Texture dumping works, texture loading does not

[goody_fyre11]

I'm having trouble with the texture dumping/loading feature.  If I enable texture dumping, it works perfectly.  All textures dump into textures/gameid/dumps.  However, if I modify those textures, move them into textures/gameid/replacements and enable custom texture loading, they don't load.  I've made absolute certain that they're both the exact same filename as the originals, the exact same file type as the originals, and the exact same compression method as the originals.  It doesn't work for any game in my library.  What am I doing wrong?

Edit: Ignore this, a tool I was using was adding an extra space to the filename. Also, why doesn't this forum let you delete your own posts?

[IPlayWithHex]

I dunno why... because of reasons and stuff?

I've been reading through the BPH thread and I'm up to page 226. It's mentioned early on in that thread that there is a hidden part of the board that only mods see that is basically an archive of all the deleted posts.

[IPlayWithHex]

By way of giving this thread some purpose.... texture dumping/loading IS indeed broken in Champions of Norrath. When you attempt to dump textures, the game will repeatedly dump duplicate textures over and over for infinity - even when you standing in one area and not changing areas. In just 5 minutes you can have several GBs of textures! DON'T try/test this on an SSD!

Also the textures themselves appear broken and skewed and generally unusable.

Edit: I'm only referring to the first Champions of Norrath here ^^
This is the only game I've experienced issues with texture dumping/loading. I haven't tested other Snowblind engine games....

[goody_fyre11]

I've actually been using the texture dumper/loader without issues, however the textures dump partially transparent. I've heard this is a PS2 limitation but there's a custom build made by Rexis which doesn't have this issue. Whenever I try to modify any of the textures they just turn invisible.

[IPlayWithHex]

Yeah, Champions of Narroth is the only game I found that has issues with texture dumping/loading.

About your texture transparency issue - this is what I do:

Import the texture in Gimp. Go to Layer-->Transparency--> Threshold Alpha. Don't touch anything, just click OK. The texture will now be(appear!) totally solid(technically, the alpha channel is still there). Make your edits. When finished go back to Layer-->Transparency--> Threshold Alpha. This time move the value to 1.0000(full) and click the + next to Blending Options and change Opacity to 50.0 -- leave Mode at default(Replace). Click OK and export to your desired format.

Edit: I actually just recently encountered a game where the Alpha channels in it's textures where set differently and the default Alpha Threshold settings on Gimp would turn it's textures completely transparent. 

So, in this case I had to move the value to 0.0 initially, to make the texture fully solid. Then, after making my edits, when I went back to the Alpha Threshold setting before exporting, I had to adjust the value to 1.0 and Opacity to around 80 to 90 to get the Alpha channel back to how it was originally.

So, it's like Refraction says below -- not every PS2 game handles transparency the same.
-- end of edit

I don't use Paint.Net, Photoshop, etc., But, if you do, they may have similar features to adjust transparency threshold.

[refraction]

We also have a python script for converting the alphas back and forth, but it really depends how the game uses them. https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/blob/mast..._scaler.py

as an aside, it's not a limitation of the PS2, but PC's. the PS2 had an alpha range of 0-2, where PC's only have a range of 0-1, both which represent it with 0-255, so to represent 1 (which is still the normal opacity on PS2 and PC) it has to be 128, which gets interpreted as 0.5 (50%) on PC.

[goody_fyre11]

If it's understood how it works, why not make PCSX2 do the conversion automatically? The Rexis custom build dumps textures that look correct and everything still works fine.

On a seperate note, another game in my library - Star Wars Starfighter - disables custom textures during its loading screens, you have to toggle them back on after each one. So weird.

[refraction]

Because some games will use an alpha higher than 1 in their textures, and converting it will break it.