Grimrock

So I got gimp and a dds plugin to create a custom gfxAtlas.
However my gfxAtlas(file name mod_items.dds) doesn't seem to work. The editor seems to load it fine, but no icons appear when I test my mod. Visual it's blank hands disappear when item is equipped.
I suspect that my has to do with the format, D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8 is what I am told to use, the closest I have available ARGB8(close in terms of naming, I know next to nothing about image formats).

Which leads me to my question, is there another dds plugin I can use? Or is there another way entirely that I can create a working custom gfxAtlas?

My guess would be that it doesn't have an alpha channel created in gimp so the dds exporter just defaults the channel to black. If you're not familiar with alpha, it's a color channel that controls the transparency: black = transparent and white = opaque. I'm not familiar with gimp but you should be able to add the channel from somewhere.

Not sure what I did differently but it works now.

I stand corrected that RGBA8(I spelled that wrong in my previous post) does work.

It did/does have an alpha channel in GIMP, but in my previous attempts I probably removed or changed it(I was stumbling around GIMP, I didn't do it intentionally).

Thanks, antti. I can't say your advice actually helped(well it helped a bit, I know what the alpha channel is now), but it did encourage me to give it another go.
Problem is, I still have NO idea were I went wrong. Did I delete the alpha channel? Possibly. Did I screw up during exporting? Possibly. Will I make the same mistake again? Probably.

I had the same problem, almost got me mad. I tried everything, deleted and re-created the alpha channel again and again, exported half a dozen times, checked my lua file over and over, reloaded my dungeon every time, nothing worked. And all I found was this thread with no answer to the problem.
It gave me a hint though - that "it suddenly worked". So I tried just completely closing the dungeon editor and starting it anew; and that seems to be the answer, now it works.

So, apparently for the dungeon editor to recognize your atlas texture, you have to completely restart the editor, it is not enough to simply reload the dungeon from within the editor with the "Reload Project" option.
I´ve just checked that again and yes, you need to do that every time you make a change to your atlas texture for the dungeon editor to recognize it.

Just wanted to let others who may have the same problem know!

Several users reportet that the index numbers always refer to Atlas texture sizes of 1024x1024 and this was also the problem in my case.

see this post:

http://grimrock.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3996

hope i could help

-Fhiz

Thanks, just read that before I revisited this thread, will help me when/if I do more icons.
The problem described in this thread though is a different one, where any change to your atlas is not recognized by the editor until you restart it.