Sprite Generator... CA ?

[JeromeGrasdyke]

Ah. Yes. The sprite generator. It's there already, but I'm afraid it's not all that user friendly. Like many of the tools used for Rome it's embedded in the main Rome exe, and you access it by starting up the game with "-sprite_script" on the command line. It was made available in the 1.2 patch exe, and won't be there in earlier versions.

What this does is cause the game to start up looking for a file called "sprite_script.txt" in the game's root directory, which it uses to construct the sprite pages and .spr files for the sprite imposters into the data/sprites directory. This process references data in the descr_model_battle.txt file to create sprites which correspond to the different faction colour / model texture pages. I'm including a chunk of the syntax below, so that you will have something to work from when creating the script:


barb_female_peasant no_faction
east_female_peasant no_faction
generals_horse romans_julii generals horse
generals_horse romans_brutii generals horse
generals_horse romans_scipii generals horse
horse_cataphract seleucid horse cataphract
horse_cataphract parthia horse cataphract
barb_cavalry gauls generals horse
barb_cavalry germans generals horse
carthaginian_medium_cavalry carthage generals horse
carthaginian_medium_cavalry numidia generals horse
carthaginian_medium_cavalry spain generals horse
persian_sparabara_merc no_faction
egyptian_peltast_merc no_faction
greek_elephant_crew_merc no_faction sprite_root


And so on... it's essentially a list of "descr_model_battle type id" "faction type" "mount type". You have to explicitly list all the factions that you want sprites for, since you could economise on space by sharing sprites among factions. The sprite_root keyword is used to indicate a model which is on a mount but is nevertheless standing up (chariot drivers, etc).

Be warned that this process can take a long time - a couple of hours for regenerating the complete set of sprites was not unusual - and requires a decent graphics card (128mb of video memory minimum, I believe). If you run with -ne on the command line you should be able to do other things during that time, although I wouldn't recommend running anything that uses DirectX.

After it completes you'll have to modify descr_model_battle.txt to correctly use the new sprite files.

Hope that gets you started...

[Lord Adherbal]

yes, thank you, thats excellent :D

a couple of hours for regenerating the complete set of sprites was not unusual

I hope you don't mean for 1 unit's sprite set :O either way, anything better then the alternative ways of making sprites :)

[Encaitar]

Fantastic. Thank you very much Jerome :)

[Vercingetorix]

Thanks Adherbal for finding that! And thanks Jerome for the explantion!

[Myrddraal]

Thanks Jerome, thats saved me a hell of a lot of time (believe it or not, I was going to recolour the existing sprites so they vaguely fit my units)

[Lord Adherbal]

well it works perfectly - generating a sprite for 1 unit (1 faction) took only like 1-2 minutes.
The game then went back to desktop (I assume that's normal) and the sprite files (spr + TGA files) were there in the data\sprites folder. The TGAs are then easily converted to the much smaller DDS fileformat with photoshop.

[SigniferOne]

Jerome... !!

[WhiteWolf]

Ah I could just kiss you... except Im not that kind of wolf..

Anyway thanks for the great info!

[Monkwarrior]

Could I suggest somebody to make a "How To" about this question?
It would be great.

[Simetrical]

I tried doing this. I created a shortcut to my RTW.exe which went to "C:\Games\Rome Total Realism\RomeTW.exe" -sprite_script. I made a file in C:\Games\Rome Total Realism\ called sprite_script.txt. In that file, I wrote

generals_horse romans_julii generals horse

with that spacing, copied directly from Jerome's post. When I clicked the shortcut, RTW started up, went through the initial loading screen, and then returned me to the desktop almost immediately. The data\sprites folder doesn't even exist. I must be doing something wrong—but what? Jerome, [cF]Adherbal? Any ideas?

-Simetrical

[JeromeGrasdyke]

When I clicked the shortcut, RTW started up, went through the initial loading screen, and then returned me to the desktop almost immediately. The data\sprites folder doesn't even exist. I must be doing something wrong—but what? Jerome, [cF]Adherbal? Any ideas?

Are you sure the original Rome dataset is still completely intact? The fact that it returns almost immediately could indicate that it's not even getting to the sprite generator execution.

Also, you need to make sure there are no -mod options on the command line, and since it's a modded game, there's a risk that some of the typenames have been renamed or removed from descr_model_battle.txt or descr_mount.txt ... i'd suggest you make sure that the typenames are there, the cas models reference valid textures, and so on. And of course run with -show_err on the command line as well.

[bouis]

I tried it on a fresh installation and I couldn't get it to work either. Went straight to desktop after the red credits screen. show_err was used but said nothing.

[bouis]

I haven't been able to get this to work, with a fresh install of RTW and 1.2 patch. The game returns to the desktop after showing the red credits screen, and show_err gives no report.

In fact, no one I know of who has tried it has been successful either.

[lt1956]

Question if you Put no faction will it generate a sprite with the unit color and not faction color it? In other words, made the sprite more realistic by keeping the colors of the unit and not the faction?

Thanks,

Lt

[Roman_Man#3]

Ah. Yes. The sprite generator. It's there already, but I'm afraid it's not all that user friendly. Like many of the tools used for Rome it's embedded in the main Rome exe, and you access it by starting up the game with "-sprite_script" on the command line. It was made available in the 1.2 patch exe, and won't be there in earlier versions.

What this does is cause the game to start up looking for a file called "sprite_script.txt" in the game's root directory, which it uses to construct the sprite pages and .spr files for the sprite imposters into the data/sprites directory. This process references data in the descr_model_battle.txt file to create sprites which correspond to the different faction colour / model texture pages.

"game with "-sprite_script" on the command line", i dont understand what it means by this

[Makanyane]

Its same as where you put -show_err, right click on your desktop icon, select properties and in target box, add a space after ...exe" and add -sprite_script
so result looks like
"X:\blah\blah\RomeTW-BI.exe" -sprite_script

[Roman_Man#3]

thank you

[Roman_Man#3]

haha, I finally got it to work. Thank you.


ah, nvm, i knew it was too good to be true. the sprites were made no problem, bu the when i tried to play a game, this signal that said:out of area - came up. then i went to adherbal(?) preference thing on the second page, and just as battle was about to begin, it went to that stupid signal again. Please help!!