aquaMat, Wingy,

I've only been back for a day but here I am learning already....

Didn't know about the multiple music file options. I tried something similar with the background screens and it doesn't seem to take anything over 6.

Glad that others are starting to do serious modifications to MM. When I started on this a long time ago in a galaxy far far away only a couple of people were doing it but now it seems as if a whole new group is taking on the challenge.

I also have had Bias and SoundConverter but they both seem to not like the Intel Macs and I have had issues on the PPC platform similar to what you're seeing. So I guess for the time being I'll keep the SoundApp solution which although a little hokey does do the job. I've also been playing around with another nifty little piece of code called Soundflowerbed which allows me to do virtual patching between music/sound applications using Apple IAC. I'd like to get a midi interface for my old Roland D-10 but since I just dabble in music I don't want to spend a lot on an interface that will spend most of it's time collecting dust.
For Dominator I wanted to create John Williams type music but the first 2 things I've come up with are based strictly on Apple Loops. And it's been Matt doing that. I'm working on a 3rd piece written completely by hand but working with the music typing and miniscule keyboard in Garageband has made me pull out the Roland and an old Yamaha and I think I'll wind up in Finale which is more robust for "real" music but also carries that nasty learning curve thing.

As far as DS goes believe it or not it actually started on the Mac (or so I've been told) but like most software has taken a turn to the Dark Side. Take you time with it and don't make the mistake I did by assuming I could go straight from DS to MM graphics. Then you wind up in that annoying "Oh crap, the edges look terrible" mode. Just make PS posting part of the process and you'll see how much easier it becomes. I'm probably what would be considered a proficient DS user so PLEASE don't hesitate to ask me for help and again, I do have a ton of content so let me know if you can't find something.

In the same vein I'm probably going to ask you guys a lot of sound stuff. Finally what mansions have you guys put together so I can go get inpired to finish the dilithium mines and get Dominator posted.  Matt's also looking to play some new mansions so any suggestions would be welcome.

And now back to that annoying work thing.....

later,

joeb

And here is a picture of my lever:

Joes TIP #1:

White is not always white.

Whenever you have a raggy edge the first thing you should do is go into PS, open the source document and select the magic wand. In the toolbar, in the tolerance box type a 1 (one). Click anywhere in your document and if there's nonwhite pixels you'll see them! To work correctly
WHITE = 255,255,255
AQUA = 0,255,255
BLACK = 0,0,0

Just because you can't see the difference between a white pixel at 255,255,255 and a "white" pixel at 254,255,255 the software will put that white pixel up and you'll scratch your head and go "Wait, that pixel is white". TOTOMB I ran into that issue with the plants where there were pixels at 0, 254,255. See the attached example.

HTH,

Joe B

NO. The magic wand is the tool that looks like a wand with a sparkle at the top. On most versions of Photoshop/Elements it's the second tool from the top on the right hand side of the tool palette. For any MM work it is INVALUABLE! Using that same technique of select everything on the white background you can then go to the Select menu and choose Inverse. Now you'll select everything that isn't white which should be you graphic. Using the same Select menu you choose Modify -> Border and in the dialog box select 1 pixel. Now you have an outline around your object. Then you can do a fill with whatever color you want, black in most cases. Then you can touch up the outline by hand. I'll see if I can put together a step by step with graphics explaining what I mean. As I said above this is THE tool you really want to become familiar with.

joeb