BAM patching

[Echon]

There is one tiny bit of FotD that still uses overwriting; BAMs (specifically MAPICONS and STATES/2). This will obviously not work in the coming version of FotD due to numerous reasons. It seemed to be beyond my skills during the initial WeiDU update and now I would like to know what the best way of patching new frames onto these files is. I hope someone has written a function/macro that handles this elegantly.

[CamDawg]

Honestly, we just overwrite states/2 with Fixpack because BAM patching is probably a lot more trouble than its worth. I looked into doing it with the missing scroll icons but, if you need to change the palette, it gets very messy quickly.

 

Miloch did some patching to fix the wyvern animations, but that was mainly adjusting properties of the frames and not messing with the visuals at all.

 

mapicons is definitely a problem since you're going to run into compat problems. You may need to rely on something like the BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy for compatibility with other mods.

[Echon]

Honestly, we just overwrite states/2 with Fixpack because BAM patching is probably a lot more trouble than its worth. I looked into doing it with the missing scroll icons but, if you need to change the palette, it gets very messy quickly.

 

I guess I will do the same then, if only because it is a lot easier. What did you edit the BAMs with, by the way? I used BAM Workshop way back when but I would not expect that to be the tool of choice now.

 

mapicons is definitely a problem since you're going to run into compat problems. You may need to rely on something like the BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy for compatibility with other mods.

 

Yeah, overwriting MAPICONS is really not desirable. I wonder how other mods that add world map areas handle this. STATES I imagine is less of a problem but it may not actually be necessary to include in the mod. And what exactly is the 'BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy'?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Yeah, overwriting MAPICONS is really not desirable. I wonder how other mods that add world map areas handle this. STATES I imagine is less of a problem but it may not actually be necessary to include in the mod. And what exactly is the 'BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy'?

It's about this mod... it overwrites, but does so "elegantly" by repatching it's own worldmap to account all the other mods ... the problems arive when the installation order changes though there too... unless the features you overwrite are patched later(thus not overwriten).

[CamDawg]

Honestly, we just overwrite states/2 with Fixpack because BAM patching is probably a lot more trouble than its worth. I looked into doing it with the missing scroll icons but, if you need to change the palette, it gets very messy quickly.

 

I guess I will do the same then, if only because it is a lot easier. What did you edit the BAMs with, by the way? I used BAM Workshop way back when but I would not expect that to be the tool of choice now.

Depends on what I'm doing. For a minor touchup (like fixing the shadows in Item Upgrade) I still use BAM Workshop. For anything larger I'll usually export frames from DLTCEP, change them with Photoshop, and then re-import.

 

mapicons is definitely a problem since you're going to run into compat problems. You may need to rely on something like the BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy for compatibility with other mods.

 

Yeah, overwriting MAPICONS is really not desirable. I wonder how other mods that add world map areas handle this. STATES I imagine is less of a problem but it may not actually be necessary to include in the mod. And what exactly is the 'BP-BGT-OMG-BBQ worldmap thingy'?

What Jarno linked. It's basically a late-install worldmap that detects everything installed and sets up the worldmap as appropriate. You could overwrite mapicons (in case someone is just installing yours) and then touch base with the worldmap folks for players that want to use FOTD with other stuff.

[Echon]

It's about this mod... it overwrites, but does so "elegantly" by repatching it's own worldmap to account all the other mods ... the problems arive when the installation order changes though there too... unless the features you overwrite are patched later(thus not overwriten).

 

I read the readme but on a technical level I am not sure how to use this in combination with FotD. Would I require that people install this before, after or what?

 

edit: I had not seen Cam's reply.

[Mike1072]

A while back I wrote some .bam-patching code for adding new icons to the worldmap. You can find info on how to use it here. The code is attached to a later post in the thread.

 

You put your new icons in a .bam file and the function will extract them out of that .bam and append them to the map icon .bam used by the worldmap. It works best if your .bam has the same palette as the map icon .bam, but if not, it will convert your icon(s) to the new palette by trying to pick the closest match for each colour.

[Echon]

A while back I wrote some .bam-patching code for adding new icons to the worldmap. You can find info on how to use it here. The code is attached to a later post in the thread.

 

You put your new icons in a .bam file and the function will extract them out of that .bam and append them to the map icon .bam used by the worldmap. It works best if your .bam has the same palette as the map icon .bam, but if not, it will convert your icon(s) to the new palette by trying to pick the closest match for each colour.

 

Sweet! I will give it a try.

[Echon]

Sweet! I will give it a try.

 

It works! I just added the new FotD area to the Tutu worldmap. Thanks for writing and sharing the code.

 

Of course, it is greyscale like the old icons but that can be fixed.