fallout tactics files are gif animations
Nope they arent. FOT doesnt use .gif image encoding anywhere in its engine. From my experience editing there are two types of images that FOT deals with, which it has converted to its own internal formats.
That being .PNG files (for other things besides sprites and tiles)
And for sprites and tiles it uses a .RAW format with an 8 bit Alpha channel interleaved.
In order to make sprites (be they inventory, projectiles, or characters) for FOT you've got to be considering this approach, and its almost invariably going to require some extensive Photoshop experience (if you're using gimp, you're probably going to have to get PS from somewhere like torent).
I havent gotten a chance to use the Sprite Creator program yet (requires 1024x768) so I use an older program called Spray. In order to import images into Spray to make FOT sprites I have to...
* Make sure the image has an 8bit Alpha channel (256 levels of transparency)
* Reduce the color of the image down to 8bit, using a 256 color palette (I tend to use a single palette for reducing mine for consistency, usually I use the Fallout 2 color palette).
* Save the image as .RAW with alpha channel interleaved (the default in photoshop).
* I make sure to save the image with a filename that has the pixel dimensions in the filename (eg 132x54).
* Save the Palette for the image if it doesnt use the one I normally use.
then I load up Spray, load up the sprite I want to use as a base, then Import the raw file as well as the Palette that I used for it (since Raw files do not hold palettes inside them, only indexes).
And then have to manually enter in the Width and Height (pixels) of the sprite, because otherwise the program doesnt know what its dimensions were (other people erroneously believe that Spray isnt working for them if they see garbled pixels, but this isnt the case).
And then (huffing, puffing, and panting here) . . . have to change the Alignment of the image so that it is drawn on the screen correctly. Spray has convenient options for this for Inventory graphics but beyond that its exceedingly difficult if its something like a ground sprite or character.
And this is for Every Frame.
Now I dont know if the new Sprite Creator or the sprite maker in FT Tools 2 does it any easier . . . but I think you're starting to get a grasp of how involved modding for FOT is.
GIF files are primitive compared to what FOT does with its graphics.
Graphically, FOT was ahead of its time, these features were rare for a couple more years to come afterward.
Edit:
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And by Every Frame
WE MEAN IT.
I tried to create an Explosion sprite once, and realized right away that for any measure of sanity I would have to set the size of every frame to a standard value (like 128x128) and then manually align the explosion in each frame in photoshop.
Because its hard as hell to begin with to have the explosion aligned properly on the screen, but to have to align each frame of different sizes would be madness.
And since I was using one of the default explosion sprites in the game as a base I had to manually change the alignment of every frame I was replacing - which since each one of mine were a standard size all I had to do was enter in the same 4 coordinates over and over again (then recheck to make sure I didnt mess up because of the repetition).
In the end I produced an explosion which was . . . generally okay . . . but I had to run the game no less than 3 times checking the alignment of the blast and had to correct it by guesswork based on my extensive experience with pixel-level editing (since FOT characters dont necessarily toss a grenade or rocket into the same exact place every time they shoot it).
This sprite was lost when I moved later on, not that it could have been saved, but it wasnt that remarkable because the explosion itself just didnt fit in stylistically in FOT.
But thats alot of work to put into something man.
And that explosion was like 18 frames long TOTAL.
Nothing even close to being a Character sprite.