Replacing Road Texture Mod

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Hello,

I'm trying to create a road texture mod, but I never made textures for SC4. So I started by opening the NetworkWideningMod.dat file, and editing one of the road textures (The TLA-5) and only edited the one with no wealth textures to test it out. I used ilive reader to export them as .PNG, and then edited them, then I used the SC4 Tool to create new .dat, put the textures in, used the instance ID from ilive to replace the texture, and saved it. (Yes, transportation texture was checked)

 

Added the .dat file to plugins and made sure it loaded last.

Problem is, the texture won't show up in-game! I'm stumped and at at loss here... What can this road Newbie modder do?

 

(I wanted to first try on maxis' road texture, but after searching through the SC1,2,3,4,and 5.Dat files, I couldn't find the maxis road/avenue fsh files for the life of me! All I kept finding was building textures...)

Please help!

 

Thanks!

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Please take a look at You may find some tools and methods there, as well as a huge PNG based road texture database.

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Please take a look at You may find some tools and methods there, as well as a huge PNG based road texture database.

Thanks for the link,

I just have one more question.. where's the data base? I can't sift through the thousands of files in ireader, and everytime I use the arrow keys in ireader I get some sort of "invalid argument error" and have to end process to close the program. Anywhere I can find the texture files for say..the Maxis avenue? Thanks!

 

[MandelSoft 2,775]

See that very same topic at the bottom post of page 1

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Thanks MandelSoft!

 

I finally got the first textures working (after like 20 tries)

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

Just one small problem though...

I managed to fix the sidewalks but when I zoom out the sidewalks turn black, yet they only appear at lowest two zooms. Why?

[Magneto 316]

Superb! I lThey both look realistic and have that "maxis feel" that I like a lot.

 

As for your sidewalk problems, did you set transparency for the textures (alpha channel)? The part where the sidewalks should appear have to remain transparent...

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Superb! I lThey both look realistic and have that "maxis feel" that I like a lot.

 

As for your sidewalk problems, did you set transparency for the textures (alpha channel)? The part where the sidewalks should appear have to remain transparent...

 

How do you do that? I used paint.net to create another layer then copied the texture to the new one and deleted the old layer as well as the gray/black stuff outside of it. I need help creating these :/

[Magneto 316]

Well yeah I never used Paint for that task as it isn't very flexible for transparency... I suggest you get a more advanced image editor such as Photoshop or GIMP; the latter is freeware and quite easy to use

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Any guide on how to create alpha with GIMP?

[MandelSoft 2,775]

It's pretty easy: if the image has an alpha layer, everything you delete will be transparent (if it's right, you see a checkerboard pattern). If not, open the Layers tab, right-click on the layer and select "Add alpha layer" and then the background can be transparent

For the texture itself, it looks excellent. Probably not going to use it, because it doesn't fit inside my cities, but it's very different from the rest of the texture and I think people will appreciate that

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Thanks, but I right clicked the layer on the layer window (in GIMP) but it there's no "add an alpha layer" option on there. Do I click "remove alpha channel"?

I'm using the textures from the PNG database

[Magneto 316]

That's weird, most of the textures from the database already have transparency...What is the texture ID you used? In any case don't remove alpha channel, you need to keep it or the texture will lose transparency.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

I love that road texture, it has a great West Coast feel about it!

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

That's weird, most of the textures from the database already have transparency...What is the texture ID you used? In any case don't remove alpha channel, you need to keep it or the texture will lose transparency.

What do you mean by "remove alpha channel"? All I did was this:

 

The original file name was  (Ex: 7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B01310E.png) I renamed it to (0x5B01310E.png)

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

What do you mean by "remove alpha channel"? All I did was this:

 

The original file name was  (Ex: 7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B01310E.png) I renamed it to (0x5B01310E.png)

Most textures that require sidewalks to show through require that there be an accompanying image that's used for the transparency. In your instance, that file would be 0x5b01310e_a.png. When you export your png files to fsh, you need both the original texture and the alpha. Otherwise, sidewalks won't show. Take this, for example: this is my own texture dev for a dark(er) RHW texture set.

 

 

Notice how 0x57001014.png has an accompanying 0x57001014_a.png file? That's the alpha transparency used to cut holes in the first image so the sidewalks can show. In theory, you could cut holes yourself in the original texture, but this would actually take longer to do (and having tried it myself, I can say don't try it and do keep the files that end with _a in the name; if you're keeping the original sidewalks in their original places, handling transparencies like this is actually the easiest method, particularly for wealth textures).

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

 

What do you mean by "remove alpha channel"? All I did was this:

 

The original file name was  (Ex: 7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B01310E.png) I renamed it to (0x5B01310E.png)

Most textures that require sidewalks to show through require that there be an accompanying image that's used for the transparency. In your instance, that file would be 0x5b01310e_a.png. When you export your png files to fsh, you need both the original texture and the alpha. Otherwise, sidewalks won't show. Take this, for example: this is my own texture dev for a dark(er) RHW texture set.

 

 

Notice how 0x57001014.png has an accompanying 0x57001014_a.png file? That's the alpha transparency used to cut holes in the first image so the sidewalks can show. In theory, you could cut holes yourself in the original texture, but this would actually take longer to do (and having tried it myself, I can say don't try it and do keep the files that end with _a in the name; if you're keeping the original sidewalks in their original places, handling transparencies like this is actually the easiest method, particularly for wealth textures).

 

 

Ohhh now I see it, I didn't know I had to use those...I was wondering what those where for!

Thanks

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Never mind, I tried putting the alpha in, but it's still the same problem:

 

The sidewalks only appear in the 2 closest zooms, then they turn black if I zoom further /:

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Hmmm, this is definitely strange. What conversion software do you use to transform the PNGs into textures?

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

PNG to FSH Batch converter

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Hmmm... It should do that. Can you post the raw PNG files here so I can look what's wrong with them?

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Hmmm... It should do that. Can you post the raw PNG files here so I can look what's wrong with them?

How do you attatch something on this forums? Can't find a way

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Wow! It's awesome! Wonderful job.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

Go to "More Reply Options". There you'll find at the bottom of the text box a button that says "attach files"

[pcwhiz24 1,187]

Here you go:

[MandelSoft 2,775]

I've ran the textures through the PNG-to-FSH Batch (version 1.5.0.4) and I experienced no problems on my end. A few things you can check.

- Go to the location where you installed the PNG to FSH Batch and open Groupid.txt. This file contains an eight digit hex ID. Is this ID "1ABE787D". If not, change it.

- Check if your alpha maps match with their corresponding colour textures (for instance, I'm missing the alpha maps from 0x5114000E and 0x51100014 in the above attachments.)

Best,

Maarten

[packersfan 666]

Those are GREAT textures.  I'm a complete $%&^! at this and I'm going to try to do some grass texture replacements to better blend between Lowkee's Appalacian terrain at lots, etc.