EQG Zone Importer

[Zaela_S]

The guard falling through the air really sells it.

I put up a new version, now has a mass triangle flag editor window in the "triangles" tab. Can edit flags for triangles based on a sub-range of them, the material they use, or both; and the flags themselves can either be overwritten to the new value or bitwise or'd to set specific bits on top of whatever they had before. Pretty simple. Might add an option for un-setting bits later.

Learned that bit 1 sets permeability/not counting for collision, so that's labelled now too.

[Leetsauce]

Beautiful. Probably the coolest thing I've seen to date integrated into EQ. Can you pretty much map anything? FF7 textures, perhaps?

[provocating]

Very cool stuff, I wish I had more of an artistic ability.

[vsab]

I've been thinking about this in a slightly more philosophical sense - mainly because my home PC is out of action (actually the PC is fine, it's my house that's b0rked).

In EqEmu customisation is generally based on:-
1. Rule set tweaks
2. Custom quests
3. Custom NPC's
4. Custom Spells

Some go a bit further and have new classes, and so on. The tools that are growing now can potentially allow this customisation:-
1. Zones + models in them
2. Weapon models
3. Particles

This basically leaves "only" NPC/PC model mods left. These I suspect, will be the hardest to change if only because the artists required are pretty thin on the ground. Personally I like the hokey (N)PC models and animations, I prefer the newer modelled zones and weapons (although IMO they've made them all way too fancy on live).

The question is at which point does EqEmu basically become a generic MMORPG development system, and really not much of an emulator at all? Because if you completely change rules, quests, zones,spells, weapons, particles and mobs, then really the only thing tying in that system to Everquest is the client, which is the biggest PITA since currently there are no legally available clients (bar a lucky find on ebay).

I see there have been multiple attempts to make a new client (and I'm even thinking about it since I think I shall have to learn OpenGL for work and quite fancing mucking about with Unity3d too). Presumably though, if you shipped Sony's assets that had been modified to a different format that would be dodgy legally? I don't know if it would be dodgy if you could distribute the export program with the new client, so users would have to have their own legally obtained data files and run the converter before using the new client?

[Zaela_S]

Making a client would be thousands of times harder than some dinky data editor, both in terms of effort and of required know-how. Would take far better programmers than me! (I made my "attempt" a few months back, good excuse to learn the basics of 3D graphics but not something to waste more than a few weeks on.) Of course, anyone who could work on that would probably be better served doing something for money, or at least, something that isn't trying to simulate a 15-year-old game client.

If someone were trying to make a "generic" make-your-own-MMO client, making it compatible with EQEmu servers probably wouldn't be worth it. EQ has too much legacy crap and terrible decisions that only made sense in ancient times (e.g. giving the client way too much information about enemy positions).

[Packet]

Taking assets from the EQ client is not recommended as you stated, it is illegal. Also, a new client will take a very long time to make. You may want to look into the client WindCatcher was working on and build upon it.

[vsab]

Oh god no, I'm not volunteering to write a new client! But I do need to brush up on OpenGl & Unity3d Let's face it a million people have posted "anyone fancy writing a new client?" and not gone anywhere.

And I think Windcatcher's code was written in Delphi (for which I have no IDE) and the source is hiding somewhere not obvious...

[Packet]

Originally Posted by Zaela_S

Okay well looking at some things it appears it just uses the alpha channel for transparency like some kind of reasonable thing. Too used to S3D format myself, I expected some kind of wrinkle ;p Haven't tested in-game but seems likely.

Edit:Actually, I just confirmed that alpha masking doesn't seem to carry over when I export to obj. I re-imported my OBJ back into 3ds max and the textures were fubarred like they are in the screenshot below.

Transparency in .png textures isn't working out for me. I set the material to use the alpha channel and renders come out alright. But in-game, these are my results. I'm trying to find an EQG zone that has a model (like grass or something) that I can reference. Is there a different shader perhaps?

http://xonos.net/zone/ss11.png




I noticed something which may be intended by design but I thought I might bring it up. The materials that are imported (like my trees) are seemingly duplicated. I use the same material on a large majority of the duplicate meshes in my scene. Instead of re-using the same material, it duplicates a copy of the material which makes it hard to do "mass edits" to referenced objects sharing the same material. But I'm not sure if this was intended or not.

[knowom]

Originally Posted by Packet

Edit:Actually, I just confirmed that alpha masking doesn't seem to carry over when I export to obj. I re-imported my OBJ back into 3ds max and the textures were fubarred like they are in the screenshot below.

Transparency in .png textures isn't working out for me. I set the material to use the alpha channel and renders come out alright. But in-game, these are my results. I'm trying to find an EQG zone that has a model (like grass or something) that I can reference. Is there a different shader perhaps?

http://xonos.net/zone/ss11.png




I noticed something which may be intended by design but I thought I might bring it up. The materials that are imported (like my trees) are seemingly duplicated. I use the same material on a large majority of the duplicate meshes in my scene. Instead of re-using the same material, it duplicates a copy of the material which makes it hard to do "mass edits" to referenced objects sharing the same material. But I'm not sure if this was intended or not.

Everquest Player Studio mentions "All texture maps must be in 24-bit TGA with no Alpha channel."

Google searched 24-bit TGA with no Alpha Channel and I came across this. http://www.yolkfolk.com/dizzyage/boo...or/page02.html

From the looks of it your texture images are opaque rather than transparent as your intending them to be. I had noticed player models and other stuff like UI use TGA files so seems there is a correlation. Anyway hope that helps you in figuring it out. Judging from the information in the link though you'd want 24-bit TGA "with" Alpha Channel in your case because you don't want your trees opaque.

[vsab]

I FUCKING LOVED the Dizzy games

[Packet]

Originally Posted by knowom

From the looks of it your texture images are opaque rather than transparent as your intending them to be.

My textures are not opaque. Also, I've tried using an opaque alpha mask and that doesn't work for me either.

[Zaela_S]

Originally Posted by Packet

Edit:Actually, I just confirmed that alpha masking doesn't seem to carry over when I export to obj. I re-imported my OBJ back into 3ds max and the textures were fubarred like they are in the screenshot below.

Yeah you're right, I tried in game myself and it doesn't seem to respect alpha. I have no idea again. Nothing jumps out at me. The shader does seem like a logical place to look, though.

Originally Posted by Packet

The materials that are imported (like my trees) are seemingly duplicated.

Whoops, laziness. I just put up a quick fix.

[Scorpious2k]

Didn't Windcatcher have a program that converted a bmp to an image with transparency by adding the alpha layer? I think it came with OpenZone. Maybe it has some clues.

[Zaela_S]

S3D-based zones have a bit flag for texture visibility settings. No direct equivalent in EQG-based zones.

Originally Posted by Zaela_S

The shader does seem like a logical place to look, though.

"Alpha_MPLBasicA.fx" seems like a good place to start. Will test later.

Need to compile a list of shader names at some point, seems like there are a bunch used by zones.

[KLS]

Mat: brnch Alpha_MPLBumpAT.fx
prop: e_TextureDiffuse0 Di_Birch_branch03.dds
prop: e_TextureNormal0 Di_Birch_branch01_n.dds
prop: e_TextureCoverage0 oakcover.dds
prop: e_TextureFallback0 Di_Birch_branch03.dds
prop: e_fCoverageScale0 0.050000

There's the tree branches on the birch trees from Nektulos.