How to Texture the NAM?

[ChiefZDN]

I want to contribute to the NAM. So, i want to make texture. How to make NAM texture?

[eggman121]

Hello first of all.

Texturing is no easy feat. It requires some knowledge of the structure of the NAM and the IIDs that compliment the applicable pieces. The NAM team is really down to a few people and usually textures are hard to create and allocate.

That being said you are welcome too make a variety of textures that cover some of the more common features and preview them to the NAM team. Most sets are covered and Mandelsoft (Our former main texture) who went onto other things has long retired to other things. From what I can tell it was a case of burnout and desires too move on (He was a great team mate).

The future holds that textures could be auto generated from a set of alphas so stopping the need to make new textures of different localities.

Nothing is stopping you from making textures but alot of work is involved. That is just a word of warning.

-eggman121

[nathkel]

Is there a set of template pix that the NAM uses in the official canon? It would be helpful to work from those.

[mgb204]

Well the files within the NAM can be extracted for such use.

If you are looking for something specific you want to work on, ask and ye shall receive. But is there a master repository of everything waiting to be downloaded, not really is the simple answer.

If anyone is really serious about re-texturing a part of the NAM, open a thread and show us what you are planning. It's easy to help when we know what you are trying to do, not to mention such help will be more forthcoming if you show some dedication to the task at hand. But simply saying I want to make textures, doesn't really give anyone a lot to work with.

[APSMS]

I agree that a template set of images would be helpful. I know that I can extract the textures from the NAM using the reader or SC4Tool, but being wholly unfamiliar with those programs (for that purpose) makes it difficult to know what is necessary.

I've been wanting to make a concrete texture pack for the RHW for a while (nevermind that I have zero texturing experience), but that barrier of figuring out how to get a texture file out of a DAT and then getting it back into the game is a pretty steep barrier, even if it becomes rote immediately afterward.

Unfortunately the tutorials for this either have lacking pictures or rely on tools or knowledge unmentioned. At least, every one I've ever seen seemed like a number of crucial steps were either missing or assumed.

[mgb204]

When you say template, I have the feeling you mean a repository of all the textures? It's an important distinction, because templates would be perhaps include the basic Straight and Diagonal textures for a network, a few basic pieces. But the full repository will be thousands of textures, for RHW, tens of thousands. The issue isn't so much in providing them, I could dump the files and upload the repository somewhere, but that wouldn't be organised or particularly helpful for most uses. What you really need to learn, if you are to accomplish this feat, is how to find the textures for yourself, no easy task that. But as ever, teach a man to FSH (er fish)...

Armed with an example though, I can be more specific, so lets take the RHW textures as you mention. The US textures are all contained within the DAT files in the Real Highway Mod folder, inside the Network Addon Mod folder. Generally speaking there is one DAT for each RHW width and height. But some textures will be found elsewhere too, others are re-used more than once. The only tool you need for texturing is GoFSH, it can open a DAT (FSHxDAT), show you the textures inside and allow you to export one, a selection, or all of them in one go. Generally what it exports is FSH files, which then need converting to BMP pairs. All of this is comprehensively explained in the manual that comes with the application.

So let's say you exported the file RealHighway_L0_RHW-4.dat from the folder Network Addon Mod\Real Highway Mod\L0. What do you now have?, 1,600 textures for the RHW-4 network, but no categorisation or explanation of what is what, except for visually. OK that figure can be cut down hugely by removing the wealth textures. Using some magic in GoFSH, you can generate those automatically for your new set. But you still will need to manually sort through what is and isn't needed to convert it into a usable repository before you can start to work. That means understanding which textures are "sets" with wealth groups. Knowing which textures have MipMaps and which don't. Which textures are puzzle-based (if any), that need to be darkened. It gets really complex, really fast, but the main barrier is that this process is time consuming.



My advice, dump the files to a temporary folder, then MOVE them one set/group at a time into the repository you are building. That way the temp folder diminishes as you build a more complete repository. Ditch any wealth textures as you go, ensuring that the folder in the repository where you add them, is based around the required wealth grouping. So in the attached example, "7AB50E44-1ABE787D-57030004-C0", the RHW-4 Straight is set to generate W16, or wealths 0-6. So you can delete the 1-6 wealth textures (ending 1-64 and just keep the zero wealth (ending 04). So that's seven textures now covered by just one in your repository, which is a huge time-saver, but takes some effort to organise up front.

The funny purple textures are what handles the grasses. Making them is easy, take the original alpha (A0 file) which GoFSH exports. Rename it from ###-A0 to ###-DO, if necessary convert the file to RGB format, make the Red and Blue channels all white, now it will place grass everywhere for the 1-6 wealth textures when built. If you use Photoshop, this can be done automatically for a large set using Actions. Similarly a bulk-file rename utility will handle a lot of renames in one or two clicks.

Not all textures need 6 wealth textures, but for RHW it's mostly that way. You will need to understand wealth groups though to ensure a comprehensive replacement for existing textures. Similarly, the one texture inside the Puzzle subfolder doesn't have wealth textures... note the ID ends in E. This generally denotes a puzzle-based texture which is darkened and includes transparency. Therefore it must be in a unique folder as we run a different command during generation. It also only needs the basic regular Alpha or -A0 file.



But there is no way around making your repository, except for starting much smaller and ignoring the whole whilst you get a few base textures made. But at that point you'll need to make a working repository, it's the only sensible way of working. The good news is that the way in which GoFSH exports this data, all the IDs are kept as part of the file names. So when you are ready to build your textures, it will auto-convert them to FSH, automatically build every texture from a single source and even pack them into a DAT/DATs for you. All things you had to do manually until very recently. All the work is setting it up and making the textures, everything else is handled for you.

A better place to start would probably be a SAM set, which all told contains about 80-90 textures (nearer 100 after NAM36 and rising). To put things into perspective, since SAM began to be a thing, the only replacement sets made have been by Rivit, my work with Cataylist on SAM7 and my SAM11 mod. Despite the far more reasonable amount of work, few people who start make it to the finish line. That's again why you won't find many takers to get that initial repository together for you. We simply don't have one and if you don't prove that this is something that's going somewhere, who would commit that time? Because having spent hours organising it for others, most will take one look at the gigantic task in front of them and never do anything with it. However, if you need help along the way and show you are likely to achieve something, then I'm certain those in the NAM team will be more than willing to help you with questions and problems along the way. But the simple reason a tutorial doesn't get into this step by step is because it would simply be too difficult to specify everything, it's a process those who succeed at have learnt. A great tutorial for example exists for the SAM sets, including "templates", but much of that information won't translate to a task like re-texturing the RHW. The tutorial is also woefully out of date, sure you could do it with SC4 Tool, I know I started that way. But I would highly recommend working out the basics with GoFSH, it would be much, much, easier and less work in the long run.

Hopefully it helps somewhat to see the process in action? To this end I've attached a small repository of the Ortho/Diagonal RHW-4 textures. When built with GoFSH this will output a dat which works as an override. So you can modify the basic textures included and get a feel for things. But expanding that repository to cover a large number of textures is not a task you'll see anyone volunteering to do for you, it's a lot of work.

[nathkel]

Well, that's what i was hoping for: the set that the NAM team works from. I have tried extracting these textures, only to find that there are different copies of the same type, plus i've noticed that the textures in-game on the NAM were not consistent, which became apparent in higher/lower zooms (mostly pixel details - not so much coloring issues).

I was hoping to avoid spending hours filtering the ones i need, since someone undoubtedly has done this already. AAMOF, this is one of the reasons i'm not motivated to dive into my own project. It's already taking a lot of time creating the piece set up and a few new texture tiles for the Tangential Curves.

Perhaps a universal, "official" set is called for, which can be amended by the NAM team. Then if you have third-party modders who wish to contribute to the NAM mod, these are okayed by NAM officially, as far as being accepted as adhering to the NAM "canon".

[mgb204]

Well, that's what i was hoping for: the set that the NAM team works from. I have tried extracting these textures, only to find that there are different copies of the same type, plus i've noticed that the textures in-game on the NAM were not consistent, which became apparent in higher/lower zooms (mostly pixel details - not so much coloring issues).

But that assumes we have a master repository built up over the years, the fact is we don't, because over the years many people just contributed various parts. Some like Mandelsoft and myself have made large-ish repositories for various purposes, but those may not be ideal when used for another purpose.

For example, my TGN and SWN repositories cover all textures with grasses and baked-in sidewalks respectively. But, due to the way I made them, many pieces which don't need grass or sidewalks were never included, because I built the repositories with very specific purposes in mind. They would be a very useful place to start for some mods, but you'd still need to do a lot of work to modify them for say making a complete road replacement mod. Happy to share what I have by all means. Note my repositories do not cover RHW in any way, the task was simply to much to expand into that side of things.

Similarly the one from Mandelsoft is probably more comprehensive, but it's out of date by a few NAM versions. Possibly it's more useful for regular networks, but the RHW stuff won't be any use since massive changes were made for NAM33 onwards, a lot of it would not really work so well with newer NAM versions.

The thing is, if you are saying to me the barrier in terms of making a texture mod is that the resources aren't provided, then that makes me think you'd be unlikely to get anywhere with such a project. Why?, well simply having done two very large texture mods and maintained them, I'm all too aware of the time involved in the process. By that I don't mean making the repositories, but the time involved making the changes and everything work. That's far more involved than simply creating a repository to work from in the first place. Such projects require a lot of commitment to have any chance of reaching completion, either that's something you are motivated to do or you aren't.

Different textures that look the same but with different IDs happens a lot. Understanding why is not always obvious, but with enough experience you can start to see the whole. Rather than worrying about what you might or might not need, assume you need them all. There are only really two difference you should need, regular and "puzzle" or darkened textures, otherwise the same texture should be identical. Of course, not all were made by the same people and there are inconsistencies in the sets. For example, that's one are I focussed upon improving in my personal repositories, there are many tweaks, fixes and improvements there. But again from personal experience, you don't need all the answers to get cracking with making a mod. The basic pieces are easy enough to put together and if you manage to get that far, it shows others then can take your proposal seriously. If we see something cool, no doubt you'll be enabled with assistance as possibly resources to further the project. But when you ask for a lot of work up-front, with not so much as a sample texture or plan, then you may find people less willing to devote their time. It's nothing personal, but all too often people are going to make a mod, but simply never go anywhere with it, you have to prove yourself.

Creating a universal set is easy, if you are talking about a texture dump, there you go, that's all the textures. But the time it would take to extract, organise and build a working repository is probably too much to ask of anyone "for the benefit" of the community. The reality is, the work will be done, but very little will be created to vindicate the work. If you have a specific goal for a texture mod, let us know, where possible we'll help where we can with providing the resources or help to work things out. But I just don't see with such a limited number of members on the team right now the time to devote to such a task. If we can dump the textures, it's really not all that hard for you to do it either. Frankly, you'll be better served by getting more familiar with the process by doing it yourself anyway.