Also, before I started the game for the first time I pulled up the start menue and accedentally hit a tab marked "nose art". It ran a DOS program of some sort?? What was that all about?

In the game the user nose art exists in two forms: one for the map screen and one for the 3D section. Changing the nose art is therefore a two-stage process:

Modify the mapscreen nose art in a standard art pack.
Run a conversion program, which we have provided, to produce the form of the nose art for the 3D section of the game.

Modifying the Mapscreen Nose Art
The source files will be found in: \artwork\noseuser. If you haven’t changed the default directory the full path will be: \rowan\mig\artwork\noseuser\.
The nose art consists of sixteen files in the bmp file format. You can edit any or all of these files in your art pack. The following restrictions apply:

Each piece of artwork must be 64 pixels x 64 pixels and must have 256 Colors.
The palette cannot be changed.
Color 253 must not be used.
Color 254 is the mask color – this will be transparent and not show up on the aircraft.
Color 255 should be pure white (255,255,255).

After saving out a modified piece of nose art, it will be possible to view the change on the mapscreen paint shop dialogue. At this stage, though, the change will not be available in the 3D.
Preparing the Artwork for the 3D Game
To make the modified artwork available in the 3D part of the game, you need to run the ‘nose art’ program that is installed in the same directory as MiG Alley.
There are two other ways of running the nose art program:

It is available as a menu item in the MiG Alley section of the Start Menus.
It can be initiated from the command line with the command: tt2 –r user.res

Running the nose art program will produce a new version of the file: MaskMap\UsrDecal.X8
If at any time any of the user nose art files are corrupted then they can be replaced by copying from the original CD. The directory names on the CD are identical to those on the installed version.

As for other peoples "nose art" i think the best was included in the game? and people just stuck with it?
I made my own "Horny" Dungeon Keeper2 art but forgot about it when i recently formated my HD

And what the heck does this mean, "The palette cannot be changed. Color 253 must not be used. Color 254 is the mask color – this will be transparent and not show up on the aircraft. Color 255 should be pure white (255,255,255)."

I'm using MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop.

You really need to go to this site:

ma-skins.frugalsworld.com/sabre.htm

It has everything you want to know. You can change the default nose art off of the jolly roger scheme, you can download other folks noseart, etc. I have made several nose art files of my own using the stuff provided at this site and just modifying the existing files, etc (ie, I start out with the "blank" nose art and modify it by cutting, pasting and drawing my own stuff). Go to the above listed site and all will be answered. If you can't get straight to the site, start at Frugalsworld.com, then select mig skin central from one of the tabs on the screen. Hope this helps.

then scroll down the page to "Hosted Sites" which is about 2/3 down on the right side of the web page. Then click on

MiG Alley Skin Central

And there you are. Look for tips on nose art and 'killing the Jolly Roger' for what you want.

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Originally posted by Squeehee:
Ok, it's not working. I've followed everyone's instructions...at least, as much as I understand them. I still get images that look like hell. The backgrounds are all black. In fact, the images I've tried to make end up looking like negatives of the originals. What am I doing wrong?

And what the heck does this mean, "The palette cannot be changed. Color 253 must not be used. Color 254 is the mask color – this will be transparent and not show up on the aircraft. Color 255 should be pure white (255,255,255)."

I'm using MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop.

I should point out that the images look fine when I choose them in the map screen but don't work in 3D.

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Go to Mike Caulk's site, the one listed above. DL that blank template. Then, you have to cut/paste your image onto that, which automatically changes the palate to MA's, which is very strange. The more color depth your original image has, the more chance it has to copy over reasonably well, so hopefully your machine supports 32-bit. Anything less and you are almost guranteed to get a bizarre change that is very, very hard to fix.