FiSHMan: An FSH image management tool

[DarkMatter 21]

EDIT

[ilive 36]

edit !?!

[ALTX 41]

lol.. you guys are funny

[DarkMatter 21]

LOL

Sorry....I responded incorrectly, and was going to edit my first reply...then there was a trauma in ER and I had to move some people. Anyway.....

I'll add a windows filetype to FiSHMan in the next release, so the files will automatically open when you double click on them. You will need to run FiSHMan at least once to make it insert the file type association in windows before it will work, though. I'll also add the ability to open files using a command line. Like:

fishman <filename.<qfs|fsh>>

I used to know how to do DDE, so you could open files in an already running program, but I forget how. I'll try to figure out before the next release.

[CycleDogg 130]

Thanks DM for creating this program.  I finally downloaded it a few days ago and it's working out great for making the .fsh files for my latest building.  It's much easier to use than fshTool.

 

Is there a way to make 16-bit textures that also have transparency, like the ones Maxis uses for most of its buildings?  I used DXT3 with a texure and alpha map, which works fine in the game, but the filesize of these .fsh files is a little larger than Maxis'.  I thought maybe if I used some kind of 1-5-5-5 scheme, I could make my .fsh files the same as Maxis', but I haven't been able to get 1-5-5-5 to work.  Offhand, do you know if there is a way to accomplish this?  If not, it's not a big deal, since the DXT3 .fsh files FiSHMan creates seem to be working fine.

[ilive 36]

I don't know if it can help you, but another program exist to convert to FSH format

you can download it (its name is EAGraph) in this forum.

 

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~nbalive/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4491&sid=2ee956834eb3912eb750ab35236d9ed4

 

It seems there is also an another program, FshEd (also available in this forum) But both programs seems harder to use than FishMan.

[Carpman 0]

FISHman? Why was I not informed sooner that someone had turned me into a program of some sort?

[frogface 354]

lol! anyway i downloaded this program. um how do i edit the FSH files? i cant find any?

 

[CycleDogg 130]

Thanks ilive.  I tried EA Graphics and I can't reproduce maxis' format with that either.  (And yes, Fishman is much easier to use than EA Graphics.)  I know very little about the format of .fsh files, so I am probably not understanding something correctly.  But the files I am making are twice the size (uncompressed) as maxis' uncompressed files.  Compressed, they are about the same.  Don't know if it matters.

 

frogface: if you open some of the simcity .dat files with the ilive reader you will find lots of FSH files.  You can save the fsh files individually from the reader and then open them in Fshman or FshTool or EA Graphics to pull the bitmap out of the fsh file so that you can edit it in a paint program.

[frogface 354]

thanks i have looked but i cannot find the train textures anywhere. the Dat seems very unorganized too which makes it difficult

[DarkMatter 21]

Maxis only uses DXT1 and DXT3 textures for their buildings. I've never seen any 16bit formats used in SC4 so far. FiSHMan is still beta, and a lot of its features are incomplete or don't work properly. The reason Maxis uses DXT compressed images is they can be decompressed in 3D graphics hardware, unlike raw 16bit formats.

I also highly doubt that you will get "better" file sizes with raw 16bit formats. DXT compression compresses 8 to 1, so the file sizes will be much smaller than a raw 16bit 1555 image. The difference in file size your seeing is the difference between a raw FSH and a QFS compressed FSH. Save your FSH files as .qfs, and you will start seeing proper file sizes.

I'll finish FiSHMan someday, and include all the features I want it to have. I just don't have much time lately. I've neglected my school studies to work on DatGen for the last couple months, and I need to finish the classes and take my finals. If I can get into a proper routeen with studying, I can dedicate the weekends to working on DatGen and FiSHMan, and maybe finish FiSHMan in a month or so.

[Trolca 15]

 

thanks i have looked but i cannot find the train textures anywhere. the Dat seems very unorganized too which makes it difficult

San Frogfaceco is the place to be. why dont you go there... quickly!

The train textures are in the SimCity_2.dat file. The way I found them is by finding the Exemplers in the SimCity1_dat file. Using the Ilive Reader, sort by Instance nearly all of the train related Exemplers and S3D files will be togather. Open the SimCity_2.dat, sort by Instance and scroll untill you reach the range of numbers. I'm not where I can check but I think trains start with Instance 10980000.

[CycleDogg 130]

Thanks DM, I missed that QFS option.  I'll use that in the future.  The program works great as it is, so please don't neglect your studies to work on it.

[Pegasus 2,837]

Well, I just had a fun time trying to get my first overlay files working. Read the Texture File tutorial, downloaded the Fishman program, both of them spot on and I had a new set of base textures installed in no time.

3 hours later... with nothing but a white square showing where a new Overlay File should be gracing the landscape, I was about to question someone's heritage.

The problem was complicated by the fact that the alpha-blended view in both Fishman and the Reader showed the overlays correctly. It was somewhere around the third or forth pass over the messages here regarding 16-bit images being an issue that the light bulb began to flicker and I rechecked my alpha-map images. Sure enough, they had degraded to 8-bit color depth when I had originally grayscaled the original images.

A quick convert to 32-bit, back through the Fishman, into the reader, out as a .dat ... and I can now express my gratitude for the fine effort that went into the Fishman tool and tutorial.

[DarkMatter 21]

Thanks Pegasus. I'm always glad to hear of someone else who has had success with FiSHMan. If you have any suggestions or requests, please post them. FiSHMan is still very incomplete, and someday, maybe before the end of the year, I intend to finish it, or at least make it more complete.

[Pegasus 2,837]

Well, as long as you brought it up...

#1. BUG(?) FIX NEEDED IN BATCH PROCESSOR
I used the Batch Process function in Fishman recently to create/process a couple of overlay files. It works great... what a time saver that is!

But... the Batch Process doesn't seem to work on making base files. It appears to process and output them okay... but the .fsh files it creates are corrupted. If you try to load those .fsh files back into Fishman, I get the error message:

ERROR LOADING FSH
FSHImage: The file is trunicated and invalid
at FSHlib: FSHImage.Load(Stream 5)
at Fishman.frmFSH.Openfile(string path)

The files also can not be viewed in the reader.. I repeated the process several times, even using the image that successfully converted to an overlay file... but I got this error each time.
* Using the manual/single file method in Fishman for base files works fine.

I'm not sure if this is a local issue limited to my system or more wide spread.

#2. Minor Request - Fix Save File Prompt
In VB/.Net, the normal procedure is to a set a Public boolean variable to True whenever a file is loaded... and clear it to False whenever the file is saved. The value of that variable is checked before a New file is loaded, or the program is exited, and the "Save Current File?" prompt is displayed only if the value is True.

Neither Fishman, the Reader or the Lot Editor does this correctly, and being they are the three programs I use most as of late, I spend a lot of time clicking "No" needlessly.

Also, the Tab Order is wrong for the Output FSH textbox and Browse button on the Batch Process File Load screen.

If you could squeeze these little items into the next build,it would be appreciated.

Other than that, the program ROCKS and does everything I've needed it to do. Its a great little app !!

[DarkMatter 21]

Will do.

[Pegasus 2,837]

In the mean time before your next build, do you have any suggestions for getting the batch processor to work on base textures? A specific file naming convention or certain steps to take/omit or option(s) to disable?

[DarkMatter 21]

I'm not sure what you mean. Base and overlay textures differ in only one way: overlays have an alpha map, bases do not. If you uncheck the "Is an overlay" checkbox in the batch processor, the resulting texture will be a base texture, otherwise it will be an overlay texture.

[Pegasus 2,837]

I know...

But... the Batch Process doesn't seem to work on making base files. It appears to process and output them okay... but the .fsh files it creates are 0 bytes in size. If you try to load those .fsh files back into Fishman, I get the error message:

ERROR LOADING FSH
FSHImage: The file is trunicated and invalid
at FSHlib: FSHImage.Load(Stream 5)
at Fishman.frmFSH.Openfile(string path)

The batch overlay processing works just fine. Its just the batch base file processing. (Manual base files areworks okay)

* I'm using 24-bit (16 mil color, 72 pixel per inch) Windows bit-map (128x128) images as the source (the same files, with an alpha map, batch process into overlays correctly)

I may be using it incorrectly. Here's what I do...

1. I'm selecting Batch Texture Processor from the Tool menu.
The BatchTexTool window appears. (btw... if you try to close this window at this point, you get a "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error.)
2. I click on Add Files and the Batch File Add dialog box appears.
3. I use the browse button to enter the name of the source (BMP) file.
4. I use the default DOC1 as the output file name by clicking on the browse button and accepting the default.
5. I change the Starting Instance to a legitimate address.
6. 'Instance auto increment' is checked. 'Is an overlay' is not checked. 'Generate sequences' is checked.
7. I click on Batch Add (have also clicked on Add with same result)
8. I close the Batch File Add dialog.
9. I click on Process Batch on the BatchTexTool window. The message Batch Processing Complete dispalys on the bottom status bar.
10. I close the window, check the files and see they are all 0 byte, except the TGI files which are generated correctly.

Hope this helps. Thanks.

[Teirusu 38]

Pegasus is right DM. In fact, if I remember correctly I PM'ed you about this a while back and you said you'd fix it in the next release.

I did figure out a work around, though. If you select an image for an alpha map but UNselect 'Is an overlay' the processor will make uncorrupted base texture .fsh files. Unfortunately, the output files are in DXT1 format. I believe they should be in DXT3 format, because, as far as I can tell most of the game's base textures are in DXT3 format.

Fortunately, DXT1 textures don't seem to much of a problem when creating new base textures for a lot. However, in my case where I'm trying to replace the in-game textures with snow-covered versions, the game just doesn't seem to like the DXT1 encoded textures the batch processor creates. They just randomly appear and disappear.

So DM, if you could please fix this bug as soon as possible it would be much appreciated!!! There are just too many textures for me to create manually for the Arctic Modd!

[DarkMatter 21]

Um, actually, DXT1 is the correct format for a base texture. A DXT1 image has no alpha channel. A DXT3 image DOES have an alpha channel. Thats how the game discerns the difference between an overlay and a base...one has alpha, the other doesn't.

 

The batch processor ALWAYS requires an alpha map image. For base textures, this can just be a fully white image, but its always required. If you omit it, it will create invalid zero-size .fsh files. To generate a base, make sure Is an overlay texture is unchecked, and supply a white alpha. To generate overlays, make sure Is an overlay texture IS checked, and supply an appropriate grayscale image for the alpha.

 

The batch processor should generate DXT1 .fsh's for base textures and DXT3 .fsh's for overlay texturs. Let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Teirusu, about the texture appearing/dissapearing thing....I've never had that happen with the snow mod. I can't say I've tested it exhaustively, but I've never had any glitches. Maybe send me your latest version and I'll do some testing to see if I have the same problem.

[Teirusu 38]

One word... SHOOT!!! >_<

Now it all makes sense! I just realized what my problem was... half the textures I was trying to replace are in fact overlay textures and not base textures, which I thought they were!

Nevermind DM! *hits self over the head with a 2x4*

[Karybdis 34]

hmm... just ran into something. Tried to open up a compressed QFS file from need for speed 6 to test the unknown bytes that arent used in simcity4 textures, and I got an error

"Index was outside the bounds of the Array"
"at FSHlib.FSHimage.load(Stream s)"
"at FishMan.frmFSH.OpenFile(String Path)"

Not sure whether this is the unknown bytes making an appearance and messing with the program or not, but something's causing the error with that image cause it can read other ones fine.

[DarkMatter 21]

Hey, Karybdis. Can you email me some of the NFS images? I've wanted to test FiSHMan with them for a long time, but I havn't been able to find any of my NFS CD's. If I can debug the program while its loading one of the images, I can find the error to the character in my code and fix the problem.

[Karybdis 34]

just sent one to your hotmail. Hope it got through ok.

well turns out size of the block is pretty universally decided to really be the size of the block, or the size of the storage area for the pixel data. As far as I can see though it hasnt been used since NFS III

as for the "number of special units" that one still evades me.

[DarkMatter 21]

Didn't get it. If your still around, could you hop online so we can chat in MSN?

[TinySim 4]

I've edited the bus overlay texture... but i can't get it back into the FSH file!
I just get an error...

[Pegasus 2,837]

I was wondering if there was going to be un update to the FishMan tool anytime soon?

One of the issues when using the batch function is that the outfile file name gets trunicated. For example, the default file name, DOC1 gets trunicated to just "D". If you name the files in your batch, DOC1, DOC2, DOC3, etc... they all get trucicated to "D" and the batch process fails.

The work around obviously is to use longer output file names with unique identifiers as the first few characters... but to have it work properly would be very helpful.

* Also, can we lose the need to have an alpha map for base texture batch processing?

Thanks. Despite these little glitches, I'm still lovin' it!!

[TinySim 4]

The problem is gone.





Bunny attack!