A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

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Corvin
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A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

I think I'm in the right place to request consideration for a new much needed Blood tool.

I was wondering if the ReBUILD programmers would or know how to program a tool that mod creators could -insert- art tiles in the existing Blood tiles so the mod creator wouldn't have to distribute duplicate original Blood artwork with their mods.

Along the lines of this tool made for Duke3d:
http://dukertcm.com/knowledge-base/down ... rtdiff.zip

This tool is "a program which will compare your user ART files to the built-in 3D Realms ART files, and output a difference file containing the differences between them."

Would it be possible to have ReBUILD create such a tool?
its dearly needed and I think it would go along ways complimenting the other ReBUILD tools.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Elric »

From what I remember, I think the ART Tools from the ReBUILD project should allow you to do that. Apart from not being user friendly, what's the problem with them?
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Thanks for replying,

I'm not sure if the existing tools compare to the original Blood artwork or not based on what a read and output the differences. Unless I'm reading it wrong, it seems you have to have the tga files first rather than already in Bloods tiles...I'll review further...

Anyhow I'm asking a friend that's heavily into modding Blood for his opinion, he used the Duke3D artdiff tool before so he should have some comments.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Elric »

BTW, I think the ART files have the same format across all BUILD-based games. So you may want to try this "artdiff" tool with the Blood files if you haven't done that yet. It might work.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Yup, he tried the artdiff with Blood tiles, but you need a duke3d.grp file since artdiff compares the original artwork in the grp vs the .diff files. The end-user would need a duke3d.grp file, if that makes any sense. Basically it wouldn't work.

He's going to look into the current ReBUILD art tools to see if they function the same as the ideal artdiff tool.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Still waiting on his final say, but what I don't understand is why no one has used the ReBUILD art tools before if they truly work like artdiff?

It would save allot of space in a download and provide for a neat install/copy paste package.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

It appears that the Windows GUI version tga2art is no longer posted on the ReBUILD downloads:

http://blood.sourceforge.net/rebuild.php


EDIT: nevermind found the tool lower down.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Okay my friend tried and tried but its a no go.

I believe he got stuck with tga2art, there was no way of inserting the tga into the tiles effectively. He had to make multiple copy's of tga2art and the original Blood artwork.

Maybe he can explain it further if he registers here. I doubt he will.


Would it be to hard to make an artdiff for Blood? If your even willing too I mean.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Elric »

Okay, let's make sure I understand what you need.

Basically, you want a program that takes a set of original ART files and a set of modified ART files as input, and then outputs a new ART file containing only the images that have been modified in the 2nd second set (or that are completely new). Right ?
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

He said nevermind, the joining of the new art into blood artwork is too slow to warrant a new tool for the person installing the mod....

But basically the artdiff tool extracts custom art to a ".diff" format, (but I suppose it can be tga) by comparing the original artwork. Then when you go to install the mod it compares the original artwork with the diff files and adds them, its a real slow process. You should look at the artdiff program, I haven't used it in years tho so my recall can be off.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Elric »

Oooh... I understand now. I didn't get that you have to merge the diff file back into the ART files during the mod installation. I was wondering how it worked exactly to have an extra ART file with unconsistant image IDs added to the Blood installation :P

Anyhow, I'm a bit surprised that the process is slow. There's less than 30 MBs (60 MBs if you change everything) of images to handle. On modern computers, it should be pretty fast.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

From what he got artdiff working under DosBox emulator it was slow, I can't recall back in the 90's if the tool ran slow on pure dos, but its an old tool so I'm not sure how a modern windows command line program would run. Oh thanks for at least consider doing this, I wasn't sure ReBUILD programmers where still around. :)
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Elric »

No problem. :)

Last question: if I code a version of artdiff for Blood, do you think it would be useful to anyone? Because I think it would be quite simple to do that, but I'm not going to spend time on it if nobody cares :D
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Well we care(two of us), but I wouldn't be using it myself.

If its not command line, dos or windows command line it won't be useful, and if its way to slow it won't be useful.

It would be beneficial for many people making mods/add-ons for Blood.


If its a stress-er to do it, don't.
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Re: A possiable new tool for ReBUILD people...

Post by Corvin »

Also my friend had this to add:

It should be a tool with command line option that can add seperate GIF or PCX files to one of the ART files,
the tool should be able to calculate the correct ART file so we only need to specify the TILENUM, the FILENAME and all the properties that goes with it (x and y offsets, anim etc.)

So basically it could look like this


TOOL [tilenum] [filename] [surfacenum] [viewtype] [VOXELid] [ANIMtype] [ANIMlength] [ANIMspeed] [Xoffset] [Yoffset]
The tilenum and filename is the minimum requirement, the rest is optional but in that particular order (most convenient).
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