Gone FSHin'

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Since this topic has popped up once again, I might as well take the opportunity to say that I have been using GoFSH pretty much on a daily basis throughout the recent weeks because I'm assembling a new plugins folder and I'm colour-matching all the BATs so they play nicely together and nothing stands out.

Not only does this enable me to give my existing plugins assortment a much more coherent look, but it has also opened up new possibilities and widened my BAT selection because some that I originally skipped due to some texture issues I had with them are suddenly an easy fix and look surprisingly good when placed among the others. I have also made another Maxis night => DarkNite conversion, and more are coming up.

So thank you very much for this superb tool that has become a staple in my SimCity toolbox, and as far as I am concerned, you're a bit of a legend for me as well. Thanks again and keep it up!

[rivit 3,391]

Thanks Ray, T Wrecks, I don't know what to say.

~~~

I have found the problems that Ray's find highlighted and about half a dozen bonus others that popped up when I starting fixing them, but the situation is better than I had expected and as such I don't think its going to be a long wait. Those and a few other fixes I had made along the way will be in the new version.

~~~

Also Eggman121 and I have been wrapping up the textures and scripts to be able to make the MAXIS Style Reskin of RRW available soon (and quite possibly the source too this time).  

It will work with NAM37 and also NAM36 as we (with MGB [RSC04] and Simmer2) did the bulk of the work back when NAM36 was released in 2017.  Back then, though, we couldn't change the rails. To remind yourself what it can do look at the bottom of page 2 of this topic.  I do need to do a RUM for NAM37 version too. - busy, busy, busy.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Oh, oh - if you're working on a new version, there's one little thing I'm wondering:

I regularly select the day FSHs for decoding only, and unless I have been missing something all this time, you need to select/deselect them one by one. Would it be hard to implement a selection logic as used in the Windows Explorer, for example, where you can [CTRL]+click / [SHIFT]+click to select a range at once? It's totally not a problem as it is now, I just thought asking couldn't hurt.

[rivit 3,391]

I see what you mean - the selection action works (it is a standard windows listview) but I don't respect (tick) everything selected.

Like in this pic below only the first one will get selected.

In Tex view like above all of the set will be exported if you select Save all sizes. For BATs this can be a lot of textures. I usually export them all then kill off the night ones.

Inverting the whole selection can be done by clicking on Sel at the top of that column.

I'll see if I can figure this out to work as it should - thanks. For some reason too in the latest Windows10 the progress bar during the read doesn't seem to display progress anymore either.

[matias93 7,535]

On 7/6/2020 at 4:43 AM, T Wrecks said:

I'm colour-matching all the BATs so they play nicely together and nothing stands out.

Some chance we could see some examples of the results?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

2 hours ago, matias93 said:

Some chance we could see some examples of the results?

Yeah, sure. Here's a set of pics that I showed in the "Show us what you're working on" thread - it's a BAT by beutelschlurf (and a really good one!) next to a Maxis building:

Below is the result after exporting the textures, batch processing them through my picture viewer, and re-importing (it obviously takes a bit of trial and error, particularly because I lack profound theoretical image manipulation knowledge and an "educated eye" for these things):

In this particular case, the result even took the modding decision (CO$$ or CO$$$?) for me - standing next to this high-wealth Maxis apartment, it certainly looked pretty upscale as well and ended up as high-wealth commercial office.

Here's a way more subtle example. Look at the three office mid-rises that I plopped into the Rush Hour tutorial city, a 100% Maxis environment:

Once again, these are beautiful BATs. I love them. If you look a little closer, however, you might notice that their colour hue differs slightly from the backdrop. They have a slight greenish tint to them. The tallest one to the bottom left (the one with the arched windows in the top floor) is probably the one to show this most clearly of the three. Once you see it, it's hard to un-see.

Take away a few notches of green, sometimes a slight gamma/contrast adjustment, sometimes a bit more blue and/or red, and you end up with something like this:

These aren't even good. I'm certainly not 100% satisifed with them. The two left ones are too "cold". Still, when you zoom out, none of them stands out against its backdrop any more.

And this is only BATs vs. Maxis. BATs from different authors used in combination are yet another story. They are all awesome, but put them next to another, and you'll see how one is noticeably darker or has a colder hue than the others. I might find some better examples if I poke around a bit more. This is just an example to show an idea of what can be done with GoFSH.

[rivit 3,391]

Ok - after a flurry of activity and finding more landmines than I imagined (I'm now on my knees) I've put a new test version of GoFSH 3.6.3 here on my archive.

In this version you should able to do the following

1) Raymond: Load/Save A8R8G8B8 and GREY256 FSH without size modulo4 restrictions. If you save color to GREY it will lose its color.
  Size restrictions were quite easy to fix but saving GREY256 stuff was particularly broken because for some reason I never saved the palette and so Reader and presumably SC4 too would correctly just display black for grey images. I also stopped other potential glitches by restricting these types to no MIPS for now. Batches of these should work.

2) Along the way the restriction of C0-C9 for multi-textures is now C0-C99 as I found during testing that there are fsh for the beach waves that have 30 multitextures. This was more complex to change than I expected. Works best in Batch Mode - it would be a pain to append 30 textures by hand one at a time.

3) TWrecks: In FSH-DAT there is now a slightly better Multi-Select. SHIFT-SELECT works if you double click the first one then SHIFT click the end one. CTRL-SELECT is still a dog's breakfast - I just can't fathom it. Also if you use CTRL+Click on the SEL column header it will clear all previous selections - this lets you restart from scratch with a modicum of elegance if you screw up a complex selection. I've also fixed up the progress bar and added wait cursors for some of the tasks of longer duration (particularly useful on simcity_X.dats).

4) a new color correction from Terrain to Lot - a result of a cooperation with hugues aroux. More on that later.

5) there are other small bug fixes or small GUI changes but I can't remember which as they were made incidentally over the last year.

I'd appreciate a few people trying it out on (a copy of) their work - previous code in scripting and the DXT fsh code has not changed at all and so should still work as advertised. Meanwhile I'll fix up the manual and if GoFSH survives further testing then put it up as the new official version.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Super! Thanks a million Dear @rivit, It works perfectly, Now i could continue my tests of cutaway, @hugues aroux Sorry to beep you Hugues, Just thought this Version would be helpful to your project (probably you have already known it) , Thanks again Rivit, btw, your water Texture is my favorite.

Yours Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[rivit 3,391]

Good news! - Tell us Raymond, how do these side alphas work? 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

24 minutes ago, rivit said:

Good news! - Tell us Raymond, how do these side alphas work? 

I have no idea yet Dear Rivit, I just found out these two strange FSHs from simcity_2.dat when i wanted to change the Texture of signpost.

 

As you know, I have a cutaway mod by the help of CoriBoom™, there are three FSHs which are corresponding to the top and middle and bottom layers of cutaway, after i change them(257x1) to all black(i have to at that time), the cutaway of city all shift to the bottom's texture, then with the help of your new Version, I change that to half white, then somewhere of the cutaway, I couldn't see the bottom layer's texture.

I just presume that these two FSHs , 7AB50E44-891B0E1A-CA5CC9C1(top),7AB50E44-891B0E1A-CA5CC9C0(middle), their indexes are used for code to control showing which map in which range, just like you and Cori @CorinaMarie have discussed in this thread:

I haven't made enough tests to prove this, but i will report that when i get it. Thank you Rivit!

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[T Wrecks 10,209]

5 hours ago, rivit said:

I'd appreciate a few people trying it out on (a copy of) their work

Just downloaded it and took it for a spin in my break - works like a charm, and the selection in the first step has become a lot more comfortable! 

I can't thank you enough for this tool and your ongoing work on it. One of these days, I'll recolour all of SimNation with it, muhaha! Erm... I mean, I like it a lot.

[rsc204 21,808]

I download and tested out the new version of GoFSH today and saw no problems with any of the scripts I ran. Thanks again for the continuing development of this fantastic tool, it's utterly indispensable for me.

[rivit 3,391]

Thanks Raymond, Thomas, Robin - all good news to me. It's getting to be a piece of software that I don't dare break - but I'll always try to improve it.

I just love seeing what everyone does with it.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

I've had GoFSH sitting on my Start Menu for about six months, but gave it a real spin for the first time this week, and can't thank you enough for the work that went into this tool. Hard to imagine the level of work that went into making and editing textures before this existed.

[rivit 3,391]

  I think it's time I updated the link to my Archive on OneDrive. This is what it looks like as of Today 27 July 2020

 
 
 You will note I have highlighted two new files in particular.
 
 On behalf of the RRW Reskin Team (Eggman121, MGB/RSC204, Simmer2 and myself rivit) I'm releasing a RRW Reskin set which is coloured to match the old MAXIS Rail, and has MAXIS paving and grasses on the crossings.

This allows you to have all of the newest RRW features with the old shiny rail look, in a manner entirely compatible with the original RRW design. This also compensates for the fact that legacy rail has now been removed from NAM in favour of RRW, which after 7 years and tons of development is the state of the art in Rail for SC4.

To use these you need to install the contents of the zips exactly as they are designed. Beware its 55MB all up.
The Reskin goes into Z___NAM 37 RRW Reskin, and the RUM into Z___RVT Modds and Z____MGB mods respectively. (as before)

These mods will work with NAM36 or NAM 37 provided you install it this way, and read the install notes. For NAM36 it must load after Z___NAM and in both cases before rivit and MGB mods as they rely on it being ahead of them. They will add a lot of files to the loading sequence, which will slow down loading a little, but they are overrides of items in NAM so will not increase RAM requirements.

As this is essentially a Release Candidate we are looking for feedback on coverage and quality.
The Reskin covers all NAM36 and NAM37 rail tiles, and a Lot Tiles by BSC, NCD, WMP, MGB, Simmer2 transitions, Cogeo, NOB.
The RUM contains crossings for MGB and rivit streets and a few odds and ends like viaducts skins.  

1) Coverage - you should not see the old MAXIS rail or the standard RRW after these are installed - if you do there's a tile missing. (or you've still got old stuff loading after this). Having said that Lots with baked-in RAIL may actually still show the MAXIS width rails. Some bridges will be like this - we never converted them all to RRW standards. Those we did fix may now be mismatched (can't win 'em all) - but a lot were fixed in NAM37 to be auto changing. The most likely places are new or very obscure content. RUM does not reskin the new draggable viaduct pieces (and wont).

2) Quality - As the Reskin is an automated edit of the original RRW, done by algorithm using masks made by hand and there are over 4000 tiles, its inevitable that there may be glitches - mismatched masks, misaligned edits, parts of rails missed, color mismatches on the ballast - you name it anything could be off. This is the first edit that changes rail, sleepers and ballast at once so we'd really like to hear about the ones that are blatant first please. Not everyone is equally sensitive to these things. Keep in mind its a manual process to fix so it can take time. But all findings contribute to a better set.

These mods are directly removable as they are really only texture changes. So you can always return to standard RRW by removing the mods. This will take direct effect.

Please use this thread to ask and discuss things - that way we can all follow the fun and games. We look forward to seeing your before and after shots and finding out how it flies for you. At least one of us will be about to answer questions.

  For the RRW Reskin team - rivit

 

[hugues aroux 3,784]

On 08/07/2020 at 8:40 AM, rivit said:

a new color correction from Terrain to Lot - a result of a cooperation with hugues aroux. More on that later.

Hi Ron, I'm ready (plugin finished!) to continue on this subject, but I have a feeling you haven't received my last PMs. (?). Best regards

 

[Flann 1,709]

On 4/3/2020 at 7:16 PM, rivit said:

To make the mod, I unpacked the default SCILT, then used the Alphas and Photoshop scripting to define the D0 files I needed, then made up the script to rebuild the SCILT.

Could you please elaborate on how you define the D0 files with photoshop?  I'm just dipping my toes in here but I'd like to try and overwrite some CP overlay textures and turn dirt paths into paved paths.   

So how do I go from the A0 to a D0?

  

Thanks!

Edit:

I figured it out.  I was able to use the batch tools in photoshop to modify the colors in the A0.bmp and then following the instructions in the post I quoted, I was able to replace the texture with paths from my sidewalk mod.  Personally, I really love these BATs but I don't care for the dirt textures and would rather my cities be paved!  Thanks for this awesome tool.

  Edited September 15, 2020 by Flann  
Solved my own problem

[rivit 3,391]

Well done @Flann.  

[Flann 1,709]

Hey @rivit,

Can you help me diagnose why this texture I am generating with GoFSH has these artifacts?

Zoomed in with photoshop:

resultant texture:

C0:

D0:

 

Here are the C0 and D0 bitmaps:

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B2B0304-C0.bmp

7AB50E44-1ABE787D-5B2B0304-D0.bmp

 

I can't see what's gone wrong, hopefully you can help.  Thanks in advance.

[rivit 3,391]

Ok Flann,  here goes:

Firstly I assume you're generating new grass/paving so the masks are in all three channels, i.e R,G and B. Its imperative that these are properly filled relative to each other. Where it shows yellow GoFSH says - its not grass (blue channel), but paving (red channel) which the green channel is also calling the cutout. So it tries to substitute paving in those places. To fix this make sure the yellow shows as white (greys) in the mask, by making sure the blue channel is the same as red and green channels in those places it shows yellow. 

Also you can see see blue in the D0 mask next to the road edge - this leads to some grass between the new paving and the kerbs.  It suggests the original alphas weren't completely aligned with the color to start with.

 

These things then trigger the second fault (the Bleed effect) which is caused when the DXT compression routines tries to find the best 2 colors in a 4x4 pixel block. In some of these cases the paving colour wins and so bleeds over some of the other pixels. This should go away once the masks are aligned correctly.

 

Hope that explanation is useful. See pages 51,52 in the manual for another version of what I tried to explain above. 

[Flann 1,709]

Thanks for the response, seems like I just need to improve my methodology for creating the D0.

Here's a basic summary of what I've done to make this new texture:

1.) Extract the source avenue, road and OWR-1 textures from the game .dats and NAM .dats, saving largest size of each wealth variant.

2.) Decoding and re-encoding with pregen wealth 1-3 to obtain D0s.  The yellow appears at this point.

3.) Use Bender to bend the OWR C0 and D0 into a suitable curve for a slip lane.

4.) Bring avenue and road C0s and D0s into photoshop.

5.) Bring the bent C0 and D0 into photoshop.  Delete the pink areas, link the layers.  (Perhaps the A0 would be a better choice)

6.) Rotate the bent C0 and D0 by 45 degrees and shift to fit.

7.) Attempt to merge the new textures into the base textures.

It's at this point where I feel like I start to make mistakes.  Here are is where I'm at for my current attempt.

I know I'll need to repair the yellow areas, but I am unsure of how to incorporate my new white into this D0.  In this case I used the A0, so I have white blending with black along the edges, instead of blue.  I am thinking that now instead of having slivers of blue between my white and black, I am going to have slivers of black between my white and blue.

There must be something obvious that I don't know how to do.  Any further advice is appreciated.  Thanks.

 

[rivit 3,391]

Looking through your workflow there's really nothing odd about it - there are many roads to Rome and we pick the ones we can replicate best and are usually the least work.

But given that the mis-alignment (yellow problem) starts at step 2, then making the D0s may need to be done differently because the individual wealth alphas aren't exactly aligned.  Instead of making the D0s at the beginning leave it till the end. So take the A0 of the 04 wealth texture as your basis and take that through your steps. Then you at the end have a sliplane texture and an alpha A0 that exactly matches the extent of the roadway and its kerbs.

A tip for merging the A0s -  best done by layering the parts and turning the top one to blend as Additive (linear Dodge). This keeps the gradients best. 

If possible also avoid rotation in Photoshop if you can - it will smear the edges of the alphas. Rotation to 90s is OK,  You can do some of this in Bender by appropriately orienting the texture to start with, or by bending a longer piece than you need and then cutting off what you don't need 

 

Now take the final A0 in Photoshop and do the following

1. Clone it, turn it into an RGB Mode texture if it isn't already, and name it to -D0.bmp

2. in Channel mode select the Blue Channel - will become the 1,2,3 wealth alpha

3. In this channel draw/fill the parts you want the grass to be (in addition to the roadway parts already filled in). You will see this turn Blue in the all channels view

4. If there is to be grass in the 456 wealths then do steps 2,3 in the the Red Channel too. 

4. Everything left black in the D0 will be always be paving. If you want any part left alone make it white in the all channel view.  

that's it

Now by means of experiment you can do this instead of step 2 to make your D0s at the beginning, but because you need to merge textures to make the sliplane, its easier to leave it till the end.

 

[rsc204 21,808]

I too have experienced the same and also needed help from Rivit to work out a solution.

Basically it comes down to, sometime for more complicated textures, a little manual editing of the D0 may be required. As pointed out, there isn’t really a flaw in how you are going about things.

[Flann 1,709]

Thank you for the helpful advice.  I've been able to correct most of the issues.  I have just one follow up question:

On 12/11/2020 at 4:57 PM, rivit said:

But given that the mis-alignment (yellow problem) starts at step 2, then making the D0s may need to be done differently because the individual wealth alphas aren't exactly aligned.

Since GoFSH is deriving the D0 from the finished wealth variants and the A0s, does this mean that the source textures are misaligned between wealths?  I.e., the grass and pavement areas are not identical between wealths 1-3?

[rivit 3,391]

Yes - it looks like the 123 and 456 alphas are slightly different at the road edge (probably only 1 or 2 pixels off) from the 0 alpha. If you take those as two layers into Photoshop and blend with difference or subtract you can see where they are different.

[rivit 3,391]

On 4/4/2020 at 11:16 AM, rivit said:

SCILT (Sidewalk Compatible Interchangeable Lot Textures)

Last year I made a small mod (see previous page) to let you make your own SCILT set for your own paving (if its wasn't one already supported). Recently Mattb325 made a new lot that required some street textures to support SCILT and so @BartonThinks made up a set for him. I've also since put up a Tarseal Road version.

On my archive you'll now find a new GoFSH script archive so that you can make these yourself if you use a particular terrain mod - so that it all matches the rest.  For simplicity here is the link to the archive.

look for 202004 SCILT Reskin.zip (for paving) and 202102 SCILT CulDesac.zip (for streets and grass)

Also there is a new version of GoFSH (v3.6.6) which has been standardised to fit a 1024*600 pixel display. This allows it to work on smaller panels and is a lot tidier all round. A few small GUI bugs have also been fixed.  

[rivit 3,391]

fellow FSHers

Here a longish post to make up for the fact I was increasingly offline for the last 3 years or so as my eyes deteriorated and I could no longer work for extended periods at the screen without severe eyestrain and headaches. In January 2021 I had cataract surgery in both eyes and I can safely say things are much better than before. I now have better vision than I had when I was 9 years old (still need glasses though). This means I can now get back to some of my favourite pastimes - programming and graphics.

<TLDR
A new version of GoFSH 3.7.3 now has a number of enhancements for bulk processing of FSH.
- If you need to make a lot of FSH then you can now turn off the display when running scripts for 1/3 the runtime.
- There is a new tool to take a .dat of FSH and fillet them into C0/DO pairs and a script to remake them. (Ts and Cs apply).
- There are new generation options which can be used instead of EDIT for certain classes of textures. 
/TLDR>

Read the full story HERE:    Features GoFSH 3.7.3.txt

This version represents a major change from earlier versions so when installing it, make sure you have backed up your texture archive in USER\RoamingProfile\GoFSH\Textures first. Then uninstall the previous version and copy your textures back afterwards.

This new version can be found on my OneDrive (see below)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All of my SAM and Street Modds have been upgraded to NAM41. They will be available only from the archive until late May in order to catch mistakes and then they will be uploaded in .zip/.dat format to Simtropolis as formal uploads. All archives contain the MAXIS grass/paving dats and the sources that made them. They need to be made with GoFSH 3.7.3 or later.

Please test them an let me know if you find mistakes, omissions, mangles or iotherwies faulty things. Its a lot of modding and updating has taken me more than a working week of time. But it would have taken me a couple of months without the new tools. For making up your own you only need to choose appropriate paving or grasses. if you want No Grass choose paving as grass too. 

These can be run without previews for faster runtimes. Make sure you put them in a spacious part of your drive and cleanup afterwards. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Apropos the new versions of all of my street mods to be found on my archive, with NAM41 its possible to make transitions from one every SAM to another. These previously would have required a TE lot known as a SAM Stopper to stop the automatic and uncontrolled propagation of one SAM over another. They are fully wealthed and respect SAMs without paving.
    
    This has a major implication for combining override SAM sets as now every combination needs to be accounted for. Once you settle your combination of SAMs you need to create a set of transitions to match. This will typically be from NAM, maybe mine, MGBs or Tarkus' sets which are then compiled into a definitive collection and added into the loading sequence after the SAM streets have loaded.
    
    So you can find a SAM-SAM Wealthed Zip on Archive. In this zip are the bits you need to account for your mix of SAMs. You'll find the NAM ones - which will cover Tarkus street/black SAM street swap (after renumbering 7x and x7 textures), MGBs darkened SAM6 need the original tiles slightly darkened, his SAM7 is in with my ones, at least enough to make other combos, and my set includes all of my Overrides in one. Their native NAM combinations that are with those SAM sets.
    
    The idea is you make a copy of the NAM ones , then substitute from other sets to make a custom set of (11*10 SAM-SAM + 11 SAM-Street textures in all) which you can the make and load after NAM to cover all combos.
    
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lastly here is the most up-to-date view of the Onedrive Archive  link to the archive. All previous versions are now gone, only the latest are here. Ther are no changes to Rail Related files.

[Flann 1,709]

@rivit

Thank you so much for all this hard work!  I've just read the release notes and this release sounds like a serious game-changer!  No pun intended?  Your contribution to the continued development of the NAM and particularly the pace at which we are able to create is nothing short of extraordinary and absolutely essential.

[Durfsurn 539]

Hey @rivit,

First of all thanks for this amazing program! Getting some great use of it! Just wondering if the so called "Fatal Errors in Pregen encountered" (and other errors I guess) could be made unfatal and just offending files skipped?

Thanks again for all the hard work.

[rivit 3,391]

It kind of depends what the fatalities were - its a catchall for missing things that cannot be resolved by the program and need intervention. What exactly were you trying that came unstuck?