EQG Zone Importer

[Gnomish1987]

Originally Posted by Zaela_S

I didn't have any particular use in mind when I added the PNG export option, I just know I get annoyed when I run into DDS files since I don't have anything to edit them with. There's no reason not to use PNG, at least, since EQ will load any of the common image formats for any purpose. I prefer to use PNG since BMP is a bit of a space-hog.

I fully agree about BMP being a space-hog. However, don't you end up having to convert your final work to BMP eventually anyway if you're dealing with a pre-Luclin zone (when all textures were solely in BMP format)? If one did use a PNG in lieu of a BMP, could one delete the parallel BMP files and the PNG ones would be loaded in their place even with an old zone/model? (For instance, if I wanted to make a brown Old Froglok to overwrite the base Old Froglok texture.)

As for the difficulty of opening DDS, I see what you mean. I managed to find a plugin for GIMP that allows me to open them with relative ease, so I don't mind as much these days. There may be a similar plugin for your image editor of choice.

Originally Posted by Shendare

You can easily download zlib1.dll from the official website and drop it into the same folder as the program that needs it, and everything should work fine.

Thanks! I believe this was the initial problem, as both programs now open just fine.

However, while I can get full use out of the Model Viewer, EQGExport still doesn't want to play nice. It simply opens, prompts for the S3D directory, populates the list of .s3d files, then does nothing further. I'm able to select a given .s3d file, but nothing comes up on the next column. Right-clicking does nothing.

I may simply have to make do with v1.1 for the time being. Didn't mean to hijack Zaela's thread and turn it into a troubleshooting session!

[Zaela_S]

Originally Posted by Gnomish1987

If one did use a PNG in lieu of a BMP, could one delete the parallel BMP files and the PNG ones would be loaded in their place even with an old zone/model? (For instance, if I wanted to make a brown Old Froglok to overwrite the base Old Froglok texture.)

Yeah. The client has no expectations about what format a particular image will be in. Any BMP or DDS file could be replaced with a PNG or JPEG without problems. It just looks at whatever's there, sees if it can figure out the format it's in, and sends it off to the correct decoder for that format.

The only caveat is that, due to internal references in the .wld files, the name of the image file needs to be exactly the same as the original one you want to replace, including the extension. So if you wanted to replace "frglg0101.bmp" with a PNG, that PNG would need to be renamed to "frglg0101.bmp". The extension doesn't really matter. I'm pretty sure some of the official texture updates for older zones are actually DDS files even though they have a ".bmp" extension -- changing the names inside the .wld is a bit of a pain.

Originally Posted by Gnomish1987

However, while I can get full use out of the Model Viewer, EQGExport still doesn't want to play nice. It simply opens, prompts for the S3D directory, populates the list of .s3d files, then does nothing further. I'm able to select a given .s3d file, but nothing comes up on the next column. Right-clicking does nothing.

Now that I'm really not sure what to say to :( Both tools are pretty much identical up to the point where it decides exactly what should show up in the second column. Right-click should bring up a the menu regardless, too... I re-uploaded my most recent files just in case that helps (zlib is now included too).


Maybe I should actually make a thread for EQGExport ;p