SS2 Vurt's Flora Overhaul

[673f87818e119Marvin]

@IGNA
Where did you get that wrench model???

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=691.0

[673f87818e3d9blaydes99]

You beat me to it Marvin

I use all the tacticool weapons in place of the originals, they all feel like they belong and are an excellent graphical improvement.

[673f87818e527akumaKAERU]

Thanks Marvin.

I have seen the Tacticool weapons mod but didn't like any of the weapons and totally missed the wrench model.

[673f87818e6a2Kolya]

This crash was apparently caused by the flora overhaul.

[673f87818e8e2vurt]

Hmm i haven't had any crash there, in fact i dont think i've had any crashes that i can recall. Maybe a corrupt file in his install or something, hard to say.

[673f87818ea84Sketcz]

Sorry to bump such an old topic, but I'm having similar crash problems.

I installed a series of updates in the Perma folder and they work fine, including Vurt's other mods.

When I put the Flora Overhaul into temp, the game crashes immediately after selecting New Game. It runs the intro, then the loading screen, then it crashes with a system error.

Removing the mod solves the problem.

Do you require any extra info, like my changelog etc? Of all the mods, the flora one is probably the one I'm most looking forward to, since it's quite a dramatic improvement.

When Unzipping using 7-ZIP, it said that all the files (bins, etc), were compressed using an unknown method. It dumped the files in the temp folder, but I'm not sure whether it extracted them properly or not.

Many thanks.

[673f87818ebe4voodoo47]

yes, it seems to crash for some people. share your crash.dmp and shock2.log, but don't keep your hopes too high.

[673f87818eee1bluemess]

[...]
When Unzipping using 7-ZIP, it said that all the files (bins, etc), were compressed using an unknown method.
[...]

That's weird. What version of 7-Zip are you using?

Maybe the archive was corrupted, try to download it again.

[673f87818f020Sketcz]

I redownloaded the mod but had the same problem. Looking more closely at the files after unzipping, they were 0 bytes.

So I downloaded a new version of 7-Zip and that fixed both problems, 100%. The unzipping had no error messages and there was no crashing. That guy in the other thread might have wanted to try updating his 7-Zip utility.

I was on 4.5 and have now updated to the latest. Thanks for the suggestion - it's often the simplest things you overlook! Put a few hours in, and it's still as good as I remember.

[673f87818f130bluemess]

Most of the 7z archives here are compressed using LZMA compression, but some, like this one, are using LZMA2. 7-Zip 4.5 (released in 2007) doesn't support LZMA2 yet. First version supporting it is 9.04 released in 2009.

The solution for the next case like yours and the other guy's, will be to acquire 7-zip version not older than four and a half years

[673f87818f218OneofTheMany]

Hello! I'm loading all my mods with Blue's Mod Manager. Should I load both the main file and the fix, OR, unzip the fix in the main folder and just load that one?

[673f87818f45aOlfred]

I would go with unpacking the patch into the main folder and load it.
But you could also just load them seperately, you just need to make sure that the fix has the higher priority for it to work.

[673f87818f560OneofTheMany]

You mean the fix should be above the main file in the manager? Then I did the right thing from the start
And if that won't work I'll unzip the fix in the main folder.

[673f87818f660voodoo47]

you either combine the mod with the fix, or load them both as two separate mods. that reminds me, I should really combine the files to avoid confusion.

[673f87818f743OneofTheMany]

I did just put the fix in the main folder and loaded that one. The fewer folders the better :p

[673f87818f8beSystem]

Image: http://www.kachalka.com/images/07jclww1hh58o4cdnth.png

[673f87818f9acvoodoo47]

the dml package should fix that.

[673f87818fba1voodoo47]

had a second look at the flora pack (as we want to have everything working smoothly when SCP is released) after seeing the hydro2 bugreport (cannot find it right now, but basically the updated plant bed was poking through windows and generally looked odd). the updated plantbed model is problematic - unfortunately, vurt did not make it as a direct replacement, but instead made it to fit the beds on hydro1. this basically means the model looks completely wrong in the rest of the game.

this leaves us with two options - painstakingly dml fix ALL the plantbeds in the entire game, hydro1 excluded (there shouldn't be that many, but even after fixing, they just look odd, see the pic - the right plant is fixed), or ditch the plantbed model entirely. I personally am in favor of ditching - this model is not the prettiest, and let me also remind you that it also has some weird problem that has never been sorted out - it really brings the performance down for unknown reason.

ideas?


more notes:

- the Z dimensions and offsets of the potted plants don't match the originals. this will need to be adjusted to make sure there is no floating above or sinking below floor. after adjusting the Z params, X and Y might need a tweak as well, so the plant would not look too deformed. X and Y not matching the originals should not cause too much trouble. some plant models need this slightly, some badly.
- plantwa.bin the base texture has quite a lot of z-fighting.

[nope_plant.jpg expired]

[673f87818fd08ZylonBane]

I'd say the "bug" is in Vurt's model. Not our job to compensate for it.

[673f87818fe2avoodoo47]

yes, but it's our job to manage the mods hosted here. and as vurt is not returning to SS2 modding anytime soon, we either fix and tweak, or mark the mod beta/unfinished/has issues/use at own risk.

apart of the plantbed, this is a pretty nice set of replacement models, and I think hammering it into proper function (either via dmls or via model editing - we'll see what is Olfred going to say) is effort well spent.

[673f8781900ebZylonBane]

and as vurt is not coming back anytime soon

I was not aware of this. Did he rage quit?

[673f8781901e9voodoo47]

no - but the latest status update was "busy with modding other games". probably going to take a while.

//rephrased my previous post.

[673f87819034bOlfred]

What about using the current model only for hydro1 and creating a new model for all the other places based on this one?
Should be doable with the dml files. Just copy the original model into the SCP and rename it to a new name, then use that for hydro1. Then take the vurt model and rename it to be used for hydro1.
For all other places just keep the old filename.

So what's there for me to do is take a look at vurts model to get the performance issues out of the way and create a new model based on this one to fit all the other locations.
Just post the model name, ID and stuff over at the engineering board. Would also be nice if you could provide me with map names and location IDs so I can test it ingame.

And maybe everything else I should take a look at.

[673f8781904aavoodoo47]

it's actually quite easy to do this via dmls, but it does not solve the underlying problem of the model not being a 1:1 replacement that anyone can install and use in any existing mission without breaking anything (in this case that would mean that while the visuals can be very different, the new model needs to have roughly the same dimensions when viewed ingame, and needs to behave identically to the orig model when floored or manipulated around). if the new model is not a 1:1 replacement, it's not really a ready to use mod, but more of a modder's resource.

added all info I have so far to the model fix topic.