Tides of War

Sounds good!! :)

Glad to hear things weren't too bad for you.
Now what's happening with that color/skin mod?

Actually, reskinning and game modification is on the way anyway. I've written a game file unpacker program. It also repacks the game's EZV files. East has granted his permission to release it. Look for it soon. I'll post it in this forum.

TT

Yes, I see the thread: http://enigma.tidesofwar.net/index.php?showtopic=2140

Thanks for your effort! (I like to think I gave a little push)

I'm still wondering about the previous skinning mod East spoke of:

I believe so, yes, but I think we also had a template so you knew how to paint your own for what portion of the ship or aircraft.? I'll post as soon as we find it (and test it).

Is that still coming? If so, is it more or less capable than timetravellers'?

Just curious...

Glad to hear things weren't too bad for you.
Now what's happening with that color/skin mod?

Actually, reskinning and game modification is on the way anyway. I've written a game file unpacker program. It also repacks the game's EZV files. East has granted his permission to release it. Look for it soon. I'll post it in this forum.

TT

Yes, I see the thread: http://enigma.tidesofwar.net/index.php?showtopic=2140

Thanks for your effort! (I like to think I gave a little push)

I'm still wondering about the previous skinning mod East spoke of:

I believe so, yes, but I think we also had a template so you knew how to paint your own for what portion of the ship or aircraft.  I'll post as soon as we find it (and test it).

Is that still coming? If so, is it more or less capable than timetravellers'?

Just curious...

The camo mod I believe will just change camo for a ship. With ENIGMA Ripper you can change anything in any game file. Lately I've been fooling with the ocean color a bit, bringing up the blue a little more and adding and a little green tin too. More Mediterranean color.

TT

Ah.

I reached a roadblock at DXTbmp. I'm not saying that I won't press forward, but I'm not an ol' hack at in depth game modding, so I'll need to study a bit.

Ah.
I reached a roadblock at DXTbmp. I'm not saying that I won't press forward, but I'm not an ol' hack at in depth game modding, so I'll need to study a bit.

NVIDIA makes a neat little DDS thumbnail viewer that works with Windows Explorer. It enables you to choose thumbnail view for your folder window and see all the DDS images. Explorer already works thumbnails for PNG images.

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_thumbnail_viewer.html

It took me awhile initially to figure out dxtBMP too. Basically the DDS and PNG images have alpha channels within that control the main image transparency. dxtBMP allows you to split out both the main image and the alpha transparency channel (a greyscale image itself) so that you can work on them separately. It splits each off as a BMP format, which is easily editable in most any image editor, even MS Paint. Me and alpha layers never got along too well. I understand them, but for the life of me the PaintShopPro (and Photoshop I presume) way of dealing with them is 100 times more complicated than it needs to be and I never have totally figured it out. Note that dxtBMP will only resave DDS images, not PNG format. However, with the ability to split off both the main image and alpha channel, they can be recombined in PSP and resaved from there.

Also been playing with the bow wakes on the ships, making them bigger, wider, etc. Fun stuff. That's all done in the \data folder. It's also easy to kick up the waves a bit if you want worse weather and seas.

Too bad about the ship numbers. Looks like they are randomly generated.

TT

I have PaintShop Pro, and Photoshop, altough I rarely use PaintShop, and so I am not as adept with it.

However, from the links on the NVIDA page you posted, I see they have other plugins/apps tailored for Photoshop. Do you think I can get the same results with those?

I have PaintShop Pro, and Photoshop, altough I rarely use PaintShop, and so I am not as adept with it.
However, from the links on the NVIDA page you posted, I see they have other plugins/apps tailored for Photoshop. Do you think I can get the same results with those?

The other DDS utilities don't seem to be too useful for what we are doing. I tried the Windows Texture Viewer, but found it wouldn't work on many ERT DDS graphics (it gave me an error on many). If you want to play with the DDS graphic in PSP or Photoshop directly, you will definitely need the Adobe plugin for DDS (this is if you choose not to use dxtBMP as a front-end).

I came across acool viewer yesterday that really works great for DDS and PNG images and many others, and will show you the actual view with the alpha channel superimposed. Get it at:

DDSView

I've dumped Irfanview for it, because Irfan doesn't always show the superimposed alpha channel and the true image. For me, Irfan is becoming too big. I don't need an image viewer to play MP3s and other stuff like that.

So between having the thumbnail viewer mentioned in the other reply and the DDS viewer above, we can easily see all the images.

TT

Let me ammend my above statement. The Windows Texture Viewer on the NVIDIA site does work for all DDS files. The download I have for it was from another site and was apparently corrupt. I downloaded the NVIDIA one and it does work okay.

It won't do PNGs though, or other file types.

TT

A quickie tutorial in using dxtBMP with an external image editor. I'll use PaintShopPro for example.

Setting the editor path.

1. Start dxtBMP.

2. Click on Prefs and locate the .EXE of your image editor. (My PSP 7 is at C:\Program Files\Jasc Software Inc\Paint Shop Pro 7\psp.exe)

Editing the main image.

1. In dxtBMP, Click File|Open and open a DDS image file.

2. Click Image|Send to Editor. This will send the main image to PSP as a BMP file.

3. Modify the BMP in PSP.

4. In PSP, click Save to resave it. (Important! - Do not use SaveAs)

5. Back in dxtBMP, click Image|Reload after Edit.

6. Click File|Save As and save the edited image (saves the combined image and alpha of course).

Editing the alpha channel.

1. In dxtBMP, Click File|Open and open a DDS image file.

2. Click Alpha|Send Alpha to Editor. This will send the alpha channel (the transparency channel) to PSP as a BMP file.

3. Modify the BMP in PSP.

4. In PSP, click Save to resave it. (Important! - Do not use SaveAs)

5. Back in dxtBMP, click Alpha|Refresh Alpha.

6. Click File|Save As and save the edited image (saves the combined image and alpha of course).

There you have it. Hope this helps.

TT

Timetraveller, the other evening, before I saw this tutorial (doh!), I had a go at an RN White Ensign flag. What I did was import the default LFN flag into DXTbmp and then, in MS Paint, cut and pasted it into the flag I wanted (except for the blue, which I painted myself). Then back into DXTbmp, then to Enigma ripper and into the game. It seems to work fine and I think looks good, but: I did absolutely nothing with the alpha channel. Is this a problem? Anyway from now on, I will follow this tute.