Changing file types

[bevan]

:hmmm: please explain .tga to .bmp or .wav to ....so on

 

and why the heck doesn't my .gif file load so i can use it as an avatar?

[NKF]

Um, in the technical sense or just the conversion? Never mind.

 

Many image viewers and editors should be able to save in a variety of file types. Same goes for audio editors. You could try searching places like https://www.tucows.com/ and search for any editor or viewer that'll suit your needs.

 

For images, I often recommend Irfanview ( https://www.irfanview.com/ ). It can save images in a lot of common file types, so its adequate for image conversion.

 

As for your avatar not showing up -- your browser might not have refreshed the files in its cache just yet, so it's still displaying the old avatar.

 

Just click on refresh (or reload) to refresh the files in your cache. If you're using Netscape (I think Mozilla and its variants should be similar), you might want to hold down shift while clicking the refresh button to force your browser to get a new copy of the files off the server.

 

- NKF

[bevan]

thanx a bunch NKF, ill check them out soon

[NKF]

Just one more thought about your avatar -- are you uploading it or just linking to it from a different site? If you're just linking to an image on a different site, the server of that site may not allow off-site image linking.

 

- NKF

[bevan]

im uploading it, this avatar works but a couple of others dont

[Clean]

Maybe the avatar must be a common filetype like jpg or gif

 

Anyway, i have an other question in this case !

 

I want to edit the .../Game/liglob.dat file in TFTD without uesing a cheatprog. !

 

When i open this *.dat file with the comman windows tool (editor/wordpad) everything is codeed

 

If anyone know a programm so plaece tell me !

 

Tahnx so far

[NKF]

Those windows editors in particular won't do, as they strip a lot of data from binary files, as they open files as text files rather than as binary files. Character conversions occur with plain text files, and some entries like 000, 032 and 255 (they all look like spaces in the ascii table) will be converted into 032.

 

One suggestion would be to get a hex editor, or if you've still got an old copy of MS-Edit (just go to start>run, then type in 'edit' and execute it to see if you still have it. If you're using Win95/98, or heck, even Windows NT 4, you should have a copy of it. The version of MS-Edit may differ, as some don't come with the option to open and save files as binaries).

 

If you have MS-Edit and if you can tell it to open the files as binary files, then that's what you want. You can also specify the column widths, which makes editing some of the game's data files very easy if you know the size of each object entry, such as the objects file (if I remember correctly, it's something like 54bytes per weapon/item entry) and map files (4 * map width (since each 'tile' is 4 bytes long). You can get the width and height dimension from the first two bytes in the first tile of the individual map files. ).

 

You'll see a lot of characters from the ascii table, but don't worry. You should be able to see their actual value in the lower right hand portion of the screen if you move your cursor over to it.

 

I find that MS-Edit seems to have trouble with the first 26 numbers (001 - 026) or so (with the alt+three digit combination), so you'll have to press ctrl+p (or was it ctrl+k?) then press A to Z for values of 001 to 026 (No, the number does not correspond to each letter's proper ascii table values, as this is the shortcut for symbols). Other values should be simple enough, just hold down alt and type in the three digit values on the numeric pad as you would for non-standard keyboard symbols in Windows.

 

Oh, and by the way, if you do decide to do a bit of game file tinkering with MS-Edit, I suggest you use overwrite mode (the block cursor) rather than insert mode. Just hit the insert button and it should change the modes. You want to keep each line of code in any data files you edit the same length as it was when you opened it. Increasing ore decreasing the size of the data files can really mess up the offsets. Also, remember the last line of data may not necesserily fill the exact column width you selected.

 

You'll probably be better off with a proper hex editor, as this is rather a primitive method of editing files. Still, if you know how many columns each data entry uses, it's rather a nice way of viewing the data in the soldier and weapon files (sans a game editor, I mean).

 

- NKF

[Clean]

Thanx for the good explanation

 

I have WinXP, but this also have the MS Dos Edit !

 

I tried to open the *.dat file days ago with edit, but there is no chance to see the file in hexadec.

 

So i will rather try to get a hexeditor

 

Anyway, thanx a lot dude

[NKF]

If your MS-Edit has the 'open as binary' option, enable that before opening your file. I'm guessing since XP is based on NT, you might have the old MS-Edit that's really a part of Qbasic rather than the stand-alone MS-Edit (at least, this was what the few NT machines I used had).

 

Once opened, to look at the actual values, look in the the lower right hand corner of the screen, in the status bar, you'll see the current cursor's row, column and the value for the character you've selected. It'll be a value from 0 to 255 (in a hex, editor, this would be 00 to FF).

 

- NKF