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Full Version: Masking the GIF files?
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How can I mask the GIF files so that they are unreadible by common image viewers but that I can still load them with my QBasic gif loader?

Is this possible? Gif loader is not by me so altering it would be a problem.
Change the header. ;*)

Big Grin
Right...

Newsflash: Lachie is a dummy! Dummy needs dummy instructions.
A technique I used for old WOS betas...

Each tileset was saved as an SBS file (Super BSAVE), and I then wrote a tool to wipe out the palette and save the tileset to GIF. Only WOS could use the GIF...Windows-based viewers and editors, even if you applied a palette with indexing, could never view them because they equated all pixels to 0 due to the plain black palette.

The reason I did that though was so that no one could see the files as they were being loaded. Nowadays, I got my act together and know how to black-out the palette during the GIF load so no one sees the load anyways. :lol:
And that's not really helping me.

Unless you are saying I load up a black palette and copy and paste all 17 images on new pages with black palettes and save them?

I'm way to lazy to be doing that.
You can do what I suggested you a while ago.

GIF files have an ID field in their header. If you examine your GIF loader you'll find it out somewhere. I think it should read GIF87 or GIF89. The trick is modify your loader to check for "KENTA" (for instance) instead of the aforementioned strings. Then you write a program that opens the files and change their headers.
You mean header as a begining of a file? How do I open GIF files when changeing their header. With a plain text reader? Or with somekind of more complex file reader that can read files in HEX.
Download the best Hex Editor: http://www.bpsoft.com/downloads/
Hex Workshop (not for DOS I think)
yeah, but you can also try qb:

Code:
header$="KENTA"
PUT #1, offset%, header$

You only have to find the proper "offset%", the position where the ID is (I think that most likely offset%=1).
Yep, very simple as well.

Take a look: http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/formats/gif.html