I was making a sprite for an actor that I'm making, I am saving out the files as compressed bmp's and yet they seem to be much larger file sizes than other ones that I've seen people make. I am using other peoples files as a template and I work over it to create the sprite. I'm saving it out as an 8bit windows compressed(RLE) file. The files size comes out to be about 52kb, and the one that I started with was only 4kb. I'm using photoshop to create them too if that helps solve the problem... Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

You probably want to copy them into a base.rte sprite in paint and save a copy, just in case PS is taking them out of palette. That would be my guess.

Ok, so I got the file size down now to the 4kb like I was wanting, but now when I load up cortex command it says that it was aborted. What I had to do to get the file size down was save it as a .gif, and then I converted it to a bmp. Anyone know what's going on?

Ah, it was a palette problem. For the rte aborted thing, did you do any coding in addition to the sprite? Your sprite should not crash your game that early, but it will look funny when you finally get it ingame. I recommend you ask someone to put it in palette for you or figure out how to put something in palette using PS.

Ok, so I used Gimp to create the sprite this time and the game runs with the sprite, except the sprite only works when the actor is looking to the right, if he turns around then it goes all funky.

You need this palette file. Stick it in wherever Gimp keeps palettes on Macs (for me it's Documents and Settings\User\.gimp-2.6\palettes) and put your sprites in palette by using Image -> Mode -> Indexed, selecting the Cortex Command palette file (via Use Custom Palette), and making sure that "Remove Unused colors from Colormap" is unchecked. You want all of them in the correct order.

Are those the only colors you can use? From that palette file?

For most sprites, yes. Bunker Mat files use a different palette, this one. Glows are regular 24bit bitmaps but they are applied additively.