new skin for Duke

[fairline]

Hi all, I have recently discovered RRT3 and started skinning locos; here's my first attempt, a reskin of the Duke in the late 19th Century livery of outside framed Great Western Railway locos:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/6742/dukescreenyrn3.th.png (http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dukescreenyrn3.png)

It works in-game but there are niggles that I'd like some help with. First, it has the infamous night-time 'glowing wheels and windows' produced apparently by the inaccurate resizing of the alpha-channel by the user skinning tools. I think I understand the 'get-round' thanks to reading notes by Bombadiere: I need to manually resize 5 or so repeatedly 50% reduced versions of my original skin tga rather than have the skinning tool automatically produce a DDS. However, I can't find the pk4 unpacker program produced I think by PJay in order to extract the files from my Duke pk4, as his site is no longer on-line. I have DL-ed Game translator v2 as it claimed to support pk4 format reading and extraction, but the free version does not do this.

Second, I have removed about 1/3 of the Duke's roof by adding to the alpha ransparency selection. It works OK, but an unsightly black line is left on the edges of the transparent section in-game. Anyone know a workaround?

Thirdly, how do I force the game to use my skin's recoloured wheels (the are brick-red in the skin)?

Thanks for your help :-D

[AZ Rail Rat]

Good job fairline . . . MUCH better than my first try at skinning the Duke::mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

http://www.users.qwest.net/%7Egreames/Ghost%20Duke.jpg

[hawkdawg]

Nice job on the Duke. :-D

I think this thread may touch on a couple of the issues you mentioned.

http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1042

[fairline]

Ah, thanks for the link there Hawkdawg - it confirms what I had read in this forum about the 'glow-in-the-dark' problem, and also a sensible solution in the form of forcing the alpha channels in reduced-size tga's to have max contrast, thereby getting rid of 'grey' pixels which are misinterpreted by the game.

I don't suppose either of you guys (or anyone else here) has PJay's pk4 extractor do you? I'd love to get my teeth into more advanced modding like creation of new locos, which need access to files trapped in the games pk4 archives.

@ AZ Rail Rat: ha, that's a little more transparency than I was after with the Duke's roof! :D

[hawkdawg]

From that same thread, 4th post down;

You'd need a PK4 unpacker, such as Watto Studios Game Extractor, to get to the 3DP files, and you'll need a Hex Editor such as Hexplorer to edit the contents of the BCA and BTY files.

I'm not sure if PJay's files are available anymore.

There's some discussion of creating new engines in one of the threads over there in that forum. There's also some new engines and rolling-stock available at this link; http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/xtras/xtras.htm

[fairline]

Yes, I have Watto's game translator. Unfortunately, the free v2 version does not have a plug-in for RRT3, despite the fact the fact that the Watto site claims it is supported. I guess I need to try and get hold of someone like Bombardiere who presumably has PJays extractor, although I assume he's no longer active. I discovered RRT3 a couple of years too late it seems :D

I've had a look round your (?) site and its great - lots of nice DL's I'll be trying out. Thanks for the link! Unfortunately the site registration doesn't like my googlemail e-mail so I can't post on your forum. Oh well......

[fairline]

Just realised my own dumb-ass mistake - I was using Watto's Game Translator, and I should have been using game extractor. Works like a charm. Thanks for the advice hawkdawg.

[hawkdawg]

Unfortunately the site registration doesn't like my googlemail e-mail so I can't post on your forum. Oh well......
There's ways around that if you're interested.
You could register with your ISP email address, then change it after you're registered.
I block GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo because of all the spammers that try to register using those accounts.

[fairline]

Yes I'm interested, but the reason I use googlemail is that my IPS assigned e-mail is buggered.

[hawkdawg]

I have unblocked Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo for the time being.
As to whether it stays unblocked or not depends on spammers.

[fairline]

Sorry to be a pain, but my gmail address is still persona non grata...

[hawkdawg]

It is gmail.com, right?

I'll look into it, I know I unblocked it, unless I have it in the list twice. I'll look.

[hawkdawg]

I just looked through the blocked list and the only thing I found was gmail.net, gmail.org, and googlemail.com.

I don't think Google uses the .net or the .org so that only leaves googlemail.
Are you using that?

I tried registering with a gmail.com address and that was successful.

[fairline]

unfortunately I have a googlemail.com address

I'm being awkward here aren't I? :D

[hawkdawg]

Try it now. :-D
You might have to clear your browser cache but try it without doing that first.

[fairline]

Thanks :)

Due to an amazing level of incompetence on my part I registered as a minor :D Ignore that one!

I have re-registered as fairline4 on a new yahoo account...

[hawkdawg]

I got 3 registrations from you.
The minor one.
fairline2 using a googlemail account
fairline4 using a Yahoo account.

So I can delete the other 2 and use the fairline4 registration?

Edit 1: I have activated the fairline4 account with the Yahoo email account.