Theater tutorials, update for 2007

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-06 11:08:13

I think its time now to update the PMC Theater tutorials for 2007 since so much have been changed. At the moment we have tutorials of:

Ultimate Theater tutorial

Terrain tutorial

Texture tutorial

CATE tutorial

TE/Campaign tutorial

PAK Map tutorial

Map/Flag tutorial *

Main UI background image tutorial *

Tiling tutorial **

Airbase Leveling tutorial **

Zaggy's Tile Meistering Tutorial

Database Editing tutorial

* marked tutorials are eF/108i2RP5 obsolete, they don't work in SP3.
** Obsolete because of CATE does it automatically.

So I think we should scrap those obsolete RP5 tutorials or at least move them into some history archive. The ultimate theater and terrain tutorial are tricky as they are kind of the same, what I mean is the terrain part is included in the ultimate tutorial. I've been long time wanting to update that system so there would not be duplicate stuff.

Any suggestions or requests for new tutorials, feel free to post and I'll try to restructure/fix/update the tutorials as best I can.

Sherlock · Post by **Sherlock** » 2007-02-06 15:44:28

As far as the terrain tutorial and the ultimate tutorial, there are small sections in one that are not in another and vice versa. I recommend editing carefully for these differences and getting ALL of the "nuggets" from both for the final end product. Just an observation...

Epic · Post by **Epic** » 2007-02-08 05:44:02

Snakeman

I tried to use the Ultimate Tutorial and found it was complicated. Is there anyway to make it a little simpler?

Epic

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-08 08:02:49

I tried my best to make it short and simple. Do you have any suggestions how to modify it?

Malc · Post by **Malc** » 2007-02-08 15:34:32

Snake Man,

Let me re-write it, it'll be good practice for my upcoming exam

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-09 09:46:15

All help is welcome, feel free to rewrite it

Sherlock · Post by **Sherlock** » 2007-02-09 20:19:16

Epic wrote:Snakeman

I tried to use the Ultimate Tutorial and found it was complicated. Is there anyway to make it a little simpler?

Epic

Epic,
I believe the Ultimate Theater Tutorial can be made CLEARER, but I doubt it can be made any simpler.

Epic · Post by **Epic** » 2007-02-10 10:42:06

Guys

I found CATE very complicated to use. I tried to create config files, but it was way over my head. I don't even know what half the numbers were used for and I didn't understand much of anything in the config files. I ended up using existing configs for another theatre, I don't know what theatre, they were the only ones that I could find, and they did not work well at all.

Now that the PMC is back in business I can just ask for help as well. I appreciate all the work that went into the original Tutorial and any changes would be much appreciated, as well.

Thanks,

Epic

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-10 11:39:41

CATE configs are very complicated. I have been thinking unifying all my configs, for example there is now ODS as the theater with best config files, so what I'm hoping is to use only its config for Afghanistan, Vietnam, Nevada and so on to theaters which use new texture.bin's. Europe of course uses korea texture.bin so there is only one config which applies also to Korea128 theater and umm well guess there isn't many more korean bin using theaters. There is no problem with the texture.bin's if they say like HDSRT001.pcx - desert tile, it can be jungle tile for Vietnam and so on, filenames don't mean nothing, we can just call them terrain type 1, terrain type 2 etc.

I think its waste of time to create multiple texture.bin's and suitable CATE config files for them as we can just use one. I will definitely try some stuff out with this in the future to see how it all comes together.

As for CATE tutorial, its really non existant at the moment, the tutorial just explains some features hehe. I'll try to make new CATE tutorial the usual step by step method as seen on other tutorials. Again all suggestions are welcome.

Sherlock · Post by **Sherlock** » 2007-02-10 18:09:33

Snake Man wrote:CATE configs are very complicated. I have been thinking unifying all my configs, for example there is now ODS as the theater with best config files, so what I'm hoping is to use only its config for Afghanistan, Vietnam, Nevada and so on to theaters which use new texture.bin's. Europe of course uses korea texture.bin so there is only one config which applies also to Korea128 theater and umm well guess there isn't many more korean bin using theaters. There is no problem with the texture.bin's if they say like HDSRT001.pcx - desert tile, it can be jungle tile for Vietnam and so on, filenames don't mean nothing, we can just call them terrain type 1, terrain type 2 etc.

I think its waste of time to create multiple texture.bin's and suitable CATE config files for them as we can just use one. I will definitely try some stuff out with this in the future to see how it all comes together.

As for CATE tutorial, its really non existant at the moment, the tutorial just explains some features hehe. I'll try to make new CATE tutorial the usual step by step method as seen on other tutorials. Again all suggestions are welcome.

The readme that SkyFire76 wrote for CATE was pretty clear on most things I thought. Yes, CATE is complicated, that is no doubt. But reading his README doc and experimenting made most things clear to me.

Couby · Post by **Couby** » 2007-02-25 09:35:31

Some comments to help updating the Ultimate theater tutorial.

When you update the data in the web page, it sets the coordinates to XX.99999 style, don't worry about it as 64.999999 is 65

This issue seems to be fixed on DEM website.

use winzip to uncompress the europe5.tgz file, make sure the TAR option is disabled, its the :

Options -> Configuration -> Miscellaneous -> TAR file smart CR/LF conversion.

it needs to be OFF, unselected, unticked.

I'm using winrar, I didn't find such option. With winrar default options the result seems to be ok for me.

For the theater directories part it should now use the Unified Theater directory naming structure

After SPTinstall process, LxNormalFix and seasonswitcher processes to be added

.

I'll take a look at writing a script automating the whole "IA/TE/CAMPAIGN MAPS" part.

I'm at this stage in my french translation of the theater at the moment, so maybe more later

.

Closter · Post by **Closter** » 2007-02-27 11:01:27

In Texture Tutorial,

Making fartiles.pal

Use Paint Shop Pro to create one 16 million color image where you add one tile from every tile-set, then reduce the colors to 256 and save the palette to for example "new-fartiles.pal" filename, also save the image to be used later. This image should be then resized for example to 16x16 resolution to make it nice and small. Then take the mkpal.pl perl script and run it like this:

./mkpal.pl new-fartiles.pal >fartiles.pal

Now you have brand new fartiles.pal file. The new-fartiles.pal PSP palette's image is also to be used in the T tiles color palette.

As far as I understand, you refer to four files here:

1.-The large image built with one tile from each set---> 256 tiles and then color-reduced to 256.
Name=??

2.-The PSP palette file saved from that image:
Name= new-fartiles.pal

3.-The former large image, now resized 16x16 image file:
Name=??

4.-The file that comes from using mkpal.pl script over new-fartiles.pal
Name=fartiles.pal

Then we can read:

Making M, L and T tiles

Download the Runtiles packet [here]
Unpack the Runtiles.v1.1.rar to \temp directory (any dir, we refer to \temp). Copy all your new H tiles to \temp directory, then place the fartile palette PCX file (new-fartiles.pal image) to the same dir. Rename the fartile pcx file for "xfartile.pcx".

I don't get it if you are referring to the file #1, #2, #3 or #4 (or another one).

Sorry if this has been answered before.

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-27 12:09:26

Thanks Couby for good points about the existing tutorial.

Closter wrote:1.-The large image built with one tile from each set---> 256 tiles and then color-reduced to 256.
Name=??
3.-The former large image, now resized 16x16 image file:
Name=??

Name wont matter really, anything you like.

I don't get it if you are referring to the file #1, #2, #3 or #4 (or another one).

The line you highlighted on bold says xfartile.pcx, so umm?

Closter · Post by **Closter** » 2007-02-27 12:25:49

The line you highlighted on bold says xfartile.pcx, so umm?

Sorry, english is not my mother language, so I keep not understanding a thing.

I want to know where the xfartiles.pcx come from... it is not clear for me.

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-02-27 12:29:13

Its the 16 million color image the tutorial instructs user to create, as its said to be saved for later. Its this file.

Closter · Post by **Closter** » 2007-02-27 12:50:34

Ah, OK! But reduced to 256 colors I think

Then it would be better call it xfartile.pcx from the beginning, woudn't it?

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2007-02-27 13:06:15

Hey SnakeMan-

I don't recall seeing this in an existing tutorial, so if it is there, let me know, but as I've tried to get some of these older theaters working, I've run into problems and didn't have a clue where to look for solutions.

So, maybe a tutorial with some idea of how to phase in and test a theater.

For instance, you've just generated the DEM data and built the ..L and .O terrain levels, and done a rough tiling with cate, and you want to see what it is like in the game - how do you do that?

Or, you've got the terrain in, but the maps still show Korea - what file(s) need to to be changed?

I guess what I'd like is a flowchart of how you bring these old theaters back to life.

Epic · Post by **Epic** » 2007-03-11 02:24:10

Snakeman

I had the same problem as TRex. I followed the Ultimate Theatre Tutorial and got a flyable theatre, but even when I seemed to have no problems with the PERL scripts the maps in the UI didn't change at all. I use OF, if that changes things at all.

I guess the biggest mistake I made was using the Balkans texture.bin and Korean (I think) config files for CATE.

It would be great to have configs that are already made. I tried reading one of the articles on CATE configs and I don't even know what the instructions mean. I have no experience with graphics or the language used in the tutorials.

Epic

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-03-11 05:07:22

I will most certainly add more detailed CATE config tutorials in the future.

Closter · Post by **Closter** » 2007-03-20 11:50:01

About the palette creation issue. The "image of images" step seems boring to me. I have found easiest, quickest to use BRIGHT tool to make the palette, instead all this image browsing, cutting and pasting. It is a cmd line tool that can generate a common palette for a given number of files. In fact, it is able to generate n number of palettes, n being a parameter.

Web page of BRIGHT

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2007-03-20 12:39:49

Closter - only download looks to be fileplanet... any chance you can email me the utility?

Closter · Post by **Closter** » 2007-03-20 12:45:45

At your will!
.
.
.
.
.
.
Uhmm...What's your email address?

No matter. Here it is.
http://www.mark-cole.co.uk/majic/zips/Bright183.zip

T_Rex · Post by **T_Rex** » 2007-03-20 13:41:10

hehehe

I was going to PM it to you, but got distracted.

Thanks for the link though. :thumbs:

Couby · Post by **Couby** » 2007-03-25 00:36:50

French translation of the Ultimate Theater tutorial : http://www.veaf.org/index.php?option=co ... et+article.

If I get any comments or updates proposal I'll relay it here

.

Epic · Post by **Epic** » 2007-05-21 06:31:56

SM

I think a good addition to the Ultimate Theater Tutorial would be how to use Object Placer to add bridges. Nothing is mentioned about bridges currently.

Epic

PMC Youtube channel · Post by **Snake Man** » 2007-05-21 08:29:20

Yes indeed its missing. Well here is quick overview of the task.

Get the theatermaker package from our download page. Get your final L2 to the point where the road/river setup at least wont change anymore. If its using korean texture.bin then you can use the Object-BridgeScript.dat that came with theatermaker package. Start ObjectPlacer.exe, choose theater size, open L2 file, and use Actions -> Place Birdges feature. Check the free ID's from Tacedit and then setup the starting object ID in Object Placer.

Then just place bridges and it generates the csv file for you which you can import to Tacedit.

Epic · Post by **Epic** » 2007-05-21 21:30:44

SM

That was the problem, I wasn't at the point of being ready to place the bridges yet when I tried. Plus, the objectID number I used was the default one, which may have screwed it up as well.

Thanks,

Epic

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Theater tutorials, update for 2007

Theater tutorials, update for 2007

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