[Obsolete] SS2 SHTUP (Shock Texture Upgrade Project)

[674068ff821f3Magnus Vile]

So, this is driving me slightly insane, because being a modern sort of guy I want what I want, and I want it now...

Further experimentation, (this time, extracting original copies offending the files from fam.crf and overwriting the ones from SHTUP) now has the game loading, and the pistol is once again all updatey and fabulous. The shotgun, however remains textureless. Since these files appear to be (according to the titles and the images they contain) tiles for the skybox, I am at a bit of a dead end since I can't see why those files should be affecting the shotty.

Obviously I'm missing something. 

[674068ff823d4Magnus Vile]

Ok, now I am being a pain, I know...

The shotgun now works, as far as I can tell it's because the wrong file was being cached by Windows...

Isn't that nice of Windows.  :p

Which means, as far as I can tell, using the files from the original fam.crf to replace the ones that are not working appears to make SHTUP work, sort of. Obviously any file I replace isn't going to be updated, but it looks like the rest of the mod is working. 

Sorry to have been a bother.

[674068ff825c2ZylonBane]

What you're saying now doesn't even make sense.  "cached by Windows"? What?

I'm starting to think that your SHTUP install is just botched somehow.

[674068ff82739Kolya]

I think the gist is that the sky textures caused trouble for him. Might still be a driver problem.
The gun textures was just mods activated in the wrong order, I assume.

[674068ff828fbMagnus Vile]

What I mean by cached by Windows, is that, for whatever reason, (possibly due to me restarting the game so many times while trying to find which files were a problem) Windows wasn't reading the file from the folder, but from memory. The shotgun textures started working after I restarted, and I made no other changes after the restart.

I downloaded SHTUP both from Megaupload, and by using the Torrent, which I believe has error correction built in, so unless both are broken, in the same way, since the files match each other, it doesn't seem likely that it's a broken file.

Adding, since there was another post while I was writing this one, (Nice forum software, by the way  )

Yes, the skyX textures appear to be the problem. The guns seem to have been a side effect, as I said above, possibly due to the sheer number of times I restarted the game.

[674068ff82f3dEnchantermon]

What I mean by cached by Windows, is that, for whatever reason, (possibly due to me restarting the game so many times while trying to find which files were a problem) Windows wasn't reading the file from the folder, but from memory. The shotgun textures started working after I restarted, and I made no other changes after the restart.

The thing is, the gun textures do not rely on the skybox textures at all, so something else was going on. But at least it "works", if you don't mind losing the updated sky. Do you get the same problem with only SHTUP installed?

[674068ff8324aZylonBane]

What I mean by cached by Windows, is that, for whatever reason, (possibly due to me restarting the game so many times while trying to find which files were a problem) Windows wasn't reading the file from the folder, but from memory.

Image: http://www.freewebs.com/devin_futurama/morbo1.jpg

Windows does not work that way!

[674068ff8338eKolya]

Of course it doesn't. So if anything let's concentrate on the sky textures!

On a quick comparison I noticed that the SHTUP sky textures are all pretty much the same 8Bit 256 colours PCX files at 256x256px. All except skyp.pcx which is only 4x4px sized. The original skyp.pcx is 128x128px as it's siblings though.

[674068ff834ffNameless Voice]

I'm fairly sure skyp.pcx is just used for to specify the palette to use for the other images.

[674068ff83655Kolya]

Yeah I figured that might be it, just wondering because the palette file is usually named full.pcx. I'm still sure that the actual problem isn't on SHTUP's side, as it runs on so many systems including my own. But if the SHTUP sky textures cause a problem on Magnus Vile's system, while the older skies and all other SHTUP textures work, there may be something different about them that could be changed, to achieve optimal compatibility.
Of course this is assuming Magnus Vile didn't unintentionally screw up in his testing which admittedly isn't completely clear, given the unrelated gun texture problems and his idea about Windows caching images like a browser. (No offense Magnus Vile. But ZylonBane is right: Windows doesn't work like that.)

[674068ff8375eNameless Voice]

It's because all sky textures are stored in skyhw, and each can have its own palette.  This is more of an issue for Thief's version of Dark, where different maps were more likely to have different sky textures (I think SS2 just uses one sky/space texture for the entire game).

[674068ff83862ZylonBane]

SS2 uses two skyboxes-- the "acid" texture on Earth, and then the starfield for the rest of the game.

ADAoB adds a third-- the starfield with Earth visible out the window for the station level.

[674068ff83bb2unn_atropos]

A few days ago I completed the game once again. This time starring the shtup as a feature besides the Tacticool Weapon Replacement.
And I was total amazed by your texturework! My favourit is the door texture, which looks very real. Looking at it reminds me of a DeLorean^^
Some questions:

1)I didn't quiet understand the discussion that was going on here some pages ago about the "DDfix world texture replacement feature"...
Is it possible to replace the world textures in the game with this method, or can ist be used for custom mods only? Sorry for asking this, but I'm a noob when it comes to topics like this^^

2) You replaced a lot of textures in the game. And they are all looking sharp and great, but what I'm missing here is translation. So, for example, the german version had also german text for the textures. Don't know about the others.
So, do you plan to make specific textures for each language?
Since you already have the high-res textures, it would be rather "simple" to translate them. It would be cool to have german, france, russian, japanese^^ textures.
I can imagine that there are some sys fans out there that would help to do this. You could post your files you used for creating the high-res here...

[674068ff83cb3Kolya]

I'd be up for the German translation anyway.

Edit: Wait a second, we don't need to translate it. Translations already exist in most cases. Stupid me.

[674068ff83da7unn_atropos]

Jupp, the files are translated already because there are the old textures. I said "translate" because I don't know a better english word for the process^^. The translation would happen like this: we take a high-res texture that f.e. says "technical control room" and change the spelling to "technischer Kontrollraum" or "techniksky controllsky roomsky"^^

[674068ff83eeaZylonBane]

I dunno... would STALKER have been as atmospheric if they'd localised all the signage and AI chatter?

[674068ff84157Rainalkar]

Although it is SS2 lore, sort of speak, that english is even more widespread in the story of the game than today, there is something in "die Masse ist stark!"
Stalker should be in russian or ukrainian, for it is it's setting, while there is no objective reason why SS2 should be in english. To each his is likely the best way.

[674068ff84275Kolya]

Well I may be biased, but since an original German SS2 already exists, that has localised textures, it would be nice to complete that with high res textures. I can understand if you're not willing to put much work into that ZB, but that shouldn't be necessary. Anyway, your call.

[674068ff8439cZylonBane]

The thing is, that would be a huge amount of work, since so many object textures have text on them. Literally hundreds of them. Even worse, in SHTUP the objects for the large signs with the red block lettering have been redesigned so that each letter is an individual texture.

So yeah, I don't see a localized version of SHTUP in my future.

[674068ff84554povuholo]

Magnus Vile: I also had the problem with the crash if I tried to reload the game after having saved it and exited the game completely, after installing SHTUP.

However this time I got it working somehow, figured it may have had something to do with the fact that I upgraded my graphics drivers yesterday. But that didn't seem to be it. It was ATI Tray Tools. When I loaded it, with default settings or not, the crashing issue would return. Did you also get the problem with part of the loading screen turning pink?

Closing Ati Tray Tools fixed my problem. Setting anti-aliasing and all the other fancy stuff through the Catalyst Control Center worked fine. Or set them in Ati Tray Tools and then close the program, leaving the settings active. No more crashes, and no more pink glitches.

Are you using an ATI graphics card and Ati Tray Tools by any chance?

I don't know why SHTUP would trigger the problem with Ati Tray Tools though...

[674068ff84648Kolya]

A pink menu is a typical sign of lacking DDFix.

[674068ff84763povuholo]

I did install DDFix, with your SS2Tool utility (which is awesome, thanks!). If I really didn't have that installed and configured right I'd have more problems, like the screen going black for a second or two every time I exit the main menu or load a game. Unless I installed it only partially right... But I doubt that.

[674068ff84ab3unn_atropos]

The thing is, that would be a huge amount of work, since so many object textures have text on them. Literally hundreds of them. Even worse, in SHTUP the objects for the large signs with the red block lettering have been redesigned so that each letter is an individual texture.

So yeah, I don't see a localized version of SHTUP in my future.

Indeed it is a lot of work. The question is: would you mind if someone uses the shtup textures to do this?
Look how nice it would look like^^:
http://tiborplanet.de/sys2/acceg_ger.pcx
http://tiborplanet.de/sys2/acceg_russ.pcx
http://tiborplanet.de/sys2/acceg_jap.pcx

[674068ff84bb2ZylonBane]

Those... don't look very nice. Imagine how SS2 would look in English if all the signs were redone using Times New Roman. That's kind of the same effect I'm seeing here.