Textures Hosting
 

Anyone that wishes for me to host there textures simply email them to me as an attachment to:

textures@eqemupvp.net

On the subject line please tell me what type of file it is (ie A whole zone, an object, etc).

I'll upload them a few times a day and when its uploaded it will be downloadable from http://openzone.eqemulator.net/

If you are going to be making a lot of textures for the eqemu community, contact me for a username/pass so you can upload them yourself.

NOTE: Please note that the website is .com and the email is address is .net, I dont have the email server setup on the dedicated server so if you send it to the wrong address I wont receive it.

I've got 20 textures so far and a test zone that people can play with (it overwrites ecommons)...it's a lot to send, so I'd prefer FTP'ing it directly to the server. PM me when you get the chance :)

WC

Sent you the pm

Yup, got it. I've been making some major improvements to OpenZone so I haven't had the chance to upload yet. I'll try to get something up tonight if I can.

WC

Edit: OK, the first version of my test zone is up, all nice and packaged as an .S3D file you can use. I also uploaded all of the textures I've generated so far, all my own original stuff (created with Texture Maker). There's also a tiny text file accompanying the zone file that tells you what to do to use it.

Once you zone in, make sure to do a #goto 0 0 500 so you don't fall forever. The normal entry point to EC is off the edge of my zone.

The textures are all 24-bit BMP and take some room. I don't know if you want to ZIP them up in the future...

I just tried this out. VERY COOL. Obviously it keeps the spawns for EC intact so Bubar was about 15 feet in the air standing by the water. Easily fixed though, great job!

I've tried tinkering with the 1.6 version of this tool but don't quite understand how to use it. The only thing I was able to come up with was a door, a chair and a block all piled on top of one another. Care to shed some light?

When I get home I'll upload the .SCN file I used to generate it. You'll need OpenZone 1.7 to open it and tinker with it. Basically you make buildings from the ground up, just like a real building: first the foundation, then the ground floor walls, then what's in there. Then add the ceiling/second floor, more walls, etc. Add the roof when you're done. Since the tool lets you move around in "fly" mode also, you can move inside buildings and add more stuff, like chairs and tables. You'll see what I mean when I upload the scene file.

WC

Thanks, Windcatcher. I've already downloaded 1.7. When I get home from work I'll look for the other file.

It's up. It's in the same folder as the .S3D file.

WC

EDIT: I mist have accidentally deleted the bounding box or forgotten to include it in this version. I've replaced the .SCN and .S3D files with correct ones.

Got it...I've redownloaded the s3d file as well. Going to give this a shot. After seeing your sample zone, I can definately see some major possibilities with this tool (if I can figure it out :lol: ). Thanks again, Windcatcher!

Hmm, maybe I'm doing something wrong. I opened up the SCN file and I see the different objects listed on the left but I don't see anything in the view screen. Nothing at all anymore even if I try to create or add anything. It's just a blank green screen. :?

Hmmm. Do you have OpenGL support? The tool uses OpenGL to display the 3D view.

Two tests you can try:

1. Click the edit ground button. You should see a top-down grid of the zone, with grassy areas and barren underwater areas shown. If this doesn't happen, then it sounds like the zone didn't load properly (which I highly doubt if you're seeing the object list).

2. Click the change view button to switch to first-person perspective and see if that helps.

I just uploaded new versions of the .SCN and .S3D, with some roads I put in with the ground editor. The road textures I made are up on the FTP site.

WC

Good news and bad news:

Good News: Got Open Zone to show the objects and I even loaded in your SCN file and looked around. I also understand the changeview now.

Bad News: Now that I've seen how you created your zone, I decided to try it myself and started a fresh zone. I added in ground, objects, etc. Only problem is it's not showing again. Not even if I load in your file, it's just not showing up. It's almost as if it comes and goes as it pleases.

Is there any type of readme or manual that shows how to do things? I have a gazillion questions and I really want to use this tool. I think it would be awesome to create zones and put them in for all new and truly "customized" content.

There should be an OpenZone.Txt included in the .ZIP file that serves as basic documentation.

When you load my file, does the object treeview on the left side get populated, or does it stay blank?

WC

It gets populated but I think I figured it out. I was actually able to get in and put in a flat ground, building and a table and chair inside. But again, I have a ton of questions about using this. The txt file inside the zip doesn't even begin to scratch the surface when it comes to questions. I'm trying to do a "trial and error" so to speak but would save hours upon hours if I had some sort of reference to turn to.

Just as an example, looking at your SCN file I wanted to see how you placed the text on the sign that says, "Wind's Tower". The value I'm showing is "windstowersign" which is in the "sidetxt" column. How on earth did you come up with that value and how do you add textures? Is it on a numbered value? Do I have to create the textures? If so, where do I save them? I tried saving a simple brick texture to the proper subfolder in a .bmp 24 bit format (can't remember exact name of the folder at the moment) according to the readme.txt that was inside that folder but I still couldn't pull it up.

Again, way to many questions to post here...

UPDATE:

I did finally slow my brain down enough from the excitement of using this program to actually READ the OpenZone.txt instead of scanning (sorry about that). It did answer several questions but a few things do come to mind that I couldn't find or figure out.

1. You mention several times in your OpenZone.txt about creating heightmaps. I have yet to figure out how to do this. I found the sample one you supplied but how do I load that into Open Zone to use and/or edit? Everytime I click on edit terrain it tells me a heightmap needs to be created using Open Zone 1.7 or later (I'm using your most recent 1.8) and the loop continues putting me right back to the same question, "how do I create the heightmap or use and alter the one you supplied?".

2. Several times in the OpenZone.txt file "mesh" was mentioned. I read through this section for nearly two hours and have yet to understand a single bit of it. I'm not a programmer, dev, know about compiling or parsing, etc. Any chance of an English version of this explanation?

3. The included program "GC3" I have yet to understand the use for. Why would I need a .WLD file (what is the use of this format?) if Open Zone can create straight to an .s3d file? I tried loading in a .DDS file using this program to see if I can find anything to convert to .bmp but nothing came up after browsing over 600 .DDS files found. It was all garbled.

4. .XML files......see question "2" and replace "mesh" with ".XML". Very confusing. :?

5. Texture Sets: I understand how to select and create new folders to select from (I created northkarana to test it) but do these pull from the textures in the eqemu files? Or do I have to create each texture for each zone that I want to create?

Overall this is a fun tool to use despite several questions and not understanding how to do certain things. A very loud "Way to go!!" definately goes out to you for this project. I even have my two kids creating .SCN's and they're doing quite well with the buildings. I figure what the heck, I might be able to use their creations later when I actually save to an .s3d and test it. :D