Just a quick check in to this topic. I am considering returning to my TRX project to finally finish it after, oh, fifteen odd years or so...! There's still a lot of unfinished business here, ahem. 😉

But I'd like to make sure that any new texture packs will work on both Glidos and TombATI. How would I go about that? Is there a tool that converts Glidos packs to back to TombATI? Or am I better off ignoring Glidos completely now and instead make textures for TombATI? If the latter, how would I go about that?

I appreciate this is all pretty old now -- as am I -- but if I could get some hints at the right direction, it would be enormously useful. Cheers.

Great to see you back, and awesome to think you might continue work on this.

I have a ruby script that will convert a Glidos texture pack to one for TombATI. I don't remmember much about how it works, but at least I've managed to find it. I passed it to someone else, and explained in some detail how to use it, probably by email. Hopefully I can find that email.

I usually keep programs safely in git repositories, but I seem to have been a bit lax with this script.

Hi Paul, thanks for the quick response! Good to hear there's a tool/script to help with this: the thought of having to rebuild all those 1024x1024 tiles by hand would likely send me to an early grave 😁
Incidentally, does TOMBATI support anything higher than 256x256 per tile? I tried a quick test using a 4x4 tiles at 512px per tile (so a 2048x2048 group tile for a LEVEL_X.PNG), but it bombs out. I'm not sure if that's because it's just not supported, or something to do with the level/tile hashes no longer matching?

It's difficult to remember for sure, but I have some recollection of a 1024x1024 limit. I think best strategy is develop for Glidos with its 256x256 texture limit and let the conversion script handle the TombATI limit.

I've remembered how to use the conversion script, by the way, confirmed also from having found the explanatory email I once sent out to someone, so certainly conversion should be fine, albeit a process that might take hours of compute time.

Strangely, I'm seeing some resurgence in Glidos usage, perhaps because of its 3D stereoscopic support. I reckon people may be using it with VR headsets.

Hi Gambit,

I'm excited to see you back and willing to work on your pack again! Old timers don't know when to quit 😁

Hi there, intersting toppic. I would love to use some better textures on my pcx1 version as well as on my mac-version on my g4-cube r128pro 😀

I'm not aware of anyone having worked out how to hook alternative textures into those versions.

Oh awesome. Nice to see you back, Kaminari.

Kaminari wrote on 2021-04-30, 03:45:

Hi Gambit, I'm excited to see you back and willing to work on your pack again! Old timers don't know when to quit 😁

Hi there, it's been a long time, hasn't it! I should be clear I'm making no promises,: returning to finish my texture packs after all this time is just for me to scratch a creative itch that has been missing from my life for a long time. I'm not even sure yet if I'll even have the time to make any kind of realistic progress. So please don't have any expectations, I would hate to disappoint anyone!

Of course. Just good to hear from you.

I know what you means. What matters is that you're having fun tinkering with your project again 😀

@Glidos Is it possible to modify a LEVELx_y.PNG image in a TOMBATI texture override folder, to test out work in progress textures? For example, by pasting a 256x256 different texture over the top left corner of the 1024x1024 texture? I've tried this out, but it seems that if I even change one pixel in one of these 1024 square images, TOMBATI will crash. That seems a bit... weird? I thought the raw bitmap data for override files was completely independent of the engine?

(I can of course just continue in Glidos for now, but it would also be nice to see the work-in-progress in TOMBATI too.)

The script, which is here http://download.glidos.net/TexConvert/, uses calls to ImageMagick commands to modify parts of the large squares. I'm not sure why what you have tried didn't work. Perhaps the new version of the file ended up in a different format.

I think your best bet is to just test with Glidos, and perform occasional conversions of the whole pack.

Aha, thanks for the tip about the file format changing. I hadn't noticed that the TombATI textures are all 32 bit PNGS, rather than the 24 bit I was exporting from PhotoShop. I was using an older method for exporting, but have now found a better way which exports in 32-bit and TombATI is happy.

I'll try the script soon. I already have Imagemagick installed for web projects, but not Ruby, so I need to sort that out first. Thanks for providing this, it will make this much easier.

I'll post some instructions when I get a chance. The script alone doesn't do the whole job. You also need to use GenEquivMap to set things up.

OK, cool thanks. Absolutely no rush at all, there's plenty for me to be getting on with for now.

It's interesting to go back to this after so long, gives me a chance to see some of the stuff I'd finished and never shared, and new ways to improve everything too. I've decided to undo some of my previous artistic licences and instead get things looking more like the original game, just in higher quality. So expect lots of bright saturated colours again!

I would really love to see a redone 256x256 texture-set with deep colors for 3dfx users.
Can I do this by myself?

Gambit37 wrote on 2021-05-10, 22:22:

OK, cool thanks. Absolutely no rush at all, there's plenty for me to be getting on with for now.

It's interesting to go back to this after so long, gives me a chance to see some of the stuff I'd finished and never shared, and new ways to improve everything too. I've decided to undo some of my previous artistic licences and instead get things looking more like the original game, just in higher quality. So expect lots of bright saturated colours again!

keep in original and keep it in higher quality...that would be AWESOME 😀

Here is the message I previously sent to someone wishing to perform the conversion:

Ok, you might not like this: the process involves several tools, with the setup performed under Windows and the main conversion […]
Show full quote

Ok, you might not like this: the process involves several tools, with the setup performed under Windows and the main conversion under Linux. Perhaps the whole thing can be done under Windows, but I've never tried that.

Setup
Two parts:

1) Capture the textures from the TR1 disc's .PHD files.

2) List your Glidos texture pack, adding a texture.log file.

Both parts are performed using the attached GenEquivMap application, using tabs "Capture" and "List" respectively. You may have done Part 1 already when creating your Glidos texture pack, but YOU NEED TO DO IT AGAIN with this latest version of GenEquivMap, which creates some new key files not produced by previous versions. Part 2 will just add an extra file to your Glidos texture pack, called texture.log.

When you've done that, you should place the Capture folder produced by Part 1 and your texture pack together in a folder (call it the conversion folder).

Conversion
For this you need the attached ruby script, plus the tools used by that script. The tools are part of a system called ImageMagick - specifically the script calls the "convert" and "composite" commands. You also need to install ruby for the script to run at all. Perhaps that can be done under Windows, perhaps not. If not, maybe try cygwin, or docker or a VM, or perhaps you have a linux box. Windows 10 has a linux subsystem. That might work.

With ruby and ImageMagick installed, you just need to place the convert script in the conversion folder along with the Capture folder and your texture pack and run

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1convert <texture-pack-name>

You should see a load of "composite" commands being run. May take several hours. If it works, your conversion folder will end up with an extra subfolder called "Pack".

Good luck!