Talking Books Help Required

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

Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:15 pm

J'Kla wrote:At this time thats way above my pay grade. :)
I might add all of these are also above my pay grade.

I don't see why. I also don't understand why my suggestions to your challenges are met with dismissal. If you ask for a solution, and I suggest the best possible route, but you dismiss it without even trying, why ask for help?

Anyway, none of us are getting paid, so I think our pay grades are all equally non-existent. :shock:
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Thu Aug 02, 2018 2:31 pm

Deledrius wrote:
J'Kla wrote:At this time thats way above my pay grade. :)
I might add all of these are also above my pay grade.

I don't see why. I also don't understand why my suggestions to your challenges are met with dismissal. If you ask for a solution, and I suggest the best possible route, but you dismiss it without even trying, why ask for help?

Anyway, none of us are getting paid, so I think our pay grades are all equally non-existent. :shock:


Show me a tutorial and I will have a crack at anything.

Naming something is not suggesting a solution and it is only being dismissed because at this time I have no idea how to do this.

I know what it is the concept is valid and I have taken on board the suggestion.

I know how to build ages and I have decoded how to build a LAN based shard and created idiot proof instructions so that anyone can do it.

I have to have a start point and at this time with no frame of reference "It is above my pay grade" is not a dismisal without trying. This is an avoidence of hacking blind.

I am not afraid to ask for help. Why do you think I keep making suggestions.

I know my limitations and until someone (and at this time that is not me) can figure out why the tag <img src= is not playing no mater if I do manage to create a new book type.

Look at all of the suggestions I have made to try and figure this out.

Please I am not dismissing your suggestions out of hand.

Thats why when I selected the quote I have highlighted At this time and by that I am suggesting that I do not know YET!

By the way where I come from and my history former military something "thats above my pay grade" implies that it is a job I am not qualified to do.

I know none of us get paid but your (and by "your" I do not mean you specificaly) skills level predicts the pay grade you would receive if you were paid.

At this time I lack the skills (pay grade) to make a new book type.

Please you have made an assumption that I am rejecting your suggestions.

All I am saying is I am the duty (old fart) idiot here I need slightly more than pointers.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Thu Aug 02, 2018 3:36 pm

I'm trying to work out the image problem right now. I can't get my journals to load pictures either at the moment, so "Please Stand By". ;)

J'Kla wrote:At this time I lack the skills (pay grade) to make a new book type.

Please you have made an assumption that I am rejecting your suggestions.

All I am saying is I am the duty (old fart) idiot here I need slightly more than pointers.

I'm saying that you're obviously a smart and persistent guy, and since you're willing to hack at something until you understand it, the better option is to hack at making a custom book instead of modifying an existing one that has hard limitations which run counter to your end goal. The way you want to do it may seem easier in the beginning but it's going to be harder to complete.


EDIT:

After quite a bit of trial-and-error, and Hoikas finding some important bits in the code, I think I have the information you need.

Turns out there are a couple of rules you need to follow in order to get inline images to work.

First of all, you were onto something with the DDS images. Hoikas discovered that the engine won't allow the use of any images compressed with DirectX compression here, so as stated earlier in the thread, any textures you want to use in a journal will need to have MIP Map disabled in the Image Sampling options (this option tells Korman to render multiple levels of quality for the image texture and produce a DXT-compressed texture -- we don't want or need this here). One very important thing to note is that Korman (currently, though this may change in a future version as we're considering solutions to streamline this process) will append .bmp to the name of your texture when it creates the uncompressed, single-level Mipmap, and this Mipmap name is the source you must specify in the image tag. For example, a texture named "Page01" will be "Page01.bmp". A texture named "Page01.jpg" will likewise become "Page01.bmp". This final name is the value you must use. You can browse the Mipmaps in your textures using PrpShop to double-check the correct name.

The other major limitation I've found is that it appears that images which are too large to fit on a page are simply ignored. I'm still looking into this, but there are a couple of HAX ( ;) ) you can use to work around this. The maximum image size looks like it's going to be a 512x512 texture. In order to make sure the picture will fit, you need to add some absolute positioning for an image that large to the image tag. Example: <img src="Page01.bmp" pos="0,0"> will place the image in the upper left corner (and if it's 512x512, it will take up the entire page). One thing to note is that the square image will be squashed to fit the book's width, so you'll want to make your images at the same aspect ratio as your chosen book (0.7:1, I think), and then stretch the texture to 512x512 before saving it. A quick calculation says that a 358x512 image should fit? This needs some extra investigation (and of course if you change the book scaling this ratio will be more extreme).

So, to reiterate and sum up:

  • Turn off MIP Map for any textures you intend to use in a journal, and note that the name to use in the src attribute will have .bmp appended to the end.
  • For large images, use absolute positioning and put the image origin in the upper left with pos="0,0". They will need to be pre-stretched to compensate for being squashed when rendered into the book.
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:09 am

Thanks for the EDIT I will get on this today. ;)

[update]
Yes that works

There is a matter of polish.

Your correct in that I now need to create a new bkBrochure.prp

In this the cover needs to be the same size as the pages I dare say bkNotebook would be a better start point as the covers are the same size as the pages so I will explore this first.

I need to loose those turned corners of the page they are not necessary and distract from the look of the page.

I need a back cover in the same way as we have a front cover for the time being I am using a double last page as the back of the brochure is just the exhibition logo.

Thanks for you help in getting to this as its nailed the proof of concept.

Aside from trying the notebook option it is just a case of rattling cages here to get somene to look at the finished item. :)
[/update]

[update2]
Ok Notebook still has this little bit of overlap where you see the supposed inside of the cover poking over the the ouside edge where in a normal hardback book the cover is just that little bit bigger than the page size, with a paperback or a brochure the cover and page are exactly the same size.

Strictly speaking you should not see this on the bkNotebook model.

The page corner on a brochure has no defined colour for the next page the generic Notebook page is white with some fine lines. and the default book corner is that yellowed page.

Sometimes it just shows the ghosting of the dog eared corner its not a big issue just something for me to work on. ;)
[/update2]
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Fri Aug 03, 2018 2:44 am

OK. I have got rid of the turned corners they are still there but the image is a complete image thats effectivly an alpha chanel so therefore transparent.

OK. I accept this is a hack work around but it will do for now.

[method]
I used PhpShop to export the corner images as .dds

I then opened them with Paint.net and made them blank erazing the yellowed parts and re saved them.

This left them with the .dds extensions which I then removed.

Because I knew the names of the files without the extensions I was able to import them back into PhpShop even though they could not be seen by the importer.
[/method]

Now my book pages do not have yellowed dogeared page corners.
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New Book Types

Postby J'Kla » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:39 am

Deledrius wrote: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.


Is there a process to create a new book type and if so where do I find details?

Is there a Tutorial for this?
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby Deledrius » Fri Aug 03, 2018 12:06 pm

J'Kla wrote:This left them with the .dds extensions which I then removed.

Because I knew the names of the files without the extensions I was able to import them back into PhpShop even though they could not be seen by the importer.


Why do this?
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Re: Talking Books Help Required

Postby J'Kla » Fri Aug 03, 2018 1:10 pm

Becuse when I imported them with the .dds extension they did not work.

It appears that the generic page is looking for that file name not one with a .dds extension.

I tried editing the file name it was looking for and it did not work

If I remove the .dds extension then import them with the original name the only thing that changes is the content the file.

And it works.

When I have tried it other ways it did not work.

I am posting my method so that it is repeatable if someone else wants to do the same.

Also because at this time there is no tutorial or instruction on buillding a bkBrochure.prp from scratch.

If it works and I get the required result and the program does not fall on its arse do I really need a reason. ;)

Just in case I forgot earlier thanks for the help.

You asked earlier why I was not hacking at finding a way to make a custom book.

Simple answer I tried and the progam fell on its arse about three times and twice it plain just did not work.

Tired of beating my head against the wall I walked around the listings and found something I could change in the short term that would give me the result I was after.

Long off topic aside hidden behind spoiler tags (pull up a sandbag and I will tell you a story).
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