PT File Formats

[unzubaru]

Hi I'm Unzubaru

Well i have a problem. Me and a couple of friends are working on a project for PT and i was enquiring into how the feck the skills worked???.
I mean the thing is that all files in the Skilleffect folder use standard .bmp's but also use .ASE's aswell as the AssaEffect folder uses .SMD's and .bmp's.
The thing i thought was strange is that if you are using .bmp's to make an animation skin then why the fuck are you using 32x32 .bmp's???!?!?!???! I mean what is the point? Can someone point me in the right direction?
im trying to find out how to add animations and im getting confused XD

 

[Filterheadz]

Those files are most likely the small skill images and not the skill effects?

 

[bobsobol]

If you are thinking of the files I believe you are, they are partial effect images. So, if you look at the BMPs they will all be stars and flashes and foggy stuff. They are mapped to a simple shape that acts as a voxel. (that's a pixel which in a 3D world, always faces the camera)

Then the LUA script for that effect determines how the voxels move during the animation. If I'm not mistaken.

Obviously the BMPs don't animate. I don't think the shape files (SMD / ASE) really animate, unless they follow the character movements for leaping and crashing and all that nasty pikey stuff.

The LUA is the big key... that determines how many partials, how they fall or fly from the origin (the end of your wand, or the point where your weapon meets the monster) how long they last, how they fade in and out etc.

There isn't AFAIK a guide to writing PT LUA, and the LUA base language is very simple... most of the code is custom functions exposed by the host application, but you can check LUA.org for the basics. I've used it on WoW UI mods, but Blizz have an open API for their implementation of LUA. (of course, they keep changing it, which is very boring)

I have had no need or desire to mess with this, so I'm no expert... but that's what appears to happen from what I've seen. (just poking around out of curiosity)

My information may be wrong, or I may have misunderstood the files you are referring to, but I hope it points you in the right direction to gain a better understanding.

Are you looking to create more, or different skills for the classes?

 

[unzubaru]

Oh thaanks so much Bobsobol and indeed we are. I am a 3D Modeller (Ex-Programmer) and was just inquiring into how the skills work so i can get a better understanding of how the animations work. If you are saying what you are then where exactly ARE the skill animations? I mean they have the skill folders for the animations of the Ratoo skill but inside there are .bmp's irrelevant to it? Looks like what we are doing (its a secret for now) will take longer for i have no knowledge of LUA other than that it is used for most boss AI and the UI for WoW if im correct.

We could REALLY use someone with a vast (or medium) amount of knowledge in the coding, programming and scripting aspects.

Peace!
Unzubaru!
P.S Bobsobol if youy are interested then add me on MSN: [email protected] tt1:

 

[SoyEdu]

about pt, bmp are for icons or skins, the transparent things or images with alpha (some transparent things in the file like the trees) or skill effects, they use TGA files, so if u wanna change the skills image effects, look in to the tga files and be sure to reactivate the alpha channel cuz Photoshop mess this files.

 

[unzubaru]

ok thanks Soy

 

[bobsobol]

I'm sorry Soy... You are usually very correct, so I really don't like to contradict you but (in this case) the Effect\AssaEffect\Guardian folder does indeed contain 3 bitmaps of lightning. These are the Guardian Saint power (or skilled) attack voxel surfaces. I believe Alpha layer in these cases is "assumed" from Luma channel. (Black is transparent, white is opaque) Now there are TGAs in there too, and there are indeed SMDs, and the older skills seem to be controlled by an internal particle engine set up by ini files in "AnimationData", and the LUA is in the "NewEffect" folder.

But outside of this specific topic, SoyEdu is correct. BMPs are usually used for the UI overlay, in PT and have a colour mapped transparency. If anything is transparent, it is R0,G0,B0 in the BMP. Unfortunately it doesn't hold true for the effects. Notice the flame1-8 BMP files in the image folder too. This is the fire you see in Ruinen, and it has no alpha layer.

Now I'm going to give a very *BIG* hint. If you open the m_IceGolem.smd (I think you can guess where to find it) in a Hex editor, and replace each instance of "m_IceGolem.BMP" with "m_IceGolem.TGA" you can convert his ice spray from a reasonably solid bitmap to a truly controllable 32-bit alpha texture. ^_^

Be careful when doing this though, because the file may be listed in the EXE as well. But since both extensions are three characters long, you will never overwrite a null terminator doing this, even to the exe.

Of course BMPs can hold an alpha channel just as well as TGAs, and since PT doesn't work with compressed TGAs one wonders why they didn't use 32-bit BMPs... however, if you change a PT BMP file to 32-bit, it breaks... in my experience... just as it breaks if you save as a compressed TGA.

I'm not a fan of Adobe PS, but while PSP reads the alpha of a TGA just fine, it doesn't save in quite the form PT would like... (It embeds meta taggin info to help organise your image collection) Here's another tip

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handles them just the way PT likes, and is quite reasonably priced by comparison to the other two... I'm using version 11, but there is a

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available for free, and Version 9 can be got for just $10. (I warn you, these guys can be hard sell once they have your details though)

I don't normally advertise, but I think there are a range of options there to suite any pocket, so... I also have no idea how much PT likes TGA files produced by the

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and vise vesa, but that is also FOSS, and if you are used to Adobe, then there's

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. ^_^

 

[unzubaru]

awesome sounds great Cheers bro .

 

[SoyEdu]

well, i know, we can share here all what he find out with our own experience, and some can have more experience than others and in fact we all are learning together so thx to clear that

 

[unzubaru]

Lol I S'pose no1 knows how to add Tier 5, They are doing it in uPT?

 

[SoyEdu]

they was, but gave up cuz i havent heard about it in a while, they had the stats for the t5 but now it is gone so they gave up.

 

[bobsobol]

I think there is a problem with Tier 5 that even Yedag have struggled to cure, and they have better source material than any of us.

Again, with my experience of Triglows original English Beta (Before All4U and all the rest) there was no Tier 3 or 4, but about when Tier 4 came, (just before I think) we got the arrow that changes Tier tabs... Tier 5 was promised, and promised, but never came.

I'm sure Tier 5 was never part of the plan for the game, and it would seem that there is some underlying element of the game which makes it's implementation problematic. Presumably, if you add it in the normal way, something crucial lower down breaks.

For example, server saved character files... There could be a skill record using a signed byte in the server for the skill ID. For 6 classes at 5 tiers and 4 skills per tier = 6x5x4 = 120, and the highest number supported by a Signed Byte is 128, which means 1 new skill for each class and 2 spare... That's not good. It's also not necessarily the problem, just an example of the sort of thing you may be up against.

This is similar to the issues presented by high EXP from kills causing negative numbers and subtracting EXP for a nice big kill. ^_^ All of these types of issues are because we are still using an old program well beyond the limits of it's initial design tolerances, rather like the difficulties of keeping DOS running and useful on 32-bit machines, DPMI and UMBs and conventional memory for TSRs and so on. It's all sticking band aids on an old nag that should have died years ago but we just won't let it.

The advantage some of us have over Yedang is that we may not have to worry about 10 year old user accounts that have paid good money and won't be happy to find they have to start their characters all over again, should we decide that some file needs to be completely re-written. O_O

 

[RagingYou2]

If you want to make your Tier5+ skills you should not continue to build on the system for skills in the original PT but make your own.

 

[unzubaru]

Perhaps that could work..... Maybe you could create a .dll that injects into the .exe using a launcher that you absolutely need, this could possible be what uPT are doing.

 

[bobsobol]

It's difficult to speculate. But even if you did this, where are you going to store which characters have what skills? This will take modification to both server and client, unless the client remembers the skills and a reinstall wipes your skills and a hacker can give himself whatever skills he wants because the server knows nothing about them.

The server may well think that your new skills are hacking unless it is aware of them in any case.