Topic: blank terrain maps

[abenavides]

Was looking through the blank terrain maps (they came with the original FF editor and I know are used in the JLA and Super Powers mods.)

With the FF textures added to my setup, they all work fine in the FFv3R editor, except for blank_desert.
It shows up as a purple plane with some rocks. the rocks are using the TGAs and look fine, just the floor is all purple.

I checked the the right tga is in the folder - terrain_desert.tga. Anyone know how to fix this? (just in case I want to use this map in the future)
I can post a pic if it helps.

[BentonGrey]

Hmm...that's a new one to me.  My copy seems to work fine.  Are you using the area_specific / area_speciff1 method of texture and map organization?  Stupid question, but you put the textures in your area_whatever/_textures directory, right?

[abenavides]

That’s the mappack setup right?
I’m not using the mappack but maybe I should ?

All I’ve done is literally copy the 4 blank map nifs from my jla mod and then the textures from the original game are merged Into my area_specific\_textures folder.  Three of the 4 maps work fine . And the desert texture is where it should be I think

I’ll look at the map pack version. I’ve hesitated using it because my mod is using original ff maps so far and so far it’s worked,

[BentonGrey]

Well, in theory, there's no reason why you should HAVE to use the Mappack (though it would probably save you a good deal of time, it would also make your mod much larger, since it includes a ton of stuff you won't necessarily use).  If you've got that texture in the _textures folder, then it SHOULD be working.  That's where mine are (though in area_speciff1, but that shouldn't matter).

[GogglesPizanno]

I'm trying to remember how all of this works, but the reason for the area_speciff1 I think was to have a separate folder to make sure it was isolated and self contained from regular data and conflicting filename etc...

The name of the folder was chosen (not by me, I pulled the method from someone else) because it was the same number of characters, so you could batch find and replace folder paths in maps using a hex editor without having to worry about offsetting values.

What you might try is opening up the desert map in a hex editor and search for the the textures. You might find that it is looking for a different texture in a different place than the obvious one. I ran into that numerous times.

[abenavides]

Thanks GP, was hoping you'd weigh in.

I am using nifskope to look at the blank_desert nif (both the one I had from the mod and the one in your mappack) .
They look identical so far, but I'll keep looking.

Thx to you too BEnton. will see what I can figure.
I'm just being OCD about it , but I like to understand how everything works that I add to my mod

[BentonGrey]

No worries, I completely understand.  Better to understand it so you can do it again if need be.

Try replacing the nif from your mod with the one from the mappack and see if that does anything, maybe?  It SHOULD be identical, but for some reason, my copies are working and yours are not, so something is off.

[abenavides]

Got it working now.
The ones in mappack definitely worked if I copied over the entire area_speciff1 folder.
(but I couldn't really tell why it would work and not when I tried it by just adding the nif and tgas I had from the mod. I even compared the nifs byte-by-byte with a hex editor and they were identical)

Anyway, I had an old backup on my hd of the blank terrain nifs (made it when I updated the Super Powers mod), I pasted those nifs and tgas in and everything suddenly worked. Not 100% sure why it wasn't working, but it's all good now and no extra files.

[abenavides]

While doing this, I realize I never added these 4 blank maps to the "Atlas" section of my site.
Will do that now.

[BentonGrey]

Hahaha!    Well, that sounds about right.  Sometimes this game is just plain weird.  I've had the same kind of thing happen to me.