64 replies to this topic

[Sam.]

I was wondering about the ia_reference_picker program that comes packaged with IA. Was its source code ever publicly shared anywhere, or was it only Erephine who had it? If I manage to get this .exe patch fully switched (that's a big IF for now), the app ideally should be updated to accept lists with new symbol references as input, as well as hand out ready-to-use slot ids when claiming new slots. Otherwise, the process of claiming a new slot could become complicated...

As far as I know, the source code was never released. I just forcefully decompiled it, but it may not have recreated the syntax to 100% of original (see the"Tidy Error"s). It's a start anyway.
 ia_reference_picker_v1.02.rar   339.48K   336 downloads

[pro5]

You should ask Miloch who is working on the next version of I.A. As far as I know, it will include the remplacement of the animation codes in a way that should solve the subject of this topic. But ask him to be sure.

Oh, I'm counting on Miloch to eventually notice I invaded his forum and started hacking his mod. I know he's one busy half-orc these days. But if you're saying he's been working on the same problem already, maybe I should wait for his input before wasting more time on this.

As far as I know, the source code was never released. I just forcefully decompiled it, but it may not have recreated the syntax to 100% of original (see the"Tidy Error"s). It's a start anyway.

Thanks, this could come very useful later if the converted patch ever gets finalized.

[pro5]

OK, a quick follow-up on this while we're waiting for Miloch.
 
It seems that the Reference Picker program actually does not need any updates whatsoever - all it does is read the contents of the anims.list file from the same folder, and looks for the first open slot of appropriate type in that list when claiming a new animation slot. I swapped all slot prefixes in that file with new symbols, and it worked like a charm after that. This is very good news, 'cause I was worried someone (read: me) would have to rewrite it from scratch to make this work. I'm attaching the modified .list file and the .txt with latest reference list converted to new symbols in case someone wants to try this.
 
Locally, all ref slots have been converted to use new symbols. No significant problems so far. The only thing I haven't figured out yet are several dragon slots - they appear to be using a few non-conventional characters that are not used anywhere else in the .exe patch plus I'm yet to locate their offsets in the executable:

0x122c    XDRµ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122d    XDRР   EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122e    XDRÞ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122f    XDRØ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1230    XDRÑ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1231    XDRÆ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1232    XDR    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1233    XDRß    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1234    XDRÇ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted

Fortunately, there are 35 more dragon slots free to use apart from these, but still.
 
The next step will be thorough testing of all slots listed in anims.list to make sure I didn't miss any old symbol references, and didn't replace something I shouldn't have.
 
Current table of symbol swaps in reference names: 

 OLD:          NEW:
µ = 0xb5  ->    0x7e = ~
Æ = 0xc6  ->    0x7d = }
¢ = 0xa2   ->    0x2b = +
£ = 0xa3   ->    0x7b = {
¥ = 0xa5   ->    0x2c = ,
Ð = 0xd0   ->    0x26 = &
Þ = 0xde   ->    0x27 = '
Ø = 0xd8   ->    0x3d = =

If anyone has objections about the chosen replacements now's the time to speak out, before I start full testing of the changes.

Attached Files

•  refpicker_listtxt.zip   47.67K   304 downloads

[Gwendolyne]

 
Locally, all ref slots have been converted to use new symbols. No significant problems so far. The only thing I haven't figured out yet are several dragon slots - they appear to be using a few non-conventional characters that are not used anywhere else in the .exe patch plus I'm yet to locate their offsets in the executable:

0x122c    XDRµ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS %2

[Gwendolyne]

 
Locally, all ref slots have been converted to use new symbols. No significant problems so far. The only thing I haven't figured out yet are several dragon slots - they appear to be using a few non-conventional characters that are not used anywhere else in the .exe patch plus I'm yet to locate their offsets in the executable:

0x122c    XDRµ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122d    XDRР   EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122e    XDRÞ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x122f    XDRØ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1230    XDRÑ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1231    XDRÆ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1232    XDR    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1233    XDRß    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted
0x1234    XDRÇ    EMPTY                                 HUGE   D Do  DRAGONS (XDR) unpaletted

Fortunately, there are 35 more dragon slots free to use apart from these, but still.

 

Argh !!!

 

I will need to use new dragons slots (5 Tarasques and maybe more than a dozen new dragons if I can deal with their palettes).

 

So what do you mean : are the "35 more dragon slots free to use" vanilla ones (inluded in IE) or the number of free slots available in I.A. ?

[pro5]

Argh !!!

I will need to use new dragons slots (5 Tarasques and maybe more than a dozen new dragons if I can deal with their palettes).

So what do you mean : are the "35 more dragon slots free to use" vanilla ones (inluded in IE) or the number of free slots available in I.A. ?

As far as I can see, there are a total of 44 dragon (XDR) slots in anims.list, from entry 0x1209 to 0x1234. None of them are officially taken yet, all are free to use, judging by the latest ref list posted in this forum. Sounds like you will be taking a good chunk of them, Gwendolyne. Are you sure you need all the different paletted types?

[Gwendolyne]

In fact, I have ported a tarasque with 5 palettes. When I claimed for a dragon reference slot with the IA reference picker, there were no option allowing me to use one single set of bam files and 5 palettes (the way the MDR files are hardcoded : MDRnnnnn.bam files with several MDR___.bmp files for the palettes). So I had to assign the 5 palettes to my raw bam files (567 files for the dragon format!) to create 5 different sets of bam files and was obliged to use 5 different slots to implement them in the game with IA.

 

I am working now on new dragon bam files, trying to maximise their palette structures, so I can easily change their colors and produce gold, brass, copper, emerald dragons, and many others.

Unfortunatly, the way Erephine modified the exe does'nt allow me to use the hardcoded process I described above.

If I succeed, which is not granted, using the reference picker means that I will need to choose as many slots as new colored dragons. Except if someone finds a way to change the exe coding... And it is so far from my skills.

 

But as you noticed it, since the release of the I.A. mod, nobody has yet produced new animations using the dragon format.

 

Therefore, even if I use 15 ou 20 of the 44 free dragon slots, I don't think - and I really hope - I will cannibalise them.

[The Imp]

@Gwendolyne, shouldn't you just go a head and ask:
 
@pro5: Can you eat the current IA code and fart out a dragon(huge) form with a full assignable palette ? Sorry, I couldn't find a mope pleasing metaphor...

@Gwen... this way you only would need only 2 animation slots, one for the dragons, and another for the monster you have...

 

But as you noticed it, since the release of the I.A. mod, nobody has yet produced new animations using the dragon format.

Well, there's the IwD white dragon... but yeah...

Which brings to the question... as the Abazigal's dragon's forms is a poor green copy of the Firkraag's red, the palette-ing would be good thing, as the other dragons are just copy'es of the original red original. So we actually have 4 animations, the Red, Green, the IwD white, and the Gwendolyne's monster.

 

EDIT... + silver dragon... erhm, but that also means that erhm... Gwendolyne can just replace the palette on the creature file by the same means that ... no I actually don't know what it means... as Gwendolyne has done this, but... apparently there's problem !?!

Edited by The Imp, 16 February 2014 - 08:56 AM.

[pro5]

The IwD young white dragon uses one of BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART slots, not one of the dragon slots.

I'm not sure what you're asking is even possible - all "color-cloned" animations in the vanilla game which use different palettes for the same set of BAMs still occupy different slots for each variation. For example, each type of spider takes 1 entry in ANIMATE.IDS, even though they all use the same animation with different bmp palette:

0x7A00 SPIDER_GIANT
0x7A01 SPIDER_HUGE
0x7A02 SPIDER_PHASE
0x7A03 SPIDER_SWORD
0x7A04 SPIDER_WRAITH

It's the same for vanilla dragons (except black and silver).

The "paletted" bit in the slots descriptions refers to them using character colors (major/minor/hair/metal/etc colors in the CRE file), not to them being able to swap BMP palettes in some way while only taking 1 animation entry slot. At least that's my understanding so far.

Edited by pro5, 16 February 2014 - 08:32 AM.

[The Imp]

The IwD young white dragon uses one of BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART slots, not one of the dragon slots.

I was referring to the adult version:
&
But never mind that.... yes, that picture is scaled down. The green ring should be the same as the normal dragons. The picture is taken at the Copper Coronet's dog fighting ring.
EDIT: the ... picture showed so small on large monitor that it seemed scaled down.
 
So Gwendolyne just needs to append the animate.ids and name the files correctly... or ?

Edited by The Imp, 16 February 2014 - 03:31 PM.

[pro5]

I was referring to the adult version. The green ring should be the same as the normal dragons.

There's an adult version? The file you linked only has the young dragon, and there's no adult listed in current reference list... Yes, the foot circle used by the young animation is the same size (HUGE) as the XDR slots. The BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART slot refspapce is split into 2 parts, entries in 0x1001 to 0x10ff range have LARGE foot circle, and 0x1101 through 0x11ff have HUGE foot circle size. The young white dragon uses the first entry (0x1101) in the second range.

Gwendolyne can just replace the palette on the creature file by the same means that ... no I actually don't know what it means... as Gwendolyne has done this, but... apparently there's problem !?!

So Gwendolyne just needs to append the animate.ids and name the files correctly... or ?

From that thread, looks like what he did was repalette a group of bam files using several different bmp palette files. Thus, he now has several sets of dragon and tarrasque BAMs, each of different "coloring". Each of them will require its own separate animation slot (entry in ANIMATE.IDS) to show up in the game, and will be treated as a standalone animation by the engine (the engine has no idea they are in any way similar, it just draws the contents of the BAM files as indicated by the animation id field in the CRE files). There's no problem, unless occupying 15-20 out of 44 available XDR slots for basically the same 2 recolored animations can be called such.

[The Imp]

I was referring to the adult version. The green ring should be the same as the normal dragons.

There's an adult version?

Well, if you read the readme...the human is this size in the game:

The young one is a wyvern sized:

 

The above is the adult, a full on dragon sized:

 

EDIT: pro5, we are positevely talking about totally different subjects... so I won't drag this further.

Edited by The Imp, 16 February 2014 - 10:56 AM.

[pro5]

The second (under human) is wyvern_white_big, not a dragon.

It should show up on the tooltip if you hover your mouse over the picture in the readme for a bit.

Edited by pro5, 16 February 2014 - 10:37 AM.

[Gwendolyne]

@Gwendolyne, shouldn't you just go a head and ask:
 
@pro5: Can you eat the current IA code and fart out a dragon(huge) form with a full assignable palette ? Sorry, I couldn't find a mope pleasing metaphor...

@Gwen... this way you only would need only 2 animation slots, one for the dragons, and another for the monster you have...

 

But as you noticed it, since the release of the I.A. mod, nobody has yet produced new animations using the dragon format.

Well, there's the IwD white dragon... but yeah...

Which brings to the question... as the Abazigal's dragon's forms is a poor green copy of the Firkraag's red, the palette-ing would be good thing, as the other dragons are just copy'es of the original red original. So we actually have 4 animations, the Red, Green, the IwD white, and the Gwendolyne's monster.

 

EDIT... + silver dragon... erhm, but that also means that erhm... Gwendolyne can just replace the palette on the creature file by the same means that ... no I actually don't know what it means... as Gwendolyne has done this, but... apparently there's problem !?!

 

 

Yes and no!

As both of you already noticed, the IWD white dragon displays a dragon animation but uses the BGI MONSTER LONG 4 PART unpaletted format, not the dragon one!

In fact there are three sets of dragon bam files in the vanilla game : the red one (MDR1nnnn series), the black one with greater horns and head (MDR2nnnn) and the silver one (the most elegant : MDR3nnnn series).

The others are clones of the red one with a set of palettes (each one using 5 palette files) :

MDR1_AQ[1-5] : Aquamarine Dragon
MDR1_BL[1-5] : Blue Dragon
MDR1_BR[1-5] : Brown Dragon
MDR1_GR[1-5] : Green Dragon
MDR1_MC[1-5] : Multicolor Dragon
MDR1_PR[1-5] : Purple Dragon

So at the end, you can choose one of the 9 following slots : 0x1200 DRAGON_RED, 0x1201 DRAGON_BLACK, 0x1202 DRAGON_SILVER, 0x1203 DRAGON_GREEN, 0x1204 DRAGON_AQUA, 0x1205 DRAGON_BLUE, 0x1206 DRAGON_BROWN, 0x1207 DRAGON_MULTICOLOR, 0x1208 DRAGON_PURPLE.

pro5 understood my "problem", not really a problem but more a convenient question : why should I use most of the dragon slots if I could only use two and left the others free for the other modders?

 

 

As each dragon animation contains 567 bam files, I wanted to use the same process as the I.E. when you want to display a green dragon : the green dragon slot uses the red dragon bam files BUT applies them the MDR1_GR[1-5].bmp palettes serie.
I thought the reference picker could manage that with a "paletted" option. But it is not the case.

Let's say I created the 567 MTARnnnnn bam files for the tarasque. And 4 series of additional palettes bmp files (MTAR_RD[1-5], MTAR_GR[1-5], MTAR_BL[1-5] and MTAR_PU[1-5]).
When I claim a slot for the first tarasque (brown), everything ig OK. I pick up a new code.
But if I want to register the blue Tarasque, "in a perfect world", the reference picker should ask me if it is a brand new animation or if I want to use an existing set of bam files (the MTAR one for exemple) and assign them a set of bmp palettes! The way the 0x1203 to 0x1208 slots are defined.

More over, using the same tarasques exemple, even if it was possible, I would however be obliged to claim for 5 new slots. The only benefit (but important in terms of modding) would to save time to create new animations and to lighten the files weight (each tarasque .7z files weight more than 50 Mo : 5x 50 Mo = 250 Mo for the 5 tarasques. And 50 Mo x n for the dragons...).

And I think either it is quite impossible to code, or it is too much pain and hard work to produce for a rather limited use. That's the reason why I don't intend to ask anyone to do it!
 
It was just a little conceptual contribution to the lifting of the I.A. code pro5 has begun, concerning a point of modding that nobody has not yet tried.

 

 

 

[The Imp]

...

Erhm, if you would make a "gray" dragon as the base animation, and then add in an effect to the creature that colors the gray, wouldn't it possibly work ? ... as the gray would be best as it's color neutral.
See the difference between the two dragons in the above pictures. It's not environmental, but of the creature color effects(well those can be shut out, as they are in aTweaks creature colouring's of golems etc).

K, now you can take the pitchforks and try to transfix me...

Edited by The Imp, 16 February 2014 - 03:38 PM.

[Gwendolyne]

Helped by another french modder, I tried and produced about 10 new dragons that way!

 

But sometimes it doesn't work. For an unknown reason, the shadows are also colored when you pick some colors (yellow to gold for exemple). For exemple, it is quite impossible to colour a radiant dragon.

 

Moreover, the coloring result depends on the basis dragon file you use : you can colorize the silver dragon, but it becomes very difficult with the red one. Maybe it is due to its original palette supposed to fit the 6 different palette sets I described above.

 

And I don't describe the strange effets produced by the coloring in darkness or in light, depending on the colour scale you use... Sometimes a dragon seems to be gleaming in darkness.

 

That's the reason why I try to create a new generic dragon with a palette sorted by colours, so you can change them easily.

 

 

I also reacted when I read that they were only 44 free dragon slots. I thought they were at least as numerous as the other slots (more than a hundred by type).

[pro5]

I've modified Erephine's file renaming utility to automatically mass-rename files from the old scheme to new one (¢A¢E1A1.BAM --> +A+E1A1.BAM, etc.).
 
This means hopefully there will be no need to reupload those GB-sized content archives or worry about files previously installed by mods like Aurora's Shoes, it's enough to add a couple lines like this:
 

AT_NOW ~infinityanimations\batch\renamer.exe "infinityanimations\content\"~ 
AT_NOW ~infinityanimations\batch\renamer.exe "override\"~

 
to the TP2.

Attached Files

•  renamer.zip   371.52K   314 downloads

Edited by pro5, 19 February 2014 - 09:31 AM.

[The Imp]

I've modified Erephine's file renaming utility to automatically mass-rename files from the old scheme to new one (¢A¢E1A1.BAM --> +A+E1A1.BAM, etc.).
 
This means hopefully there will be no need to reupload those GB-sized content archives or worry about files previously installed by mods like Aurora's Shoes, it's enough to add a couple lines like this:

AT_NOW ~infinityanimations\batch\renamer.exe "infinityanimations\content\"~ 
AT_NOW ~infinityanimations\batch\renamer.exe "override\"~

to the TP2.

You still have to extract the files using the English code page while doing so... as that's where the thing goes boom. ... so it would be better to reupload the files.

Edited by The Imp, 18 February 2014 - 02:25 PM.

[pro5]

You still have to extract the files using the English code page while doing so... as that's where the thing goes boom. ... so it would be better to reupload the files.

Hmm. This should only be possible if the file extraction program was non-Unicode. Which would be strange, to say the least, in this day and age.

But suppose that's exactly what happens and non-Unicode software is used, when you say "goes boom" do you mean that the files extract with incorrect filenames (i.e. for instance Жaag11.bam instead of Æaag11.bam on code page 1251), or that they fail to extract at all? Because in the first case, the renamer utility actually should still work - it should rename both Æaag11.bam and Жaag11.bam into }aag11.bam, I accounted for that possibility.

Edited by pro5, 19 February 2014 - 05:38 AM.

[The Imp]

You still have to extract the files using the English code page while doing so... as that's where the thing goes boom. ... so it would be better to reupload the files.

Hmm. This should only be possible if the file extraction program was non-Unicode. Which would be strange, to say the least, in this day and age.

 ...do you mean that the files extract with incorrect filenames (i.e. for instance Жaag11.bam instead of Æaag11.bam on code page 1251)
 

Most people use the WinRAR to extract .rar archives, yes, the IA's archives are .rar's ... I have no idea if winRAR has this feature... but the fact is, the files come out strange... in other words, the Æaag11.bam can comes out as 0xc6aag11.bam ... or something to that effects the files a lots, all depending on the currently used codepage, especially if it has two of the Latin letters(¢A¢E1A1.BAM -> 0xa2A0xa2E1A1.BAM)*, and the end result is that it won't get processed correctly at the install. *this result is an example, not a real case, see the next example with the link etc, but I claim to have seen it at least ones.

Yeah, the renamer could work, it would still need to have all the codepage references outcomes, I thing there's about 15-20 of them for each (*8 letters)... and they can't then be misread. As you can read from here, there's odd results, like the "£jxg1.bam", prints out as "￡ JXg1.bam", and those letters are not the exact same thing. This might have something related between the .2da files content and format(character set) and the used codepage and so forth, but I am just guessing here.
 
The laughter edit:

There is nothing I or WeiDU can do here...
Windows does not use Unicode (rather than the sensible choice of Unicode, Windows uses a series of local charsets they collectively refer to as "non-ANSI". Included are CP1252, CP1251 and others).

*, yeah a brief edit all due to the preference of the non- term, you can leave it out if that's what you are into.

Edited by The Imp, 02 March 2014 - 01:14 AM.