Creating *NEW* ART / Graphics for Arcanum?

Is there some tool or set of utilities to make a BMP or some other gfx fornmat into a ART file?

Chris Beddoes, YOU must have SOME sort of tool to add in that car/other items I've seen?

Why isn't it available to the public?

the ART file format can't be THAT complex, infact I would not be surprised if it were little more than a few palletes, size grid, compressed BMP/tga type format.

 

There is a tool called BMP2ART and you should be able to get it here http://users.raketnet.nl/renevandepol/ included in the Tutorial on How to: make and add .ART files. Do NOT expect this to work for adding complicated ART files like sprytes! Those ART files are much more complicated than that program can handle. Personally, I have never been able to get the program to work successfully, but maybe I'm just not patient enough to keep trying over and over until it finally spits out a useable ART file or maybe there is something about the way Windows XP or my system in particular is set up that interferes with its proper function.

 

I have, it's an odd little contraption. Haven't used it in a very good while, and I've forgotten the intricacies of it. Maybe if I practice a little.

 

Ahh, Thanks!

Too bad there is not more info on the file formats 'n stuff...

it looks to me like arcanum modding never really took off, which is too bad as _I_ can't think of many/any moddable RPG's.

(and nethack don't count )

 

I'm working on a program to allow people to do the conversion, but it is taking me a while to get it out. Sorry I'm so slow. I'm trying to set it up to allow the conversion to and from ART format and several of the better graphics formats, not just BMP, since TGA and some of those are a lot better suited to editing sprytes and the more complicated ART files. Many of them have multiple views involved, not just simply the factors that you mentioned. They also vary several other factors, depending on what the item is, how many views it has, what pallette it uses, etc, so the ART file format is not quite as simple as you are assuming it is. When I do get my program done, I will make it available so others can try it out because I would also like to see more people make mods and interesting goodies for Arcanum. In fact, I forsee the possibility of an area here for downloading such items some time in the future - I hope.

I have to make this program work to be able to make the major mod that I am working on work because I need several new sprytes for new playable characters, such as most of the currently unplayable female species. I also need to put in some new art work for items that I want to add, so I want it working to make my life easier in that respect.

 

Never Winter Nights
Morrowind
Dungeon Seige

There are quite a few... These are just a small amout of the total RPG's that are modd'able.

I feel that Arcanum is a great game for modding. I might just start on one now. Its rather confusing and the link for that tutorial doesnt work...

 

Oh dear god here we go again... isn't there a moderator you could pester about that?

 

Darn I forgot about Morrowind, but Dugeon Siege is a joke.
Tragically its creator made my all time favorite (and EXTREMELY MODDABLE) RTS game. Total Annihlation. Dahm you M$ :x

Its still good too.

I always thought it was kinda bleh to mod a Medeval type Fantasy game. Whatcha gonna do? add a few more Orcs, Purple trolls, A shiny new Enchanted Sword, (similar to the other 500 ones but oh so better)? Bah, and usually the prospects for adding new stuff is so limited.

Arcanum seems fairly flexible however, and FO seems to be as well, even if there are no large-scale TC's out there are still many mods. So assuming That new Troika PA game does not steal Arcanum's thunder...

Arn't there libraries/packages/Dll's for quick TGA/JPG/PNG/BMP access and conversion?

It would be faster to slap together a simple CLI tool to do Batch style conversion.
In fact; make a CLI Batch version that works with BMPs first and THEN do a GUI version that makes it nice to work with fancy formats and pretty pictures of moving sprites and all that jazz.
Modders love to wade thru arcane mountains of hex and obscure code and scripts. Right :wink:

Also, a PRO editor is needed (?) as these new items and critters would need these to work correctly, right?

And on a seperate note; I wonder why Troika never put Crossbows ingame, they would be a nice bridge between Firearms and Bows.
and no Derringers or Carbine Rifles either.

 

Dkoepp is already working on a PRO editor and he has the most experience of anyone around at working with those files.

Converting to BMP format first would actually lose a lot of the quality of the original ART files, so I have no intention of going that route. That is the main reason I want to include the other formats - to maintain the quality and flexibility of the original ART images to as great a degree possible. For simple item images, that is not an issue, but as the images get more complex, it does become an issue.

I fully intend to include a GUI and will not be releasing anything for public consumption until it is working. It might still have bugs to be found, but it will be working as well as possible before I will release it.

If I didn't have some major health problems, I might have made better progress on this, but that's life. {shrug}

 

Any progress is better than no progress.

Too bad about your health, :-( keep sukin' down those anti-oxidants and Vitamins, oh yeah Chicken soup too and perhaps it will improve.

Ahh right BMP does not keep transparency masks intact.
Hmmm... If PNG supported animation it would be a natural format for ART files.

However:

MNG stands for Multiple-image Network Graphics. It is pronounced "ming". MNG is the animation extension to the popular PNG format. It was originally designed to replace GIF(tm), which, due to its patent issue with LZW, has caused a lot of controversy. But MNG has much more powerful animation techniques than animated-GIF. It can hold sprite-like objects, has advanced compression techniques such as delta-images, can contain upto 64-bit RGBA images (all formats of PNG are supported), and has the other PNG advantages of partial transparency, color-correction and more.
http://www.libmng.com

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/libmng/libmng-win32-1.0.8.exe?download

That sounds like the good ART file converion format, all you need to store extra is ?perhaps? a pallete and the size of the item.
All the animation frames would be kept included, and transparency is built right in.

There is probably no ideal image file format for ART's except ART.

 

I would be very intrested in anything that can import/export graphics good luck and speed in creating your utility.

I'm hopelesly lost when it comes to modding but I seem to have a knack when it comes to creating pretty pictures for games. I have a question and it my be in the wrong topic but where can I get a tutorial or two for just the graphic side of things? I saw a tut. that was about 30 pages of something like that but that seemed to be for everything, not just the art stuff.

 

Thanks to the encouragement, guys.

If you scroll up and read the second entry in this topic, Sir-Kill, you will find a link to the only tutorial I have ever found dealing with the ART files used in Arcanum.

A lot of what I have figured out, I learned by asking others after I had made some progress on my own and by lots of years of experience working with graphics files. (I may be the oldest person regularly posting on this forum. :lol: )

 

Thanks for the link, man I can't belive I missed that. Yes that will help.
I have psp, and I'm fairly good with it. I am currently very busy with a game, that it seems people here don't care to mention (he he).
But if I get something that looks good in .bmp can I post it here or does it have to be jpeg, zip, or no file attachment on the forum.(I see in this topic that you can't). If there is no file attachment how can I send stuff to you's guys?

 

Ok so if I understand I have to;

1 undat everything or just what I want
2 use art to bmp just drop it in and it creates a bmp
3 make my image
4 drop it in bmp to art

right?

how do I know what want? is there ia list or go I go fishing?

sorry for hijacking this thread

 

Don't worry about it. Threads were meant to wander as they may, or at least that seems to be the rule around here.

You have the sequence right, but it doesn't work for anything but item ART files.

If you use either Arcanun or DjUnique's Undat utility to extract your ART files from the DAT files, you will also be able to find an MES file in the same are that will give you a list of ART files. Use that MES file with the Description.Mes file to figure out what ART files go with what. There are different MES files for different types of ART files, so you will probably want the ones called item_ground.mes, item_inven.mes, item_paper.mes and item_schematic.mes. They should be found in the "art\item" directory of Arcanum2.DAT along with the actual item ART files. Description.Mes is in Arcanum3.DAT.

Another way to do it is to just extract all the ART files to a holding area and use Red!Viewer to take a look at them. You can download Red!Viewer at http://www.duckandcover.cx/fallout2/modtools.php, but you will have to scroll down a ways to get to the entry for it. This program does the best job, so far, of letting you view ART files in Windows, but it will not convert them, so don't even try to get it to do so. It will give you a good idea of what I mean about the complexity of some of the ART files and why you get a real mess of many, many BMP files if you use ART2BMP to convert them - plus BMP2ART will never be capable of the reverse conversion and was never intended for that.

I hope that this is enough information to get you going. Good luck.

 

thanks for the link but it seems to be broken.
Yeah I uddated arcanum 1,2,and3 thats alot of files <1gb
and one unanswered where can I upload files?

EDIT:found the link http://www.duckandcover.cx/fallout2/modtools.php

or a direct link http://www.duckandcover.cx/tactics/modtools/redviewer.ace

thanks again!!