The thread that started it all

[Craig Kostelecky]

It's nice to see some progress going on here. I've also renamed this thread so it looks like the official place to discuss the COL files.

 

I'd also like to publically thank Ryan_ for his efforts in tackling this subject. It's always nice to get new people involved in the mod.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Some of you may have noticed that there is a new Led-by here. If you didn't, I'd like to announce that Y_Less now has Led-by status of the Liberty City forum. The reason I chose Alex over some others which may have been around longer or done more for the mod is Y_Less has shown me several times that he has the desire, motivation, ability, and free time to keep things organized around here. Just take a look at the first post in the mission coding thread.

 

So hopefully things will get a little more organized around here.

Edited March 22, 2005 by Craig Kostelecky

[jcab42]

 

I think the floor has to be darker, more muddy because it isn't VC 

That was the point of the multiple textures thing, to give people a chance to try different options, but it seems like the GTA3 sand was the mobs choice [somehow] so unless someone seconds that nomination, I think the sand is going to stay.

 

Craig, I do remember us talking about that tunnel, thanks for keeping after me about that. I got a good plan for it.

[santehnik]

I found a 2 little bug but it need to fix

 

When i compleated portland and goes to second island i compleated all missions of Donald Dav & killed Kenju but when i compleated all Asuka missions and want to compleate kenju missions it not starts!!!

 

Sorry my English!!! Thanx for Advance

[charlesbesso]

can someone help me I'm missing something obviously.

 

ok I'm trying to add collision to the dock crane in portland, which the col for is in /gta3maps/making/making.col listed as "dockcranescale"

 

I open the dff in z-modeler, add a new spline to the hole in question, fill it's surface so it's just two polygon's, I then exported it as .x and edited the file as per steve-m's tutorial, then I used colmaker and fliped the x axis as ryan suggested in pm, and saved as dockcranescale.col. then I used coleditor to load making.col and replaced the default dockcranscale with the newly created dockcranescale.col from colmaker. but when I go ingame it's still unsolid where I just edited it. any clue what I'm messing up in the process?

 

thanks for the help.

 

note the model has a slanted top, and zmod wont let me see the orginal vertices otherwise I'd just do a spline fill as two poly's on the col and export it, this model has high poly's on both the dff and col as it's a fairly complex object, I've tried using a new spline fill as stated but I have no idea how to weld the new spline to the orginal object.

Edited March 22, 2005 by charlesbesso

[jcab42]

That's the same problem Ryan had before. Remember, the COLs you need to edit are the ones in the GTA3.IMG, not the ones in the directories.

 

Actually, I'd like to see all COLs taken out of the IMG. The IMG has a limit to the amount of files you can add to it. Does anyone know of a reason why we shouldn't just link the COLs in the gta_vc.dat (GTA3 style)?

[Golden $]

it doesn't work yet so I reinstalled the BETA 1, which worked fine before, but now when i want to start a new game it stops right at the beginning of the loading screen...

 

Error Message:

 

unhandled exception: c0000005

at address: 004c032d

 

Please help me

 

@ Craig Kotelecky

where can I get this Zip???

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

*EDIT* BETA1 works fine again

 

can anybody give me his exe, which is working with the BETA2???

Edited March 22, 2005 by Golden $

[charlesbesso]

I'm using max now and the panda express is giving me errors the text it's generating has alot of referrances to "DWORD" so I think there's an api problem going on.

 

I have good news thanks to your help I have edited the dock crane and it is now solid as a rock ;] only took 6 more poly's to do it too. I'm going to try tackling some other collision's today, now I'm off to do another collision file, ryan you and me should start networking on what collision's which of us should handle so we don't overlap each other's progress. alright I'll be back in the forums later today hopefully with another postive update.

 

update - ok I did the same with indhibuild2, it's the building in collision1.jpg, it is substantly high in polygon's though if anyone comes up with a open source or freeware way to lower the polygon counts please point it out to me (ryan mentioned NuGraf but that's a $395 dollar plugin) one benefit of building the col out of the dff was that the balcony is completely solid including the barrier on the edge (high rise sniping anyone? ;] )

 

second update - ok I found a stand alone program called VizUP that automaticlly reduced the .col's without marring the model in any visual fashion problem being it's $700, if anyone knows modeler's ask around about an open source or freeware solution to this issue.

Edited March 22, 2005 by charlesbesso

[Y_Less]

GT-1 we actually have one that I made the other day, I just haven't posted it yet, it just needs a bit of tweaking and formatting before its good to go.

 

santehnik: this is not the bugs topic but your problem is probably that the missions simply do not exist yet, we haven't converted them, see this thread for mission status, and if you don't already have it, download the latest scm from the first page of this thread.

[Hammer83]

That's the same problem Ryan had before. Remember, the COLs you need to edit are the ones in the GTA3.IMG, not the ones in the directories.

 

Actually, I'd like to see all COLs taken out of the IMG. The IMG has a limit to the amount of files you can add to it. Does anyone know of a reason why we shouldn't just link the COLs in the gta_vc.dat (GTA3 style)?

I'd like to see this too. I'm not sure myself why cols were placed there, but I think the reason is because they didn't work outside of img.

[charlesbesso]

ok so I've got these items converted

 

indhibuild2

dockcranescale

redlightbuild11

newbuildind

Chinabuildnew1

Chinabuilds05

Chinabuilds07

ind_mainten5

pharmas

 

but the game now crashes, not to worry though I'll restore the beta 2 gta3.img and continue making new .col files for problem buildings and then once we work out the polygon reducer situation all these files will be available to be reworked. this also brings up another issue if all the added col's make the engine crash then perhaps we will have to use the polygon reducer on the actual ingame models themselves at some point, just a thought but something to consider if we want to get this mod finished.

[Craig Kostelecky]

If we can get it to work outside of the image, I fully support removing them from there.

[Craig Kostelecky]

Okay, I finally updated the AudioLC file so it'll work with all versions of GTA:LC. So now you can enjoy the game even if you don't have lost your GTA3 CD. All of the cutscene audio files are present, but they are blanked out. This download is only 3.04 MB so it will be included in all future releases (to make things easier).

 

I haven't completely tested this, but it should work. I was able to start the game and I played two missions, and both ran fine.

 

You can download the GTA3 audio files from here.

 

I'll most likely be releasing another test package before Thursday which would have a final gta-lc.ini and cuts.img. That way any new mission coders don't have to worry at all about cutscenes or any other audio files.

[Ryan_]

Problem is that there are mutiple cols im mutiple places.v I guess this is something Pine did when he converted?

Anyone ever think, now that hammer has a kick ass lancher, it would be good to properly reference all the files?

maybe get rid of unused vice files in the LC game folder ect?

just a thought.

 

Edited March 22, 2005 by Ryan_

[Golden $]

thank you Craig for the file. Now i'm able to start the BETA2 but if i wanna start a new game it crashes at 2/3 the way.

 

With the following error message:

 

An unhandled exception has occured, the details are shown below:

 

Exception at address: 0x0048944C

 

Registers -----------------------------------------------------

EAX: 0x00721714 EBX: 0x068ACC8C ECX: 0x00000000 EDX: 0x00000000

ESI: 0x00000010 EDI: 0x0012FA50 EBP: 0x0012FABC ESP: 0x0012FA3C

EFLAGS: 10000001000010110

 

 

PS: im using the GTA-LC.exe to start the BETA

 

i hope u can help me

Edited March 23, 2005 by Golden $

[spaceeinstein]

I got an idea. First make a roof of the building. Then make the collision. Then delete all the collisions EXCEPT the roof. Now MERGE it with Rockstar's collsions. Just my theory.

[jcab42]

Yeah, there's alot of unused stuff floating around. Like, I don't know how long it's been happening but:

comNbtm folder contains comNtop files (they should be deleted)

 

As an experiment, I deleted all COLs from the gta3.img EXCEPT for train.col and then I added this to the gta_vc.dat:

 

COLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\comNbtm\comNbtm.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\comNtop\comNtop.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\comroad\comroad.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\comSE\comSE.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\comSW\comSW.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\indroads\indroads.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\industNE\industNE.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\industNW\industNW.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\industSE\industSE.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\industSW\industSW.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\landNE\landNE.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\landSW\landSW.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\making\making.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\subroads\subroads.colCOLFILE 0 DATA\GTA3MAPS\temppart\temppart.col

 

 

Seems to work great. Sure would be cool if we could have area 1, 2, and 3 like in GTA3, but it works fine with all 0's. I don't see any difference from IMG style.

 

Could you go into more detail about using Hammer's launcher to reference the files? Anything that helps us organize is good.

[Bebop]

Bebop, just to let you know (and I think we already talked in PMs about it) is that automatic converter is very crappy and we use it for cutscenes simply because there is no choice. Given that we have a fully working peds.ifp from VC, it's very, very doubtful that we'll ever use converted GTA3 one.

 

Hammer the most possible thing is that i got it done when i have time, VC anims are far from being like the ones from Gta3.

[Ryan_]

well i dont really know much about how issues were overcom when pine put liberty city together, but mainly the col and map files.

i dont even know what exe restrictions there were before the launcher was out. just a thought that spilled out on my keyboard.

 

so, did you export the cols from the image and copy them over the ones already in the maps folders, or are you using the ones that were already in the maps folder and just deleted the ones from the image?

Edited March 23, 2005 by Ryan_

[charlesbesso]

a stern warning needs to be made, I am using windows xp sp1 updated as much as possible on an AMD Athlon XP 2400 using an nforce2 chipset, after I launched the game with the list of new collisions I modified the game crashed with a memory error before it could launch the opening movie and this corrupted explorer.exe to the point where if I tried to copy a file or move an icon it would continuely crash, rebooting did not fix it, so as a general rule of thumb I believe we should import new collision models one by one for testing and then collect them into an archieve for when the poly reducer situation is handled that way there will be a far less chance of this error happening to anyone else contributing to the project.

 

I got an idea. First make a roof of the building. Then make the collision. Then delete all the collisions EXCEPT the roof. Now MERGE it with Rockstar's collsions. Just my theory.

 

that seems like a great idea but as to how we go about that I'm clueless, I have no way of measuring the areas that are without collisions, without being able to access the orginal vertices there is also no way to weld the objects together but if we could measure the dimensions of the gaps then we could generate a .col though it'd have to be manually added to the orginal .col's which is beyond the scope of my knownledge. also some buildings such as block_maindrag to the left of the hospital in portland when facing west is a problematic model that has multiple level's of heights as well as the center which is unsolid even after running the .x of the .dff through collmaker.

 

as for getting rid of all unessacary vc content, I'm all for it and moving the projects .col's inside or outside of the img is all fine and dandy the less confusion and the more organized the smoother the project will progress.

 

well I'm off to make more col's from the images i've collected.

 

update - I did what Jcab did and it seems to load the .col's faster outside of the image, I didn't notice any problems at all having the files outside of the image but I just crashed with this exception

 

Exception at address: 0x004BB557

Last opcode executed: 0001 wait

In thread: ambul_m

 

seems like every crash I've seen has been in the ambul_m thread or in the train thread. anyways moving the col's out of the image seems perfectly reasonable.

Edited March 23, 2005 by charlesbesso

[Lurk Morrison]

Some more problems/errors/glitches I've run into.

 

 

Dead Skunk In The Trunk

Opening Cutscene: Joey's head is in the tire.

 

 

Any Of TONI's Missions

They are marked with an "S" instead of a "T".

 

 

Sayonara Salvatore

Cutscene showing the car driving to the club doesn't happen. Instead screen flickers with 'widescreen' on.

 

 

Drive Misty For Me

After arriving at Joey's, Claude gets out of car, takes one step, then freezes (Claude, not the game).

[Y_Less]

BUGS, GLITCHES, and INCOMPLETES

 

Bugs topic - report them there.

[Lurk Morrison]

Oh, I thought we could report mission coding errors in here.

 

My bad.

[Ryan_]

Well things are going well at this end. I have all updated cols for relevent objects within the temppart.col and I am 75% of the way through industne.col files.

My game runs just fine with my colfiles, however they are largewr than gta3's original cols. My average col is 150-300 polys (which is on par with a lot of gtavc's cols), but there are 2 so far that are still rather large 1000polys.

I have used a polygon cruncher with 3ds max 7 to recieve my results, and my results have been around 40-65% decimation.

I was thinking that when I get some cols with a lot of polys after crunching, a modeler could use their skills to trim out what poly cruncher could not. (for instance, one of my high poly cols 1000, has a bunch of picnic tables with unbrellas on top in the mesh, i cant go any further with poly cruncher without losing the shape of the object. If a modeler could edit those unbrellas in the cols mesh, the ploy count could drop much lower). In case your wondering, the original poly coun for the object was near 3500, poly cruncher brought it to 1000 while keeping a good mesh.

 

Well, im back to the cols.....

 

Any advice?

 

Edit: industne.col/temppart.col complete

Edited March 24, 2005 by Ryan_

[Cran.]

I tried Beta 2, and bang.

Did it half way though loading the game.

[Hammer83]

Accuracy is not necessarily important with cols. In my opinion lower poly count is priority. BTW, you cans see if the game considers col model to be huge by having DbgView open while running the game. If you see a lot of "Colmodel x is huge" then you need to further reduce it.

[jcab42]

 

well i dont really know much about how issues were overcom when pine put liberty city together, but mainly the col and map files.

i dont even know what exe restrictions there were before the launcher was out. just a thought that spilled out on my keyboard.

 

so, did you export the cols from the image and copy them over the ones already in the maps folders, or are you using the ones that were already in the maps folder and just deleted the ones from the image?

I used the cols that were already in the folders. To my knowledge, they are the same, but that is a good point.

 

re: Pine Creek, you know there's another guy that was just as important even though it's rarely mentioned, REspawn was the pioneer for getting rid of Vice City, and alot of the leftover VC stuff was his idea, like the generic.ide... after trying myself to get rid of it I talked to the spoon man and we are at least in agreement that it's more trouble than its worth because of the myriad of bugs it causes. And then there's the many VC models that have replaced the GTA3 ones, like the phonebooth. So if there's a program that could parse the DFF's into the same groupings as the IDE/IPL/COL folders, that would help us to identify unnecessary crap.

 

 

I got an idea. First make a roof of the building. Then make the collision. Then delete all the collisions EXCEPT the roof. Now MERGE it with Rockstar's collsions. Just my theory.

that seems like a great idea but as to how we go about that I'm clueless...

You guys gave me an idea. You could import both the COL and the DFF into zmod, then select the four vertices that make the roof of the COL and move them together until they are in line with the roof of the DFF. Then delete the DFF and export the col. That should keep the face count down while retaining R*'s detail. I actually think the GTA3 cols were way too detailed, but if you guys want detail, that'd be the way to do it. Incidentally, col models should never exceed 500 faces.

[Ryan_]

Well, I tried debug viewer and guess what, I had 3 col files that dbg said were huge, but, there were even more huge cols that I had not edited. ones from gta3 i guess.

Anyways, things are going good. I dont think the object cols that i am making will at all hurt game performance, but we can all check it out when i finish it up.

Thanks for the info.

 

[charlesbesso]

for the umbrellas a modeler could make a box around the table it should be around 10 faces then for the pole another box with no buttom or top but just the four sides so 8 more faces then for the umbrella top you just do 6 faces pointing to the corners of the umbrella and then just connect them to a vertice at the top point of the umbrella, since you can't jump on the bench anyway (it just moves when you run into it) so bamo it becomes a simple 24 face model and duplicate for the others. what do you think guys?

Edited March 24, 2005 by charlesbesso

[Ryan_]

At the moment i know very very little about 3d modeking. I was thinking when I finish with my cols i would learn and cut them down even more. do you know how to do this charlse?