Terrain tiles; PCX to DDS file conversion

[Snake Man]

I already posted a request for help in the FF forum about how to convert PCX terrain tiles to DDS format. So far nobody has instructed me how to do so.

I was just thinking that why not post it here, most users are same in both forums but I gues it wont hurt to ask here also.

I've gathered that the TerrainTexCompress.exe will do this conversion, however the readme says only this:

Code: Select all

 TerrainTexCompress from BMS (original version renamed)

 In summary:
 - TerrainTexCompress.exe Uses a grand total of 500 MB, so have the required memory
     available.
 - TerrainTexCompress.exe overwrites existing night (far)tiles when switching seasons,
    thus, no need to delete these files when installing custom terrain textures.

Not really helpful isn't it.

I have been told that it reads the windows registry for the current theater directory, so I assume you need to first use FreeFalcon/Redviper to change the theater (which of course gives error when it trys to load textures, ie the windows error bling sound).

So far I have tried to do that, but still when I run the util it will start to process korean tiles. I'm outta luck and running out of patience. I need to be able to convert PMC theaters to FF/redviper so I can evaluate this Falcon version if it would be supported from PMC.

So if anyone has any information about FF/OF pcx->dds tile converting, please post it here the info is in high demand right now.

Thanks.

[Closter]

Part of the process of adapting the theaters for BMS2/FF3/Cobra involved converting the PCX tiles to DDS . So I think it is perfectly possible, even easy, to do what you are trying.

I have translated into spanish the Penz guide to adapt the Balkan theater to BMS2, and I can read in the guide that, after several steps, you must select the new theater in the UI and then inmediately quit Falcon, run LxNormalFix and then SeasonSwitcher. Those things make the trick and at the end you have the tiles in DDS format.

(Put aside that trying to make this with our theater, we found an error with the texture.bin, but this is another problem)

I know that the tools you use in redviper1 can be a different name, but DDS is DDS...

I hope this to be of any use.

[Snake Man]

Couby posted in the Afghanistan topic about Image Converter Plus util that converts PCX to DDS. Thanks.

I'm not sure but that still leaves us empty handed with the fartiles.raw file which would have to be created by the mysterious TerrainTexCompress.exe, but still that above converter might come handy.

[Closter]

AFAIK Irfanview will do the same job, and it is free. About fartiles.raw, no idea.

[i_hawk]

Couby posted in the Afghanistan topic about Image Converter Plus util that converts PCX to DDS. Thanks.

I'm not sure but that still leaves us empty handed with the fartiles.raw file which would have to be created by the mysterious TerrainTexCompress.exe, but still that above converter might come handy.

Snake-man... I'm for sure no terrain expert or something like you in this section but TerrainTexCompress is a very very easy utility to use.

Just make sure the Texture.zip you want to convert is in the active theater running for your installation. and run TerrainTexCompress. this will add a texture folder with the DDS tiles and 2 farties files for day and night, all will be inside theater\texture folder. please tell me if you get troubles with this one... shouldn't i guess

[Snake Man]

I finally managed to build a PMC theater (terrain) into FF/RedViper (RV). Thanks to T Rex, Ripsaw, Couby, Closter, Ranger822 and i_hawk for their help, hope I didn't forget anyone. In the end Ranger822 pushed me to the ultimate solution. Much appreciated.

Okay so to get SP4.2 or any non FF (dds tile) theater into FF/RV goes like this. First you start with the files of:

theater.L2, theater.O2, theater.MAP, and theater.MEA

These files are located in the usual terrdata/terrain/ directory. Next you need to get three utilitys which are:

SPTinstall.exe
LxNormalFix.exe
SeasonSwitcher.exe (or TerrainTexCompress.exe)

Now you run these utils in three stages:

1) Run SPTinstall.exe for example sptinstall d:\games\f4\Theaters\Vietnam\terrdata and click create.
2) Run lxnormalfix @Vietnam @d:\games\f4\Theaters\Vietnam\terrdata
3) Start RV, go to theaters selection and choose your theater (in our case, Vietnam). Then exit RV. Now run seasonswitcher -0.

Done. When this whole three part process is done, you have fresh dds tiles and the fartiles files created in the terrain directory.

First important note which boosts up the frustration is that TerrainTexCompress.exe and SeasonSwitcher.exe utilitys read the texture.bin and if in terrain dir or texture.zip has any pcx tiles missing, the utilitys will give error dialog and abort. This is very annoying as in my experience its not that rare to have theaters texture.bin with some or even many tile files missing.

So make sure you have all the texture.bin entry pcx tiles present in the zip or in the dir, whether you actually use them in the theater.l2 file does not matter.

Second important thing is that these two utils read the windows registry and check Falcons current theater directory, so get ready for many many mistakes when you start to run default Korea (or other theater than intended) terrain files. The registry info is as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "SOFTWARE\Microprose\Falcon\4.0" "curTheater"
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE "SOFTWARE\Microprose\Falcon\4.0" "theaterDir"

If you like, you can just modify these so you dont have to start up RV and use theater selection to switch the registry. Perhaps the registry fix in some runme.bat file is much quicker/easier to do.

[Closter]

First important note which boosts up the frustration is that TerrainTexCompress.exe and SeasonSwitcher.exe utilitys read the texture.bin and if in terrain dir or texture.zip has any pcx tiles missing, the utilitys will give error dialog and abort. This is very annoying as in my experience its not that rare to have theaters texture.bin with some or even many tile files missing.

So make sure you have all the texture.bin entry pcx tiles present in the zip or in the dir, whether you actually use them in the theater.l2 file does not matter.

That's just the problem we had when we wanted to make the conversion into BMS.

I think the problem is the way we create texture.bin. I don't think the tutorials are very specific about this. Perhaps they could be improved.

Specially the "Adding New Textures" into the Terrain Tutorial, is the place to insert this new info, IIAR.

[Snake Man]

Here is my registry changing code

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reg add HKLM\Software\Microprose\Falcon\4.0 /v curTheater /t REG_SZ /d "Vietnam" /F

After changing the curTheater value like this, you can succesfully run SeasonSwitcher (and TerrainTexCompress I presume) without needing to start RV/OF to change the theater.