Gone FSHin'

[rivit 3,391]

Just a short note to say that GoFSH 3.7.8 is now officially available here - this also includes some improvements in Bender. 

This version blows away the previous in terms of performance and is now really the version to have if you are running texture scripts.

[junspud 1,066]

Tried to find it in the User Guide, but how do you go about using GoFSH to create new overlay textures from bmp files from scratch, like you would in SC4Tool, as opposed to editing existing ones?

[rsc204 21,839]

You need both the C0 and A0 (Alpha Channel) textures, when you load either and use the Encode function, it will convert them into FSH files. The filenames of such textures dictate the IDs, here is a sample pair for reference:

Archive.zip

As with any operation, ticking the Reader InList function, generates a .txt file, which can be used with the FSHxDAT function later. Doing so will add all the textures you Encoded into a .DAT file you can place into Plugins.

[rivit 3,391]

7 hours ago, junspud said:

GoFSH to create new overlay textures from bmp files from scratch

Overlay textures always have transparency, and the Group ID 0986135E, and have 5 mips. Largest mip must end in 4,9,E.  If it doesnt have transparency you get a Lot base texture.

name the color as TGI - 7AB50E44-0986135E-IID-C0.bmp., and an alpha with some holes (not white 255) in it - TGI-A0.bmp. 

Tick make 5 set/ halve. Load C0,A0 as usual, GoFSH will see its got transparency and make the 5 mips into a set of 5 fsh. The smallest ending in 0,5 or A, the largest 4,9,E.

If you're taking a network texture to an overlay - if its a puzzle piece (darker) then color correct ZtoL, if its say a street (normal network) color correct NtoL for perfect joins.

[junspud 1,066]

I've been using the SAMxSAM Transitions script/textures, but I'm having trouble understanding how some of it works. Most of the transitions for rural SAM textures have alphas which include a pink layer, presumably for dirt?

For example '7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5E5C4B04-D0' is all pink. But when I run the script, it seems like it gets ignored, and a transition with a sidewalk is still generated. Does the script have to be modified for it to generate dirt textures?

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious.. Thanks.

[Flann 1,709]

54 minutes ago, junspud said:

I've been using the SAMxSAM Transitions script/textures, but I'm having trouble understanding how some of it works. Most of the transitions for rural SAM textures have alphas which include a pink layer, presumably for dirt?

Actually, pink (magenta) means there's white in both the red and blue channels.  The blue channel is the alpha definition for wealths 1-3.  So if you take the blue channel and subtract the green channel (which defines the road itself) you'd be left with just the areas that would be filled in with grass.  Here's an example:

RGB:

Blue (alpha for 1-3)

Green (road cutout)

Difference:

There you see the areas for which grass will be substituted on wealth 1-3.  If you repeat this process but subtract green from red, you get areas for which grass will be substituted for wealths 4-6:

 

54 minutes ago, junspud said:

For example '7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5E5C4B04-D0' is all pink. But when I run the script, it seems like it gets ignored, and a transition with a sidewalk is still generated.

The script is set to generate wealth 1-3, so you'll get grass in place of pink for 1-3, and since 4-6 don't exist, the game uses the alpha for 0 (same as green channel) and substitutes sidewalk on the fly in the black areas.  If GoFSH is set to generate 1-6, you'd have a grass texture to use instead.

54 minutes ago, junspud said:

Does the script have to be modified for it to generate dirt textures?

Apologies if I'm missing something obvious.. Thanks.

The dirt texture is applied in place of sidewalks for networks along agricultural zones, is that what you mean?

[rivit 3,391]

thanks @Flann, could not have explained it better myself.  

[junspud 1,066]

5 hours ago, Flann said:

Actually, pink (magenta) means there's white in both the red and blue channels.  The blue channel is the alpha definition for wealths 1-3.  So if you take the blue channel and subtract the green channel (which defines the road itself) you'd be left with just the areas that would be filled in with grass.  Here's an example:

RGB:

Blue (alpha for 1-3)

Green (road cutout)

Difference:

There you see the areas for which grass will be substituted on wealth 1-3.  If you repeat this process but subtract green from red, you get areas for which grass will be substituted for wealths 4-6:

 

The script is set to generate wealth 1-3, so you'll get grass in place of pink for 1-3, and since 4-6 don't exist, the game uses the alpha for 0 (same as green channel) and substitutes sidewalk on the fly in the black areas.  If GoFSH is set to generate 1-6, you'd have a grass texture to use instead.

The dirt texture is applied in place of sidewalks for networks along agricultural zones, is that what you mean?

Thanks I didn't even think of that, that the colors would be blended even though it's pretty obvious I guess lol.

I was wanting it to be dirt for every wealth. I think if I modify the textures by hand to include dirt and then put them in a new folder with blank alphas and add a 'generate W16F'  into the script for the folder it should work that way.

[Flann 1,709]

2 hours ago, junspud said:

Thanks I didn't even think of that, that the colors would be blended even though it's pretty obvious I guess lol.

I was wanting it to be dirt for every wealth. I think if I modify the textures by hand to include dirt and then put them in a new folder with blank alphas and add a 'generate W16F'  into the script for the folder it should work that way.

Personally, I would modify the D0s such that they're just magenta everywhere except for the road, then run the script and have GoFSH use the dirt texture for each of the grass textures instead.

If you have photoshop you can record a series of actions to fill the red and blue channels entirely with white.  Then use the automate function to do an entire folder of D0s.

[rsc204 21,839]

Honestly I don’t see the value in messing around with dirt base textures for the SAM transitions, unless your SAM networks also use dirt. Otherwise you’ll end up transitioning from Sidewalks to Dirt to Grass in the space of three tiles, which for me would look out of place. If you only want dirt for rural areas, you should add a w7 texture to the set, specifically for rural (I-AG) zoning, so as to keep the regular wealthing system for the 1-3 and 4-6 textures.

Instead I’ve tried to end any sidewalks gradually and transition to grass in one go, simply because that’s how the surrounding textures match. Note that a lot of the alphas from TGN have been specifically changed to improve this area. Even so many are just quick and dirty for now, since there are so many to do, it’ll take some time before I finalise them all. But I’ve some neat ones (unreleased) for my own SAM sets. 

[junspud 1,066]

11 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Honestly I don’t see the value in messing around with dirt base textures for the SAM transitions, unless your SAM networks also use dirt. Otherwise you’ll end up transitioning from Sidewalks to Dirt to Grass in the space of three tiles, which for me would look out of place. If you only want dirt for rural areas, you should add a w7 texture to the set, specifically for rural (I-AG) zoning, so as to keep the regular wealthing system for the 1-3 and 4-6 textures.

Instead I’ve tried to end any sidewalks gradually and transition to grass in one go, simply because that’s how the surrounding textures match. Note that a lot of the alphas from TGN have been specifically changed to improve this area. Even so many are just quick and dirty for now, since there are so many to do, it’ll take some time before I finalise them all. But I’ve some neat ones (unreleased) for my own SAM sets. 

Might sound odd but I really like the 100% dirt texture for the rural roads, any sidewalk at all puts me off. For the RVT SAM streets I actually did run them so it's as close to 100% dirt as I was able. It's probably a really specific preference, I agree with you most people probably wouldn't find it suitable for their own game lol.

This is the particular one that prompted me that I did it wrong. I like to have rural streets outside of AG areas or where fake-zoning to force the dirt isn't ideal.

20 hours ago, Flann said:

Personally, I would modify the D0s such that they're just magenta everywhere except for the road, then run the script and have GoFSH use the dirt texture for each of the grass textures instead.

If you have photoshop you can record a series of actions to fill the red and blue channels entirely with white.  Then use the automate function to do an entire folder of D0s.

Thanks, I'll do that instead I think.

[rsc204 21,839]

18 hours ago, junspud said:

I like to have rural streets outside of AG areas or where fake-zoning to force the dirt isn't ideal.

Sorry, I was unaware of your intended purpose here, I had much the same idea when I created my SAM-11 textures, I wanted to have a special SAM network where the usual sidewalk/grass system was suppressed. Flann's suggestion is absolutely the right way to go here.

If your scripts are set to Generate 'w13', sidewalks will still appear next to med/high density zoning, whereas 'w16' will ensure you'll always get dirt where there is zoning present. I personally only made the w13 set for SAM-11, since if you know you don't need the 4-6 textures, the overall mod is around 40% smaller. But in essence I use the same technique of using concrete textures as grass when generating them.

[junspud 1,066]

5 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Sorry, I was unaware of your intended purpose here, I had much the same idea when I created my SAM-11 textures, I wanted to have a special SAM network where the usual sidewalk/grass system was suppressed. Flann's suggestion is absolutely the right way to go here.

If your scripts are set to Generate 'w13', sidewalks will still appear next to med/high density zoning, whereas 'w16' will ensure you'll always get dirt where there is zoning present. I personally only made the w13 set for SAM-11, since if you know you don't need the 4-6 textures, the overall mod is around 40% smaller. But in essence I use the same technique of using concrete textures as grass when generating them.

No worries at all and that's one of the reasons I use SAM 11 so much, it's a great addition along with the repo to customize it.

[CorinaMarie 29,813]

Hiya, Ron.

We've used v3.6.1.8C87 for a long while and love it. Now we've installed v3.7.8.537E and seem to have lost the ability to create the four smaller FSH for the high quality A8R8G8B8 mode. The four smaller files are created, but as only 24 bytes each and won't load during the Encoding.

7AB50E44-0986135E-F8B44525.fsh failed To load, skipped
7AB50E44-0986135E-F8B44526.fsh failed To load, skipped
7AB50E44-0986135E-F8B44527.fsh failed To load, skipped
7AB50E44-0986135E-F8B44528.fsh failed To load, skipped
7AB50E44-0986135E-F8B44529.fsh added To ReaderList
1 FSH files In Readerlist

Any idea what we are doing wrong with the new version?

[rivit 3,391]

Hi Cori,

   you're quite right - that was a consequence of things that Raymondcn was doing/found a couple of years back when he was playing with water and masks and was trying to make odd sized bitmaps. I then turned off Mipmaps for A8R8G8B8 and Pal256 as a sort of autoprotect. So it was easy to fix, just turned it on again for A8R8G8B8. This will be successful as long as the source bitmap is a multiple of 32. For Pal256 still left it as no Mips as it doesnt make sense to have mips for masks anyway, and they can be strange sizes like 257x1.

That was the reason it issued no error message, but it shouldn't have written those small files (just headers actually as there were no bitmaps to save) - so part intent, part bug.  Thanks for letting me know. New version still 3.7.8 but todays date 20220131  on my archive.

[CorinaMarie 29,813]

Thanks for the quick fix, Ron.

Tested and working now.

[Flann 1,709]

Hi Ron,

I'm experiencing an issue with PNG to BMP conversion.  I've just run some PNGs through and found that the resulting BMPs don't work properly with GMAX, it refuses to display them at all.  I'm guessing maybe it's an issue with the file header?  This was done with GoFSH 3.8.3.

Look at the statistics:

 

I've attached one of these PNGs.

I can get working BMPs by resaving them with Windows Paint, or encoding to FSH and decoding them again, but it's not an optimal workflow.

[rivit 3,391]

Hi Justin, you do find some interesting things..

    well a debug look suggests the following - GoFSH writes one field in the header with -Height to indicate a top down Bitmap, and the Paint version doesn't. As I don't have gmax anymore - here is way to test that. I've made a patched version attached below. 

[Aside: In the GoFSH converted bmp take a hex editor and look at the file that GoFSH produced. At position 0x0016 there is a field of four bytes 80 FF FF FF  (-128). If you change the FF bytes to 00 and save, the bmp should load, but be upside down]. 

If this loads in gmax (it should be upside down ) then it can't handle the top down format bmp and I'll need to flip it before saving (the old fashioned 1998 way). If it still won't load we've a whole nother problem.

Photoshop and Paint both have no problems with any of these variants, so its a bit like gmax is the culprit, but then it is a very old program.

 cheers Ron

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-57871004-PatchedC0.bmp

[Flann 1,709]

Thanks for looking into it.  I loaded the patched bmp into gmax and as you predicted, it is visible but upside down.

Like you reported, I also experience no issue with Photoshop so it does seem to be a gmax issue.  While not the most pressing issue, it is rather annoying as I'm getting source textures in PNG format from Tarkus and modifying them for the ramp interfaces.  I want to use the modified version as a reference while I design the ramp models.  The extra save step is just one more tedious thing to do, but not necessarily difficult to overcome.  If you can fix it easily I'd appreciate it but it's not a show stopper.

- Flann

[rivit 3,391]

Good  - that confirms what I need to change - its not difficult to change - I already have a routine to flip bitmaps, and it will add a small processing overhead on save, but it will be hard to test for side effects as it's a core routine used to save all bmps. Should have a usable version pretty quickly - just keep an eye out for other oddities afterwards.

~~

In the interim you could make an action in PS to take a folder of them and convert them to bmps too - these should work OK as they dont have any transparency. They wont get the C0/A0 split but at least you can use them for the gmax part. In PS you can also specify the filename so not having an alpha isn't a problem later.

to make the action  load a PNG, then make a new action, record a SaveAs 24bit bmp step . thats it. Then use the Bridge to select and run (and override names as necessary).

 

[rivit 3,391]

Have updated GoFSH for the bmp fix and thrown it at all of my testing suites and it seems to hold up OK.   Version 4.8.4 on my Onedrive Archive.

Major Version has jumped to 4 from 3 as I've migrated all of my codebase to Visual Studio 2022 and upgraded to a newer NET 4.6 Framework version over the last few months, in preparation for my new machine and inevitably Win11 and .NET Standard 6/7 later this year.  Its now compiled for x86/x64 to take advantage of the flashier compilers and x64 addressing and it may show some performance improvement although I expect it to be slight.

Anything could still be possible but I'm reasonably sure it will do the job. Please let me know if you find anything odd.

[Flann 1,709]

Just wanted to drop by and say thanks, it's working as expected.  I have yet to notice anything misbehaving.  Well done, thanks.  It does seem slightly snappier, especially in 'no previews' mode, but could just be placebo effect

[Ulisse Wolf 4,429]

On 7/2/2023 at 5:48 AM, rivit said:

Have updated GoFSH for the bmp fix and thrown it at all of my testing suites and it seems to hold up OK.   Version 4.8.4 on my Onedrive Archive.

Major Version has jumped to 4 from 3 as I've migrated all of my codebase to Visual Studio 2022 and upgraded to a newer NET 4.6 Framework version over the last few months, in preparation for my new machine and inevitably Win11 and .NET Standard 6/7 later this year.  Its now compiled for x86/x64 to take advantage of the flashier compilers and x64 addressing and it may show some performance improvement although I expect it to be slight.

Anything could still be possible but I'm reasonably sure it will do the job. Please let me know if you find anything odd.

A piece of information. The new version of GOFSH is seen as malware by Windows Defender. (Windows Defender identifies it as a Wacatac.H!ml trojan) I think it's a false positive. I'm using Windows 11

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Just a FYI, it seems to be a false positive on Defender - Malwarebytes is saying the install file is clear - it sometimes pops up on unrelated files if you've had the trojan in the past at some point. I would recommend putting the file through Windows Defender's analyser if you want to be sure.

However, @rivit - this isn't really expected, maybe look into the installer itself? We should be able to install-in-place shouldn't we?

[rivit 3,391]

@Ulisse  - funny that I havent scored that Defender popup - and I made the file. It has happend once or twice years ago and I'm confident its clean. 

@Shadow Assassin Have always had it configured to require uninstalling first - so this must be your first reinstall.  Don't uninstall for now - I'll be making a new installer shortly (3.8.5 in progress) and I'll see if I can get it to configure as overwrite. It should be OK as you say, as therse nothing especially fancy as a couple of apps, dlls and files.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Awesome, thanks for that 👍

I'll wait til you get the new installer up.

[rivit 3,391]

Ok all,  the new installer is now up 4.8.5 on the archive - should just install over the top of your current install.

Turns out that because I didn't change the Product Code or GUID of the package (since 2009..) the Windows Installer says 'nope, can't do an over the top install'. Wasn't entirely obvious from the Installer Maker doco but I found it eventually. This 'over' installation should now work and Repair should also be possible. Feedback would be useful.  It will probably also put paid to any accidental removing of texture sets in AppData/GoFSH. That can happen if you uninstall a bit too rigorously (I know IOBit uninstaller can creme them) so you should regularly backup your AppData/GoFSH folder (anyway).

Changes were caused by two things:

I found a bug in name comparisons which led to lowercase filenames being regarded as invalid in 'Proofing' (Lot Textures) which I found when trying to find out why some of the Lot Support Textures were glitchy when running them through a Reskin (REDIT). 

Tiberius06 put me onto this and the cause was a combination of red channel not matching blue channel values in Green areas of the D0 Alphas and an unsubtle treatment by GoFSH of those pixels, leading to the Rail Colour turning up in strange places. This was very marked in the NCD textures and some BSC ones also triggered the flaw - note the light rail coloured pixels at the edges of the ballast..

Looks like this (annoying enough to need fixing)

So in the special case that G=255 with R=B <= 255 in a D0, REDIT will see this as graduations of the ballast/background texture and can now blend in ballast edges a bit more subtly. This addressed most of the NCD glitches without having to change the D0 Alphas. It should only have effect on Rail that is on a texture background for Base Lot textures using a D0 with feathered Green Rail Edges; true overlays or network textures with alpha should not be affected.

I found a few other things requiring manual intervention in those Lot Texture D0s and I've been fixing them as I go. In due course I'll release Sources and the MAXIS lookalike set again as v2.46; if anyone knows of more textures for the Reskin, either Core RRW/HSR or Lots please let me have them. Reluctant as I am at present, I really only want to do this once.

[redfox85 659]

If the package is 64 bit now .. shouldnt it be installed in the Program Files folder .. and not the Program Files (x86) folder (idk if it really makes a difference..)?

[rivit 3,391]

5 hours ago, redfox85 said:

shouldnt it be installed in the Program Files folder

A good question for which the answer is yes and no - its not exclusively 64bit - its actually compiled for either x86/or x64 - its a particular compile mode in .Net called AnyCPU.  This is the first option in the table below. 

For people running on x86 ie 32 bit Windows this will still be installed where it should be.  Hence, I've left it where it was for least change. 

While MS would like x64 in Program Files, x86 in the other, it doesnt matter as long as all required dlls are in the same place - for instance way back when I accidentally installed Simcity4 in my x64 Programs Folder. Its still there and runs fine.

[junspud 1,066]

Was going to do texture overrides for a few textures (BSC_TexturePack_Cycledogg_V 01) and came across this, 4 textures/alphas with the same ID but with C1/A1 C2/A2 ect. Haven't seen it before and was wondering what it meant? I tried the PDF but guide but wasn't able to find anything about it or maybe missed it.

 

Thanks.