Saving Bricks discuss [LBA Screen Viewer Offtopic]

[Gergely]

As I am exhausted from just translating Sid Meier's Alpha Centaury and its expansion I am being quite a retard now, so could you please tell me a step by step procedure for extracting the bricks (hopefully those 25x25 or so images) into an editable format and putting them back into the hqr?

[Battler]

- Gergely: Just follow Zink's signature, and download a program suite, called "LBArchitect". It has two programs: Builder (for grid = room editing) and Factory (for bricks editing). You can edit the bricks there, without having to export them into an editable format.

But however, if you want, I can try to make a program, which would convert bricks into .BMP's (but not vice-versa, as that's a bit more complicated).

[Zink]

Although, the LBArchitect has a bug, that saving Bricks from LBA 2 is not possible, so you can edit LBA 1 ones only.

[Battler]

- Zink: Hmmm... if you tell me, what that bug exactly is, maybe I could help you to fix it.

[Gergely]

Okay, thanx again all! I'll give it a try.

[Gergely]

Hmm, there seems to be a bit of a problem. Everything works okay, I modified the bricks I needed, the program even seems to have saved it although I think there is a slight problem with indexing. If I see it right the program only saves the modified bricks into the brk.hqr file by overwriting the ones already there. The problem is that with Screen Viewer the indecies are all one less than LBArchitect is showing them to be, so I guess it saves them a location above the required. When I run the game, over the desired bricks I get another one drawn. Forexample by modifying the F letter on the radio machine right at the start in the prison I get a wall brick drawn onto the radio instead of the letter brick.

Any idea what I could do?

[Zink]

OBrasilo> Thanks, but I know what it is. I just forgot to make the procedure to check if it has been opened LBA 1 bricks or LBA 2, and it saves all of them as they were from LBA 1

Golemboy> The indexing differences between Screen Viewer and LBArchitect can be just because Screen Viewer starts indexig with zero, while LBArchitect starts with 1 (it is more intuitive this way, I think), so it sohould be ok in the game. Thus I wonder why it isn't. Could you post a screenshot from the game? Or I will try to check it today (don't know if I will have time).

EDIT: I just tested it, and it seems that my saving procedure has some bugs. It's strange, because the modified brick is displayed properly only when a part of it is outside of the screen, and not when it is all visible.

[Gergely]

At a second glance it seems as parts of the bricks or the whole bricks themselves would become transparent.

[Zink]

Ok, it's fixed. I can't release a new version now, because there is work on it in progress. But here is the unofficial fixed version. As I said, it's in progress now, so Layout features may not be working.

http://80.55.102.190/~zink/other/Factory.zip

The thing was because the program saved bricks without the transparent parts that were at the right of any non-transparent parts. The game displayed such bricks in completely wrong places, and with some king of weird stretching. That's why they seem to be transparent in your screens, they are just displayed not in the places where they should be.

[Battler]

Edit: - Zink: IT ACTUALLY WORKS!!!! Only the layouts can't be saved for some reason.

[Gergely]

So, if I see it correctly, I would need to reedit the tiles from an original brk.hqr file, cuz force saving modified bricks and then updating the archive didn't help. Am I correct on this?

[Zink]

I think opening each modified brick, saving it, and resaving the hqr after all should work. If not, you have to open original hqr (in a separate program), and copy+paste your modified bricks.

OBrasilo: As I said: this is version-in-progress, most of Layout editing features are not working.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by Zink

I think opening each modified brick, saving it, and resaving the hqr after all should work. If not, you have to open original hqr (in a separate program), and copy+paste your modified bricks.

OBrasilo: As I said: this is version-in-progress, most of Layout editing features are not working.

Hmmm... could you tell us an estimated release date of the new LBArchitect version, please?

[Zink]

I'm sorry, but I can't. It depends on amount of my free time, and it's amount depends on amount of work on farm, where I live. I can only tell you, that pretty much of things-to-do for this release are already done.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by Zink

I'm sorry, but I can't. It depends on amount of my free time, and it's amount depends on amount of work on farm, where I live. I can only tell you, that pretty much of things-to-do for this release are already done.

Ohhh... OK then. I'll wait for it then, don't worry. I just needed that information for reference.

[Gergely]

Originally Posted by Zink

I think opening each modified brick, saving it, and resaving the hqr after all should work. If not, you have to open original hqr (in a separate program), and copy+paste your modified bricks.

OBrasilo: As I said: this is version-in-progress, most of Layout editing features are not working.

Only resaving the tiles don't help, but if I can copy-paste from instance to instance then it should be no problem. Thanx again! Great tool!

[Gergely]

Unfortunatelly the new version doesn't work either. It saves the transparent pixels all right this time but the rest is displayed black inside the game. In the editor it looks good but in the game transparent parts are transparent and painted pixels are blank black.

[Zink]

Hmmm... I have tested it this time, and it worked. Could you save some of your bricks that appear in a wrong way, and send them to me? (I mean: save as *.brk files in the editor directly.) Although it would be better if you sent me your LBA_BRK.HQR file through an e-mail, but if you can't due to a slow connection or some limits, maybe some single brks will enough.

[Gergely]

Here's a brick.

[Zink]

I'm not sure... is it supposed to look like this?

[Gergely]

Yes it does. It looks like this in the editor as well except for the brick thumbnails where it looks a bit wierd, transparent cells are displayed cyan and border is displayed different too. And inside game it is all messed up as said below. In editor though, after opening it looks fine.

[Zink]

This seems very weird. It looks fine in the thumbnails view for me. Could you please post a screenshot of how it looks for you? I will try to test it in the game today too.

BTW: Alexfont, I see we took your thread over So a split would be good I think.

[xesf]

BTW: Alexfont, I see we took your thread over So a split would be good I think.

Ok, done
If you think its better to merge it with your LBArchitec thread just say it

[Zink]

Don't know

[Gergely]

You know what? Up until I send you a look from the game try painting into a brick with the transparent color. Cuz that's what I did. When importing copy-paste from the wrong bricks it pasted plain black into the new editor's brick. So I reached out for the transparent ink on the right and repainted all black spots with that. Maybe that's what got saved wrong!