Odds And Ends Are Us! Discuss them Here!

[bobby]

Well, the first item for Odds And Ends is up. The Stone Retaining Wall was first posted last November. We are looking to do Concrete, Natural Stone, Sand Bags, Bulk Work and Concrete Ties.

If you have any other possible ideas that just don't fit in anywhere else, list them here, or post in this thread what you have and we'll check it out as soon as we can, delete the post here and upload it.

[snoopy55]

Slider, about your Herefords. Some of us who mess with the NIFs found out long ago that while it is possible to change such things as 'Cows' to 'Herefords', it takes a lot of editing in other parts of the files and other files. In short, since the game does not display the wording content of the NIFs, it ain't worth bothering with it. You'll find most mods of the last 3 or so years do not have them changed.

I also noticed that since Bobby has chosen to play with the background color of the posts we are going to have to find a different color for BB types......... bobby -> <- the forum













.

[bobby]

Slider, about your Herefords. Some of us who mess with the NIFs found out long ago that while it is possible to change such things as 'Cows' to 'Herefords', it takes a lot of editing in other parts of the files and other files. In short, since the game does not display the wording content of the NIFs, it ain't worth bothering with it. You'll find most mods of the last 3 or so years do not have them changed.

I also noticed that since Bobby has chosen to play with the background color of the posts we are going to have to find a different color for BB types......... bobby -> <- the forum.

Yeah Played with it even more now so the posts now have a black background where the post is so the Colors now show up much better.

[slider38]

Hey Snoopy, Somewhere you lost me. Getting Herefords to show up is easy. Pop the BB files into your Usermaps folder and everwhere "cows" are called, you get Herefords (which I like much better than the Holsteins). There is nothing else to edit. You get Herefords on the ranch, in the traincars, at the stockyard. Couldn't be simpler.

Now if you are trying to use both, that would take a lot of work.

I obviously don't understand something about your post. Do you want me to eliminate the readme part? I'm confused.

[snoopy55]

HEREFORDS README

I thought a brief explanation might be needed here. I got tired of using Holsteins for meatpacking, so I decided to try and put Herefords in place of the Holsteins. After removing the utters I spent a couple of hours moving verticies around. While the underside of the Herefords are not 100 percent closed, you will never see anything in the game. I really thought they looked good in the game.

I tried changing the name in the game from cow to Hereford. Here's where things got interesting. Everytime I'd try and test my Herefords, the old Holstein would show up somewhere. So, since the map I was working on didn't feature milk, I just changed the cow image to a Hereford and left all the cow references in place. Works great. If you want to be able to use both on a map, you are going to have some work to do. Cows for the ranch, cows for the annex, cows for the stockyard and the traincars. So that's why these files just say cows.

That is what I was referring to. Looking at it now I may have misunderstood it a bit, but hey, what do you expect at 4 in the morning!

While we are on this subject........

When editing ANY KFM/NIF, there are a few things to remember. Unless you have edited a KF, there is no reason to mess with them. They are nothing more than movement files and no matter what you name the KFM or NIF, they will still work. I've attached an edited version. While I was at it I decided to try putting both on one. I've attached the file and a screenshot for that too. And your bulls make nice holstein bulls too. (attached)

Now, on to the rest of the problem. All that is really needed for any of the rest is to take the Car or Stockyard you want to place your Herefords DIFF DDS file, or any others you may wish to make, into the map and go into the NIF and change 'cow_diff.dds' to 'hereford_diff.dds'. The actual structure of the animal on them does not need to be edited since it is not seen that well. The annexes are the same. Unless you are specificly looking for the gap where the utter was, you won't notice that well. I've attached all of them. The NORM, EMSK and SPEC for the animal can be left as is.

Now if you want to mess with something, grab that Cattle Ranch Annex and reshape that cow to look like a horse. Tijer and I had borrowed shapes from CIV4 to get horses into the game with a Stable, Horse Car and the Food Plant for use with Horses (not to eat!), but that blasted Annex is the problem. They would not have to look as sleek as the horses we used, but they need to look better than those hefty cows.

[slider38]

That's a great pic of the Herefords and Holsteins together. I'll be digging into those files to look that stuff over. Great job!

[NSrailfan]

When looking through some of the games FPK's I found a new signal in Signals0.FPK. I asked Snoopy55 if it's possible to use it in the game, and the answer was yes. He sent me the files to use it in the game and I think it looks pretty nice, something new for the game.

Does anyone know how to animate the signal? I posted a picture of it in the game and its files. Could someone possibly edit it so the lights can change colors like on the gantry to the right?

[wingsofphoenix]

Yep I know that, it was posted some years ago. Unfortunately they were not finished by firaxis, they've tried a different animation for them. Using MaterialColor instead of a DIFF file, which (dont know enough about that to fix it, the animation files seem to do nothing).
I was working on them last year too, but something else caught my attention so I put them aside. They will need to be reworked the way the gantrys are made (well, because they work ^^) and theres still the missing 3 Light Signal for switches.

Well if I can spare some time for it, I will try it

[snoopy55]

I looked at the Gantrys to see what it was that made them work. They have an extra group of lines that control NiTriShapes that are the lights on the DDS. Since there are green ones on one side of the Gantry and blank on the other, I'm guessing the NiTriShape of the lights, Green on one side and Red on the other, are supposed to flip to make the change. I cannot get it to work in NifSkope, even tho I have the KFs loaded into it.

You might be able to take a block from the Gantry and paste it into the signal NIF, adjusting the NiTriShape of the lights into thier proper place.

As to spare time, heck, we all have LOTS of that!!! It's just that we have gotten so busy that we have forgotten just where we put it

[wingsofphoenix]

I looked at the Gantrys to see what it was that made them work. They have an extra group of lines that control NiTriShapes that are the lights on the DDS. Since there are green ones on one side of the Gantry and blank on the other, I'm guessing the NiTriShape of the lights, Green on one side and Red on the other, are supposed to flip to make the change. I cannot get it to work in NifSkope, even tho I have the KFs loaded into it.

You might be able to take a block from the Gantry and paste it into the signal NIF, adjusting the NiTriShape of the lights into thier proper place.

As to spare time, heck, we all have LOTS of that!!! It's just that we have gotten so busy that we have forgotten just where we put it

Yeah something like that, the Gantrys use 2 layers, one is static with red on one side and green on the other, and the second is animated with mirrored colors. And that layer moves back and forth.
But its not possible to just copy&paste things and use it with the Signal. The red and green lights are seperated there. I did it the other way by moving the signal shapes to the gantry. But that alone wont do it.

So heres is what I did:
- Cloned the bones and their dummys, because the lights are seperated and they need to be skinned seperated
- Skinned them to one light each in 3ds Max and made new animation files for them
But to actually got them working it was

Anyway, there are 2 ways to animate them:
- As an Indicator for a blocked track section (thats how firaxis made all of them)
- or the more realistic opposite

I decided for the second one, but if you prefer the common way open the .KFM and exchange the animation file strings of 2.<->3. and 4.<->5.
Well heres a pic of how it looks:

working_signals.jpg

Of course the model could be improved, but thats a minor thing. For now it will do it

Whats left is the 3-lights signal, but I dont know how it will be possible with the way they are made and animated. (because the event for the 3rd light is fired while the engine is already on the switch, past the first signal light - and the position where the signal post would be then)
Have to think about it...

Enough about that, heres the working signal

[NSrailfan]

Wingsofphoniex that looks great, thanks for taking the time to work on that. However when I went to use it in the game it crashed, I placed a section of track and when the game went to load the signal it crashed. Any idea what happened?

[wingsofphoenix]

Yep found some errors in the .nif and some .kfs.. strange that it was working yesterday, and today broken.
I hope it is now, I've tested it with a saved game and new standard scenario and it seems to work, but somehow I cant get it work with a SAM map. It keeps crashing on building the 2nd station.

[NSrailfan]

This sure is a tricky thing. It wouldn't load on my Wood Valley map, it crashed when the game went to place it at the first station. It sort of worked on the SouthWest US scenario, but like you said it crashed on the second station.

This game is confusing

[bobby]

I would say it is also could be dependent on another set of files as it seems to work fine with the starting station and you can add 4 tracks and they all show up fine. Its only when you try to add more than one set at other stations. It may be that it is also partially hard coded in the exe to use the other files needed to build the signals in other places but who knows with this game. We would need to check every XML file for references to track laying possibly.
I tried it on a few different SAM maps but maybe it will only work on standard maps.

[wingsofphoenix]

This sure is a tricky thing. It wouldn't load on my Wood Valley map, it crashed when the game went to place it at the first station. It sort of worked on the SouthWest US scenario, but like you said it crashed on the second station.

This game is confusing

Yep it is, I cant figure out why it acts so strange. Loading a savegame works with them, even start a new map after going back to main menu. But starting a new map right at the game start will crash on 2nd station, or not all lights are working and just disappear. I reworked the whole thing, but still no progress.
If you want you can try them. If still getting CTD try to rename the signal2l_default.kf. That will prevent the crash and shows an error box for the missing file once for each new placed signal. But 1 to all 4 lights should be working after that..

[NSrailfan]

I downloaded the signal you just recently attached. I tested it and here's my results.

SouthWest US, Custom Assets = Works
Wood Valley, WareHouse Folder = Crash
Wood Valley, Custom Assets = Crash

So the signal appears to crash on SAM's when the game goes to place them by the track. Why would it work on a stock map perfectly fine and crash on a custom map There sure are a lot of mysteries to this game.

[Barney]

Nice work, but for some reason the Normal, Spec and Emask appear to not be rendering, just the Diff. A few things can be causing this. First would be if the 3 maps are not present in the NIF before export. The other is that the "TSpace" Flag is not set to 16. So please check. If I recall correctly, the TSpace Flag is located in the data block details for the TriShapeData of the NIF. What it does, is allow the 4 maps to overlayed in the same space. Once the TSpace Flag is set to 16, you have to update tangent space and save. If the TSpace Flag is not located in the TriShapeData, then I will have to get with Snoopy to locate it. As of late, I have discovered many errors in the import-export NIF scripts for Blender. This is just one of them.

[Grizzly]

Hi Barney, I looked all thru the nif file and didn't find a TSpace Flag. I found a plain Flag set to 16, and some set to 1 and 15. You may be right about the Spec, Emsk, and Norm files not rendering, but I think they are because I made a lot of changes to them to get the house to be green and brown and not blue like it was in my first try. All the files are in the downloadable attachment below the pic. For sure, I did not have all 3 files in my Blender/nif export. I only got the _diff file UV map set in Blender, then painted it in Gimp. Furthermore, I couldn't get the nif file to recognize the Spec, Emsk and Norm files in my Blender/nif export, so I used Block-Copy Branch and Block-Paste Branch in NifSkope to copy the TrishapeData into an old SMR city building file, deleted the old TrishapeData, reset the Trishape line reference to my new TriShapeData and edited the new Spec, Emsk, and Norm filenames. Then I renamed the old building.nif file to my TestHouse.nif filename. I got it to work, but the flat appearance of the house may just be due to my poor job of creating the Spec, Emsk, and especially the Norm files. About all I have the Spec and Emsk files doing is brightening up the windows without burning a hole in the wall (which one of my earlier version did). Any suggestions you have for improvements will be welcome. - Griz

[slider38]

Hey Grizz, I took a look. Check line 19 & 20 - the trishapedata lines that appears after your source lines. I am not sure how you ended up with 2 of these trishapedata lines. Line 19 has its T-Space flag set to "0". The T-Space flag in 20 is set to "16". If I were you, though I'm no expert on any of this stuff, I would remove line 20 (I think it is ignored anyway) and change the T_Space flag in line 19 to "16". Just double-click on the "0" and change it, then re-test your house and assuming all is well, re-post it. Good call Barney.

[NSrailfan]

If you go to NiTriShape > NiTexturingProperty and open that in Block Details you will see all the way at the bottom you will see "Num Shader Textures" the number to the far right of it should be 5. Then under it, click on the refresh arrows to the right of "Shader Textures", open it to see 5 lines called Shader Textures. Open them and edit them to match those that under the NiTexturingProperty except for the DIFF file, it seems to have to go under Base Texture that up the list a ways. This may seem strange but this is how it appears to be in other models.

As for getting the SPEC, EMSK, NRML lines into the NIF file I think I must've originally copy and pasted them into it from an existing/working model. Can't say for sure as it was 3 months ago I did all this.