Modification appearance of Aliens - is it a possibility?

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Sun, 22. Jun 08, 17:37

I love those characters from Mass Effect (i need that game), but i think it would be better to stick to the original concepts, to make them the races of the X Universe, not races made up by someone else or Mass Effect.
Kujal, any news?

Zoed Vega · Post by **Zoed Vega** » Sun, 22. Jun 08, 21:51

Moderator erased post

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Mon, 23. Jun 08, 19:07

The Mass Effect races have some amazing detail and feeling to them, that in X3 would be amazing.

Kujal4 · Post by **Kujal4** » Mon, 23. Jun 08, 19:13

Hi guys and gals, to Dragon93 I've got no further with the audio on X3 - I must be doing something wrong - still it will not work. If someone gets me round the audio issue then I can answer my first post question which is yes - You can change the characters in X3 - (and actually quite easily it appears)
In keeping with the current characters and re-beefing them? sure, why not,...... but changing them to whatever you like? - Hell yeah.
It may not keep everyone in the X3 community happy to know I truly do not care about the look of the original races but I'm not planning on re writing content for what might be a potential X4 and shoving down their throats either - I'm in it to have fun with it and make it more condusive towards an overall even better product for myself. If I hear one more helium balloon filled voice of a Boron telling me "But we are at peace" I'll Frag him so bad they'll have to bury him twice.

If anyone can get around that audio issue - ie decipher it and be able to actually hear it then please let me know.

All the best - Kujal4

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Mon, 23. Jun 08, 19:38

Please forgive me if I am asking you to reiterate what you may have previously stated - but could you elaborate precisely what the issue with audio is, and I will make effort to help you in direction to resolve.

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Mon, 23. Jun 08, 23:02

Just encase you didn't see this Observe.

There, done, All up the .mov runs for 46 mins and 7 seconds (Big file) It consists of 20 mins and 15 seconds of characters and the rest is the rotating Trade and stock items that you see when trading and looking at stock (Obvious Rolling Eyes )

This was the 00001.dat in the MOV directory of the X3 root menu files simply renamed from .dat to a .mov

The audio though I had some issues with, it's file designation is 00144.dat and when renamed to 00144.wma it played but with no apparent audio (It was silent but for a few near silent background snaps/pops here and there. Oh and get this, it runs for 9Hours 55mins and 37 seconds Confused
If anyone gets this working - please send me a private message, I'd truly love to hear from you.

I don't know anything about it, but i have a feeling that either 1, wma is not the right format to change it to, or 2, the sound of the vids is held in a different file.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Tue, 24. Jun 08, 01:11

Since this is not my project (too many others), but since I am interested in seeing fruits of efforts ongoing in this thread, I will help where I can. Also, since I haven't been following each and every detail of what you guys have and have not accomplished, please forgive me if I cover ground already unearthed.

1. @Dragon93: You should be able to play 00144.dat when changed to .wma extension. I'm not sure why you couldn't

2. As you've already ascertained, "characters" showing in the monitor have audio derived from 00144.dat, and video from 00001.dat.

3. File \mov\00044.xml specifies location of the audio clip within 00144. For further information you may find this thread useful.

In case you are familiar with Mission Director, you can create code which will display a video "actor" in the video monitor, and you can also specify accompanying audio clip.

I encourage all of you to continue this interesting investigation.

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Tue, 24. Jun 08, 09:18

Oh right, thanks for the info. Btw, i could open with wma, just i was wondering if it was the wrong format, i guess not. I think its kinda stupid having sound and video separate.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Tue, 24. Jun 08, 09:24

Dragon93 wrote:I think its kinda stupid having sound and video separate.

Not really when you consider probably why they did it that way. For example, we have short video clips of "characters" shown on the monitor. These individual video clips are associated with different audio clips depending on the circumstance.

Kujal4 · Post by **Kujal4** » Tue, 24. Jun 08, 16:30

First off to Observe - I sent you a PM before I read this page so apologies for asking a question you answered above a post or two.

Pre cognative abilities - I'm very jealous - but you knew I was going to write that too right?

Nice to see another X'er jumping on the wagon to give a push - Thanks mate.

To Dragon93 I say, good on you for continuing to flog the same dead horse as I am, thanks for the support and my God I'm so envious that you can get that bloody file to work and I can't.
How long does it truly run for? - is the audio easy to hear? and can you give me more info an the bitrate etc of the playback if you can get it please. I'm attempting to playback on windows media player and it just 'aint workin'.

All the best to the both of you till next time- Kujal4

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Tue, 24. Jun 08, 16:37

PM replied to. Let's get these in the game! It's not very difficult to do once you understand several of the files which specify the audio video combination.

KRM398 · Post by **KRM398** » Wed, 25. Jun 08, 15:42

Since my (small) talent seems to be fan fic, I have nothing to help you with, but as an X player since it started let me say, "YES!!!" and go for it, you have some good names on here trying to help and I'd love to see this work. If new sayings for the charactors could be used let me know, I'll send some new ones out to let you vote on.

KRM398 · Post by **KRM398** » Wed, 25. Jun 08, 16:05

Ok, couldnt wait to hear, giving xenons a voice has got my attention, here are a few small ideas with intros to when they would be used.
Xenon patrol traveling through sector sees a ship approaching:
"Xenon patrol 12 reporting unknown contact in sector ...."
"Contact verified, Brennen,Julian, past destruction of Xenon life, terminate immediately!"
"Patrol 12 under attack."
"M class ship destroyed."
"L class ship destroyed."
"LX ship disabled. unauthorized entry, computer hacking in progress, need assis.......tan.....cccccc.."
Under diferent conditions:
"Xenon patrol 12 in sector."
"Apraoching unknown vessel."
"Patrol 12 engaging ship class M3"
"Enemy destroyed, continueing patrol"

As the Xenon never talk to US the coms you'd hear would be reports and orders being picked up, but definately better than nothing. The voice would be decidedly mechanical but not badly so, think old BSG cylons..deap voice with metalic side tones perhaps.

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 01:58

Here we go. Example of custom video (also has audio) playing on in-game communications monitor:
[ external image ]

Obviously non-copyrighted material would have to be used for anything actually released in a mod. The above was simply a proof-of-concept test while I worked out the technical details. I could have used a video of my own mug, but that would have been far too scary.

eladan · Post by **eladan** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 05:11

Size of the vid doesn't matter? (In dimensional terms, I mean)

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 05:38

eladan wrote:Size of the vid doesn't matter? (In dimensional terms, I mean)

It does matter. Only videos contained in the huge 00001.dat file (575 meg) will play in this fashion. That is the file with all the other "character" video clips. Format must match exactly. Frame size is 256 x 256.

Way back when I was doing research into Billboards, I found that only a couple of filenames could be used for them. In the case of "character" videos, it appears hard-coded that 00001.dat must be used.

Instead of modifying existing clips, I've added new ones to the end of 00001.dat, and then added entries in Videos.txt. I'm using Mission Director <play_dialog> to make the video play. This provides advantage of being able to trigger the video anytime I want depending on mission situation. If desired, Videos.txt can be changed so existing characters are replaced by new ones added to the end of the video file.

One question that will inevitably arise is: "does this mean a mod using custom characters would have to include the modified 00001.dat file as download?" Happily the answer is no it won't. Transcend II mod next release will contain custom characters. My solution is to automatically "patch" the big 00001.dat file during mod installation.

Custom audio take a somewhat different approach. They depend on file 00144.dat, and definitions in 440001.xml and 00044.xml (English).

The bottom-line is, providing custom videos (and audio) of this nature is not only do-able, but also quite practical for mod inclusion.

eladan · Post by **eladan** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 06:13

Fair enough - I thought the vid looked large, hence my question. I now noticed you cropped the image.

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 08:54

What about a nice, simple and sexual tutorial then Observe?

Observe · Post by **Observe** » Thu, 26. Jun 08, 16:09

Dragon93 wrote:What about a nice, simple and sexual tutorial then Observe?

Perhaps some day - at least the tuturial part.

For now, my main effort is evolution of Transcend II with inclusion of character "dialog" enhancement of our Mission Director code using existing X3 characters; and perhaps a few custom ones as well. You are welcome If you wish to join that effort.

Dragon93 · Post by **Dragon93** » Fri, 27. Jun 08, 18:29

I still need to try out Transcend

. Got a nice game in XTM atm. Don't mind parting with XTM though, its mainly all the scripts im using that make it really good, plus the XTM ships, Transcend ships could replace them, just need to uninstall XTM safely.

egosoft.com

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Modification appearance of Aliens - is it a possibility?