dll quick reference 'guide'

[the_mask]

Wait till you get to my age

[ElvisMiggell]

I'm only 18 but i feel old, so i'd rather wait to get to your age.

[Tsunami]

Blast, I just cannot find those fighters in the dlls. I REALLY have a blind spot there.

Anyways, I extracted all those cool planet pics from XWA; they are usable in Rebellion without many problems. There still seems to be something wrong with the color (they look really weird in the game), so there is that. The big hitter is that the pics have to be of the same resolution as the originals, which is really crappy. If there were a way to make new slots in strategy.dll, we could ADD things instead of replacing, but I don't think that's possible. Sad thing.

[Guest JediIgor]

Actually, I read something in "Discovery American" (or whatever the name of the magazine was) about the "Next Ice Age."

 

It said that the wind patterns were shifting, and because of that, the temperature will soon drop about 5 degrees celsius, and that will of course be catastrophic throughout the world.

 

But maybe it's fake? Maybe if both that happens and global warming, it'll offset each other..

[TK421]

Guys... stay on topic.

 

Igor told me he has a nice plug in for PSP so he can make some planets if we wish...

What about those combat mode planets? Anyone knows where to change them?

[Tsunami]

Someone (methinks it was Mask) said they are probably the ones also used in strategy mode. Appears to be correct. A pity.

There are also strange things going on with the colors. I resized a planet pic from XWA, but it shows only strange colors in Rebellion (and yes, I converted it to 256 colors).

 

I noticed there is a lot of free space in the dlls, like strrefs not used by anything. It's a goofy idea, but we could fit some things in there. But since no one currently knows about where all the triggers are stored, it might be a problem to get this all into the game.

 

Does anyone know how to edit all the files in the Gdata folder? All the text etc. is in the dlls, but the main engine with triggers and such things could be stored in there. When using rebed, the program changes some files in that folder, but I have not found any way to dig into them. My 'skillz' are lacking, though...

[ElvisMiggell]

Aye, join the club mate. Some of us have no skills, but loadsa ideas, it's soooooooooooo frustrating!!!

[Tsunami]

Hehe, got an idea.

The planets maybe use the same color palette as the fighters (for which there is now a tutorial). This would explain why standard 256 color bitmaps show up strange in the strategy screen.

[ElvisMiggell]

Ooh, is the fighter tutorial available for download yet?

[the_mask]

I was mistaken on the small planet pics being used in tactical. vakundok said, he found the bmp data for the ring planet (should be Fornax) and that it used another palette than the fighters. He's working on it and will release it with a future version of his program

 

Elvis, the fighter tutorial was available since I posted that I completed it. It's on top of the Rebellion section on my page. Yesterday I saw it in the downloads section of SWR, too. But only 4 downloads so far

[ElvisMiggell]

Okay, i'll try and get it when i get home tonight.

[Texas_Fett]

Waitaminute! There's a quick reference guide for the dll's, and it's not available for download on the site here? "Lucy!! You have some 'splainin' to do!"

 

Seriously, this would've saved me a lot of headache. Can anyone hook me up with a copy, since the aforementioned links appear to be defunct? Pretty please?

[the_mask]

Well, this was among the first things done for the TC. I figured some reference would be the fastest way to find the locations for the stuff to insert. After this rough version, I wanted to have a more elaborate version, but it quickly turned out to be taking a lifetime to map these hundreds of entries and we gradually abandonded the idea.

I just mailed it to ya and also added it to the downloads here. As the description says, it just gives you the direction, but that's better than nothing, eh

[Texas_Fett]

Many thanks, Mask! You know...how is it that you find the time to work these minor miracles for the game when you're constantly having to ride to the rescue of clueness noobs like me?

 

Well, this still points me in the right direction. I'll just have to see about adding what I've mapped out so far, and get it back to you. Little by little, we may actually get this whole bad-boy done.

[Lord_La_forge]

Ummm.... back to the problem with the small planet pics. What is the main problem? If we have the bmp file, we can see the palette it is using too. I never worked with other palettes, than the one for the cards.

[Trejiuvanat]

Strategy.DLL uses a different palette than TACTICAL.DLL. The palette that you use for cards, is different from the one you use for fighter, ship textures and Planetary background in tactical... More than that I don't know.

 

BTW, Tsun the files in the GDATA folder are the ones you edit with RebEd, Stats, and the like.

[the_mask]

Many thanks, Mask! You know...how is it that you find the time to work these minor miracles for the game when you're constantly having to ride to the rescue of clueness noobs like me?

Now you would never hear me saying "noob", cause true to the teachings of Confucius I think we are all learners throughout our lifes. But the answer is simple: I don't sleep

 

 

I already tried editing the planets, but because I lacked a bright enough picture of Coruscant it came to a temporary halt.

 

Editing them is easy, as far as I remember. vakundok already explained it in the release of his bmp converter. If you look at the palette from tactical, you'll notice some (about 86 I think), skin-colored tones. These are the ones you can use for planets.

For each planet you need two bin files, one contains the planet image, the other it's palette. I don't remember the entry numbers at the moment (at work right now), but they should be somewhere above 5030, but it's all in vakundok's readme.

So you just paint your planet over the reconverted, original image, to get the position, reduce its colors and convert it with the bmp converter to a .bin and a .pal file. The bin replaces the entry of the planet and the pal that of the, guess ... the palette.