I've got as far with my little project as I can get with only being able to change the alpha channel but being unable to touch the actual texture.

The problem I'm stuck with is, that many of the bright orange areas bled into the surrounding areas, probably due to conversion errors or somesuch. So I have the (theoretical) choice of either putting teamcolor over everyone of those orange splotches (which, apart from being more work, doesn't look all that good) or cleaning up the underlying texture. I'd prefer the latter, but I just can't get to the damn texture.

When I open the converted DDS file (no matter if I converted it to tga or png) in GIMP, I only see the parts that are team-colored ingame on a background of dark- and lightgrey squares.

Somewhere in the background the actual texture must also exist, because when I save the whole mess and convert it to DDS, it is restored. I just can't find any way to actually see and edit the texture in GIMP and the help files of gimp itself didn't contain anything that could help me either.

I also tried to just use the actual texture (gotten via copy/pasting out of IrfanView) and work in a new alpha channel from scratch, but I just can't get any new alpha channel into a picture without one. Again the Gimp helpfiles are decidedly unhelpfull, explaining at great length that every pixel has it's own alpha value, but never telling how you can adjust it, except for blanket-changing the transparency of a whole layer.

Oh and I also found a very helpfull article about textures in the tutorials liked in the first post of this thread. There it says under the GIMP users section of the texturing tutorial "- open your .dds in Gimp".

The only thing my GIMP had to say about that was "The opening of file xyz.dds failed: Unkown fileformat".

That's because GIMP doesn't have true channel support, and it uses the alpha channel for transparency, as it is with most images. But for Sins cl images the alpha color is team color, not transparency. Thus in spots where there is no team color (I.e. the alpha channel is black), it takes that to mean its fully transparent.

I use paint.net and not gimp, but I believe it has the ability (perhaps with a plug in) to "extract" individual channels from an image. If you can just get the RGB do that, otherwise do each color channel individually, put them in different layers, and merge them together.

I'm not particularly stuck on GIMP. I only downloaded it a few days ago, specifically to be able to work with alpha channels... one good choice that turned out to be

I'm trying out paint.net now, thanks

I would help you screw with textures but i leave on business so much that it would take years to get anything done.

Paint.net really isn't any better, you still have to extract the channels individually with a plug in. I just find it fast for UI work (not textures), and its not as strangely set up as GIMP for me. Photoshop is the only program I worked with that lets you see all 4 channels separately in one interface, though of course that's not free like GIMP and Paint.net. If you want to use the freebees you have to deal with some additional annoyances.

Gimp: with the DDS plug-in. Use any image editor that can edit the .dds format. This will require to download a DDS plug-in for most image editors.

Gimp Users by Thoumsin

- open your .dds in Gimp

- colors > components > decompose ... rgba and decompose to layers option

- on the new pic created, remove the eyes icon before each of the color channel, you can maybe activate the chain icon in front of each color channel if you fear change these channel by mistake... be sure that only the alpha channel is selected... make your edit work...

- colors > components > recompose ... change made on the second pic alpha layer will be transfer to the first pic alpha channel...

- save

Ah, my Hero!

While I have to work on each color-channel seperately, at elast I can actually do it now

Just a minor addition to what you wrote. It certainly is true that the alpha channel is taken over into the first pic.

But what's more important to me was, that recomposing opens up a new picture, which contained all changes I made, including those in the three color channels, And that 3rd pic just needed to be saved and copied into the textures folder to work ingame.

Thanks for everyone who helped me and now I'm off to work on those four channels.

Im trying to make one race, its not working out to well. I have no idea what im doing was wondering if anyone would want to actually sit down and take the time to teach me better use of how to mod.

EXPLANATIONS & DISCUSSIONS

How to Add a Fourth Race

Trust me I looked at that already.

I wish I could but I can't just assume that when someone is asking for help, especially when they're new, that they've taken the time to actually read things in the OP.  It almost never happens even when they've said they did.

Instead of waiting around for someone to offer to help go over everything and do the work for you (like Sinperium  ;Þ  ), why don't you instead start posting the steps you're taking as you try to add a race.  Now I'm not saying detail every little thing out, but presenting a punch list of things you did would greatly ease the burden on the rest of us and make help come much easier.

Because honestly, if you list out a bunch of things, of which, none of them was update the entity manifest or add in the appropriate entries to the galaxy scenario def file, it's very easy for someone to come along and say to do that rather then kill off a weekend or two doing everything for you especially when there are detailed guides of how to do exactly what you're asking already posted.

!!!!

I have a Question.

Actual i work on a private Minimod for Sins Rebellion.

I want to have more civilian movement on my planets.

That means:

Tradeships flying between researchfacilities

Cargoships flying between Factorys and Mines

Is there a way to do that?

Not really. Cargo ships automatically fly between anything thats the game labels a "trade port", and refinery ships go between things in nearby systems labeled "mines" and "refineries". Now you could the label, but your frigate factories must be labeled frigate factories or else they don't build frigates, and some for your research centers. You could increase the number of ships flying around but it would be difficult to increase the number of destinations they go to.

The best you could do is mod in multiple refinery types-with some looking like other structures.  Hardly seems worth it really.

If i have 2 mods... and I want them both to work on there own or together but both add new units that need

entity.manifest

and

English.Str

is there a way?

also..... Fighters/bombers with abilitys??  I put detect mines on a combat squad and it...... buged them out a bit!

It really depends on the mod. Even if these mods don't overlap at all (they each add completely different races that wouldn't mess with each others stuff), English.str, Entity.Manifest, GalaxyScenarioDef, plus minor edits to a host of other files would probably be necessary.

Fighters are the hardest entity type to work with, they have a ton of restrictions nothing else has. No shields, limited abilities etc. Basically you have to use InstantAction types that use a radius, either directly or by attaching a buff to a planet or all objects at the planet. You cannot use ApplyBuffToSelf or ApplyBuffToTarget or any of the many variations of those two.

Is there a way to only open a phase lane after so much time in the game, or to prevent the AI from moving along that phase line until a certain point or action?

Not without making a "gatekeeper" planet that prevents all ships from escaping it until after a specific duration. The AI would probably get stuck on it though, so its fleet could get trapped there until the duration expired.

How would I make that planet a gatekeeper then?

Make a new frigate, give it an ability that makes it invulnerable, disables the phase engines of all ships in the gravity well, and destroys itself after however long you want. Then place it at the planet which has the phase lane you don't want people to use.

Is there a Hardcode limit on TargetCountPerBank for PlanetModuleWeaponDefense I can only get them to shoot 2 things when they are twisting to find a new target.

    DamagePerBank:FRONT 61.000000
    DamagePerBank:BACK 61.000000
    DamagePerBank:LEFT 61.000000
    DamagePerBank:RIGHT 61.000000

TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 1
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 1
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 1
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 1

prefersToFocusFire FALSE

yet they only shoot 1 thing, and the Dev says it only has 1 TargetCount at front??

is this just a..... silly limit?  or am I missing somthing?

Yeah, that just says you can shoot at one target in every direction. It can't shoot at two things at front. Also if you're doing this to a standard turret you need to add weapon points for each direction.

I have weapon points in All directions

At the moment it will only Shoot 1 target DIRECTLY infront of it, it will not shoot at one to the back left or right.

My turrets mesh points are pointing out all the way round a circle 12x.

I can set

TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 9
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 9
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 9
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 9

and it still only shoots 1 target at the front, the one its facing.

I tryed using another mesh to see if it was a mesh issue, I quickly swapped in the Tec Colony ship.... still only shoots 1 target, the one its told to attack, it ignoors all other targets with its other turrets.

is this a Hardcoded limit so I can move on and use a Starbase or bypass weapons by making ability that aoe, or is there some comment I missed?

is there weapon hardpoints on the sides AND back of the mesh?

if no hardpoint on the side then NO fire to that side.

harpo