To help out those that are new to Blade Pro ( and maybe some of you that aren't so new) here are some tips and tricks on organizing your presets, packaging them for the list (or your website!), and using Blade Pro.
It's highly recommended that when you make your own presets you give them a unique name. This helps people identify who made it and who to give credit for it. It also helps to prevent it having the same name as a preset they already have. The best way to do this is to start the name with your initials or nickname. Jane Doe might start her presets with JD, JD-, JD_, jdoe, jdoe_, jdoe- or something similar. After the initial identifier the name is up to you. Some people like whimsical names, others like descriptive, and still others just make presets in 'series' and assign a series name and a number to each preset.
Like presets, it's highly recommended that when you make your own bitmaps you give them a unique name. Just name them like you would a preset, with your initials or nickname starting the file name.
The absolute minimum files to have in your zip file is your .q9q (or .q5q for SBP), and up to two (2) bitmap files. If you have any doubt that people would have the bitmaps you used, include them. It's a lot less hassle to have multiple copies of a bitmap than to be missing one! You may want to include a 'preview' image (generally a .jpg) to show what your preset looks like and a text file with your website information and any terms of use you may want to have to limit the commercial use of your preset.
When you're getting ready to send your newest preset out into the aether (be it on the list or on a website) you may find yourself wondering what bitmaps you need to include with the preset in your zip file. To find out what bitmaps your preset uses open the .q9q (or .q5q for SBP) file in Notepad. There will be several lines of 'garbage' characters but the names of any bitmaps used in the preset will be clearly readable. Make sure you have word wrapping turned on so you don't have to scroll sideways for several 'pages'. :)
To make this easier you can add a shortcut to Notepad in C:\WINDOWS\SendTo that way you'll only have to right click on the .q5q or .q9q file and select Notepad under the Send to... menu.
[NOTE: Editpad users, you MUST use Notepad for this, for some reason Editpad won't display the information. Probably because it's a 'smarter' program.]
Open Windows Explorer. Under View go to Folder Options and click on the File Types tab. Find the entry for .q5q (or .q9q) in the list. It should have either the Notepad icon or an icon of a sheet of paper with the Notepad icon on it next to it. Highlight the entry and click the Remove button.
Vandy answers:
Making a template to use for a Blade Pro/Super Blade Pro sample is a very personal
endeavor and, one that I wouldn't dream of stating that my way is the only way.
What I've detailed here is only one of many ways it could be done. Having said
that, here is the way I make a template for use with Blade Pro Presets:
To use the template, follow the below steps:
Roy adds:
I pretty much did the same to make my template, but instead of just saving it
as a psp graphic, I saved the entire workspace then named my template "template
B.psp" in my templates folder....you see I have several templates. What's
nice about this is that when you are ready to make a preset, just click "file/workspace/then
select the template of your choice and the template is returned to your drawing
surface in the same place it was when you saved it with the objects selected
and ready for the preset to be applied.
SBP can use BP presets. As for BP using SBP presets, here's what Lloyd at Flaming Pear has to say:
"The answer is: kind of. Change the .q5q suffix of the preset files to .q9q, and the original BladePro will be able to display it in the load-preset dialog box. However, BladePro will ignore all the features that only SuperBladePro understands, like blotches and moss."
No, installing SBP in the same folder as BP won't mess anything up. All the files necessary for running SBP are named different from the ones for BP. The textures and environments are the same, so even if they overwrote the ones from your BP install you didn't lose anything.
No, you don't need to keep BP if you don't want to. SBP can use the BP presets without converting them and they'll look like they always did. Just don't remove anything in the Environment and Textures folder.
With the early versions of SBP you had to convert them one by one. Open the BP preset in SBP and then save it as an SBP (.q5q) preset. The latest version of SBP does conversions.
If you don't see even a small white/grey gradient or any other obvious placeholder image you probably have ImageFox installed. ImageFox will prevent SBP from displaying previews of presets. Right click on the fox icon in your system tray and select Options. Click the Local Options tab. Find the listing for Super Blade Pro and highlight it. Uncheck all three check boxes.
SBP can only display previews for SBP presets (*.q5q files). To have previews of older BP presets you must convert them to SBP presets
This question has many answers. Some people just dump the presets and bitmaps all in the same folder (which is what Blade Pro does by default). Others separate the presets and bitmaps into two folders but don't otherwise sort them. Yet others get more complex with their systems.
Vandy uses this method:
As I'm sure you're aware, Blade Pro looks for its .q9q preset and bit map files
in the default folder environments and textures. If you place your files in
a different folder, Blade Pro will ask you to locate the bit map file(s) it
needs for the preset. Okay. I said all that to say this...
... What I do is to make a folder first for Blade Pro and then for Super Blade Pro Below each folder, I make individual folders by preset author's names. Within these folders I store the actual Blade Pro .q9q preset and bit map files or Super Blade Pro .q5q preset and bit map files. For example, my folder structure would look similar to the following:
C:\Graphics
\Blade Pro Stuff
\Presets
\Blade Pro
\Kim's Presets
BP_example.q9q
bit_map_1.bmp
bit_map_2.bmp
\Super Blade Pro
\Kim's Presets
SBP_example.q5q
bit_map_1.bmp
bit_map_2.bmp
Now, I know that this can lead to redundancy with bit map files. However, I made a conscious decision to duplicate files so that I ALWAYS know I will have all the necessary files for a given preset. Also, I keep presets on my hard drive ONLY long enough to get a CD's worth of files. Then, I'll write the ~650MB of data I've been storing (presets and anything else I've collected) to a CD ROM. This way, I can take my presets anywhere, use them on any computer and not have to "clutter up" my hard drive.
Tephra uses this one:
I dump all the bitmaps into the environment and textures folder and keep several
folders for presets.
My directory tree looks like this:
..\BladePro
\environments and textures
\presets
\!BP
\!SBP
\#-J \1d
\Charlene \JJ (etc)
\K-O
\KH
\NL (etc)
\P-Z
\PJ-Wings
\RoyWeeks
\Vandy (etc)
\Teph
\SuperBladePro
!BP = The presets that came with BP and early ones I collected that don't have
nicely unique names.
!SBP = The presets that came with Super Blade Pro.
#-J = Presets starting with numbers or letters A through J.
KO = Presets starting with letters K through O.
P-Z = Presets starting with letters P through Z.
Teph = I keep mine separate so they are easier to get to when making zips.
As you can see, sometimes I file under a person's name rather than initials. This usually happens because they 1) don't use a naming pattern like their initials or 2) their naming pattern is not immediately associated with the name they use on the list.
When I get a new preset I just unzip into the directory the .q*q file belongs in. Later I move the bitmaps into the environments and textures folder.
If I get a warning if there's a bitmap of the same name already there:
It's a bit of work to deal with same name bitmaps but since most people here are good about putting unique names on their own bitmaps it's not that common to have to do it.