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Using ink effects on objects, you can use a "monochrome" (grayscale) effect, but in MMF2D is it possible to make objects in other monochromes such as shades of red or blue? And I am not sure what the XOR, AND, ADD, OR, etc. ink effects are supposed to do or how to use them effectively.
I guess to make the objects monocrome other than gray such as red or blue you'd need to edit them in photoshop, since this program separates the three channels and let you edit them.
about the ink effects:
XOR
The result of drawing the object, is the combination of the background and the object itself with a XOR operator.
AND
The result of drawing the object, is the combination of the background and the object itself with a AND operator.
OR
The result of drawing the object, is the combination of the background and the object itself with a OR operator.
Monochrome
When drawing the object, its colors are converted to shades of gray.
Add
When drawing the object, the RGB components of its pixels are added to the RGB components of the background pixels.
Subtract
When drawing the object, the RGB components of its pixels are subtracted from the RGB components of the background pixels.
I personally use mostly the ADD effect which is great!
I am sure that JASC's PaintShop Pro would serve the purpose. I find that to be considerably less unweildy than Adobe Photoshop. Anyway, that explains what all that stuff does, but I remember what I was taught about connotation versus denotation. The latter gives me a definition of what it is and a vague idea of its application, but without seeing a practical need for it, I'm afraid the explanation is meaningless. I think I'll stick to using the inverse, monochrome and semi-transparent features. I know I'll have a practical use for these things.
When the SDK for ink effect will be released we'll find a lot of different ink effects I think <img src="/center/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
What they can be used for:
XOR
Commonly used to highlight things, i.e. the old selection boxes in Windows and some cursors. In games, objects can toggle between normal and XOR ink effects to make them stand out when the user needs to be able to find them quickly (i.e. when a marker appears then disapears soon afterwards). If you use XOR on an object which has a colour of RGB = 255, 127, 127 (or some combination of 255 and 127) it should show up on almost any colour. When used on an object which is white, this is the same as inverting whatever it's overlapping
OR
Before we got alpha chanels, OR was used for creating lighting effects, but the effect was bad. Now a combination of ADD and Alpha Chanels can make a better effect.
AND
Similar to OR, AND used to be used for shadow effects (where using a semitransparent black object wasn't enough) But now alpha chanels can do this better.
ADD
Used to brighten sections of the screen for lighting / highlighting.
SUBTRACT
Used to darken sections of the screen for simple shadows or fades.
Remember that when working with XOR, OR and AND the effect is applied at the bit level, so you should check what your colours look like when writen in binary. This makes them less useful for smooth fades
i.e:
127 (0b01111111) XOR 255 (0b11111111) = 128 (0b10000000)
127 (0b01111111) OR 255 (0b11111111) = 255 (0b11111111)
etc.
Add is good for explosions and fire particles since it has both the advantage of brightening the background behind it and because at rgb 0,0,0 nothing is added and the pixel is transparent, the ink can achieve soft edges on your sprites.
Subtract is also very useful; like bovril said it is good for shadowing (it is faster than using alpha channels), and is also very useful for creating colour filters. By subtracting 0,255,255 you create a filter that makes the background behind it monochromatically red, because it has filtered out the other colours.
Experimentation is probably the best way to find uses for these ink effects. Knowing what each one does is a step in the right direction, so explanations aren't completely useless.