Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 9:15 pm Post subject:
Having problems with voxel replacement
Subject description: I can't make old artwork be replaced
I wanted to create a new unit, and I did. I used a custom voxel and put the unit in the game. I didn't like the artwork I had done, so I edited it, and tried to put the new version in the game. Strangely, the old artwork would not go away, and I can't figure out how to make the game recognize the new artwork. I deleted every file with the old artwork, and the new artwork even appears in the Final Alert 2 editor, but the game still displays the old artwork that I want to get rid of. I'm confused, since I'm assuming the game needs the expandxx.mix file that I created to have the artwork, and there is no file with the old artwork on it. How can I make the game register the new artwork? And what exactly is going on? How is the game finding the old artwork? QUICK_EDIT
Is it possible the old artwork is still loose in your game folder?
If it is, then it overrides what's in a MIX.
It's handy for game/mod devs so they can debug/test stuff quickly. _________________ One and only developer of the Command & Conquer Dune "C&C D" mod.
m7 wrote:
I tend to release things I create so that assets are never lost to hard drive problems, accidental deletion, or me having to pretend to care about rippers taking things from my project when it is done.
TAK02- Turns out there was a voxel and .hva file in the game folder, but I moved it. I re-did the whole thing from scratch redoing the rules.ini and art.ini. I made sure no .vxl or .hva files were in the game directory. Remade a new MIX file, and put it in the game directory, but the old artwork is still showing up in the game. I do have some backups of the old artwork stored in a few folders, I dunno if that would affect anything. I find it really weird that the right art pops up in Final Alert 2 but not in the game. Thanks for the help so far, I didn't know that tidbit about overriding the MIX.
G-E- To make the unit, I copy/pasted the code for the SUVB unit (the black civilian SUV), and changed the file name of the unit to SUVG (which will be a green SUV). I hope I'm understanding what you're saying to do correctly. Are you saying to take my new SUVG unit, and add a line to rules.ini that says Image=SUVG ? QUICK_EDIT
I do have some backups of the old artwork stored in a few folders, I dunno if that would affect anything.
It doesn't. The game only looks in its own folders and files. And the expandmdXX and ecachemdXX and elocalmdXX MIXs (leave out the MD and you can do RA2 instead of YR).
Carville97 wrote:
G-E- To make the unit, I copy/pasted the code for the SUVB unit (the black civilian SUV), and changed the file name of the unit to SUVG (which will be a green SUV). I hope I'm understanding what you're saying to do correctly. Are you saying to take my new SUVG unit, and add a line to rules.ini that says Image=SUVG ?
Pretty much.
But if FA2 can do that, I find it odd the game doesn't.
Are you using Ares and the #include feature? If not, skip this.
If you did, chk in the INIs you listed for anything on the SUVG. It's possible you gave it the old image in there and forgot about it...
If you can, make a bunch of screenies that show you game folder. Maybe we'll find something then...
(If you can use command prompt: navigate to the game folder, and type dir/b
Simply copy and paste it here then.) QUICK_EDIT
I tried another thing, and it's really strange. I tested out if the game was really reading the MIX file by deleting it, and the game did crash when I removed the MIX file (which I wanted it to do), then when I put the MIX file back, the old artwork loaded up again. It's very strange, because it looks like the game is reading the wrong artwork from a MIX file that has only the right artwork on it.
I'm not using Ares and the #include feature. I dunno what that is yet lol.
I got the command prompt game directory stuff. Here's what the dir/b command gave me back
OK, chk the contents of expand97.mix and ecache97.mix
These might contain the old artwork still...
I take it you're modding RA2?
Which MIX file did you remove? _________________ One and only developer of the Command & Conquer Dune "C&C D" mod.
m7 wrote:
I tend to release things I create so that assets are never lost to hard drive problems, accidental deletion, or me having to pretend to care about rippers taking things from my project when it is done.
I tried moving expand97.mix and ecache97.mix out of the game directory. It's still displaying the wrong artwork in the game.
Yeah I'm modding RA2, and the MIX file I removed was expand10.mix. What I did was tested to see if the game was reading that file by deleting it, so the game would intentionally crash, then put the file back in the game directory, and the game ran. To me that seems like it's reading the right MIX file.
But the problem is that it's reading the old artwork, which isn't in that file, from the MIX file with the right artwork. QUICK_EDIT
OK, I'm stumped... No idea what's going on. If FA2 reads the new artwork just fine and RA2 fails, then it's drunk.
Unless...
This FA2 you have... is it the YR one? The one that can read .YRMs?
Also, where did you put the SUVG.vxl?
If you put it in expandmd01.mix and are using the YR FA2, then no wonder why RA2 can't use the new graphics: it doesn't read the MD .MIXs like YR does.
But then how did the "old" voxel get read by the game when you first tested it?
That doesn't explain why RA2 still won't read the new voxel if you've already tried placing it loose in the game folder...
Did you have the HVA for that unit loose too? If not, place it and the voxel loose, see where that gets you.
It is also possible the new artwork didn't replace the old one properly. Happens when you mix XCC Mixer and the Program Files (x86) folder.
...this might be much easier if we had some form of chat 'n video communication. By video I mean your monitor feed. QUICK_EDIT
I believe the FA2 I'm using is the Red Alert 2 regular one, since it doesn't have YR units appearing, like Guardian GIs and Premier Romanov. Plus, the MIX file I made isn't an MD.mix one.
I put the SUVG.vxl and SUVG.hva in the MIX file using the XCC editor. The "old" voxel read just by me making a MIX file that way.
I'm gonna retry putting the loose voxels in the directory. Do I maybe have to make the .vxl and .hva file uppercase? Right now the letters "SUVG" are in lowercase, but I think I did that with the old artwork too.
The XCC mixer is in the Program Files (x86) folder...but when I open the MIX file that the game is reading in XCC mixer it's showing the right artwork.
Say, do you have a Discord TAK02? I can chat there. Not vid chat, but text.
[Update] I tried with the loose voxels, even capitalized, it didn't work still. I moved the XCC mixer out of Program Files (x86). Not sure if that'll help. QUICK_EDIT
If you have RA2 installed under "Program Files" and you make the mix yourself as administrator or something, it's possible it can't open your file because of the Windows permissions. Did you set RA2 to run as administrator? _________________ http://www.moddb.com/mods/scorched-earth-ra2-mod-with-smart-ai QUICK_EDIT
No. It's SHPs HAVE to.
VXLs and HVAs can be put in expand or ecache. Or loose.
G-E wrote:
Did you set RA2 to run as administrator?
If RA2 could read the files the first time, then I doubt it's RA2 with the admin issue.
One of the things I do is copy/move the MIX I want to files add to or remove files from is move it to the Desktop, and use XCC Mixer (not running as admin) to put new stuff in or kick old stuff out.
I do this because I have RA2 in Program Files (x86) installed, and when XCC Mixer is run as admin (so I don't have to copy the MIXs to Desktop and back again), you can no longer drag 'n drop stuff into my MIXs.
I'm unfamiliar if there's any other way of putting stuff into MIXs.
Thanks G-E, tried it with an ecachexx.mix file too. Still the same problem.
All I can say is I recommend you redo all of your mix files and you probably will find the cause of the problem/or just fix it. Also you could just set Image= in art.ini (RA2)/artmd.ini (YR) to "xxxx" and have xxxx.vxl and xxxx.hva in the mix file too if you do not really feel like more troubleshooting of this.
TAK02 wrote:
G-E wrote:
Voxels should be in ecache*.mix ...
No. It's SHPs HAVE to.
VXLs and HVAs can be put in expand or ecache. Or loose.
This^
Tiberian Sun Firestorm puts them expand01.mix and not in the ecache01.mix inside the expand01.mix but IIRC that would have worked too and I usually put them in expandXX.mix / expandmdXX.mix for TS & RA2 / RA2:YR unless I am just quickly testing, then I just throw them loose in the game folder. QUICK_EDIT
I finally got it to work!! I ran the program as an administrator, and it worked. I can't remember but I think I may have run it as an administrator the first time to get the old artwork to run. It makes sense now why the new artwork ran in Final Alert 2 but it wouldn't load in RA2, because it's necessary to run Final Alert 2 as an administrator or everything goes black. I think that when I ran it with the old artwork, and then didn't run as an administrator anymore, the game began thinking the old artwork was the "true" SUVG artwork, unless it was run as administrator again to "approve" the new artwork.
TAK02 wrote:
One of the things I do is copy/move the MIX I want to files add to or remove files from is move it to the Desktop, and use XCC Mixer (not running as admin) to put new stuff in or kick old stuff out.
I do this because I have RA2 in Program Files (x86) installed, and when XCC Mixer is run as admin (so I don't have to copy the MIXs to Desktop and back again), you can no longer drag 'n drop stuff into my MIXs.
I'm unfamiliar if there's any other way of putting stuff into MIXs.
I also made the MIX file this way, with desktop and XCC mixer, which also may have helped. There is supposedly another way to put files in MIXs, the way I did the old artwork MIX wasn't through XCC Mixer, I created the file from the XCC Mix Editor. The one that has "save" and "compact" buttons. I'm not sure if that program isn't as good as XCC Mixer or not.
Thank you guys so much for your help! This was hard, but it's great now. The green SUV will be the first of a big Ultimate Civilian Mod, that will add new colors and types of civilian vehicles, and new civilian infantry units as well. Thanks again so much!
djohe wrote:
All I can say is I recommend you redo all of your mix files and you probably will find the cause of the problem/or just fix it. Also you could just set Image= in art.ini (RA2)/artmd.ini (YR) to "xxxx" and have xxxx.vxl and xxxx.hva in the mix file too if you do not really feel like more troubleshooting of this.
I was just about to do this but I got it to work. Thanks for the great idea.
[Update] Weirdly, the wrong old artwork still loads when I don't run as an administrator...I guess for some reason, when I ran it not as an administrator for the old artwork that permanently "locked" the old artwork when the game's not run as an administrator or something. I've only been running RA2 on this laptop for about a month. I think I never ran it as an administrator until today. I'll always run it as an administrator now though. QUICK_EDIT
If you're still loading the old art, then you still have the old art in one of the mixes, you should delete it. It's for this reason you want to avoid using the same voxel names as Westwood when overriding existing art, so you can be absolutely sure the change took.
The weird thing is, I tried deleting the MIX with the new art, and the old art wouldn't load either. And if I put the MIX with the new art back again, the old art would load up.
G-E wrote:
It's for this reason you want to avoid using the same voxel names as Westwood when overriding existing art, so you can be absolutely sure the change took.
I did use a similar voxel name to Westwood's, but not the same one. So I don't know if that affected it. I knew that it's a terrible idea to mess with the Westwood MIX files, but I did export the .hva file from there. Could that cause a problem?
G-E wrote:
For my mod I have 3 ecache* mixes for voxels, Allied, Soviet, Civilian. It keeps things tidy and any mix errors are easy to track down.
That's a really great idea, thanks, I think I'm gonna do that as well. QUICK_EDIT
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Having problems with voxel replacement
I moved the XCC mixer out of Program Files (x86). Not sure if that'll help.
I ran the program as an administrator, and it worked. I can't remember but I think I may have run it as an administrator the first time to get the old artwork to run. It makes sense now why the new artwork ran in Final Alert 2 but it wouldn't load in RA2, because it's necessary to run Final Alert 2 as an administrator or everything goes black. I think that when I ran it with the old artwork, and then didn't run as an administrator anymore, the game began thinking the old artwork was the "true" SUVG artwork, unless it was run as administrator again to "approve" the new artwork.
but I got it to work. Thanks for the great idea.
