PBW needs your help

[Captain Kwok]

Well technically you shouldn't have a ship set without any model files or else it's not really a fun custom set. I would think it would use the default models and slot layouts since that's what happens with neutral races, which have no models or layout references in their folders. Not sure if that would be applicable to the middle of a game if the original referenced models or slots file were not found anymore. I would think that would scramble something up since the slot layouts would be different.

[geoschmo]

Well, that's one of the things I'm hoping someone can take it upon themselves to test for us. It's about all I can manage to create a test game and run the first turn to make sure the empire image hasn't changed. Doing detailed battle damage analysis takes more time than I have available.

[se5a]

maybe if pushed, aaron could get it to run with the .x file, but without the textures.

basicly each model, has a .x file and one more more texture files. the .x file just describes the triangles which make up a 3d model, the texture files are just the pretty skin.

geo, one way to support custom shipsets with mods, is to get the mod designers to include a folder with the 3rd party shipsets in the modname\empires folder. this folder only needs the AI files IF the entire complete shipset is in the default(sev\empires\shipsetname) empires folder as well.

The benifits of this is that PBW admins only need to keep the default empire folder up to date.

The Problems with this, is that mod devs need to keep the mods up to date, OR allow the mods to use the default empires via the "Allow Main Empires:= TRUE" line in the mod_definition.txt in the mod folder.
problem with the latter is that it shows two shipsets when choosing your shipset at the empire setup.

[David E. Gervais]

Here's an idea.. on the PBW server replace all the texture images with a small 32x32 white (or any color) image that takes very little space.

run a batch program to rename and copy the PlaceholderTexture.bmp to the target mod folder.

I attached a small 32x32 white .bmp to this post. (It's 4k in size)

That's the only 'workaround' I can see. and it would most definately reduce the amount of space taken up on the PBW server.

another way would be to batch 'scale' all the images in the mod folder to 32x32.

Just an idea from an atrist's point of view.

Cheers!

[capnq]

se5a said: maybe if pushed, aaron could get it to run with the .x file, but without the textures.

Probably not, because:

geoschmo said: These are issues that have been brought up over and over to no avail. This is why I've delayed a year in implementing custom shipsets for SE5. At this point I'm no longer trying to get the issues resolved and I'm simply trying to come up with the best way to work around them and get it done with what we've been given.

[geoschmo]

David E. Gervais said:
Here's an idea.. on the PBW server replace all the texture images with a small 32x32 white (or any color) image that takes very little space.

run a batch program to rename and copy the PlaceholderTexture.bmp to the target mod folder.

I attached a small 32x32 white .bmp to this post. (It's 4k in size)

That's the only 'workaround' I can see. and it would most definately reduce the amount of space taken up on the PBW server.

another way would be to batch 'scale' all the images in the mod folder to 32x32.

Just an idea from an atrist's point of view.

Cheers!

I did something very much like this with SE4. However, what I ran into with SE4 was that for some of the game images, not the shipset images, changing the dimensions of the bitmap caused errors. Since I don't totally understand how the .x files and the texture bitmaps relate to each other, I was concerned that this might cause a problem with SE5 shipsets.

The other odd thing is that there are wide disparities in sizes of files between shipsets. For example, in the Cardassian custom shipset, the total folder size is 20MB. The largest .x file is 67kb, and the total of the .x files is only about .5MB. On the other end of the spectrum, the Shadows shipset folder size is smaller, only 18MB, but the .x files there are more than half the total, 10MB. The spacestation.x and starbase.x files for the shadows set are 1.5MB each.

I'm probably just going to copy the shipsets to every mod folder and be done with it.

[se5a]

you can actualy open a .x file with a text editor such as notebook. it's all just a bunch of coordinates. inside the .x file the texture file is called, there is no requirement for it to be any specific size. the larger .x files probibly mean that the shipset has a higher poly count. if the textures are bigger then the texture detail will be better. the higher these two are, the better the ships tend to look, but the more work the computer has to do.

DG's idea should work for the texture files, with the portrate files you may have to keep them the same size. (you can easly see which is a texture file in most shipsets by looking at it - texture files look like someone has peeled the ship like an orange.)

[Fyron]

geoschmo said:
I'm probably just going to copy the shipsets to every mod folder and be done with it.

Why?! If you don't care about what the AI does in a mod during missed turns, all you need to do is set the Allow Main Empires setting to TRUE, and install shipsets to the stock folder. You don't need to do anything else just to get a shipset callable from a mod...

At worst, to attain AI support with custom sets, all you would need to do is have a program that creates blank empire folders in each mod for each installed shipset (in the stock Empires folder), with just a copy of the two .csf scripts from another custom AI empire in the mod. There is no reason to duplicate models, textures, whatever inside mods.

se5a said:
you can actualy open a .x file with a text editor such as notebook. it's all just a bunch of coordinates.

That's not always true; some of the .x models that ship with the game appear to be in a binary format, rather than plain text. A number of the planet models are like this, for example.

[se5a]

Fyron tells me that he thinks the doubling up of the shipset at empire creation has been fixed.

[se5a]

Fyron said:

That's not always true; some of the .x models that ship with the game appear to be in a binary format, rather than plain text. A number of the planet models are like this, for example.

really? I'd not looked at them all. still, the custom ones are probibly txt.