 
You can find lots of pictures on the web and on CD's, or you can create your own rooms with programs like Ray Dream Studio and Bryce. Regardless, you'll have to make some modifications on them to fit them into your Palace. First, you should have some graphics program that is capable of manipulating pictures. The Mercedes of graphics programs remains Adobe's Photoshop, but for many of us it remains too expensive to buy. Some shareware programs, however, work very well and will do almost everything you need to create cool looking rooms. For Mac users, I recommend Graphic Converter and GIF Converter, both available as shareware. For PC users, I recommend Paint Shop Pro, again available on the web as shareware. Once you've d/l'ed (downloaded) one of these applications, open it and then open the picture you want to put into your Palace. Palace requires that your pics be 1) GIFs (Macs can download jpg's, but you'll still need GIFs in place for your PC users), 2) 72 X 72 resolution, 3) 236 colors, and 4) 512 X 384 sized. Let's take each of those in turn.
Once your picture is Palace ready, save it and move the image to your Palace:Pictures folder. That's where it needs to be so that you can actually call it up into your Palace. Now, in your Palace go to Wizard mode (you set the wizard code from your server's Preferences menu). Then under the Wizard menu (only visible when you are in wizard mode) go to Create New Room. Presto! You'll be transported to a new room with a name like "Room 124." The default room GIF is "Clouds" so you'll see a background of blue sky and fluffy clouds, but you can soon change that. Under the Wizard Menu, pull down the Room Info menu. That opens a dialogue box where you can start making changes:  In the illustration above you'll see a line called Pict which will read "Clouds.GIF" without the quotation marks. Just change the name there to the name of the image you want to call up--we'll call that "Filename.GIF" Type the name of the GIF in that spot, making sure you put the appendix .GIF and you should immediately see your new picture as the background to the room. So, creating a new room picture is not all that hard. The tricky part is making it look good while fitting the Palace requirements of resolution, colors, and size. Other users will be able to d/l your new background picture automatically as part of the Palace client program.  Once you've created your background picture, you can also overlay GIFs. This can create very cool effects, such an animations, text or images that work with scripts for special effects. In the following section, I'll describe how to make such GIFs, how to install them on your Palace, and give you some idea of why you'd want to use such overlays by talking about some actual uses for them in CyberQuest Palace (207.140.30.49) where I am a wiz. Creating a GIF to overlay in a room is a lot like creating a GIF for a web page. If you've done web page GIFs, this should be a snap. If not, you'll now learn.
 (Note: The following information is Mac-based, but should be more or less true for PC users as well). In that dialogue box you'll see a line called <none> for the GIF that's now in the door. By using the buttons at the bottom of that dialogue box, you can delete the <none> and then click "Add." On Macs, that calls up a menu that allows you to choose a GIF from your hard drive. Call up your new GIF and click "Save." Voila! You should now see your GIF overlaid over the top of your background picture. By moving the door, you can move the overlaid GIF anywhere in the room. Just highlight the door and drag it to make the overlaid GIF move. You can use this technique to add things into a picture that didn't come in the original. In this way, the overlaid GIF can act as the poor person's Photoshop, layering photos over photos. If your beach scene didn't have any bathing beauties in the original, don't despair! You can add some now using the overlaid GIF technique. And you can move those beauties anywhere you want to. How convenient!
 Sometimes you might want to take a cool av and make it a permanent part of a room. You cannot do this with a script that just calls up the av, because it can be erased by any user saying "Clean." But you can do this with the overlaid GIF technique. Let's say you have an av of some male hunk you want to be a permanent part of your room (see, I'm being equally sexist, folks, so don't flame me about the bathing beauties in the last section). Take your av and place it in a room, making sure you line up the parts perfectly. Then you can change the background of the room to be all white. Under Wizard Menu, go to Room Info and in that dialogue box, under Pict change it to Allwhite.GIF That's a background that comes with your palace server, so you should have it already in your Palace:Pictures folder. That will change the room background to entirely white and your av will stand out nicely. Now, take a screenshot of that room. On Macs, you can do that by pushing Control/Shift/3. If your computer can't take a screen shot, find someone who can. The screen shot will be saved on your Hard Disk in some format that you can open with your graphics program. Now, you can treat the image as you would any other, and do a GIF transparency on it to get rid of the white background. Once you have sized it and done a GIF transparency, save it in your Palace:Pictures folder and you can call it up in a door dialogue box, just as you can any GIF (see above). So any av can be turned into a GIF which can be overlaid in any Palace room. It's a handy thing to do, as you'll see below.
 The great thing about overlaid GIFs is that they are part of a door, or spot. The door can be moved anywhere in the room, meaning you can place your overlaid GIF with precision and can move it again if you change your mind. It's not a part of the background GIF which is fixed and permanent. But a door with a GIF can also be activated with a script to turn on and off, or even cycle through a number of GIFs. Let's see some actual examples of how this works.
(Note: most of our rooms at CyberQuest are hidden, but can be accessed by going through the Foyer and from there to the various wings. You'll find the Quest for Romance wing by clicking on the door in the Foyer that leads to a harpsichord.)
We first created a door and went into the door to the pict dialogue box, adding the GIF of Linda after the <none> line:  Then, we added the script below:  ON SELECT {1 7 SETSPOTSTATELOCAL 325 257 SETPOS "@39 232The Foyer is the beginning point for the various Wings at Cyberquest.Take a tour of Spinny's Universe! Stroll through the magnificent gardens of an old English Home. Or just relax in some of the more modern rooms we offer." LOCALMSG "@39 232Your next stop is Imagination, so hold on tight. Hey, not that tight!" LOCALMSG { 166 GOTOROOM } 2200 ALARMEXEC { 0 7 SETSPOTSTATELOCAL } 2200 ALARMEXEC} That particular script performs several functions, but let's just focus on the door state for now. You'll notice in line two that the 1 7 SETSPOTSTATELOCAL changes the state of door #7 to state 1. (The door state is the very first numeral you see there. The second number refers to the door ID#.) Remember that door state 0 shows no GIF at all <none>. Linda only appears when the door state becomes 1. So, the script first changes the door state to 1 and makes Linda appear. I love it! Then, in the last line you'll notice 0 7 SETSPOTSTATELOCAL. That changes the door state back to 0 and Linda disappears. To simplify, you can change the door state to make an overlaid GIF pop up. In it's most simple state, here is that script: ON SELECT { { 0 ME SETSPOTSTATELOCAL } { ME GETSPOTSTATE 1 + ME SETSPOTSTATELOCAL } ME GETSPOTSTATE 0 > IFELSE } In this script, when the door is touched once, the script makes the door state change from 0 to 1. When the door is touched again, the door state changes from 1 to 0. It's a simple, but very useful script and comes in handy when you use the lockable door script described on another page.
Here's how you can achieve that same kind of effect: Go back to the PICT dialogue box in the Door Info dialogue box. Remember that the door initially came with <none> in the first line. That initial <none> state is called 0. That means no picture will appear if <none> is the first line in that box. But you can delete the <none> and start adding your own GIFS. Look at the example below:  And so, in that door's pict box, we have inserted no less than 13 separate GIFs. And we can insert a script to make those GIFs animate in sequential order (and repeat, so the animation effect continues). Below is that exact script: ON SELECT { 10 ME SETALARM } ON ALARM { { 0 ME SETSPOTSTATELOCAL } { ME GETSPOTSTATE 1 + ME SETSPOTSTATELOCAL } ME GETSPOTSTATE 13 > IFELSE 5 ME SETALARM } When touched (selected), the script will cause the GIF to cycle through all the door states, causing it to animate and the stars twinkle!. Whoa! You can change the rate of speed for the animation by varying the number before ME SETALARM in the last line. Play with that number to achieve the speed of animation you desire.
 With the above information on room GIFs and overlaid GIFs you'll be able to achieve a wide variety of effects. Go to lots of palaces to see what others have done and then be creative yourself. It's a lot of fun, can look cool, and with any luck you won't crash the server.
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GIFs: Most
graphics programs can save your pic into another format. So, you can open
a JPEG, for example, and save it as a GIF. When you do, the appendix .GIF
should be attached to the name of the file. You should be able to convert
PICT, TIFF, and other graphics files, too.
PC USERS NOTE: One
helpful reader (Ken) sent the following information regarding creating
transparencies in PaintShop Pro: "I tried the PSP in Palace and got a
transparent background with no trouble. One must save the file with the
background color on the program set to the color one wants transparent.
Then under options when saving click the box that sets transparent color
as background."
Mac USERS NOTE: To
create a transparency in GraphicConverter, go to the Pictures menu and
then to Toolbox. That will bring up a small palette which has the
transparency tool, which lies just to the right of the text tool. To
create a transparency in Photoshop, export your file as a GIF and you'll
be asked which color you'd like transparent.
Remember that
you can only call up GIFs that are in the Palace:Pictures folder. I can
create a GIF on my home computer, but I won't be able to call up that GIF
at CyberQuest Palace, which runs on a different computer entirely. The GIF
must be on the server which houses the Palace itself.
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