Drawing our Own Maps, Vehicles or Objects

[Bluetiereign]

Before 'gaming', I used computers for, among other things, CAD. This includes many CAD programs available in North America... including AutoCad, a currently popular and affordable program called Punch! and TurboCad, another affordable alternative (Although it is more of a technical CAD, they were slower to include a realtime 3D viewing engine.)

It is likely the drawing data file included with C4 is in some kind of format, be it *.bmp, *.tif, *.dxf.. with each one given an 'address' for a loading reference.

1. Can we access this file ?

2. If we can, what do we need to change this data file's extension to to view this file.

[Rüstinsk]

the files you are looking for are located in the c4odata.pff. they are DirectDrawSurface (.dds) files.

you can use ravens pff tool to extract them.

DirectX DXtex Tool (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dx8_c/directx_cpp/Graphics/ProgrammersGuide/Samples/CPP/DxTexTool.asp)

[Bluetiereign]

Most Excellent. Thank you very much for your help. I cannot access the server to download the tool that you mention, but might luck up on another, similar program.

I wonder what these teams would look like flying around inside a human body interfaced with microscopic commanche...fighting coronary disease.. and how much the pilots would get paid..

'We are the Borg...'

[Charger]

(they don't really like us to do this)


Who's THEY Rus...The aliens?:D

[Rüstinsk]

yup!

http://www.checkpointdelta.net/forum/images/avatars/CheckpointDelta/ufo.gif

[Tristan]

lol!:D

[Bluetiereign]

Much appreciated... let me know if these questions need to be edited...or the thread removed.

..a few hours later...

Rus.. after pursuing this, it appears to be a very difficult endeavor... I think you should have tried to discourage me...



:o

[Edited on 8-12-2002 by Bluetiereign]

[Rüstinsk]

i thought i did ...LOL

where are you hung up, i'll be more specific.

also, i forgot to ask, are you using winxp?

[Bluetiereign]

Are we looking at Oracle, Micrographix, Adobe, Tagai InfraLogic , And wavelet files with the .LWF ?

The .ADM,.KDA,.LDO... I don't have a clue..
I have a small amount of catching up to do... with some serious gaming that MUST take place in the meantime.. (A man must keep his priorities straight, you know..)

And yes, I am using XP...

[Edited on 8-13-2002 by Bluetiereign]

[Bluetiereign]

Its a no go tonight...PowerDesk is showing the zip file corrupted...

So, this tool eliminates the need to sort through the file types?

Be in Touch...

[Rüstinsk]

yes, it appears so!

must be a limit to attachment size.

i deleted the previous post & had them upload the file. it is in the downloads section.

to prevent confusion to others i reposted the instructions because i dont see a way to delete attachments.

[Edited on 8-13-2002 by Rüstinsk]

[Rüstinsk]

1st off, i apologize; the dxtex tool above does not work in xp. i will attach one that does at the end of this post.

extract the files using ravens pff tool

open the files with the dxtex tool, dxtex does not save files in an editable format, so once you have the file open in the tool (full screen) take a screenshot of the item. paste it into your paint program of choice, crop & resize (if needed) to the original size. edit the image. save it to .bmp & open it with dxtex. change image format to DXT5. then Generate Mip Maps.

now save it as the original file name in your C4 directory.

rather than repack the file (overwriting the original), add the " /d " (without the " " ) parameter to the end of your C4.exe shortcut. this parameter will force the executable to look in the C4 root directory prior to searching the c4odata.pff

and before you do pack any files into pff, make a backup copy of the original

open the game & test your results ;)

You can find the DxTex Tool in the C4 downloads section of this site

[Bluetiereign]

If I had been paying attention at the first link you provided to - Microsoft's DirectX Site -...instead of looking for a 'quick fix'...

The DXTool Suggested the complete 165MB DirectX SDK download. Done. Gonna play\learn with this awhile. Will share anything worthy of note..

Meanwhile, you have been a tremendous help. Thanks again.