Sprite Generator... CA ?

[lt1956]

I beleive they do if I recall the romans, because those are the most noticeable ones.

I think we need a switch or something, that someone forgot to tell us, because like you said shields are gone in my sprites, but then again its SO far away its better than nothing! lol BUt I think there MUST be a command they forgot to tell use, otherwise why do there roman sprites have shields. Agrippa cohorts also had shields when he made his sprites. So it can be done, eitehr they are using a different editor and threw this one in just for us, or they have some switch we need to use?

Lt

[Marshal Murat]

So,
You enter the -sprite_generator into the command line, then create a file in the main directory of what units you want to sprite generate?

[Tux]

No sprite_script is the command, then you create a text file in the game root folder named "sprite_script" and go to the descr_model.txt get the name of the unit,the one like "roman_triarii" and write that in the txt file and after that you add "julii" or "bruti" wich faction have the triairi with the colred textures.Also don't forget to add a folder named sprites in the data folder.

[DimeBagHo]

I got the generator to work fine. The generated files look OK. I put the new files into data/sprites/. I put suitable sprite entries into descr_model_battle.txt. But as far as I can tell the game is not using the new sprites.

Do I have to extract the original sprite packs, or pack the new sprites into them? That would be a pain, because my mod only uses a handful of new models and skins.

[Lord Adherbal]

Do I have to extract the original sprite packs, or pack the new sprites into them? That would be a pain, because my mod only uses a handful of new models and skins.

not if the sprite names are not identical to the original RTW ones

[DimeBagHo]

Must be some other problem then, because the sprites are all for new units.

[eastsidehighrise]

i am hardly a modder of any sort and i got my sprites working, so maybe your solution, DimeBagHo, is this:

-make sure you have the correct info in sprite_script.txt. The i.d. from descr_model_battle followed by a faction (egypt, romans_julii etc.) for which a texture is available under that i.d. So for example, hastati would go roman_hastati romans_julii
make sure there is a 'texture' line for the faction you're specifying in sprite-script, or else it will go default.

-convert the tga files, usually about 1-3, to dds. dont know if this has any bearing, but it sure reduces the file size by a good amount. DDS Converter 2 is a good one.

-for the new dds files, rename them: put '.tga.' just before the ".dds" extension. so "roman_hastati_sprite_000.dds" = "roman_hastati_sprite_000.tga.dds". This is because the accompanying SPR file (.spr) will look for .tga files, which youve turned to dds.

-rename each set of sprites to one that is not CA. you must add the same thing to all the files (spr and tga/dds). for eg. "roman_hastati_sprite.spr" and "roman_hastati_000.tga.dds" are CA defaults so i simply add "rtr_" at the start of everyone. although the filenames have changed, in comparison to each other, they are still the same (because you added in rtr_ equally).

-in descr_model_battle, assign the model_sprite line with the name of your new .spr file.

thats all i got for now.

[DimeBagHo]

Eastsidehighrise - thanks for the suggestions. It turned out to be a very silly mistake in the descr_model_battle.txt entries. I just hadn't specified the faction in the sprite lines.

[hobb'es]

Hi!

Does anybody know something new about the problem with sprites without shields?

And I encountered one more problem. The game doesn't seem to use the assigned sprites for standard bearers, generals and so on. Instead you see the sprites for the units they belong to. Or is it only me who doesn't get this to work?

Thanks for your answers and please excuse my bad English.

[Myrddraal]

Welcome to the forum hobb'es

when you say "Without shields" do you mean the shields don't appear?

I'm not sure about this as I haven't used the sprite generator yet... anyone?

[hobb'es]

Thanks for the welcome, Myrddraal!

The problem with the shields means that the sprite generator doesn't recognize the shields of units when making sprites. So the sprites of e.g. Princeps don't have shields and are rather dark because of their clothes in difference to their red, blue or green look because of the shields.

[professorspatula]

If anyone else notices their sprites have missing weapons when they generate them, here's a way to get a full set of tgas complete with weapons:

Go to the models_unit directory and temporarily rename the .rum file that shares the same name as the model your chosen unit uses. Eg: You've created a new uber-Greek peasant with Adidas style stripes and killer body odour. The Greek peasant uses this model: unit_roman_peasant_lowest.cas. In the models_unit directory, there will be a file of the same name, only with a .rum extension. Rename that to something else before you run the generator (don't bother renaming the other .rum ones, only the smallest size one is necessary). When the generator is run, it should now generate more tgas than before, complete with weapon animations. I was getting 2 tgas without weapons, but now I get the lot. Actually the generator tends to now create 1 more .tga file that those created by CA. Eg, My spearmen has 4 tgas, whereas the old one had 3.

To be honest, it doesn't make a massive difference, and it takes up more hard disk space, but it's nice to have proper sprites generated.

I actually found this out by accident when I was trying to get the 'new' CA Spartan to work. I couldn't get it to work without it reverting to the old model after zooming out only a tiny amount, and after much trial and error, realised renaming the .rum files the model uses fixed the Spartan. And when I then created the sprites for the fixed spartan - I got 5 tgas instead of 2, which I then realised was a result of not using those .rum files. Which makes me wonder what the .rum files are, and why I either create less tgas than what CA made, or 1 more.

I don't know if this is a known issue, and if everyone knows it already, but I thought I'd just share my findings with you. Course, means I now have a load of old sprites to redo.

[Monkwarrior]

I noticed one slight problem that I'm not sure if it is general.
I prepared a new carthaginian standard bearer and made the corresponding sprite.
I also did the sprite for the new sacred band, which in fact has this bearer as an officer and the game uses the sprite of a sacred band soldier for the standard bearer instead of its own sprite.
The result is that the standard disappears when looking the unit from long distance. I will try to put here a screenshot to illustrate this problem.

[hobb'es]

@Monkwarrior

I have this problem to with all standard bearers, generals etc. The games uses the sprites of the assigned units for them.

[Myrddraal]

Does it happen with the units made by CA.

[Encaitar]

Well I finally managed to get the sprite generator to create just a single, complete page tga file, instead of hundreds for each model. The difference being if I ran the -sprite_script command switch with the -ne switch also (that's the non-fullscreen switch), it created hundreds of partial tgas, if I ran it without the -ne switch, it create the one complete tga. Rather happy that I've finally got that done.

[SirNateofWessex]

I was able to create a sprite package with 450 images with bright yellow on my desktop which has a geforce 5200xt 128MB and on my laptop with a ATI Radeon IGP 320m 64MB and it worked like a charm. My simple file was a vanilla unit. I am at a lost of why my worse card worked.

[Monkwarrior]

Yesterday I was shocked.
Last week I was able to create a full set of sprites of the reskinned carthaginian faction. However yesterday I had the same problem, the sprite generator created between 300 and 500 tgas with no content. I hadn't changed any part of my hardware, but I had been changing some preferences in the game.
I copied the preferences posted by Adherbal in the second page of this thread and the sprites were generated without problems.

I don't know which parameter perturbs the sprite generator, but there is something in the preferences that, if changed, doesn't allow the spriter to work properly.
Just copy those values and test the spriter.

Cheers.

[SirNateofWessex]

Well when I get home I will paste my differences and compare it to the the aforementioned post.

[player1]

As far as I know, if you put color depth for campaign and battle to 16-bit, it will generate srpites fine.

But, with 32-bit it will give horde of small useless tags.

[matrik the conckery]

ok, i'm going to ask y'all to help me out here, because this isn't working for me. here's what i'm doing:


created the sprite_script.txt in the root folder

in the sprite_script.txt file entered 'roman_triarii romans_brutii' (i'm only doing one unit at a time til i get it right)

created the sprites folder in the data folder (data/sprites)

copied and pasted the preferences list as posted by Adherbal

started program as "C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\RomeTW.exe" -sprite_script

and here's what happens:

games loads up with initial rome total war screen then creative assembly/activision screen, then crashes to desktop (as i've read it's meant to do)

however, it doesn't seem to produce any files at all. nothing appears in the sprites folder or anywhere else.
anybody see a problem here at all? i'm really keen to get this working, so any help you can give is appreciated.

cheers

[matrik the conckery]

never mind, i've worked it out. i had named my sprite_script file wrong (had put .txt on the end). working well now. cheers

[Myrddraal]

Well I'm glad u got it sorted, I didn't have a clue
Welcome to the forums.

[SirNateofWessex]

Instead of posting my differences, I made the sprite generator not work on my working machine. At the time, I had other programs running like Windows Media Player, notepad, and I tried it again and it worked. Also, doing more than a handful creates some real differences. I had a custom file of 36 units and they all were messed up. But 6 at a time works perfectly. Every journey starts with a small step.

[Martinaz]

i can't start up the generator.
i have type -sprite_script on the command line and i have patch1.2
but when i start it , you see the splash screen , and then you see again your desktop :S:S

[Monkwarrior]

i can't start up the generator.
i have type -sprite_script on the command line and i have patch1.2
but when i start it , you see the splash screen , and then you see again your desktop :S:S

That's the normal way it works.
After closing the game, you have the corresponding files (in tga format, not in dds, you must change it) in the Data\sprites folder.
Did you create this folder?
Did you prepare your script?
Did you have the correct preferences?

If everything is OK it should work.

[Martinaz]

what are the correct preferentses?

[player1]

16bit battles and campaign colors.

But even if it's 32-bit, generator would work too, but would give bad sprites.

[Martinaz]

:S
it isn't working i have the map , preferencis and script :(

[player1]

Try adding "-show_err" maybe it will give you some error code.