Talking Books Help Required

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

Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:10 am

Would there be a way to export them as .dds modify them in some external package and import them back in the right format?

Ok it would be fiddly and a klunky but may give us a work around for the time being.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Sirius » Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:34 am

Hey, now that I think about it, PyPRP does support the jpeg argb8 format. Old fan-ages have custom images in their journal - I just checked Oolbahnneea which contains one such texture.
I don't remember if there was a specific step to export those textures though. But if you can get your textures to export in a very simple Age, you can probably export-import them from the PyPRP files into the Korman files. PrpShop usually handles any required conversion between the PotS and MOUL format, so it's worth a shot.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Wed Aug 01, 2018 12:52 pm

PrpShop should let you embed a JPEG instead of a DDS if you want to test that.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Wed Aug 01, 2018 1:09 pm

PrpShop says the MinkataQuest file is JPEG(ARGB8888) with Alpha Channel selected and Alpha Bit off so I need export the .dds file somhow convert it to JPEG(ARGB8888) import it then set the Alpha Channel and set the Alpha Bit off.

I can use Paint.net to convert the file to a JPEG but I tried that and ended up witha generic Jpeg that failed to do the business it is this JPEG(ARGB8888) specification thats been eluding me.

This is obviously some sort of standard I have been looking at various paint packages I have a few still to explore Macromedia Fireworks and I have access to Adobe Photoshop CS2.

But considering that the Cyan tools are using Autodesk Studio 3DMax I have access to some other Autodesk so I am going to explore there first.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Tsar Hoikas » Wed Aug 01, 2018 4:06 pm

Exporting JPEG textures with Korman is not supported (and probably never will be). If you want to avoid the generation of mip levels inherent in the DDS format, I suggest you disable MIP Mapping (under "Image Sampling") on the image. It will then be exported as an uncompressed bitmap. Future versions of Korman will assist in exporting images for journals such that hidden planes are not needed... We're not there yet though ;)
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:00 am

I have done a quick experiment switching off mipmap in Image Sampling.

This stopped the image working as a book cover when you view the book.

I am going to look into this further but at the moment that looks like a dead fix.

It looks like mipmapping might not be the issue.

I understand that there is stuff in the Korman pipeline I am just testing and working on workarounds.

Part of this spots things that are not working.

I want to assure you that I am not disapointed with where Korman stands at the moment. :)
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Thu Aug 02, 2018 12:52 am

I don't remember the details, but could this be a conflict with the auto-language-naming thing for notebook textures?
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:41 am

The idea was sound Hoikas but I do not think the problem is actually in the way the graphics are being stored.

The fact that the .dds format as it stands is fine when it comes to the localization command

<cover src=

Plus when I replace xbooknewpage*0#0 in the GUI_District_BkBook.prp with one of the .dds files it appears on every page.

This would suggest that the problem lies in the way the command

<img src=

Is NOT handling the .dds file but is capable of handling the .hsm (Jpeg file)

I believe we need to look at that <img src= rather than trying to make the .dds more like the .hsm file. We need to make the <img src= handle the graphic in the same way <cover src= does its business.

If this needs to wait till the next incarnation of Korman then so be it.

You may have gathered I am trying to make a brochure with mixed content pages appear as an in game book and while I would like this to happen quickly I do understand that this is not a quick process. I do have a temporary work around publishing those pages as posters on the walls of my age.

My process is more about pushing the boundaries of what we can do with this game engine if on the way it should add to what we can do in the game that has to be a benifit. ;)
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Thu Aug 02, 2018 5:37 am

As I said, I think the best solution there is to create a bkBrochure GUI that will function how you want, instead of hacking the bkNotebook, since you may still want to use standard notebooks. Then you can just change the GUI type for your brochures, and set a max width appropriate to the images you have as well.

I'll try to look into the image thing in my own notebooks and see if I can narrow down the problem for you, as it does appear to matter what the source is for the image tags (they aren't commands, this is markup. Think HTML if you need something to compare this to).
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Aug 02, 2018 6:13 am

I don't doubt that making some sort of bkBrochure GUI is probably the way to go.

At this time thats way above my pay grade. :)

I understand what you are saying and I can now see these < > brackets are markup tag indicators.

Either way the markup for <img src= falls over because it does not know how to handle a .dds file when the <cover src= handles the same .dds file.

I like the idea of a bkBrochure and I can see how that could be extended to make a bkPostIt and a bkScribbledNote a bkMap and a bkSketchPad.

I might add all of these are also above my pay grade.

One of the options I would see the bkBrochure having is a back cover at present a book or a notebook finishes on the last page with an entry but a brochure quite often uses the back as more space for advertising.

As I say for now I have a work around using posters. I figured I had to have the pages somewhere in the age so I may as well have them visable rather than having them hidden.

At some point we are going to need linking books anyways.

Having a sound file attached takes me back to the original idea and it has allready been done. I am thinking here with the note in the cleft.

Ok this is a one page affair but it does show the concept holds water.
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