changing the nagi\'s part 2

[barocca]

Tarrak asked if we could change the naginata's men on the battlefield,
i went and checked orig STW nag bif's and lbm's and they are the same ones used for WE/MI
HOWEVER
the actual men we see on the battlefield apparently are not!
so where do the nagi's we see in WE/MI on the battlefield actually come from?

they look like a bastardised yari sam to me...
I'm going to keep trawling through the bif's and lbm's, but...i dunno...
------------------
here are the battle images
STW original nag's


WE/MI's nag's

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-09-2002).]

[barocca]

Rats!

the lazy beggars have used the dame file in WE/MI for Nags and Yari Sams,

(*** insert favourite curse words here ***)



I tried importing the old nag files into the sams directory - following a hunch,
and the result is above
the left hand side are yari sams, the right hand side are nags...

any clues to a solution - it looks like a coding job, hopefully not...

------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[MasterYoda]

lol thats kind funny

------------------
The Jedi Order to serve and protect

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa Barocca san,

It indeed seems something about efficiency in code (graphic memory?).

Kensai is just the same sprite as the nod, but enlarged.

Ysam and Nag are the same sprites. They are bare handed and the weapon is inserted later. (Seperate graphics assemble a complete one a la Nick's faces). This could have been used in a nice manner to illustrate slight differences between soldier in a unit, samurai were not a modern army using uniforms. Even the armor of Li's Red Devils were different but all were red.
You could think of medieval knights were each knight has it's own personal family crest on shield, or a personal decoration on his helmet. Peasants having different types of (farm)poleweapons, and/or different colors of wooden shafts.

YC and NC seem to share their sprites too.

To answer your question: I don't think you can change this by replacing files.

I guess you can make some changes so that the difference between the two becomes more appaerant.

Go to textures/Men/SamS

Strange enough you'll find the xbow sprite here too?

You'll find pictures of the naginata and the yari here. Those poleweapons were frequently lacquered: red, black. The shaft could also have metal fittings.

Personally, I find it hard to distinguish Nag from YSAM on the field because it's just one dark matter (I do agree that the old nag sprites are far superior).

I think you can make a compromise (as you won't be able to put back the old Nag sprites).

You could give the SamS a bright color pair of trousers (like the old nag has). And make the shafts of the poleweapons of very distinct colors: black with metal or gold lacque, and red or plain light oak.

I've loaded the Ni bifs with RSW BIFReader 21 and used the animation option, very nice to see. Thanks RSW san.

Edit:
I changed SamS.BIF. When you change the color of a shaft you've to do that for all 12
frames. I did a quick edit to see an effect. I used red in the first 2 frames, yellow in another 4, and some white in 7, 8 and 9. The result is a flashing 'lightbulb'.

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi
http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[This message has been edited by TosaInu (edited 06-09-2002).]

[barocca]

Tosa,
Probably the best idea.
Now all I have to do is tell them apart...

This was probably done because so many people were having graphics problems,

by accident today i ran WE on an old pc here, The old pc would run STW but battle graphics were flashing flags and similar errors!
WE ran fine, graphics ok!

It is sad that they changed the nag icons, surely they could have loaded them into the bif?
oh well,

So could i export all the old and new bif layers and cut/paste/edit them together do you think?

and again - now all i have to do is tell the ys and naggy's apart in the bif...

(advice?)

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[barocca]

EDIT
-----------
the numbers are co-ordinates - not calls to images - damn
-----------------

lets see now
i still cannot tell the ys from the nags,
I think they are the same.

The bif file has 24 ys/nag icons per page
and 12 pages, for a total of 288 icons
((it only seems to call 255) - not sure yet)

it also contains 20 Ashi-X icons across 12 pages for 240 icons.

the text file SamS_page
has 36 rows of six lines - giving a total of 216 calls.
some of these calls are duplicates.
SamSpage.txt only uses 97 distinct numbers.
(some are repeated up to 12 times across different lines)

SamS.txt uses some different numbers, and some the same.(we had ablackout while i was working on this one and it's now 1am here...)

Assuming these numbers are locations, if we could work out what the lines mean we could create distinct sets for nags and sams -

By being creative we could make it work.

for example we could create the nag icons WITH weapons and make the polearm (a naginata) invisible...
------------------

In other words if we could work out which icons are called by which numbers we could edit the bif file to contain both Sams and Nags, and edit the SamS text files to only call SamS icons and the Nag's Text files to only call Nags icons.

I am unsure if we could actually cut and paste the old naggy icons into the correct positions in the bif file, or if we must be happy with simply repainting them.

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-09-2002).]

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-10-2002).]

[barocca]

Tosa,
please excuse my ramblings,
but if i write it all down here as i go we will hopefully avoid any repetition.

Now, I took the old STW bif set and extracted all frames, likewise with WE/MI-SamS.

Then i selected a standing nag and copied it (very rough) over a standing YS
all 12 frames.
Imported the whole 'new' set into a new bif and tested it.
It worked - kinda (lol)



As the camera changes angles the icons swap from the new one i imported to the old one,
(meaning there is, naturally, more than one standing SamS icon)
and all are carrying the 'new' polearm - but then we make that invis. later right?

You can also see in the frame a group of yari sam, but because of camera angle they are all old icon,
as i moved across the front they also changed - now i just need to figure the frame calls...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

Yes Barocca san, the nag and the ysam use the same icons. The weapon is fitted in during the game.

There are more pages calling icons (charge, walk, fight, die- Spears folder).

I don't think replacing SamS.bif with old nagi.bif would do the trick, not only would you lose the xbow ashi, the nags are located on slightly different places too.

(I was experimenting a bit, while I wrote this, I've read your 2nd post, nice).

Set both sams.bif and nagi.bif in motion, you'ld see the nagi.bif having some nice slashing moves, whereas the sams only have a poking/thrusting.

I copied the nag files to the sam folder and renamed them accordinly. A mess I can assure you ;-).

Remove the Nagi folder from textures/men/spears, and the nags will enter the field bare handed.

My 'impression' is that the animations 'suffered' by adding new units: the STW expansion wasn't ready for more sprites. Have you seen where the xbow ashis fire to? Straight into their own face.

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[barocca]

I don't want to complete replace the SamS file, just split the Yari Sam icons within that file into 2 groups,
Copy the old naggy's piece by piece over the SamS icons I decide not to use.

Lets assume that 2 strings of 6 numbers are required for any action from a particular camera angle.
These 2 strings call 12 sequential frames into action

If we were to shorten the animation sequence to six frames, and use the second set of six frames for the other unit type, then edit the text files so they call 6 frames twice,
instead of 2 strings of 6 frames.

This should allow us to use all 3 types (X-Bow, SamS and Nagi's) from the one bif file.


interesting, so the pages in the spears/nag folder call the polearms! So I don't need to make the polearm invisible.




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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[TosaInu]

Clever.

[barocca]

the realy clever part will be if i can actually figure out the number strings...


---
edit
oh how silly of me,
part of the string is co-ordinates
the first lines of SamS is
10 39 119 160 138 206
(( - ashi row 4 position 5 ))
I do NOT know what the 10 39 means ,
but 119 160 are the X-Y co-ord of the top left corner of the box
and 138 206 are the bottom right co-ordinates.
10 39 are NOT dimensions because the box is 19 by 45
but then the box only lines up very approximate on that particular sprite/icon...

Can you ask the write of bif editor if he knows what the first 2 numbers in the row are?
and what do the index numbers mean - they change as you move over the sprite...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-09-2002).]

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-09-2002).]

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-09-2002).]

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

ScottMcDonnell had some info about this. I think he deleted his pages.
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000322.html
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000319.html

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[barocca]

TosaInu,
Scott's information has indeed been removed from the web.
I have emailed him and asked for help

It is beginning to look like the text files are a blind alley.
And hard coding is the problem.

I have not yet disassembled the executable to check this thoroughly,
even if i did it would take me a loooong time to decifer - i am not a hard core programmer, just a 'dabbler'.

I have, however, 'watched' the shogun executable initialise, it loads the SamS bif at least twice,and performs a number of seek and reads on the file.
I assume once each for SamS, Nags and Ashi-X.

Shogun is a very messy executable
- it also attempts to load huge (and i mean HUGE!!!) number of files that are NOT included with the release!
(explains the looong load time)
(at least the developers were smart in allowing shogun to ignore load errors)

Perhaps if i could source a pre-release version - ah well...it is to dream!

Anyway, I need to know what the index is inside the bif file, and how shogun calls the index- what does shogun use it for?
what are the first 2 digits in each line of the text file, and so on and so forth
- complicated it is, hmm?

hard coded problems are a big nuisance for me, I really need the help of a C++ expert for this, given time i will sort it out for myself, by time i mean eons... LOL

Sadly it may require 'patching' the executable to look at the nag file's in the nag folders - something that would take a lot of experimentation - unless target is still around and willing to help...

I also understand that part of the reason for using the same sprites for multiple units has to do with memory limits, but perhaps if shoggy was not wasting time trying to load useless non-existant files,
AND did not load the entire unit set during initialiseation, but rather only when required by the units selected for a given game...
Dreaming again I know...

So far we HAVE replaced the constipated clown during army select, training in campaign and unit cards in battle
- all we are left to do is figure out how to successfully replace the men on the battlefield...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-11-2002).]

[Tarrak]

This is not good news...

I simply loved the old nags. Their style, their looks... Now they are just YS wannabees, and not even good at it.

I wonder why they changed them. They presented a film where we saw the Kensai (fighting Ninjas) the first time, there they were even improved compared to the old Nags.

It is like they took one step forward and two backwards.

[Kraellin]

barocca,

there was speculation at the time we started in on this about why the nag 'sprites' were changed and i believe the discussion centered around limitations due to adding in the mongols with the expansion pack. we, and i forget who 'we' is now, guessed that they had had to use some copies of sprite data in order to fit all the new mongol data into the program and memory and so on. i dont know if this is accurate or not.

it's been a while since i studied sprites and bobs (blitter objects) and i would guess that the current stuff in shogun/we/mi is actually neither. it seems more to me to be a sort of 'frame' animation or 'cells' of animations. how the hardware and software actually holds or constructs all this i'm not quite sure. but, remember this, in the game, say a multi game, ALL players are using the same base images. that means that my ys looks like your ys, looks like tosa's ys and so on, except, that they all get colored differently and with different banners. that means that a base image is loaded up for everyone and when you pick which clan you're going to be, another file is called up and colors that base image to whatever you picked. thus, you get .lbm's and .bif's working together, i think. one is the base, and the other is the clan template overwrite....i think ;)

as for your SamS coordinates, think about what the game has to have in order to render all these in the right place and the right time. you've got the x, y. now, what else does it need? and push come to shove, hack it! change it and see what happens ;)

and last but not least, dont listen to me. i havent a clue ;)

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[barocca]

Now we're not supposed to talk about hacking here,
but then we're not trying to hack the game per se'.
We're trying to mod the game.

I need to 'see' the calls to the bif files,

My problems with that include years since i've done anything serious at all.
Just before chrissy everything i owned PC-wise went out the door one day while i was at work,
this included PC, software, backups of work on CD - all the coding i had ever done, the utilities i used to code, decompile and re-asemble - everything.
Insurance replaced some, but not all.

So i had to start from scratch.
I used to have a neat utility that would de-compile and save code, then another that would load the save and show me the full command lines - what the calls were to, line numbers and offsets,
from this i could make notes, go into a hex edit and change what was needed,

I no longer have these tools, and i can't remember the name of the program that would allow me to 'see' the full code.
So i'm very literally working blind at the moment,
2 days of full time searching have not turned up utilities matching those i need.

I have no C++ expert on hand to help, so it may be mission impossible (or at least mission damn bloody hard)

will keep you advised...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[barocca]

Evening guys,
right now i'm getting very tired,

I think this project requires a patch job,

When shogun calls for a nagi man on the field, it loads a Sam and changes the weapon.
What we need the program to do is load the nagi bif file instead

I can use the original nagi bif file and create a duplicate of the sams file containing nags instead of sams and place that in the nagi folder (along with copies of text files),
(so we don't/won't have to worry about addressing the images and changing the text files)

Now i just need to figure out how to get shogun to actually load the nags bif instead of the sams bif.

this looks more and more like a hard coded function.
anyone know assembler?



------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[Tarrak]

So at the moment you can make sams look like nags right? Do they look good with the long spears?

But you know, I don't even think that the nags have nags equiped, thier weapon looks like an Ashi Yari.

[Kraellin]

barocca,

go to yahoo.com, enter this into the search field: "hex editors". you shld be able to find all you need from that, including dis-assemblers.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[barocca]

Kraellin,
thanks, I have over 7Gig of such tools on CD
- including very ancient tools that cannot be downloaded from the www
(I was fotunate enough to go to QIT/QUT, where they write their own operating systems and utilities from scratch)

I can make dupes of the SamS bif's and texts,
replacing the Sams images with Naggy images.

I can do all sorts of wonderful things to the executable, except decipher it to a point where i can add a extra few lines of code, - (i can't find the morale equations either - sorry - would have been nice to understand exactly whats going on in THAT department)

What we are hoping is that we have not yet deciphered all the text files, and that some of them control what image is shown from a certain camera position.
If some of them do control images/angles (lets hope), then we can change some of the Sams images for Nags images still using the same file,
but you won't have quite the range of 'angles' for the images.
Given the amount of time we have in battle to sit and admire the craftsmenship of the images I won't find that a problem.

If, However the images/camera angle relationships are hard coded
- well - then we have a problem.
If they are hard coded then I'd need the exe to load the Nag's Bif's and associated text files, (insert a few lines of code)
and whenever the program has to display a nagy, to use the naggy bif.
(change the pointers)

Hex edit is fine to change a hardcoded misspelling, or no-op a line here and there.
But to actually change the code in the way required for this project?
For that i need either source code (with dev notes still inserted) - OR one of the developers to take an interest.

If the developers have been smart they will have left plenty of extra room in their code to add new lines, for repair and expansion purposes.
They were smart in forcing the exe to ignore most load errors, allowing them to proceed to distribution without having to erase redundant code.

If they left room, then a patch would be very small, simply line up the old and new exe's, run a compare utility and extract differences to a patcher - one util will do all this easily.
Such a patch will simply contain the lines of code, instructions on where to edit them into place and instructions to overwrite old code.

Lets hope we can either decipher the text files which tell units to run, march, fight and die, and that the 'pointers' are in those texts, (allowing us to replace some Sams with Nags in the Sams bif)

Or else
Target - where are you???

------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-11-2002).]

[barocca]

By the Way,
The replace some SamS with Nags is the SamS bif file would be the tidiest solution.

Because we would be replacing half the SamS images for Nags images the load on memory will remain the same, Instead of 36 SamS-images/angles we would have 18, and 18 for Nags.

If, and only If the pointers for image/camera angles are in the text files we have not yet deciphered...

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-11-2002).]

[Kraellin]

k. yer way ahead of me then. i'm just a hack hacker. the reason i pointed you to yahoo wasnt for the hex editors themselves, but what else you find on some of those sites.

as for the files, did you try simply swapping the names of the two files so that the one you want is actually called?

and one other suggestion. sometimes the dev guys leave a debugger in place. if you could find that, you might have a chance at editing some of the .exe stuff without having to dis-assemble. no idea if they did, though.

K.


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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

[Trousermonkey]

Hi barocca,

First I want to apologize to all the forum-goers for my absence on the modding scene. I had big plans for this game and though I compiled several apps for my own use, I never polished them to the point where I could feel comfortable releasing them for download. Lately real life has been so demanding I've been unable to do much of anything extracurricular.

Here's an explanation of the animation text file. RSW gets the credit for this -I'm just reposting it here.

RSW quote>
My explanation of the data format in the ".txt" files.
ctrlrec = record // each line in the ".txt" files represents a data record.
cx, cy : integer;
// seems to be the coordinate of the image's center point.
// (the little soldier's standing point)
left, top, right, bottom : integer;
// this is the rectangle needed for the image.
// if left > right, we need to rotate the image
// to get the correct view.
end;

[barocca]

TM,
you have mail,

the index in the file,
if you scroll the mouse over the images of men, numbers appear on the main panel of the bifreader program,
x co-ord, y co-ord and index...
i was wondering what the index value represents.

The SamS bif already contains 2 unit types,
ashi-x and yari-Sam.

SamS_H (high res) images are loaded seperately to SamS.bif.
I believe that SamSPage.txt controls the high res images,


the text files,
in D:\Games\Warlord Edition\textures\Men\Actions
is a bunch of text files that are different to the text files contained in the SamS folder.
will experiment with these when i get time, but that may be a few days from now.

look forward to seeing what i can glean from your App.

(and if you haven't noticed from my posts i am a terrible programmer, but i like solving puzzles...)

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-12-2002).]

[Trousermonkey]

Hey barocca,

I just sent that app. The index mentioned in RSW's excellent bifreader is the index of that particular color in the color table.

Good Luck with your goal. Though good programming skills help, you can often achieve more through sheer stubbornness. Feel free to post if you have any technical questions; I'll help out if I can.

Tm

[barocca]

TM,
i was unable to find the extracted Taisho name in the file. It was almost entirely gibberish.

I've not had much time to experiment with the text files labelled run, march, fight etc. But i think they control spear type and angel.
the files in the action folder are more interesting ... will have to experiment and see...

with the server down, and my conspirator (on another project) away for the Fathers day weekend i'll try to do someover the next couple of days.


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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-16-2002).]

[barocca]

here's my theory
feel free to shoot me down in flames

(by icons i mean the little pic's in the bif file)

in the actions folder are files labelled for the units.
The file Nags.txt and SamS.txt are identical.
There are 96 calls in each file
There are 24 nag/sam icons in the SamS.bif

1. - there appear to be four calls avaialable for each icon. I'm hoping these are for different actions from dfferent camera angles.

My theory is the program knows what line to use for what action/angle.

If WE can decipher the what line is what action/angle we can edit the nags file to point at HALF the icons in the SamS bif, and the SamS file to point at the other half of the icons.

We can then substitute naggy icons where we want them and all we need to is edit the text files and SamS bif's

NagsPage and SamSPage are also identical.
so if the calls are for action/angle we can also edit the high res images too.

------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[barocca]

contents of this post were totally irrelevent
read next post for why !!!



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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-16-2002).]

[barocca]

success !!!!!!
do this
go to textures men actions
copy the SamSpage.txt file (backup)
edit the SamSPage.txt file as follows
find this line
8 44 216 67 254 113
it's about halfway down,
now empty the file and copy this line 24 times
now save the file
and start custom game
choose 1 yari sam and 1 naganita,
start game and watch the yari sams bow down to your magnificence!!!

now to decipher all addys,
then a massive editing Task is in front of me.....
I'll have to edit SamsPage, NagiPage and their bif's - a bit of work....

------------------
DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[barocca]

heres the SamsPage.txt file deciphered,
all references are to sam icons,
for this i have ignored the ashi-x icons, since we won't be touching them at all

what i will be doing is selecting half the sam icons, and switching nags into them
then edit nagspage and samspage so they point at correct icons,

> (action) (view from) (width of rectangle)

anyway heres what the file means
9 43 196 67 214 113 ----- row 2 - icon 2
> walk back narrow
17 44 226 164 254 207 --- row 4 - icon 3
> walk side medium
16 45 135 21 165 65 ----- row 1 - icon 4
> walk side narrow
8 46 149 67 167 113 ----- row 2 - icon 1
> walk front narrow
9 44 236 115 254 162 ---- row 3 - con 7
> run back narrow
14 45 167 21 196 65 ----- row 1 - icon 5
> run side narrow
15 46 224 209 254 254 --- row 5 - icon 5
> run side medium
7 48 19 7 36 57 --------- row 1 - icon 1
> run front narrow
8 42 113 209 130 254 ---- row 5 - icon 2
> stand back narrow
16 43 83 105 109 147 ---- row 3 - icon 3
> stand side narrow
17 44 150 164 181 207 --- row 4 - icon 2
> stand side medium
8 45 93 209 111 254 ----- row 5 - icon 1
> stand front narrow
15 46 203 115 234 162 --- row 3 - icon 6
> fight back medium
13 46 134 115 170 162 --- row 3 - icon 4
> fight side medium
13 47 23 98 54 147 ------ row 3 - icon 1
> fight front medium
11 46 97 156 122 207 ---- row 4 - icon 1
> fight front narow
8 44 216 67 254 113 ----- row 2 - icon 3
> die back wide
15 45 132 209 191 254 --- row 5 - icon 3
> die side wide
14 46 198 9 254 65 ------ row 1 - icon 6
> die front wide
8 48 57 33 87 96 -------- row 1 - icon 3
> die front narrow
16 46 56 98 81 147 ------ row 3 - icon 2
> charge back narrow
14 46 193 209 222 254 --- row 5 - icon 4
> charge side medium
14 48 172 115 201 162 --- row 3 - icon 5
> charge side medium
7 48 38 7 55 57 --------- row 1 - icon 2
> charge front narrow

as you can see we don't really have enough duplicate actions to do this,
i'm open to suggestions,

do i use one side and one back for nags?
and the other side and front for yari's?

i was thinking the Sam side image that is closest to a frontal image for Naginata front and frontside (remember there will be TWO references for EACH image)
and the sam back image for naganita rearside and back?


either way i'm not going to cry - i'll just be glad to have the naginata back...

---

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DoragonBarocca of Clan Doragon

[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 06-16-2002).]