Graphic Modifications

Information, How-to's, and discussion about mod'ing Master of Orion II.
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Marco
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Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Sat Apr 22, 2017 2:28 am

Hello out there,

I'm currently looking into the file formats in Master of Orion 2.
While experimenting with the graphics I created two files I'd like to share with you.

This one makes all ships of the blue player in tactical combat look like the enterprise:
http://www.filedropper.com/cmbtshplbx

This one was made for this forum (don't skip the intro logos):
http://www.filedropper.com/logolbx

Have fun,
Marco

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Rocco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Rocco » Sun Apr 23, 2017 6:53 pm

These links are weird, they don't seem to contain actual files.

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Marco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Sun Apr 23, 2017 11:32 pm

Why are they weird? I've just checked the links and I can download and unzip the files without any problem.

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Rocco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Rocco » Mon Apr 24, 2017 6:05 am

i see, i tried to do 'save target as..' but you have to go to the site first to find a download button.

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Marco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:16 am

As a hobby project I'm currently writing an application to view and edit the LBX files in the game. It doesn't have a lot of features, right now its main feature is to view and save the game's graphic and cursor files. I thought I share it with you now, maybe it will be useful for somebody.
If you play around with it and find an error or a graphic using the wrong palette please let me know.
You can download it here (win32):
http://fmoo2.bplaced.net/fmoo2-tool-20180326dev.zip

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Rocco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Rocco » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:17 am

Ok, with your program its easier to quickly browse pics compared with the MoO2 Workshop.
That program should have palette descriptions, have you looked at it?
The MoO2 Workshop is very useful for importing own/customized pictures and then create a new lbx with it.

Btw, I get a consistent crash when playing a 2nd music file:
I do View/Sound, then select a file to play, then another file, and crash.

Keep up the good work!

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Marco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Tue Apr 03, 2018 11:40 am

Thank you for testing. Indeed I forgot to remove the sound tests, I just played around with it a little bit. I have looked into the MoO2 Workshop, but it has a few errors - for example if you try to open my "enterprise mod" with it it will crash, but the game itself displays it fine. Sadly I couldn't reach him.
I also looked at his palette descriptions - but some aren't correct. I focused on displaying the graphics correctly, but that doesn't mean that the game uses the same palette as some palettes have duplicates. That's why I added the ability to alter the palettes - to make it easier to track down the exact palette used by the game.

My next tasks are Importing and Exporting palette files to/from gimp gpl palette files and then importing image files to game graphics. But this all depends on the correct palettes being used and then still the coloring of the fonts needs to be adressed when changing the palettes - so there's a lot to do ;)

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Rocco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Rocco » Sat May 26, 2018 5:46 am

Hi again-
just curious if you have made any progress on the fmoo2-tool?
it would be helpful if the program could save all images from a lbx to bmp files in one go, instead of doing them one by one.
(some files contains hundreds of pics - I am specifically looking to export to bmp all pics from the cmbship and ships lbx-es)
is it possible to make?

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Marco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Sun May 27, 2018 6:34 am

Hi Rocco,
thank you for your interest and your input - it's very much appreciated.
I'm currently busy with things I have to do for university, but I'm looking forward to work on it during the summer vacations. Most of the functionality is only available on the command line right now (like importing graphics), I'm planning to release the source code after my exams.
Concerning your feature request - I added a button "unpack" to the main lbx overview, it will unpack all graphics in the selected lbx file. I'm using png files for this because bmp lacks transparency.
You can find the updated program here:
http://fmoo2.bplaced.net/fmoo2-tool-20180527dev.zip

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Rocco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Rocco » Sun May 27, 2018 10:05 am

Great, it works. Thanks for adding that option, really helpful!

clembo
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby clembo » Fri Dec 07, 2018 3:42 pm

@Marco, I'm just curious, have you been able to make any further progress on this tool? Either way, thank you for the tool :D

I'm just a lurker, but I really do appreciate all the work that guys like you ... Rocco, Overlord2, Lord Brazen, et al. have put into this wonderful old game.

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Marco
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Re: Graphic Modifications

Postby Marco » Sat Dec 15, 2018 4:24 am

Hi Clembo,

thank you for your interest, that's part of what development keeps going.

I'm currently reworking my code and publishing it as open source software on my github page (https://github.com/MarcoKull). I have already created a library and a tool to manage the lbx files. The tool is very simple and can be used to pack and extract files, but I kept it generic to also work with the other games using this format.
Right know I'm working on the library to manage the resource files specific to moo2. My intention is to create a tool based on this library afterwards. I did not yet start the development for the tool, so if somebody has suggestions on the gui design feel free to contact me.


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