EU reskin - throwing an idea out

[Drewid]

Umm first post and a few questions.

 

I'm thinking of reskinning the original x-com (or tftd). I have a hankering to play in a victorian/steampunk setting . So the plan is to change the original graphics starting with the sprites and pedia/background screens. (Obviously rewrite the descriptions as well).

 

I'm slightly torn between EU and TFTD. I preferred the smaller maps of EU, but the "reserve time units" buttons save some pain, and I quite liked the two part missions, even with their flaws.

 

I know it's a lot of work, but I'm not in a hurry particularly and who knows, someone might want to join in and give me a hand. I work in the games industry, so maybe some co-workers might be induced to have a go once I've got things rolling.

 

Obviously I'd also like to use the inestimable Zombies entire patch collection.

 

I was part of the original x-com dev team and I like the idea of pushing some pixels again, It's all 3d these days .

 

So - feasable? Where can I get tools for replacing graphics in the packed files? and has anyone reskinned the beast before?

[Gimli]

I'll leave it to the modders to answer your questions, but since you mention that you were part of the original dev team, I was wondering if you could tell us your name (private messages work fine, if for some reason you don't want it public). We're trying to get a hold of everyone who ever worked on the games. We already have contact with some developers and this would further expand or contact list.

[NKF]

My crazy all-pistol mod a few threads down is a semi total reskin of almost all the weapons. Bomb Bloke's image converter has been invaluable in assisting the process of importing the images. Daishiva's PCKView is handy for extracting the original sprites to get some base images to work on (and the palette).

 

Since my mod also requires changing the stats and descriptions of the weapons, I'm using good old MS-Edit (in binary mode) to do the necessary file editing.

 

Speaking of steam punk, after picking up Dr. Grordborts Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory, I ended up throwing in a modified French flintlock pistol into my mod. Steampunk's strangely appealing, it certainly is!

 

- NKF

[Drewid]

Thanks for the answers. In meatspace I'm Drew Northcott, during the x-com era I was various flavours of artist.

 

I did some extra bits for the PS version of EU, I may have touched the PC version as well, I honestly can't remember. The vast majority was done by John Reitze with Martin Smillie doing pedia. It's a long time ago so It's all a bit vague. I also worked on TFTD, Apocalypse, the ill-fated Alliance and E-Mail. Bizarrely I'm now working with three other x-com old lags, such is the nature of the industry.

 

 

Thanks for the info NKF. So I'm stuck with the original palette, hmm. I'll have to see if I can find my copies of dpaint and autodesk animator. Do you know if there are there any hacks to turn the darkness into a light fog type colour? It'd mean hacking the palettes a bit, in fact that might just do it on it's own. I seem to remember it being one single universal palette?

 

I've always love alternate retro stuff. I'm afraid the "atompunk" style of apoc was mainly down to myself aided and abetted by Greg Shill who built the weapons and vehicles.

 

I'm debating whether to keep the enemy as martians, or go for vampire/werewolf/mad scientist combo. I love the Dr Grordbort stuff, especially the advertising. Could I include your flintlock as an honorary first piece?

[NKF]

If I'm not mistaken, there are two palettes, one for the Geoscape and Battlescape.

 

I haven't completed the ball bearing that goes with it, but feel free to use the flintlock pistol if you want.

 

- NKF

[Drewid]

Oh yeah, that's right. I guess it'll come back to me as I look into it.

 

And Thanks Muchly for the pistol. Very cool.

[Zombie]

Welcome Drewid! You have to be the same guy from over at the xcomufo.com forums/Project Xenocide, no? Nice to see your face around here too! It's been a while.

 

As mentioned, Bomb Bloke's image converter and PckView from Daishiva are the best tools for replacing graphics in the packed (.pck) files. You can find both in StrategyCore's files section here. That should give you a start. For the background images, XCView is a good tool for viewing the images. You can find that in the same place in our files section. I don't know of any programs which can edit the .scr background images though. Bomb Bloke probably has more information concerning that aspect.

 

Some other great resources can be found at the X-COM wiki. For instance, Image Formats and PALETTES.DAT. Speaking of palettes, there are actually 5 in Enemy Unknown: Battlescape, Geoscape, Base view, Graphs view and Research view. The last three are part of the geoscape category though.

 

- Zombie

[Bomb Bloke]

Oooh, an original dev. Well this is exciting. Welcome to the boards.

 

Regarding palettes, most of them are pretty straightforward, except for the Tactical (Battlescape) ones. These are divided into groups of sixteen colours. Basically, to create shadows and so forth, the palette indexes a sprite refers to are "bumped up" a bit, hence shifting them into darker regions. You can do pretty much whatever you like to those palettes so long as you still divide things into differently shaded groups of sixteen.

 

But, if you look at TFTD's Tactical colours, you'll see it has four palettes... 'cause missions can be on land or at various depths underwater. You're looking at a lot more work if you decide to mess with that game. Plus TFTD also has a bunch of colours that don't follow the "groups of 16" rule (they're used by the interface, which doesn't have lighting effects applied to it) so you've effectively got less colours to work with.

 

Regarding working with the sprites themselves, my conversion tools work with GIFs and don't really care if their palettes match what the game is using or not (they re-colour everything to the closest match as required). Obviously if you stick with the correct palette while drawing your results will come out exactly as you designed them, but laziness is an option.

 

This pack contains all the UFO unit/weapon sprites pre-extracted to GIF format.

 

If you get stuck trying to import any given set of graphics (backgrounds, sprites, anything), pass 'em on to me and I'll see what I can do. I've written tools to convert pretty much everything, but not all of them have user interfaces yet...

[Drewid]

Hi Zombie - Yeah that's me. Thanks for the link and the info. It's starting to look like it might be a go. I'm quite keen to replace the menu backgrounds, I've got parchment/etchings with victorian edging in mind. I may have to tweak palettes for that, but it ought to be feasable in 16 colours.

 

Hi Bomb Bloke. Good news on the converters, I'll start to have a rummage, and ALL the sprites and weapons extracted. Nice one, you're a star! Why on earth did we not store the heads seperately for the troopers on the arming/stats screens? No matter it'll make them easier. If I do those first they can serve as reference for the sprites.

 

Also how easy is it to get to the geoscape textures?

 

Hehe. I remember the multiple tactical palettes in TFTD, I think the "can we fade it to blue?" might have been my suggestion, (It's a very long time ago but I'm reasonably certain - Getting old). I remember the reserved colours as well, (I drew the control panel at least the final version:).

 

It's funny, I did one of the civilian sprites (Bikini girl), I think that might be the last hand drawn sprite I ever did, certainly the last animated one.

[Bomb Bloke]

Re the inventory screens, that's probably because the file size is tiny even with all the redundant data. One extra cluster per file, tops. So likely it was done that way because it wasn't worth the effort of dividing 'em up.

 

Oh, half those inventory screens aren't usually used by the game, by the way. Everything after "MAN_3.SPK" is really just part of a mod I cooked up. I included the extra images anyway on the basis that some day someone might want to mess with them (they're not all, exactly, uh, pretty).

 

It's very easy to get at the Geoscape textures. I'll likely script up something to work with them tomorrow.

 

(I have to ask... will there be J

[Drewid]

Re the inventory screens, that's probably because the file size is tiny even with all the redundant data. One extra cluster per file, tops. So likely it was done that way because it wasn't worth the effort of dividing 'em up.

 

Oh, half those inventory screens aren't usually used by the game, by the way. Everything after "MAN_3.SPK" is really just part of a mod I cooked up. I included the extra images anyway on the basis that some day someone might want to mess with them (they're not all, exactly, uh, pretty).

 

It's very easy to get at the Geoscape textures. I'll likely script up something to work with them tomorrow.

 

(I have to ask... will there be J

[NKF]

Efficiency basically. Splitting the sprites into segments reduces the amount that needs to be redrawn and stored. PCK files use a form of run length encoding to store its information, so all the blank pixels end up taking very little space. Plus as seen in Apocalypse, a bit of mixing and matching and you actually looked like you're wearing what you're wearing. Just a pity we never got to see the AI guards and thugs get to do this too, as there seem to be hints that they were being set up for this.

 

While I did say it's for efficiency, that would be for the use of the sprites. The creation of the sprites however would have been anything but that! All that alignment...

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

It's funny, I did one of the civilian sprites (Bikini girl), I think that might be the last hand drawn sprite I ever did, certainly the last animated one.

Whenever I play TFTD from now on and see the girl in the bikini, I'll automatically remember you.

 

- Zombie

[Drewid]

Efficiency basically. Splitting the sprites into segments reduces the amount that needs to be redrawn and stored. PCK files use a form of run length encoding to store its information, so all the blank pixels end up taking very little space. Plus as seen in Apocalypse, a bit of mixing and matching and you actually looked like you're wearing what you're wearing. Just a pity we never got to see the AI guards and thugs get to do this too, as there seem to be hints that they were being set up for this.

 

While I did say it's for efficiency, that would be for the use of the sprites. The creation of the sprites however would have been anything but that! All that alignment...

 

- NKF

 

 

Oh yeah. and Apocalypse was even worse. The guy who did the alignment and bugfixing on that was Erol Kentli. He went elsewhere before it was finished and worked his full notice even putting in some overtime, to get it finished. This was very uncommon, usually people leaving were booted out immediately, God bless 'im, an unsung hero. The job was made even worse by the fact that they were rendered in 3D, then retouched (Pete Austin IIRC), then arranged and aligned and the spreadsheets for offsets done. Some of the frames are only a handful of pixels once the cutting had been done.

 

@ zombie, I worked real hard to get that wiggle right on the back view.

[Zyxpsilon]

Thanks for the answers. In meatspace I'm Drew Northcott, during the x-com era I was various flavours of artist.

 

I've always love alternate retro stuff. I'm afraid the "atompunk" style of apoc was mainly down to myself aided and abetted by Greg Shill who built the weapons and vehicles.

 

I haven't had much luck finding how or where to reach Greg Shill directly to dig up the Apoc Alias wavefront Models or original OBJ-Meshes from the oldy Microprose DAT backup tapes... as we discussed a few weeks ago in a couple of eMails. As a reminder, i'm the guy currently working on the huge X-Worlds mod project for Galactic Civilizations II Dark Avatar & Twilight of the Arnor... @; https://library.galciv2.com/index.aspx?m=748

 

If you know anything about his most recent whereabouts (since i guess YOU both are still in the UK, right?) please do share whatever you may have - somehow.

[Zyxpsilon]

We already have contact with some developers and this would further expand or contact list.

 

Yeah, well - you wouldn't happen to have a recent one for Greg Shill?

[Drewid]

I really don't think he'll have any stuff. Even if he had the DAT tapes he's unlikely to have a machine that can read them and make sense of the files. Also DATs deteriorate and lose data fairly quickly. No harm in asking if you find him I guess.

 

Yeah we're both in the UK as far as I know, but so are 59,999,998 other people.

[Gimli]

Yeah, well - you wouldn't happen to have a recent one for Greg Shill?

 

Not yet. But if some things go the right way, maybe we will. But it's all still a long shot.

[Zyxpsilon]

I knew that this "quest" would be a long shot at some 1 to 60+millions odds, true.

The only other alternative way i can think of (for now, at least) would be to try (lucky me, again) reaching ex-Microprose(UK) employees to figure out if any might still have solid & valid backups for these models (heck, even engraved on a CD that **doesn't** decay the precious databytes of Artists' magic!)... but, that is another odd ball chance in the many bazillions range.

 

Shooots, imagine if i were to pick my gears and start every__things from scratch; all i want is to cut this task probable completion date to weeks rather than months if not years. Quite simple in fact, it's just that i want to be as faithful to the originals as possible and maintain a certain Quality level.

 

Anyone else than Gimli or Drewid which can help (in a different manner, maybe) is most welcomed to chime into this thread, btw. Certainly - over the years - someone out there in the wild-world-web-wacky-weird-wonder-wooggle-witch, may have given this whole reproduction process a good shot at already. I'm willing to bet, people developping Cydonia's Fall are on IT, too.

 

In the meantime, i'll have to stick with "general" 3d structures from GC2 default stuff and assemble some approximately fair shapes for all those vehicles. Or even add customized elements such as what i did already with the resizable "shiny eggshell shaped" engine intakes, etc.

 

So long, and many thanks - everyone.

[Drewid]

Right. I've actually started. I should have something to show before too long.

 

Hey Bomb Bloke did you get anywhere with being able to swap in the geoscape textures?

 

 

Also -@anyone - Where is the font hiding?

[Zombie]

The fonts are found in the GEODATA folder under BIGLETS.DAT and SMALLSET.DAT.

 

- Zombie

[Drewid]

Supoib. Thanks

[Bomb Bloke]

I apologise, I've been busy. I should have things sorted within the week.

[Drewid]

Hey don't apologise, you're under no obligations, it's your time after all.

 

 

Heck I haven't even done the textures yet

[Bomb Bloke]

Righto, it's finally been added to my toolpack. Install the updated version (just extract it straight to your game folder), open a command prompt window and navigate your way to the "bb_tact" folder.

 

Once there, to convert the textures type:

 

convmisc /togif texture

 

The GIFs will turn up in a sub-folder alongside the Texture.dat file.

 

To convert the other way, type:

 

convmisc /togame texture

 

There are also a few other things you can do with the tools, take a browse through the included documentation for the full picture.