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A Scenario Designer´s Guide to Umlaut´s Factory Mods


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All right lads. Now there´s longer any excuse for not making scenarios with my Factory Mod set. As promised long ago I´ve made a guide on how to use the mods. It seems that it turned out to be in the shape of a video.

Perhaps I went a bit overboard in the process, as it did end up being 10 minutes long. If you want to skip the background part, the how-to part starts at 4:43

Hopefully, this tutorial will tell you most of what you need to know. If not, that is what this thread (and perhaps future videos) is for.

 

Best viewed in HD (720p)

Edited by umlaut
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Umlaut,

 

Yup... great idea.. !

 

I am and always have been a great admirer of your mod but was a little intimidated by it. With so much else to build and play with in CMX2 I more or less gave up.. I am ashamed to say ;).

 

However.. this is just what the doctor ordered. I will for sure now set aside the time to enjoy slowly working through the How To of the mod.

 

Greatly look forward to using your mod. Will now be fun just fully learning how rather than a struggle.

 

Thanks..

 

We are all lucky to have CM.. and fortunate it’s so good it attracts so many talented people.. :)

All the best,

Kip.

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From my discussion with benpark - in the release thread:

 

This is great. Thanks for the in-depth description of the how and why you did the windows.

 

I think I may have missed the window/alpha channel discussion. Is this a thread somewhere? I'll take a look at it myself, but I'm sure you have done the work to consider every option. It would certainly be great to have the modular buildings accessible. One thing that just came to mind- Did you consider changing the existing "damaged" alpha and texture to better represent some aspect of what you ended up with? It would allow for LoS in and out.

 

 

Which files are you modding when you add the alpha channel knock out for the windows?

 

I'll take a look, and if I can't get anything to magically become invisible I'll raise the issue again to The Powers That Be in a bug report.

 

I just did some further checking, and it seems that I was partly wrong when saying that alpha channels become white in the windows of the modular buildings.

 

I think now that the correct description is to say that alpha channels does simply not work with the windows of the modular buildings. The reason the windows looked white in my tests was because I had "turned off" the bmp file of the window - making the bmp white. When today I turned the original bmp of the window on again - the windows were back in the building. IE, nothing happened: the alpha channel" behind" both bmp´s had no effect whatsoever. Had this been "normal" CM bmp´s both files would have been transparent.

 

Sorry if this has somehow misled you.

 

Cheers

 

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  • 5 months later...

Hi Ben

I have posted your comments from Npye´s thread in the CMBN forum here. I have read them several times, but I must admit that I am still not sure what it is you are trying to accomplish here. i

It is probably just because my experience with meddling with the models is close to nil. Could you elaborate a bit?

 

BTW, as I said in the other thread, the transparent windows now work like a charm. I had just overlooked that the ground floor files remain unchanged for some reason. I have been checking to see, it there are window files somewhere I somehow missed - but I cant find any. Any suggestions?

 

Cheers

 

One other thing to try- what if you replace one of the models that has windows for the solid wall model? I'm not sure if the game engine bases the LoS in this case off of the model itself, or if it calls on which model is in place on the building.

 

If it is possible to swap one of the window wall models (and line your textures up with where the windows should be) for the solid one, that way you could have the "flat" textures. The solid wall piece is "8-space space space" (for the smaller buildings, higher numbers for the larger). This would take some testing, but it would be WYSIWYG as far as the window and door placement goes. And you could use things like the large doors, etc and have them enterable where the texture shows it to be.

 

 

Okay, that seems to work. I just did some model swapping, and the game engine allows LoS based upon the model.

 

If you want to test this- I used the smallest building model ("8"). Go into the modular buildings folder (Building Walls) in your exploded CM game of choice. Make a copy of the model "space space space" (it's the blank wall). Rename that replace some configuration that you have on your texture. If it has two windows, right and left, use something like "window space window". Copy that name (no need to do anything to the model, we just want the name). Replace the name on your copied "space space space" model, and place it in your Mods folder. That should do it. You can test by setting a unit in the building, cycling through the window configurations and seeing where the solid wall is (that isn't the actual solid wall that appears after the destroyed one).

 

Now this has an issue- it renders all of the other stock modular structures for that window configuration and size of building rather unusable. Just be sure to not use that window configuration. So reserve "window space window" or something for your new textures (and make sure they match it).

 

As far as doors go- that's another issue to think about. I'd just use them as is and make your textures around them.

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As far as swapping the models go-

 

Npye's textures are really amazing, but they don't allow access to windows and doors because he is using the solid wall iteration of the modular building to overlay them onto. This is the wall without windows and doors when you cycle through the selections in the Editor. This runs into an issue with WYSIWYG- problematic when you need to know which structures allow what access.

 

The workaround I came up with swaps out the wall model of a modular structure for one with a chosen configuration of windows and doors. Basically, you replace the window and/or door selection (something like "window window door") for the wall model without windows and doors. This allows the game to "think" that there are windows and doors (where they are drawn on the texture), but what we see is the solid wall with the texture over it. No window models or cut out areas on the model, but the game thinks they are there.

 

My workaround to this issue allows the texture system Npye is using to remain intact. He (or others) can have windows and doors in any configuration that the Editor uses, with windows not having even line up quite perfectly (they can be longer, etc). But the textures should be consistent in the configuration as far as window and door placements. As I mentioned, this limits the texture placement a little bit, but you could do a few versions- but you lose those versions in the Editor for normal modular buildings with stock textures (these would now look like solid walls, but could be seen through where the windows "really" are).

 

This isn't the most ideal of solutions, but it does allow WYSIWYG.

 

As to the ground floor not changing- that is probably controlled by some aspect of the model naming convention. The textures are divided into bottom, middle and top floors- I seem to remember something to that affect for the models as well. I don't have my game computer handy at the moment, but I'll look into it when I get a second. It is definitely possible, as I had doors knocked out completely as well as windows on a "destroyed building" test I did.

Edited by benpark
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