Gruok fix

[Raeshlavik]

Tonight's bit of textured adventure was to fix the holes in the Gruok.

As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, for a long time now the Gruok have been mostly hollow as you could see through them to the ground they were standing on.

Well, not any more! With a wave of my mighty Wacom wand, the Gruok are now solid objects.

Here's another before and after:


The texture update for this is located on my test server for now. As I get several of these graphical updates finished, I'll put them on a hosted server somewhere for guaranteed future access.

Use:
extract the .agh file from the .rar file, and place in istaria/resources_override/textures_agh/monsters/gruok

Feel free to PM me if anyone spots a problem with this texture update so I can fix it.

Thanks.

[AguaRush]

nice fix if you are looking into fixing textures while im not sure if it ca be done, but the chest scales from neck to head are very messed up on some dragons, the color stops or its a totally different type.. if there was a fix to that it would be truely amazing.

[Raeshlavik]

nice fix if you are looking into fixing textures while im not sure if it ca be done, but the chest scales from neck to head are very messed up on some dragons, the color stops or its a totally different type.. if there was a fix to that it would be truely amazing.

I can take a look. I'm kind of on hold with Knossos' leather sleeves until my monk gets to a level where I can test my changes.

[Raeshlavik]

Yes, the disparate neck and chest scales can be fixed.

Basically, the secret to this fix is in the dragon_u_so_body00_det_plateXX.def files and the fact there are only four intensities of neck textures.

My proof of concept is as follows:

1) Open \Istaria\resources\definitions\characters\dragon\b ody\skin\skin_overlays
2) Open dragon_u_so_body00_det_plate00.def in a text editor
3) Within this file you will see two definitions; one for the belly plate and one for the head detail.
4) Now open dragon_u_so_body00_det_plate05.def
5) Note that there is no definition for head detail. This is repeated for the next seven .def files.
4) Now, open \Istaria\resources\textures_agh\characters\charact ers\dragon_u\clothing
5) You will see four files called dragon_u_so_head00_det_plateXX.agh; these are the neck plate textures for the Dragon, and each is the 'middle' brightness.

So, given this information, I went into the dragon_u_so_body00_det_plateXX.def files that were missing the head detail definitions, and pasted the commands from the four that had it. This was repeated 1-for-1, meaning the dragon_u_so_body00_det_plate00.def references dragon_u_so_head00_det_plate00.agh and there are 4 different textures - therefore dragon_u_so_body00_det_plate05.def should have the same texture as dragon_u_so_head00_det_plate00.agh, just at a different brightness.

This has the effect of turning on the next plates for the other two brightness settings of chest scales, but the brightness of the neck plates does not change - dark chest scales get a mid-brightness neck scale...

So, now all I have to do is figure out if adding new textures to the client is possible, so that we can have all three brightnesses of chest scales and matching brightness neck scales.

In addition, one type of chest scale is a bit short (the thin line one) and I have successfully added some length to the texture to get rid of the gap between the top of the chest plate texture and the bottom of the neck plate texture.

So, long story short, this is fixable, how well I can fix it depends on if I can add 8 textures to the client.

[Knossos]

Knossos is highly patient.

[AguaRush]

that sounds so awesome i can wait to see what you come up with

[Hellenia]

hmm i cant seem to get this to work XD ,,

[Hellenia]

*pokes this post ** does any know how i can get this nice littel mod to work ? or is it blight only working mod ????

[Raeshlavik]

*pokes this post ** does any know how i can get this nice littel mod to work ? or is it blight only working mod ????

Which mod? My posts in here tend to turn into requests and things get a little muddled... Are you referring to the Gurok fix or the Dragon alterations?

[Hellenia]

Which mod? My posts in here tend to turn into requests and things get a little muddled... Are you referring to the Gurok fix or the Dragon alterations?

the gurok fix : ) .... whats the dragon alterations ? o_o ???

[Raeshlavik]

the gurok fix : ) .... whats the dragon alterations ? o_o ???

In your resources_override directory, create a folder called textures_agh.

In textures_agh create a folder called monsters, and in monsters create a folder called gruok.

(make sure they're all spelled like that, any differences will prevent this from working.)

Now, take the gruok_gray_norm.agh file and put it in the gruok folder from above.

That's it. Your pigs should now be solid

[Knossos]

I can take a look. I'm kind of on hold with Knossos' leather sleeves until my monk gets to a level where I can test my changes.

Raeshlavik:

Please note that essense leather sleeves are the only tier of leather sleeves which are (is) altered by the file that has been modified. Thus lower tier leather sleeves are controlled by another file, and to directly test the essense leather sleeve changes your monk must be at least level 91. Also note that with the first test file (with one sleeve complete and the other truncated) the complete sleeve did properly fit both the tunic and the wristbands. This is information only, not a request for faster action.

Knossos

[Hraefn]

Oh man, Rae... If you could fix the chest plate/throat texture inconsistencies on most of the options available, I would be your number one fan! I can't tell you how long I've despised and hissed at those.

Great work on your texture jobs so far! They look really great!

[Raeshlavik]

Raeshlavik:

Please note that essense leather sleeves are the only tier of leather sleeves which are (is) altered by the file that has been modified. Thus lower tier leather sleeves are controlled by another file, and to directly test the essense leather sleeve changes your monk must be at least level 91. Also note that with the first test file (with one sleeve complete and the other truncated) the complete sleeve did properly fit both the tunic and the wristbands. This is information only, not a request for faster action.

Knossos

Yeah. The issue is repeated all through the leather line down to the bottom, so my junior satyr monk has been very helpful in figuring out the texture placement. There is a generic 'leather arm' texture for low-level leather and a few special ones for the high-end stuff - I plan to embellish on the special textures a bit once I get time to make the high-end stuff look more 'epic' (A design tooled into the leather or somesuch - I just have to come up with something suitably generic as there's only 5 textures total)...

I'd love to come up with a way to do one more layer on the armors where embellishments can be placed (gems, designs, embroidery, etc). This would allow us to have one of the couple leather, metal, or cloth textures with another layer on top of a alpha channeled tintable design - dark colored leather armor with blood red flaming hammer outline tooled into the breastplate or white cloth with blue magic symbols on the shoulders would be the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

The gapping between the arms and the chest is turning into a tricky fix and is present in a lot of combinations (put on some cargo sleeves and a leather chest, you get the same effect). I'm not sure why this is just yet, but I'm guessing there is an issue with getting everything lined up across all of the body meshes... Time will tell.

The fix will probably require some slight modifications to the leather breastplates to truly make things look complete, but I have to take time to make sure anything I change works with all the possible variations (there is a lot of texture re-use). I've been working towards a solution for this as time has been available and hope to have something 'soon' (tm).

[Raeshlavik]

Oh man, Rae... If you could fix the chest plate/throat texture inconsistencies on most of the options available, I would be your number one fan! I can't tell you how long I've despised and hissed at those.

Great work on your texture jobs so far! They look really great!

Thanks. Unfortunately I've not made a lot of my texture mods public yet because every time I think I'm done, I find another combination of armor or some fiddly bit of base mechanic that sends me back to the drawing board.

You should have seen the alpha channel tricks I had going on the Satyrs (I re-did the base body textures, then alpha blended the 5 base fur textures to give more variations of fur color (5 fur colors plus 3 base skin tints) - right before I discovered that the tails didn't work the same as the rest of the body and always looked funny... And I'm still stuck on the male Satyr feet... It's like someone took the Saris foot and just mangled verts until they got something resembling a hoof... I could fix that, but I'd have to spend some cash to get a non-educational license of Maya and then bribe someone at Vi to export the original model and send it to me.

The Dragon chest scale fix is going to take some time as it's not only textures, but voodoo in the definitions of the client that has to be performed as well as getting blessings from Vi to add the missing intensities of the throat scale textures to the client... Which is problematic because someone, somewhere, won't like the change to their six year old ancient with the missing throat scales and now that the textures are fixed, they'll be leaving the game because of it...

As soon as the smoke clears a bit from the tier2 revamp, I'll ask around and see if there's any interest in my fixing a few sticky Dragon bits... That one head with the missing neck piece (the one you can see through in the character creator) has bugged me for years... And I have a mad desire to put the proper head on the Khutit model...

[AguaRush]

The Dragon chest scale fix is going to take some time as it's not only textures, but voodoo in the definitions of the client that has to be performed as well as getting blessings from Vi to add the missing intensities of the throat scale textures to the client... Which is problematic because someone, somewhere, won't like the change to their six year old ancient with the missing throat scales and now that the textures are fixed, they'll be leaving the game because of it...

As soon as the smoke clears a bit from the tier2 revamp, I'll ask around and see if there's any interest in my fixing a few sticky Dragon bits... That one head with the missing neck piece (the one you can see through in the character creator) has bugged me for years... And I have a mad desire to put the proper head on the Khutit model...

ohh sounds lovely if the throat scale doesnt work you couuld always tackle the fins along the back and on dragons heads... they look alright but *shrugs*could be better

[Raeshlavik]

And I'm still stuck on the male Satyr feet... It's like someone took the Saris foot and just mangled verts until they got something resembling a hoof...

Okay, I broke out my trusty Granny viewer and took a look at the models for the male Satyr and found the problem... Someone actually modeled the feet, but it looks like the poly reduction got a bit confused:

http://pics.livejournal.com/rihahn/pic/0002ddc2/ (clicky on the picture to embiggen)

Basically, just a few verts need to be moved on the outsides of each foot to split up that large surface area a bit. Compare that to the inside vert placement (where I don't have any problems):

http://pics.livejournal.com/rihahn/pic/0002epe6/ (clicky on the picture to embiggen)

(I'd unweld and adjust that one vert, but it's optional...)

Basically, all that needs to happen is that both sides of each foot need to be massaged a bit to make them a bit more symmetrical as far as textures are concerned.

Now, I want to stress that this is all just for informational purposes and for the terminally curious. I certainly don't expect someone to crack open the male satyr model and fiddle with the verts in the feet to make my texture twiddling easier... But if someone does, I'll buy pizza for that someone.