Basic Modding with Playable Examples

[ZanderArch]

Originally Posted by starfuryzeta

Hi Niphty,

I have a hopefully quickly answered question. Do you know if it is possible to have a rifle use grenades as its standard ammo? I modified an L85 to use launched grenades as its standard ammo. The L85 will animate as if it is firing, but no grenade is launched. Not sure where to go from there.

Thanks!

When you tested this, did you reload the weapon after it didn't fire? If you use the Grenade Launchers from Vanilla, you'll notice that if you didn't freshly load the thing, it'll fire a dud. Try reloading it, maybe that Dud Glitch got carried over.

[starfuryzeta]

Definitely reloaded a fresh magazine of 30. The ammo counter did read VOG-25 30/100 as it reloaded. Fired mag to 0, reloaded, counter said VOG-25 30/70. Still animated as if it fired, but nothing was launched. Only did this when I changed the ammo class to a grenade. Change it to legit ammo class, and it worked great (semi/auto shotgun is fun).

[niphty]

I'll try to answer these in order..

I currently use Paint Shop Pro 9, back before Corel bought out Jasc. Versions 10 and 11 (X and XI) have the name Corel on them with an updated interface.

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In order to copy the old weapon, you first select the Selection Tool and drag a rectangle around the gun, trying to approximate the edges of where the grid are. You'd like to get the exact 6x2 area it takes up on the grid highlighted, so it will stay in proportion when it shrinks.

Once selected, go to Edit -> Copy. Then Edit -> Paste -> As Transparent Selection. Pasting as its own layer up front always seems to be more of a hassle to me, so I choose to do it this way.

You should be holding the floating selection on your mouse pointer now, and you can zoom out then back in with the mouse wheel to get to where you want to put it (Phaint Shop Pro zooms and centers). Line it up as best you can, then drop it into the equipment grid.

Next, select the Raster Deform Tool and you should get the familiar box around the gun where you can resize it. Grab a corner and try to move it, and Paint Shop Pro will tell you the selection needs to be promoted to a full layer before you can do this. Click ok, and then return to resizing the weapon. Once you have it where you want it you can save the image as the ui_icons_equipment2.jpg, I take a moment to first save the file as a .pspimage (Paint Shop Pro's native format) which records the history of movements as well as the layers, in case I need to make drastic changes later, then I save it as the JPEG format, which will prompt you that you need to merge the layers together in order to save; that's what we want to do

Then you should be set to convert. Fairly complex, but simple if you step back and think about it. We're not adding a fresh texture here, just copying and old one and deforming it.
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I've attached the all weapons icons file, and frankly.. this was the first file I started looking at when I found out I already had a program that could read DDS files :P Look at that heat seeking missile launcher at the bottom! The RPK up at the top, and something that looks like the BAR, lol. Not to mention the two odd nade-looking guys in the middle that look a light bulb and a peppercorn. Now we have to ask if there's meshes still in game for these guys.. hiding.. waiting to be used

As for getting the trader to show the tiny SVD, you'll want to do a test, and make sure you remove any other mods first, then place the ui_icons_equipment.dds file in the gamedata/textures/ui/ directory. Also be sure to use a fresh trader file (again, to test it) and put that entry I provided in my post underneath every line with a [ ] around it. You can just search for [ and insert the line right under it for testing. You don't even need the descriptions.
If it's not showing up still then I'm not sure where it's going wrong. You really should stop using other mods before trying to add in a test anything, as I've noticed a lot of them seem to cause conflicts with other mods.. which still doesn't really make sense to me

I'm still working on making grenade rounds / rockets work for any and all weapons. I've not been trying -too- hard, so there's a good chance someone else will figure it out before me, but I AM looking in to it =D

[Faiakes]

Originally Posted by niphty

As for getting the trader to show the tiny SVD, you'll want to do a test, and make sure you remove any other mods first, then place the ui_icons_equipment.dds file in the gamedata/textures/ui/ directory. Also be sure to use a fresh trader file (again, to test it) and put that entry I provided in my post underneath every line with a [ ] around it. You can just search for [ and insert the line right under it for testing. You don't even need the descriptions.

That's the one that wasn't clear.
I copy & pasted the line in all [ ] sections and it works fine on its own and within my mod

Now to make my own:

I am up to selecting Raster Deform (it's the only thing i can't find). Under which column is that?
The Help section is not any help really. otherwise I wouldn't bother you.

P.S. I am using Paint Shop Pro 11.20 and apparently Raster Deform is now called Pick Tool

[Faiakes]

OK, semi-success.

I succesfully resized the icon and placed it well. It is working.

However, the whole items pic has a permanent black background.
Only thing I can tell you is that when I first resized my icon I didn't get the message 'the selection needs to be promoted to a full layer'.

Also. how do you know which grid x & y to pick. I choose one after yours (5,34) and I think it is fine. If I do another one should I just go (5, 35)?

[dvd2007]

hello

that Attached Thumbnails 2/3 posts back

is that a mod that already is out or is it coming out?

[ZanderArch]

Originally Posted by dvd2007

hello

that Attached Thumbnails 2/3 posts back

is that a mod that already is out or is it coming out?

That isn't a mod. It's an image file that's been converted to a JPG to be shown on the site. Originally it was a .dds that has some of the pre-release stuff that was going to be included with the game, but were taken out. They just left the image in the game. Eventually, someone could add them to the ui_icon_equipment.dds for us and then we could have nicer looking inventories, jump start some mod ideas, or give a modder something to use rather than adding it them self.

[niphty]

Originally Posted by Faiakes

However, the whole items pic has a permanent black background.
Only thing I can tell you is that when I first resized my icon I didn't get the message 'the selection needs to be promoted to a full layer'.

Also. how do you know which grid x & y to pick. I choose one after yours (5,34) and I think it is fine. If I do another one should I just go (5, 35)?

Well, here's a Q's for you.. when you imported the JPEG into PSP11, did it have a transparent background, NOT black? If it's showing up as black right after you exported from the DDS file, then you haven't selected the option to save Alpha, or you PSP11 has had its preferences changed to not show the alpha, and possibly to not use the alpha channel at all, this you won't be saving it with alpha data.

What I mean by transparent background is that it shows a black & white checkerboard grid behind the items, which look like cut-outs.

Also, PSP11 automatically promotes the selection to a layer. You can see this after you choose the pick tool, and try to resize the gun. If you look in the Layers section of the UI, you can see it now has a 'Promoted Selection' Layer. They've just cut out a lot of the messaging for you. It should still gave the warning on save about merging the image down

As for the grid X and Y, you just have to count it out. I chose to put the gun right under the MP5 there BECAUSE I knew the location of the MP5 (5, 33) and i knew I only needed to drop down 1 more Y grid to get my gun (5, 34). The grid starts at 0,0 in the upper left hand corner, and goes to the right and down from there.

[FoxTwo]

Thanks to ZandarArch's thread here (thanks dude!), I dug around abit and found a way to bypass messing with trader files when modding your own stuff.

In your gamedata\scripts\escape_dialog.script file, there's this function:

function give_weapon_to_actor (trader, actor)
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "wpn_colt1911", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_11.43x23_fmj", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_11.43x23_fmj", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_11.43x23_fmj", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_11.43x23_fmj", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "wpn_knife", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "outfit_foxtwo_m1", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "wpn_g36", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
dialogs.relocate_item_section(trader, "ammo_5.56x45_ss190", "in")
end

This function fires off after you've talked to Wolf at the newbie camp, and these are the stuff he gives you. What I have shown above is an example of my test. I got a Colt 1911 pistol, 80x.45 CAP ammo, a GP36 gun and the corresponding ammo (330 rounds of it), and my own modded suit which exists in the unique_items.tlx file. No trader files were used.

Yes, I ran around with a GP36 and wearing my own modded suit, all given to me FREE by Wolf!

Hope this helps...

[Faiakes]

Originally Posted by niphty

Well, here's a Q's for you.. when you imported the JPEG into PSP11, did it have a transparent background, NOT black? If it's showing up as black right after you exported from the DDS file, then you haven't selected the option to save Alpha, or you PSP11 has had its preferences changed to not show the alpha, and possibly to not use the alpha channel at all, this you won't be saving it with alpha data.

What I mean by transparent background is that it shows a black & white checkerboard grid behind the items, which look like cut-outs.

Also, PSP11 automatically promotes the selection to a layer. You can see this after you choose the pick tool, and try to resize the gun. If you look in the Layers section of the UI, you can see it now has a 'Promoted Selection' Layer. They've just cut out a lot of the messaging for you. It should still gave the warning on save about merging the image down.

OK, food for thought there.
I also found a version 10 of PSP and I will attempt the whole think again.