Art In Pinkerton

Tag: GIMP

  • Strange times at Septim High

    Ingame appearance

    As I have worked on several games, I have noticed various oddities. I have covered one before: unused assets. However, there are a few others. In the game TES:Arena, most SET files are reserved either for walls or for floors. The exception is this one:

    WALLC

    Which gives us the below separate ingame dungeons:

    So far, it’s the only SET file to do that. Not sure what happened or why it’s like that. The main challenge with is that while I liked it on the floor against the dark walls, I don’t care for it as a wall texture. I’ll have to go back and tweak/balance it later.  In theory, with further modding of the INF files (they determine which art files each level uses), it can be made so that a different file is used but I’m not inclined at this time to do that.

    Ummm…what

    Right off the bat, I’ll admit that my “working” copy of TES:Arena has been in use since I first started this project (several years now). It is now a Frankenstein-mess of my experiments. I expanded that executable file with an ancient program, expanded all the resource files, installed “WinArena” over top, fiddled with the INFs, etc. So I don’t know if the weird things I see in the game are my fault or not (easily enough to verify but I don’t really care that much).

    I even had a very odd problem of an Imperial City textures completely changing from one style to another. I just walked into a mages guild and came out to a completely different looking city. I wished I had made a video of that weirdness.

    -Martin

  • RETRO POST : The long road to Arena

    Why Arena?

    *This post was originally drafted in 2012 but never submitted. I have revised and updated it.

    The next brief diversion was an even older game called The Elder Scrolls:Arena. It is the first game in one of my favorite video game series and I did play this one a lot when it first came out in ’94.  I found a website that packaged it (and it’s sequel) in a neat, easy to install package. But, the low resolution graphics (320 x 200…trust me it’s very low) were so pixelly that it was hard to play and enjoy for me, particularly in the cities where anything in the distance was just a blob of small blocks.

    ArenaBox

    Mods?

    After some quick checking, I found that there were NO graphic altering mods out there. No one on the forums seems to think it was even possible. I found that hard to believe and felt the “challenge bug” nibbling at my toes. I wanted to find out how to do it. But I only got as far as checking how the files were stored (container file ending in .bsa). I did find that someone attempted to remake the game (didn’t get finished).  It claimed to allow you to extract the art file out of the BSA file for you. BUT in actuality, it converts them to a common image format that the original game can not recognize and thus was not a viable option. Due to real life busyness (yes I mean busy-ness), this too faded to the background. Eventually, I did come back to it later (much like Darkstone) and succeeded in extracting all the files (using a old program).

    You did what?

    Even though the image files were not in any common standard format, I figured out how to open them in GIMP (free editing software). This involved loading the images as RAW images with a offset header of 12 (think “ignore first 12 bytes of file”) and then loading a special palette files.  I could then save it as a RAW image. The drawback to this method was that for images that had the 12 bytes that needed to be ignored (all the IMG files), the saved image wouldn’t have those bytes. That meant that I had to (BRACE YOURSELF) open the file in a hex editor (think super nerdy ), copy all the bytes, then open the original file and paste the copied bytes over starting at byte 13.  Then, I tossed that file in main file directory as the game. The only way to see how it worked was to load the game and look for the texture.  It was a overly cumbersome process that eroded my enthusiasm and by the time my “interest” (i.e. attention span) waned, I only completed 8 textures.  Although I moved on to a different project, I came back once in a while to do a texture or two. I deluded myself in thinking that over time (probably decades), I would eventually finish it.

    Progammer in Shining Armor

    It wasn’t until Hallfiry released his “Arena Modding Suite” that the project took off in a major way. His tool not only unpacked the entire BSA resource file (BSA = Bethesda Softworks Archive) but converted most of the textures into PNG files for easy editing. Afterwards, it could be used to “repack” the BSA easily without destroying the “working folder” and converting the files back to the original format. Besides some textures that used a funky compression, it had removed the technical barriers to changing images in the game. Now to date, I have completed 126 of 172 SET files (wall texture sets) with 12 additional ones that aren’t even used in game. The two biggest challenges for me now are: making unique interesting textures that work well in game (after having already made 126 of them) and figuring out how to do some of the more organic textures to match my style (since the pixel dimensions are very limited). 64 x 64 does limit the amount of creativity I can use.

  • Sometimes the baby is just ugly

    Wandering the land

    I spent some time this week searching in-game for textures yet to be done using a pre-edited overpowered save file so I could roam unimpeded. I looked for dungeons, cities, wilderness, etc. that hadn’t yet been retextured. The side effect to this is that I found places where the textures WERE done but I had never seen them in-game or at least not in combination with other textures. From this I learned that some textures don’t work as well in-game as I hoped.

    Proud Poppa

    However, there are many that I feel are just right (or close enough for me to be happy). These I feel keep a unique appearance AND work well not only for their intended purpose but also with other textures. For example:

    Avert your eyes

    Of course, they all can’t be winners. I expected that I would have to go back and tweak later, but some textures combos were just horrible. To be fair to myself, I had two limitations: one, I was trying to make each texture unique and two, some textures were awful to begin with (one of the mage guild textures is a complete mess). These will be easy to tweak up though as all the hard work is already done.

    Dirty walls and floors

    I have starting tackling some of the vague pixelly mess of some wall and floor textures that I have been avoiding. The limitations on resolution and colors will probably force me to deviate from “source” more than I care but it can’t be avoided. There are so many in the DW series alone (A through S). The reason I started looking for textures in-game was so I could see the context in which the textures were being used.

    – Martin

  • 1 step forward 2 steps back…

    Several years ago when I first started messing around with computer graphic art, I tested out visual concepts on a PC game called Morrowind (the third in the Elder Scrolls series that Arena started) . Although Morrowind was where I tested the waters, it was another game called Torchlight that became the focus of my first big project I “cleverly” decided to call Toonlight. Initially, I tried to change the art assets in bulk by using the various filters built into the GIMP software. However, while the end results were interesting, I didn’t find them very pleasing aesthetically.

    So I took those results and experimented a little more by testing different tweaks and changes. Eventually, I narrowed down the look I wanted to pursue. Since I found the game art interesting but bland, I decided my goal would be to make it more vibrant and add cell-shading style lines. Surprise, Surprise 😉 I just felt that the WOW-esque muted coloring made the environment less interesting, washed out and a lot of detail.  So I started adding “black outlines” and redoing each texture by hand. Then I would test them in-game. Each art set for the various types of levels were already separated into individual folders labeled “levelsets”, so I worked my way from one levelset to another. I was even close enough to completion that I thought I could beat Torchlight 2 being released. I had reworked almost all the level artwork and many of the monsters and props. However, I was in the midst of moving and my motivation waivered and the mod drifted down the priority list.

    Recently, when I started recollecting all my data from various hard drives (including 2 that were on their deathbed, CDRs and memory sticks, I discovered my art files for Toonlight and my other “on hold” mod, Darktone, were missing and the only thing left was a very early version of my Toonlight mod. Although this is a tragedy for most, I had learned so much from working on that project (and had so much fun) that I don’t consider the time wasted. On top of that, upon further review, I found myself not overly satisfied with the few levels I did recover. The initial mine levelset now seems too sloppy for my tastes, the crypts are a little too green and non-descript in a few areas, and the sunken temples levels are a TOO busy. Only the lava level still pleases me but some of it didn’t get recovered. I’m still searching for them but worse case scenario, I have enough recovered to springboard myself back into the project. With that said, I’m focused on my Arena mod. Once I have gotten as far as possible, I will resume my other projects.

    So where does that leave me…same as before. I still plan on completing it. One aspect all my art mods have  in common (except Minecraft) is that they are older games that I’m doing for my personal enjoyment. I don’t feel the need to adhere to a timetable before the games become “irrevelant”. Arena was released over 20 years ago!

  • Graffiti on the walls

    Why “Marking”

    As I have mentioned in previous posts, my experience in working with game art resources has revealed that the game creators often leave behind orphan files that aren’t actually used in the game. It is very frustrating to spend a couple hours on a texture only to not be able to see it in game (as I did many times in for Torchlight texture pack). To combat this waste of time, I have started “marking” texture files so that I can see if they get used in game or not. For example; Arena has SET files (2-6 textures all in one image) and IMG files (single image). I have discovered that many wall and ground sets are repeated in both SET and IMG formats. So a single “Wall” set would have up to 4 IMG files that mirrored that SET file. For any suspect files, I would mark the IMG file and see if it shows in game. Then I could avoid redoing a texture that isn’t even used. In theory, I can save time and shrink the overall pack size by eliminating these orphan files. Lastly, using this process I can find the file in the game to see how it looks when I texture it.

    The process

    The process is fairly simple. After completing some wall SET files for ADP, I tested them. I could see my new textures in-game so I knew these were correct files. But when I did the same for ground SETs, they didn’t show. So I decided to “mark” the IMG files and see if they were used or not.

    STEP 1: I loaded about 30 IMG files in GIMP at one time (only the ones I was unsure of). Since they are so small (64 pixels by 64 pixels), GIMP could load them without too much trouble.

    STEP 2: One by one, I would draw a symbol (nothing fancy) on the texture. I would use a color that stood out so it would be easy to spot in game. I tended to use the alphabet then numbers then symbols so I could narrow them down easily if needed.

    STEP 3: Since I have a fancy  Logitech keyboard that supports macros, I created a macro that would overwrite the original file then close the file (about 12 keystrokes each).  Then all I had to do was hit the macro key a bunch and it would keep executing the macro; saving and closing each file one by one. I managed to do this all in an hour or so while watching a football game.

    STEP 4: I would load the next 30 or so and repeat the process until all the textures in question were marked. In all I ended up marking 150 files (all wall and ground textures).

    Marking Pics

    Results

    After a preliminary check, I realized that ground textures seem to favor IMG formats (to allow better mixing and matching in levels?) and walls were almost exclusively SET files except for city walls. Out of 150 textures marked, I have so far only found 3 in game. The caveat on that is that I haven’t explored a lot of the game. I will most likely go ahead and texture all the ground and outer city wall IMG files and then check again. But if even half of those are just junk files, it would well be worth the saved time.