Altering textures for buildings

[Big Bear]

Hi, I was wanting to alter some of the textures for exsting buildings in the game. Baisicaly just changing the roof tiles from the Greek/Roman orange/brown to grey or slate. Unpacked the textures and altered them but nothing came up. Presumably the game is still loading from the pack. I can't find the file to change this. Can this be done? Also if I have to re-pack, I have the re-packer but not too sure how this works and will need this for the interfaces etc in the end, so is there a good tutorial on re-packing?

Thanks dudes
Big Bear

[Ramashan]

The game should be loading from the texture folder in the data/models_building/ folder. So long as you don't change the name of the file there shouldn't be any problems.

[Big Bear]

Hi, have done that but they come up as the origional textures. I'll give it another spin and see if there is some other problem. I did notice the folders that were unpacked had capital fonts rather than small case, maybe that? Thanks for such a prompt reply.

Cheers
Big Bear

[Ramashan]

Try this.

Open the ITEM file of the building you want to edit in notepad. You'll see on the top the name of the skin the file wants so you'll know which skin your supposed to be working on.

Make a copy of the ITEM file in question (usually add some random key stroke to the copy to that it goes right to the top of the list like XXXROMAN_BARRACKS.ITEM)

The skin the ITEM asks for and edit it and change the name by changing only the last letter to a number like roman_barrac2.tga.

Now, open the ITEM in a HEX editor and change the name of the skin to match the new skin, remember you can only change boxes in the HEX editor, not add or delete. Then save it.

When you open the ITEM in notepad again you'll see its attached to the new skin.

This is the way to edit the skins you attach to a building without having to have Max.

Hope that helps some.

[Big Bear]

Ramashan you are totaly the "Berries", I wish there was a part of the site "Ask Ramashan". Every time there is a wee prob and you are the chap at the other end of the Web -totaly explained. Thanks dude will get onto it right away. Got me through mapping which was a total bloody mystery till you got onto the job now an evenings work to get the baisic thing up.


Slanchee
Big Bear

[Squid]

remember you can only change boxes in the HEX editor, not add or delete

I do think you can change the length of the texture file name. If you look at the item files, 2 bytes before the first letter of the texture file you'll see a hex number (e.g. for archery_range_barbarian.item at address 0000000c you have a hex value of 10 (16 in decimal) and if you look at the file name of the item file it is 15 characters long null terminated (end with a 0) string. Now I haven't tried changing the number and either increasing or decreasing the length of the file name, but it should work, and I have done it with other files that use the same mechanism.

[Ramashan]

Aww shucks, thanks mate. But I don't know everything, just glad I can help and can only hope the help is useful.