Openzone, Textures ingame problem

[Kroeg]

After releasing your binaries WC, I successfully loaded into my created zones.. man what a sigh of relief. Now, I have exported the .wld and .s3d files for my zone, and the server lets me zone into the zones just fine.. only one problem though, textures are not showing up in game as they are supposed to (custom textures).. they show up as the default eq textures instead. Is there something I should watch closer?

[Windcatcher]

I literally just got home from work (I haven't been laid off just yet), so this might not be 100% lucid, but here goes...

1. What are the names of your textures? Do they have the same name as any EQ textures? I've seen cases where fire textures (fire1.bmp, fire2.bmp, etc.) get replaced by the standard EQ fire textures ingame. This actually turned out to be a bonus in that case, though. In any event, what I saw ONLY happens with placed objects (from the mesh library), not with anything else.

2. Are you using the textures from the texture packs I released or are you using your own? I know for a fact that the texture pack textures work. The reason I ask this is related to #1, above (potential name conflicts). I'd be shocked if the client did this for standard zone geometry, but you never know, I suppose.

3. You only need to export to .S3D, not to .WLD. Exporting to .S3D does everything for you: it constructs the .WLD files in memory and packs them and all of the needed textures into .S3D files. All you should ever have to do is export the .S3D files and copy them to your EQ client folder.

4. Make sure that your textures are in the right folder. I generally put them in library/textures, but you can use zone-specific folders under /textures if you want--it just means that they have to be referenced that way in your .SCN file. Generally, if you can see the textures in OpenZone then you should see them ingame.

One thing you can do as a sanity check is try the sample zones I distributed: zone1.scn, for instance, expects to see the textures from the texture packs in the library/textures folder. You can load it, immediately export it to something like zone1.s3d (and its associated .s3d files) and test it ingame. Make sure to add an entry for it in your database if you try this.

5. If you placed any scripted objects (objects where you set the textures in the parameter window on the left), make SURE that the texture is explicitly set at least somewhere for each object. By this I mean that you should NEVER have objects where all of the texture names are in parentheses (default values). OpenZone has a weird way of randomly assigning the texture from a different object if you don't explicitly set at least one texture (heck, for all I know I wrote it this way a million years ago). An example of what I mean is if you place a box and don't set any of the texture drop-downs: sometimes the box will take on the texture of another object in the zone. Make sure it's explicitly set at least somewhere. Most if not all scripts are coded such that the first texture parameter sets all of the others: parameters can serve as default values for other parameters if they don't have explicit values of their own. This is to balance the desire to set up scripted objects quickly with the need for flexibility and customization.

6. Make sure that you don't have ANY textures from SOE zones anywhere in library/textures or any subfolders. It's illegal to distribute them and this is the only way to avoid mistakes. The purpose of the texture packs was to give users a good enough head start that no more textures would be needed--at least at first.

Hmmm. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. Exporting is designed to be dead easy--once you do it a couple of times you'll get the hang of it (suggestions are ALWAYS welcome, though).

WC

P.S. As a side note, an EXCELLENT program for making textures is Texture Maker, which you can find at http://www.i-tex.de. It has a shareware version and a registered version, and it's what I used to make the textures in the texture packs (except the trees, which were one serious royal pain). I bought the registered version, and I can honestly say it's worth every penny if you're serious about zone-building.

[Kroeg]

Aye, thanks for all the info.. you've given me some ideas as to what may be wrong. I have used all of the textures you supplied for building a small house, left them in the libraries\textures folder, and only added 1 single custom texture (a pictureframe with a painting inside of it) .. It shows up just fine in openzone and exports just fine. Upon loading the zone, and zoning in, it shows all the geometry 100% correctly (even the light sources work just fine) .. it just defaults to eq textures for some reason.

Here are two screenshots. The first is viewing the zone in openzone and the second is viewing it in-game. (sorry for the size if they're too big)


http://h37.bounceme.net/eqemu/correct_tex.jpg <- Openzone
http://h37.bounceme.net/eqemu/wrong_tex.jpg <- In-game

The only custom texture there is the portrait inside the little house (as seen). It's a 24-bit BMP named "cypress_picture.bmp" and resides in the libraries\textures folder (along with all the other textures you have distributed). I only used a single instance of a custom texture because I was testing my ability to pull textures in and properly place them (hence trying to map an image to a box to make it look like a raised picture frame).

As you can tell, the "Texture Set" dropdown is blank (as the textures are in the libraries\textures folder and not some zone specific folder). The zone's name is my test zone, "Infernal1".
I've tried dropping the textures I used into a folder (libraries\textures\infernal1) then specifying that texture set in openzone and still the textures don't show in-game.

[Windcatcher]

What happens if you either remove the picture frame and re-export or try the zone1.scn sample?

WC

P.S. How about posting your .SCN somewhere so I can try it from here?

P.P.S. Here's another thing. All of my textures and all SOE textures I've ever seen are 256x256 pixels. You might want to check the resolution of your custom texture. Maybe the client barfs on textures that are any other size...

[Windcatcher]

Here's another thing. Specifying the texture set on the dropdown does NOT change the textures of your objects. What the texture set dropdown does is make all textures in that folder available IN ADDITION TO the textures in library/textures. For instance, if you have a box object that's using texture "abc" from library/textures and you set the texture set to "infernal1", then all textures in library/textures/infernal1 will also be available on the texture drop-downs. It does NOT, however, automatically change your box to use library/textures/infernal1/abc as the texture. It simply makes that texture available.

The idea behind texture sets is to let you keep textures that are specific to particular zones separate, for the purpose of making the texture list manageable. I'm not sure if the feature is helpful or not, but if I had 2000 textures it might. With only 200 textures it's not as important.

WC

[Kroeg]

For the time being, until I get completely comfortable with the entire interface and start getting everything to show up correctly, I'm keeping it simple and all in the same directory.

you can grab a copy of the infernal1 .scn and .s3d files, along with the custom texture file I used (you have all the other ones).

http://h37.bounceme.net/eqemu/infernal1.zip

It seems that removing the pictureframe had no effect, it just removed the geometry for the box that housed the pictureframe texture.. but everything else is still looking wrong.

[Windcatcher]

Your .SCN file seems to think the textures from the texture packs are all in the windszone folder (that is, library/textures/windszone). Is this where you have them?

[Kroeg]

nope they're just in the libraries\textures folder

[Windcatcher]

You should take a closer look at your box objects. The texture names all begin with "windszone\" (e.g. windszone\simple_stone). I recommend changing them so the "windszone\" isn't there (e.g. just "simple_stone"). The .SCN file didn't display properly in my OpenZone program until I made that change.

I'm about to take a look at the .WLD files in the .S3D files you gave me to see what's happening there...

WC

[Windcatcher]

Your .S3D files worked for me, but the .SCN file definitely wasn't right. I think that there might be a bug in OpenZone where it displays textures if the texture is missing in the textureset folder but is found in the base texture folder (which it shouldn't do if the .SCN is calling for a texture from a textureset folder). If you make sure that none of your objects reference textures in the windszone textureset folder (or any other) I think you'll be okay. Give it a try and let me know what happens.

WC

[Kroeg]

I tried removing the references to windszone folder, and re-exported the zone to check it out. In-game, the zone is still messed up looking (no change). To confirm this problem (reproduce it) I added windsdungn to my db, and zoned into that in-game. It is also using eq textures as well.

/shrug

[Windcatcher]

This is bizarre. Let's try another test: what happens if you load your .S3D files with the EQ Zone Viewer (at http://www.eqzoneviewer.com)?

You have to select "load manually" from the program and select the .S3D file to load. Please try it with your .S3D and the samples I supplied. Let's start by verifying that the .S3D files are good.

WC

P.S. Let's check some other things, too:

1. Are you using ZoneProxy 1.1 and not 1.0?

2. In zoneproxy.ini, what is the name of the alias zone? By default it's tutorial.

3. I'm testing your zones with the EQEmu 0.5.3DR2-ZP build I uploaded just recently. Are you using the same?

4. I'm testing your zones using minilogin, and I'm running the server and client on the same machine.

5. When I go to enter your zone I type "#zone infernal1" in the client.


Have you tried the "zone1" sample zone I uploaded in the zone pack? It's in the sourceforge area where OpenZone is. The .S3D files are included and I'm anxious to see if you have the same problems with that zone, since I've tested that one in particular to death.

[Kroeg]

I downloaded and installed the eq zoneviewer. I opened up infernal1.s3d manually and the zone loaded and displayed correctly (even the pictureframe shows up precisely).

1) I'm using zoneproxy 1.1 (although, in the taskbar it still reports as zoneproxy 1.0 - hehehe)

2) in zoneproxy.ini the name of the alias zone is "tutorial"

3) I'm using the exact same build of 5.3 DR2 -ZP you released.

4) I have not been using minilogin, I've been testing with my server locked on eqlogin1.eqemulator.net and eqlogin3.eqemulator.net.

5) I enter my third party zone by typing #zone infernal1 in the client

6) the zone1 file loads correctly (geometry wise) but all the trees are using tree-stump textures, and the druid circle is using the same stump texture. It's a grass filled zone with nothing but woodsy elements.. some trees are also using the fire textures.

[Windcatcher]

Can you try it with a minilogin server? Maybe that will shed some light on what's going on (maybe a timing issue?)

When you #zone to zone1 or infernal1, roughly how long (in seconds) does it take before you see the "zoning to unknown zone" message? The server has a 30 second timeout and I'm wondering if that's coming into play.

Maybe there's a bug in ZoneProxy that's timing-related or something. I have some things I need to do today, but I think I can find time to set up a test server like yours (instead of using Minilogin) and see what happens.

WC

[Kroeg]

After typing #zone zone1 and/or #zone infernal1 , I see "Loading Unknown Zone" nearly instantly -- about 1-2 seconds (and zoning into the third party zones doesn't take very long at all ).

I'll try it with Minilogin and see what I can come up with in the next hour or two.