I tried the most ugly skybox I could imagine, and I'm not sure I see it: Though I made this skybox with papatran instead of the texture editor. Or do you mean that the ball on the right in my image is so obviously a ball instead of something more smooth?
I see what you mean there. Weirdly enough, I don't have that... Do you have any mods that change the explosions maybe? Like Dark Nights or Bigger Explosions?
I'm running on Windows. 1. When I try to run papatran from the command prompt, I receive the error message 'C:\Games\Planetary' is not recognized as an internal or external command,operable program or batch file. Is this because there is a space between 'Planetary' and 'Annihilation' ? 2. Your command prompt instructions say: "where "pathtopa" has to be replaced by the Planetary Annihilation Installation Directory." My papatran.exe files are located deeper in that directory, so I adjusted the path to reflect this. (see screenshot) 3. Do I not need to include the '.exe' extension for the paptran in the command prompt?
Oh, that's because of the spaces in the path. Try this (so with quotes): Code: "C:\Games\Planetary Annihilation\Planetary Annihilation\stable\bin_x64\papatran" And sorry about the exact location. I only know where it is on Linux, but yeah you are right. On Windows it's in bin_x64. Also you shouldn't need the .exe part. Also, great show on the AbleGamers tournament.
Thanks! I made some dummy skybox files to make sure I was doing it right. I can't tell if I got the rotation correct, but I could read all the words Pretty cool to see them floating around. I got some skybox images from Space Engine so tomorrow I'll work on converting their naming convention to ours.
Gah! I'm having a tough time getting the image oriented correctly. I started with using superouman's image to relate the skybox coordinates to plain the language position so I could reorient them according to your image. Then I noticed that you seemed to have relocated the images by "rolling" the boxes around, the flipping horizontally, then vertically.?? At any rate, some of the images were mis-oriented once I went into the game and it's tough to tell what to do. One of my galaxies was split in such a way that I wasn't sure that just rotating/flipping the images could put it back together. Using superouman's directions even totalannihilation's (down thread) and still a mismatch. I think I'll export another skybox with loots of stuff in it and insert text in the images and color their borders so I can tell what I'm looking at.
Since it looks like I'm going to be doing this multiple times, I created a .bat file in the com.pa.demo.mycustomskybox directory do create the .papa files. That's a big help.
Yikes. I took a screen shot of the 'cube-view' from which I exported the skyboxes and when I matched up the images, the coordinates are different than superouman's. So I'm not sure what to call "left", "right", etc.
I had to step away from the computer for awhile, but while I was out I decided to do something similar to the images that I'm uploading as well as outlining the borders of each square in the color shown in the cube view. That way I can load the game and make sense of what needs to happen.
Huzzah! I finally got it. Here is the conversion map that works for me. The image is the exterior view if you folded it into a cube, but we play inside the cube. Since there is no text on my skyboxes, I didn't bother doing a horizontal flip. You can't tell that you are looking at the back side of the images and keeps it less complicated. @DeathByDenim , thanks for your help.
Mods use a shadowing technique, which just means that any file you put in your mod supersedes files from PA itself or any previously loaded mod. So basically, PA loads its files. Then it loads the mods. If any of the files in your mod have the same filename and path, then it loads that file instead. (I say load, but it's really loaded as needed of course)
I understand that part. But what triggers that shadowing event? Or does PA automatically look for duplicate path/filenames in the Data files by default? I see that I have a lot of mod zip files in PA Data files/download directory. Is there a file someplace else that keeps track of what mods are installed/uninstalled and enabled/disabled? Where do those zip files get loaded to? That is, are they unzipped to my hard drive or just into memory?
Both the PA client and server use a memory based file system with different mount points. The main ones are: /pa/ /shaders/ /ui/ Files are loaded into the memory filesystem in the following order: filesystem media/pa/ expansion content eg PAExpansion1 maps to /media/pa_ex1/ filesystem client mods from /client_mods/ based on priority zip client mods via community mods based on priority manual memory mounts eg Galactic War When creating a non GW game server mods are bundled into a remote mod collection: filesystem server mods from /server_mods/ based on priority zip server mods via community mods based on priority The remote mod collection is then uploaded to the server, mounted over the server memory file system and then downloaded by each client. In most cases server mods override client mods. The memory file system also allows watchers that can reload content while developing. Filesystem watchers are implemented on windows only and I have implemented the macOS File System Events API in my local build. Some of the details are covered in: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Planetary_Annihilation_Community_Mods_Implementation The actual implementation is a little more complex
Thanks. I do not have an IT background but I am curious about the way things work. Tonight I expect that my best friend Google and I will be able to construct a batch file that will take the images in the Space Engine export directory, manipulate, rename and convert to .papa files in the correct place all at once. Probably peanuts to you pros, but pretty thrilling to me. If all goes well I may try learning how to publish custom skybox mods
Reviewing the Client and Server mod examples: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Example_Mod_Custom_Skybox https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Example_Mod_Bigger_Boom_Bot If I decide to publish a mod, for best practice, should the "identifier" in the modinfo.json file match the directory name that the file is located in? For instance, for the bigger boom bot mod the .json file ontains Code: "identifier": "com.pa.you.biggerbombbot" and is located in the file structure server_mods com.pa.you.biggerbombbot modinfo.json pa units land bot_bomb I ask because the client mod example doesn't quite follow that standard Code: "identifier": "com.pa.you.skybox.name" client_mods com.pa.demo.mycustomskybox modinfo.json pa terrain sky textures Or am I misunderstanding something? Is the identifier in this case just generic? I see that the author= "demo" so that would make sense to replace ".you" Or is there no real connection between the identifier and the directory containing the modinfo.json file?
