Pic drawing tools and colour

There are three main drawing tools: pen, fill and line. Unlike SCI Studio, SCI Companion doesn't make you choose between "short" and "long" versions of them. The editor will automatically use the most space-efficient commands when saving the pic to the game file.

SCI Companion currently supports one level of undo in the pic editor.

Pen tool

The pen tool requires a bit more explanation, and offers more functionality than in SCI Studio. The 32 options of pen shape, size, and pattern are chosen from the Pen Style button on the toolbar. A preview of the pen (e.g. what will happen when you click) is shown as you move the mouse cursor over the image. If you are using a "pattern", the pattern will change randomly with each click (SCI Studio does not expose this functionality of pic resources). This should let you get more natural looking transitions between areas of different colours. You can disable random patterns in the Pen Style dialog. In either case, right clicking will cycle through the next pattern (128 different patterns for each size and shape).

Fill tool

The fill tool is one of the biggest sources of frustration with people drawing their own pics, because it only allows you to fill "blank" (previously unfilled) areas. I suppose Sierra did this so the artists would be forced to be space efficient. At any rate, it is an annoying but unavoidable feature. Design your pic with this in mind.

Another important thing to mention about the fill tool concerns dithered colours where one of the colours is white. If you have, say palette 1 where color 5 is composed of yellow and black; and palette 2 where color 5 is composed of yellow and white; then you might have a problem. Fills will look different because often dithered colours that include white will let a fill leak through a spot where it would not if it didn't include white. If your picture looks really messed up when viewing with a different palette, it may be due to this.

Line tool

This tool is pretty straightforward.

Choosing a colour

At any one point, the drawing takes place on any of the three screens. The colour used on each screen, if any, is controlled by the "V", "P" and "C" buttons on the toolbar. If nothing appears when you draw, it is because you are drawing on the screen at which you are currently looking.