Dextras

 

 

Nice. I guess you were already an RTS fan?

That's right! RTS and RPGs constitute most of my gaming history, so this was a great find.

 

 

but the strategy genre has declined so much

True. You can't imagine (or most likely, you can) how disappointed I was after finishing the game, learning that the series had gotten two sequels, and later that neither of them were "traditional" RTS. Whatever their merits might be (and I'm sure that they are pretty good games on their own right), being able to build structures and the macro aspect of the gameplay are part of what I enjoy the most of these games.

Luckily for me, the benefit of having such a big backlog of games past that I haven't played yet means I'm always discovering gems like this

Cheers!

Hey ultiraweirdo, thanks for the welcome!

Well, through YouTube, funnily enough. I came across a video of a retro review of the game, thought it looked great, so I searched for a bit of gameplay videos and immediately realized I would love it. Seeing some of the custom skirmishes players could set up with the huge amount of mods that were available was the icing on the cake.

A bit late to the party, I know, but not uncharacteristic of me

As a sidenote, I should take advantage of this post to briefly update the original topic of the thread. Unfortunately, I have barely had the opportunity to spend time on the game since last time I was here, so I still have not come across a solution to the .gfx files editing.

I have, however, solved the whole deal with the cameras. This was entirely thanks to Kekoulis help, so all credit to him, of course. Just in case someone else finds himself in the future having my same question, I figure I might as well give a very quick summary here so the knowledge doesn't idly seat in my personal messages.

The short of it is that the game expects three cameras:

• "wargear_cam": This camera seems to be used for the race selection screen
• "wargear_unit_center": This camera seems to be used for the wargear selection screen
• "commander_cam": This one, in the commander screen

Adding them is simply a matter of placing them in the appropriate position in 3DS Max with the appropriate name. No other parameter aside from its position, orientation and FOW seems to matter. That being said, the cameras need to be added to every animation that is to be called on the respective screen, otherwise the camera view snaps. I also think that they need to be added to each "vis_" .max file as well, but I haven't tested it.

Doing all of the above, however, doesn't seem to be guarantee that they will work. For reasons that are known only to the engine, on some models that procedure will yield results, and on some others it simply won't work. In that case, the best solution is to just move the entire model in the editor by some offset to give the illusion of a custom POV.

Additionally, and I don't know if this quirk was a result of my own inexperience with 3DS Max or what but, the game doesn't appear to respect the FOW you assign to the cameras. When I experimented with it, the camera's POV in game was always about 30 points greater than in 3DS Max.

Anyways, if I figure out some more I'll keep the thread updated to document whatever I learn.

Cheers everyone, and nice meeting you ultiraweirdo!

You are a Saint! Thanks a ton.

 

 

Talking of which though, although you can set the territory colour in the .race file, you can't set the territory boundary colour

Yeah, that's the case. Each territory in the metamap is actually a 3D model, and the different boundaries are just different textures that are hidden / made visible depending of the race that owns it. Not only that, but the dashed boundary line that is used when the territory isn't connected to the owner's stronghold is a different texture as well! Editing those is not something I'm looking forward to... I'm hoping 3DS will have some sort of batch tool or similar because otherwise it's going to be painfully tedious.

The colour specified in the .race file I don't know if it's used anywhere. I think it might be used when you click on the little button in the lower left corner of the metamap screen and switch views to that particular one where territories are fully "painted" according to the faction controlling it, but I haven't tested it.

 

 

I'd suggest talking to Miros

Thanks for the suggestion, will do! Do you happen to know if "Miros" is his username there, I'm having a bit of trouble finding him.

Cheers!

Yeah, I was afraid that might be the case.

Just to confirm your suspicions, you are correct. All the images that have intuitive names and are located in the "data/art/ui/swf/icons" folder are dynamically loaded at runtime and don't seem to be handled by scaleform (or the engine, or whatever is responsible). I think the logic of that is handled by some of the actionscript located in the corresponding flash files. By adding the appropriate images following the same naming conventions the developers used, I've been able to introduce all the images and icons I needed. All except for the one used to represent the army in the metamap. This one is, unfortunately, one of the "metamapxxx.dds" textures that you mention.

The wargear screen, luckily, can be customized. You just need to change the corresponding field in the appropriate .race file and the game will use whatever image you point to there.

Anyways, I guess I'll either have to live with the fact that I may need to either remember where the new races armies are, or manually check the territories. Not the worst, but not the best either. Just out of stubbornness, I'll keep trying to see if I can maybe create new .gfx files from scratch that do not rely on scaleform. I'll let you know if I succeed.

Thanks for clearing that up! You wouldn't happen to also know your way around 3DS Max and the Object Editor, by chance, would you  ? And introducing custom cameras and the like?

Thanks for your replies,

Cheers!