Talking Books Help Required

General debates and discussion about the Guild of Writers and Age creation

Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:26 am

I will investigate all of those options but it is weird that the graphic works for the cover but not the page.

I will edit this post with any results however reducing the graphic further will likely compromise and make unreadable the embedded text.

[edit]
Reducing Margins to zero did not do anything.

Ok I tried making the textures smaller but it appeared not to work so I will need to re visit this but I was ble to check all three of my test documents all of them work as the cover document.

So I am finding it strange that they do not work as page documents.

Adding an alpha did not work

I am going to make a small 3 colour graphic small size to try and display
[/edit]

[edit2]
OK I have made a new texture thats chronically simplistic with three colours of which the white background is a transparent alpha chanel the texture is only 64 x 64 this ends up called Tester.dds and does not appear in the journal
[/edit2]

test Image.png
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Tue Jul 24, 2018 6:52 pm

Could it be that the images are being masked by the worn yellowed paper texture.

I am ataching my 3 test page texture files

Page01.png
Page01.png (402.63 KiB) Viewed 5887 times


Page02.png
Page02.png (117.72 KiB) Viewed 5887 times


Page03.png
Page03.png (300.41 KiB) Viewed 5887 times


There are another 61 pages if I get this to work. ;)
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:55 pm

I was looking at the Journal Modifier and we have two options under Book Type

These are Book and Notebook.

I have been wondering if we could add a new types say with the name Programme or Brochure Map or Picture where we might have more control over the size and what is embedded.

There is the option of making a book with any image as a cover if we made that only the cover with no pages at all that could become the basis of a map drawing or single page document or even a two sided document where once picked up it could be turned over to reveal somthing written or drawn on the back.

As for the Programme - Brochure idea with the option of using any graphic as a source provided it is sized correctly we could generate pages with any external graphics package providing the means of having book content with a greater mix of graphic and text types not limited to the embedded fonts without the need to embed more fonts.

I am thinking here of languages where the font is not available to the game.

If I am talking a wish list here I believe this to be the case I would add page numbering and a way of keeping a record of an avatars place in a book so that if the avatar returns to a book it opens at the page last visited this could be useful as I have books with lots of text where embedding page numbers is posible but not without issues.

At present the Book - Notebook size has a 100% limit that currently can be made smaller but with the max 100% still having a large unused portion of the screen.

Like I say all of this is a wish list and probably beyond our scope. ;)
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:24 am

The journal type refers to the available dialogs provided by the GUI_District_BkBook.prp and GUI_District_BkNotebook.prp files. It may be possible to build your own from scratch, but I have not experimented with this, and cannot speak on the feasibility.

The journal modifier I provided in Korman was made to simplify the most-used case of creating those kinds of standard journals. What you are trying to do should simply be a matter of making a custom dialog interface. This is not yet supported by Korman.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Sirius » Thu Jul 26, 2018 2:57 am

On the topic of not appearing images, I have to admit I don't have a clue about what's wrong. Sorry :|
Maybe you could try to browse Cyan's own files and compare them with your, see if you can find a difference.

About books in general: you can't go over 100% (even if you hack into the PRP), so you'd need a custom book. I already tried "making" one (in truth I was converting Yeesha's journals from EoA into CC - they have only minor difference), but never managed to get it to show up - it would always reset to the default book. So not a piece of cake...
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:15 am

No problem Sirius this is an ongoing project it would be nice if I could have a custom Journal and I am just kicking around ideas as to why it is not working.

To use an old idiom I have a feeling in my water that it is something to do with the book page status the fact that the graphics all post to the cover but not the page.

I am sure we will get there eventually.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:56 am

I have had a dig with the Localization Editor and by en large all of the Journals are predominantly text entries.

There is one glorious exception and thats the MinkataQuestJournal this has exactly what I am looking for with the only fly in the ointment being these are exports from 3Dmax and use that strange

minkQuestJournalQuest03a*1#0.hsm

format but they are followed by pos=0,0 so I am going to try that.

[update]
Nope but I suspect we do need that position qualifier.
[/update]
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Tue Jul 31, 2018 7:23 am

OK I have had some sucess.

I exported the DDS from the page

GUI_District_BkBook.prp
xbooknewpage*0#0.hsm

I editied this with paint.net pasted in my Page2.dds data

Now all of my pages in the book have this as a background and any text appears over the top

This means I should be able to put an image onto the page

I am now experimenting with the alpha

But it does look like this GUI_District_BkBook.prp is rife for experimentation. :)

Making the page a transparent layer gave me a Black page.. :(
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Wed Aug 01, 2018 2:11 am

Ok I have some conclusions as to the state of this exploration.

Back at my original request there appears looking at PrpShop that there is a way of embedding sound as it is playing the page turning audio. (For now I would suggest we leave this on a back burner as getting the graphics working would be a higher priority).

The method works when it comes to using the now embedded .dds file as a replacement cover for a closed book.

Plus any of the embedded .dds files can be used as a generic page this would allow us to have a standard page border or the illusion that the text was produced onto some fancy embossed paper by using paint.net to edit.

GUI_District_BkBook.prp
xbooknewpage*0#0.hsm

Then using PrpShop supplant the standard graphic with an alternative image.

Personally if I was going to tinker with one of the standard book forms I would be playing with the Notebook format if only because I like the book journal appearance and have always felt the Notebook appeared scruffy however that’s purely an aesthetic consideration.

In due course we could probably develop a sketch pad format and a single page note with a reverse face even a post-it note of varying colour but either way that is for future projects.

It is clear from looking at the Minkata quest journal that the <img src=”somename*0#0.hsm”> works.

In fact changing <img src=…. in any way flags an error.

The fact that a .dds file can be used without an error popping up would suggest that the problem is not in the localization. Even if it remains invisible.

The fact that the images can be used as covers or replacement generic pages suggests that the problem is not with the size or bit density of the image.

There has to be some difference in the structure and formatting of .hsm output from 3DMax over the .dds created by Korman. It is clear there is a difference in the file name extension.

We can use PrpShop to export the .hsm file but the very act of exporting it may change its structure.

Although I am looking at exporting one of those Minkata Quest pages to see if I can edit it and still have it play.

Even if I manage this I am left with the problem that they are part of the City age and not the Personal age.

I am convinced that some small change in the way Korman exports the embedded graphics when during export it converts them to the embedded .dds form and possibly just exporting them with PrpShop doing some small change with Paint.net and re-importing them may well solve the issue.

I am working exclusivly with the Korman MOUL export has anyone tried this with the Alcugs export I am reticent to try this and since my ages tend to need ladders and these only work in the MOUL export it would appear counter productive to get the book to work only to have the ladders fail.

At present my workflow method is built around exporting MOUL compatable ages and use with a dirtsand Shard.

[edit]
I tried exporting a Minkata quest page editing and re-importing no sucess so far.

However I did notice that the Minkata Quest page used a compresson type JPEG(ARGB8888) with Alpha Chanel selected and Alpha Bit off

My standard Page02.dds was DX1 Compression type Albha Bit set Alpha chanel off

I tried changing the AlphaBit and AlphaChannel on my Page02 no difference but the differnce may be in the differences between dds and Jpeg
[/edit]
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Sirius » Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:54 am

J'Kla wrote:However I did notice that the Minkata Quest page used a compresson type JPEG(ARGB8888) with Alpha Chanel selected and Alpha Bit off
My standard Page02.dds was DX1 Compression type Albha Bit set Alpha chanel off

Hmmm, yes, this could be the problem. Most GUI textures are JPEG ARGB, so maybe only those work. I don't know how we can force textures to be in this particular format, though...
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