will be made again. If this does happen accidentally, then place your own PLDECAL.WAD back in the folder where you placed it before (so for instance the CSTRIKE, TFC or VALVE folder).
2) If you want to spray your spray paint picture in the game, and instead of your own picture a completely different picture appears (like a Hostage Rescue Point in Counter-Strike), don't panic, because it takes a while before your picture is uploaded to the server and is downloaded by yourself. As soon as this has happened, your picture will work just fine (That is, if you've followed all of the steps above here correctly).
3) Server admins now have the option of setting sv_allow_uploads to 0, if this option is on, you will only see the Valve default logo. You'll have to move to another server to use your logo.
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