A sort of request, questions... and a hello. ^_^

[dragoonblade]

Hello everyone, I'm sort of semi-new (Tom of Diadem of Maunstraut fame helped me start into SoM before my computer went boom) to the whole development process that is creating games by SoM... it's really nice to meet you all and I do apologise if the things in this topic are somewhat hard to make sense of.

I presented a question to Tom a while back about the character potentially 'shapeshifting' to different monster types. He gave a few suggestions about making different versions of maps to represent the change of view as the creatures with stat and item changes, but I was wondering if any of you could give a fresh insight into the idea?

Another question I have is about is it possible to potentially make new monsters using the textures that are already on other monsters (such as the wood texture from the tree stalker monsters on a dragon or lizardman monster)?

With those questions out of the way, I suppose I should get to the main point of the topic which was the request... I'm a really huge fan of the King's Field equipment (I just have to say, the dark armour of King's Field 2 (Or King's Field 1 in the US and UK) was easily my favorite armour and the excellector was easily my favorite sword from King's Field 3), but SoM does not have any real models for items from these games (and it really doesn't look nice trying to remake Excellector and having to use the ice blade/dagger for looks) so I was wondering if I could request model downloads of the items from the King's Field games for those things that really do not exist in SoM already. If they do exist already, that's great (and I'd like to be pointed to them) but if they don't, I am hoping someone will take up the request as I'm not really very savvy in model editing (as you can likely guess). The reason for the request is I have a idea but I kind of need the models so that I can help distinguish for the player what each item truely is (as otherwise, they'd have a hard time telling the difference by looking that Excellector is not a Ice Blade or a Shard Sword)

[Holy_Diver]

I fully intend to eventually bulk import all of the graphics from Shadow Tower, KF2, KF3, and KF1 into Som format. But it could be a little ways down the line. If by the "dark armor" you mean the Galth Fee set, I actually have plans to specifically adapt that set to Som for a game project I'm working on. I'd like to try to do an original armor set, but I think it will be safer to first do that in case I can't come up with a new design I'm happy with and kill two birds with one stone.

I may also pay special attention to the Excellector because I want to develop a new "Extension Selector" editor for Som called Excellector and I'm thinking it would be cute if the loading bar was a an Excellector graphic

Todd sent me files for Galth Fee set (including the Dark Armor I think) but it doesn't have textures, and may or may not have texture coords (can't recall) ....I was also given an iso image for KF (ASCII) which I can use to get at the textures. But I don't know if I ever got a save game with all the Galth Fee armor collected or not (which is a requirement)

If I can pull all of that together I can prepare some files for the original graphics, and when I can get around to it I plan to rework them so they will fit in with the items that come with Som.

[dragoonblade]

That's really great news Holy, I'll look forward to you bulk uploading the weapons/armour etc usable as equipment for SoM as it'll mean so much variance on what we can do equipment wise (and I really really <3 some of the equipment and would think it'd look impressive set out. Hmm, I really should try to think of a concept for displaying these items in game (like a museum in game that updates and shows just what you've collected out in 3-D for you to wander around and examine. ^_^ ).

[Holy_Diver]

Todd has a museum in Dark Destiny. I've encouraged him to turn it into a standalone "game".... I think he showed some interest. It's really handy for getting an in game view of of everything (for authors)

The bulk import will be interesting. Only ST is really visually consistent with Som. Som is indeed very much based off the heels of ST. But the monsters are just a bit below Som's level. Not to the point most of them would not fall right in, but just at the point where just the slightest touching up might help.

Some of the KF3 items might slip right into Som, but the monsters would need a bit more work to be fully integrated. Of course KF2 and KF1 even more so. So ST will likely double the size of Som's builtin asset pool. But the KF games would all represent different visual styles, which you would choose which one is right for your game. Or if everyone pitched in and made different versions for every asset then players could literally decide for themselves what style they preferred (if every file in your game could be represented in that style)

[dmpdesign]

Glad to hear you are working on a game.

I should be able to help you out pretty quick on a few of the requests.

#1 retexturing monsters isnt terribly hard but is not as simple as cutting one texture and pasting it on another monster.  If you use 'ENEMEDIT.EXE' located in the tools folder with SOM you will be able to open a majority of the enemy files to view them.  One of the options while in this editor is to export the texture to a bitmap file.  Once this is done you will be able to see the 256 x 256 texture.

For your example you would export the log stalker texture as well as another enemy you want to use the texture on and likely will have to move around the actual texture so that the segments from one line up with the pieces of the 2nd texture so when you reapply it to the 2nd enemy it doesnt look mismatched.

#2 weapons/items from past KF games.  This is simple and hard at the same time (at least for me).  Its not terribly difficult to get the weapon/item/armor into an SOM usable format however I dont know how to pull the original texture out of the Playstation disks to use with the item.  On the bright side, the texture coordinates are still attached to the models when they are ripped so you can at least see where the textures would lay and how many textures the model requires.  With a bit of effort you can reproduce them fairly easily (after all, KF textures werent exactly high res or state of the art).

I can get you whatever item models you want, just post a list here and I can work on it.  Keep in mind one thing though, the models arent necessarily in the right size/orientation to be displayed in SOM properly as is and may take a bit of work on your end in a modelling program to get it ready for SOM.  I would volunteer to do it myself (as I already planned on doing so someday when i had spare time) but at this point I dont have a lot of extra time.  With that said, its not a hard task and we can certainly help guide you to resizing/creating the som items yourself from the models we extract from the disks.

[Holy_Diver]

When I do a bulk import of games into Som I will actually write a program to extract all the PSOne graphics off the disc (for starters)

However if you just want a single texture, all you have to do is play the game on an emulator and use either an OpenGL or Direct3D ripper (depending on what rendering plugins the emulator is using) ...if you can see the texture you want on screen the ripper will write it out to one of its folders, then you can sift thru it to find it. I've done this with Armored Core once no problem.

The only trick is having a save game that gives you access to the item or whatever. So like if you want all versions of the Excellector, with this technique (assuming they don't share the same texture) you will need 3 save games (you can do the math)

PS: In case you're wondering, you can't use that approach to rip the 3D graphics, because the PSOne is really just a 2D rasterizer, so if you rip the Excellector on screen it will come out flat, which is not what you want. The PS2 is the same more or less, except it has a depth buffer coordinate, which is like pseudo 3D with perspective correction. So it would be shaped like those optical illusion rooms that make things in the back appear to get larger, and the 3rd dimension not really representational. You could reconstruct it with a clever/well tuned algorithm for sure, but could never claim it was exactly the same as the original data.

[dragoonblade]

I have to admit Holy, that most of what you said at the end in your PS on your last post sort of went over my head... I'm afraid I'm not exactly the brightest person when it comes to doing modelling or texture grabbing... and as for texture styling for items, I would really love to see them in the SoM style although I do realise that this may be something nobody has the time to dedicate to doing.

... Now I kind of feel like I'm expecting everyone to help out. X_X I do apologise.

[dmpdesign]

Can you post a list of the specific items youre looking for?

[dragoonblade]

Umm... right now the main items I'm really looking for in specific is the Excellector (level 3 version) and the Galth Fee armour (Dark Armour, Lightning Helm (but I really question how a lightning helmet is considered demonic? It's light magic? ), Skull Shield, Death Walkers and Demon Hands).

Those are specifically what I'm looking for at this time to be able to set to work on my game but any and all models from the games would be useful beyond that. ^_^

[dmpdesign]

Here is the excellector.

I didnt take a ton of time making the texture, and it may be a little too much transparent, but it will get you started.

Unzip this, place the two .mdo files and the two .txr files in your SOM/DATA/Items/models folder

place the .prf in the SOM/DATA/Items/profiles folder and you should be good to go.