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Windows Vista and Textures: A Problem No More! (Bugfix on Pg. 1)

Started by allan_kuan1992, July 01, 2008, 08:26:06 PM

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allan_kuan1992

Well... the topic sums up the problem somewhat. It's with me running Windows Vista and trying to run some FSH editing programs on it.

Lately, I've been wanting to edit some FSH files in some SimCity DATs. Opening them in LE, ILive Reader, and ingame all work well, and all textures are displayed. However, the issue comes when I try to open FSHs in both FiSHMan and SC4Tool.

In SC4Tool, the exemplars show, but no image of the texture is displayed.

In FiSHMan, the program displays an error when trying to open the file.

In both cases I am unable to edit, modify, or extract any textures. I have ideas on editing them, and I've tried to find solutions, but this has gone on for some time. I'd really appreciate it if someone could help me become a more active texture maker again like I was before my complete move over to Windows Vista from Windows XP.

- Allan Kuan

allan_kuan1992


vester


jestarr

If you're running any 64 bit variant, you're out of luck.  16 bit programs won't run, unless you use an emulator.  If you're using a 32 bit system, try running it in compatibility mode with administrator rights, (the same applies to SC4Tool) and see if that helps.  Dos Box works with Vista (both x86 and x64) and is the emulator I use most.  Cheers!

vester

Thanks Jestarr. Good to know. Am thinking of buying a 64 bit system at one point.

allan_kuan1992

very still stuck in the dark. >.<

even though there is a workaround from Wou, it's impossible to use the workaround to create alpha textures.

So far compatibility mode doesn't work, even though I'm running 32-bit Windows Vista Home Premium.

And do you want me to attach every texture that I want to convert? There's a lot. :D

- Allan Kuan

Rayden

I've been working a lot with converting textures from and to fsh, and it seems to work OK. I have Vista 64bits. My only problem, common to everyone else is the TE editor of SC4Tool. I still work with it, but I'm not able to see the base textures, which doesn't stop me from still working it around.
By the way, I don't use FSHMan, but another 32bits application, SC4FSHConverter. :)

SimFox

SC4FSHConverter, you say???
And where one could be found?

nerdly_dood

I'd REALLY love to know where to get a program equivalent to FiSHMan that works with Vista.  I used to be able to crank out police car skins like they were nothing - see the links in my signature - but I used a piece-of-crap laptop running Windows 2000 for that. (It didn't even meet the minimum requirements for SC4) But now I have a much better computer which has Windows Vista x64 and so of course I'm stuck without FiSHMan. I think SimFox's latest post in this thread sums up my thoughts nicely:

Quote from: SimFox on August 30, 2008, 08:20:05 AM
SC4FSHConverter, you say???
And where one could be found?
My days here are numbered. It's been great and I've had a lot of fun, but I've moved on to bigger and better things.
—   EGO  VOBIS  VADELICO   —
Glory be unto the modder and unto the fun and unto the city game!

allan_kuan1992

Well... uh... i dunno if i should mention it... $%Grinno$%
Umm I think Wou wanted us to keep it a secret...
However the workaround found doesn't work with alpha textures. &mmm And that's where I am stuck right now... because I got some PNG files that I want to convert into alpha overlay SC4FSH texture files.

- Allan Kuan

dedgren

Ahh, the joys of continuing to run Windows XP Pro.

I never thought I'd say that, but the only thing that shuts off the 'puter these days, going back maybe a year and a half, are power failures and trips away when we more or less shut up the house.  So we're what, into XP about six, seven years now?  Hard to go wrong at this point.


David
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

Tarkus

There is also the EA Graphics Editor.  The page says "NBA Live Series", but it creates FSH files, which are common to many EA games, actually.

I'd also have to concur with David here about XP.  I just bought a new laptop a couple weeks ago, and it had Vista Home Premium on it--quite sluggish.  However, I immediately pulled it off and put XP SP2 on it.  Runs like a charm--just make sure you can find the XP drivers for all your devices first.

-Alex (Tarkus)

nerdly_dood

#12
Oooh I MUST try this EA graphics editor...

WOW, this thing is AWESOME! it is a freaking drawing program that woks on FSH files, it doesn't just convert to and from FSH and it supports a lot more image formats than just PNG... daaaamn I can definitely get back on re-skinning cop cars with this! Thanks a million tarkus!

Hey if I play wth this enough I might make a tutorial out of it...

Hmmm very sluggish menus... and I don't know how to save the alpha map as a separate image... But I did get the skin of one of my police cars saved as a PNG.
You can see that quality was reduced at some point, and I'm reasonably sure that the muddling of the image is an artifact of the way FiSHMan works with them, because if I look closely at the car in SC4, it looks muddled in places, the very same places where it's muddled here.

Okay so I have the image edited somewhat so I'll try and see if I can use this EA program to put the new skin in-game... I already have some suitable alpha maps that survived the death of my laptop so I can use those when the time comes. Aaaand somehow I managed to turn the entire FSH transparent... I really do have some tinkering to do with this thing.
My days here are numbered. It's been great and I've had a lot of fun, but I've moved on to bigger and better things.
—   EGO  VOBIS  VADELICO   —
Glory be unto the modder and unto the fun and unto the city game!

Jonathan

#13
Sorry for bumping but I found a tool that works while FiSHMan, SC4Tool and EaGraph don't on my PC.
It's here: http://www.nba2kstuff.org/nba/download/2006/setup_wDOLFFIN.exe.htm
It's from this website and was on a lot of the NHL websites (EA hockey game that uses FSH as well)
http://www.nba2kstuff.org/nba/download/home2k56.html

If you get an error message needing a dll you can get it here:
http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dx8vb.dll
Put that in C:\Windows\System

You need to export the fsh from the dat (as usual)
open it in the Dolffin, then click on the texture in the left list box, and then click the blue circle with yellow X in it in the toolbar and the rest should be obvious.

I've tried and it seems to work great, Also can convert back to FSH and supports alphas :)

EDIT: There are a few bugs such as you can't create new FSH, so you to convert from png to fsh you have to export from the reader a random FSH then replace the blob in that.
Also don't save it ust wait till a filename.bak.fsh file appears in the folder that you opened the FSH in and then close the program Without saving and filename.fsh will be the png you converted into fsh while the .bak.fsh will be the one you replaced. Saving corrupts the fsh file.

Also don't click import or export without selecting a blob, or it will crash.

Jonathan

Jonathan

I think the problem is not the Tools them selves, but the dll called FSHLib, I'm not "hot" on programming, only tools that use this dll have a problem, I tried programming a VB app that uses it and it came up with the same problem, also the reader and dolffin don't use this dll and they work.

So I'm guessing it tries to reference/use something that was removed in Vista?
Where does this dll come from and is there source code that could be fixed?

Jonathan

null45

Quote from: WarriorWhere does this dll come from and is there source code that could be fixed?

The dll is part of DatGen 4.

The source code can be obtained by using .NET Reflector

the problem in the code is i think it tries to set the color palette to one that has 0 colors.

the code
colorArray.Length would be zero colors unless it is a 8 Bit Indexed fsh, then the colorArray.Length would be greater than zero



null45


allan_kuan1992

#18
WOW... nice fix =O

Now... can you also patch SC4Tool? =)

- Allan Kuan

null45

#19
The SC4Tool problem is with fsh textures?

In that case the problem may be fixed by replacing the FSHLib dll with the vista friendly version.

FSHLib vista: http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2250

it should overwrite the old version

The file version number on the vista friendly version should be: 0.3.1.32186

Requirements: Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0