MTM2.com

Well I succeeded in adding my first scrapyard truck part thanks to you guys! But that opened a whole new kettle of fish and a bucket o' worms as well. Now everybody wants me to modify their trucks! And you guys have no idea what that's like, do you? ;o)

My first truck was all mine. I "created" the scrap and used my own art for the BIN. No problems. Now I have a friend who has picked out scraps at Malibu350's that he wants me to add. I had to resize and reposition a few, but I got his truck looking the way he wants it.

My problem is that I have 3 installations of MTM2. One for truck making, one for track making, and one for playing. His truck works fine in my truck-making installation, but I keep getting "bad texture" errors when I put the truck POD into one of the other two games.

The bad textures are always from the add-on scraps. The truck without anything added on works fine in all 3 installations. I have tried all combinations from only one scrap to all four. Nothing works.

Any ideas? Something similar happens to me from time to time when repainting trucks. Renaming the truck art files usually fixes the problem. But I don't want to rename and re-map all of the artwork for the scraps if I can help it.

Any ideas? Am I doing something wrong? (I am using BigDOGGe's second method of adding scraps as detailed in my previous post here.) I can E-mail the truck POD, the scrap BINs and art, and details to anyone interested in tackling this.

Thanks!

Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford

Send it over, phineus@karf.net . This is a common problem that has several potential solutions. Let's see what I can come up with, then we'll go from there.

btw, you only need one installation of mtm2. You can work away from the program directory without reinstalling.

Will do! I'll send it over when I get home this evening. (I'm at my Mom's house on her comp just checking in.) I'll be spending this first wonderful spinglike day washing my Mustang and taking it for a long-awaited spin with the top down! (No more snow! Yaaaaay!)

If you get it fixed, I'd appreciate knowing what you did so I don't have to bug ya again.

I have separate copies of MTM2 because I have so MANY track and truck models and textures to scroll through. (Traxx REALLY needs a scrollbar for the texture viewer so I don't have to search through them from the very begining every time!) It's just quicker and easier for me to keep tracks and truck parts separated. Plus, when I began running into problems like this, it gave me the opportunity to "check" my trucks first before giving them to their new owners as "done".

BY THE WAY...

I was looking for a Trail Blazer model to paint for my brother. I found one at Vales, but it has what I've heard referred to as the "Noah Effect", where some external views cause the track to fill up to your doors with water. I gather this is due to the truck being made on a program other than BIN Edit? Is there any way to cure this? I already tried loading it into the various truck-making programs and the file size is too big.

Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford

> If you get it fixed, I'd appreciate knowing ...

Of course, yes, that's the main objective. We (the big four included) might even have some guesses for you but you didn't say specifically which texture message you're getting.

> I was looking for a Trail Blazer model...

The noah effect is caused by a model with a high vertex count. The exact number hasn't been determined but I think once you start going above 2500 you're beginning to push your luck. That said, you can stem the flood by turning off "reflections" in graphic options.

As for models, if you have evo you might try the low detail version. If you don't, you could see what kc's evo1 site has to offer, then convert it using zmodeler. Oh, and the faq pop up has the replacement truck pod which should have the original smf's in there too.

The "Noah Effect" comes from any model that has anything over 1000 Verts. from my experience. I think I've had to deal with this problem more than anyone, lol.

Far as "bad texture" error...
Load the model into Binedit, and "Select All Faces", and then set them to shiny, or the 0X18 MTM1 setting. Try it again. If it still persists, always run the game with all "Reflections" turned off. I've never run any of the reflections on, since owning the game, and I've never had any problems.

That's one major problem with adding Scrapyard parts, it doesn't take long for the Vert. count total, to go right out the window.

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Replica Fan's Garage

>> I found one at Vales, but it has what I've heard referred to as the "Noah Effect"

which one wer u refering to?
MOB_warrior's "Trial Blazer" or one of the other "Blazer"'s

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HEY BUDDY, the gas is on the right!

Yeah, M.O.B Warrior's 2002 Trail Blazer blazes new paths underwater:
http://www.vales.com/MTM2/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5494

Do you suppose I could get rid of the effect if I "dumbed-down" the model by deleting the driver to reduce the vertex count? (I am assuming that I can load it into BIN Edit. I don't remember anymore which programs gave me file size warnings.)


Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford

>> http://www.vales.com/MTM2/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5494

verts 2736
faces 3933

> Do you suppose I could get rid of the effect ...

There's a driver, steering wheel, front seat, and dash board. You'll sure drop those numbers down if you get rid of that stuff.... then you'd probably want to put in more conventional mtm windows.

Ok, back to the fish.

I was hesitent to jump to conclusions because there can be many things that cause texture errors. I renamed the parts and textures and remapped them to smaller raw files, then sent you the zip. If nothing else it'll be less laggy. The main problem is you shouldn't use scrapyard parts out of the box. Always rename the textures and use a texture replacer so the bins will read them. If you can, use smaller textures too. In the present case, the files were named simply "black" and "grey". That's a sure fire recipe for diaster. Two of the most common names and they are always different sizes. You'll see I used unique-ish texture names. You shouldn't have a problem now (crosses fingers).

Note. To make the problem truck work in the other game installations, just unmount all other addons. No textures should mean no errors.

Regarding the fish...

With lots of work and flying E-mails, Phineus has helped me get it working! See the results at www.gameroom.com/clawfford/enforcer.html
Thanks, Phineus!

My head is still spinning with all the new info, but I'll get back to the Trail Blazer soon. Thanks, Legwon!

I can always find fast, quality answers here. Thanks ALL!

Although it meant some work and head-scratching on my part, I am glad nobody just offered to pop the scrapyard parts on for me. I probably would have taken them up on their offer. Instead, I learned quite a lot of new things that should be helpful in the future!

Give a man a fish / teach him to fish...

Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford

Want to soak up some more?

Before I made my own parts, I would build trucks using scrapyard parts. Many of these parts were mapped to several texture files each.

So I would try to remap as many as I could to my original truck-body textures, to reduce the texture-file count of the model. Easy to do with solid-colored items like black rollbars and brushbars by simply mapping them to a black area on a truck RAW,...a bit harder on other items with multi-colors, but still doable. I try to get down to as few RAW as possible. Rarely did my trucks carry the original scrapyard RAW(s).

On occasion, my repainted, remapped part comes out better than when I started, especially when I paint in shades or shadow to the new textures...

Sometimes I would paint or copy&paste new textures on existing RAW files, in the blank areas between existing textures. In a few cases theres no place left on my RAWs to paint another part, packed as they are with stuff. In those instances, I add a new raw, 64x64 pixels if I can get away with it, 256x256 if I need sharp detail.

In the past, I've repaired trucks made by others, and a few times managed to reduce their RAW file count from low 20's to 8-12 files, just by remapping as many of the add-on parts on it as possible.....I try to not exceed 4-5 RAWs on my trucks if possible, with one usually dedicated to the engine model. My wheels take 2-4 raws, depending on wheel design...

NOTE: You want as few RAW files as possible, but the smaller you make a texture to fit on a RAW, the more "pix-ally" or fuzzy/blocky it will appear(as the texture gets smaller, the pixels appear to "grow" equally in size on the truck)....if a texture has text or fine details, then you may want to paint it larger on the RAW, using more pixels. In those cases, an extra RAW or more may be necessary.

Here fishy fishy.......come to me nice fishy....

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NOAH effect: let me know if you have any luck removing the effect by reducing details....I've tried removing vertices, and still had the water-flooding effect occur, as if once the model reaches a certain vertix count level, the BIN is permanently "damaged". My BUGG-OUT VW beetle mud-bogger has that problem...

I too always run with REFLECTIONS and TRUCK REFLECTIONS deactivated. I'm not impressed with the reflection effect in MTM2 anyway.


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- BigDOGGe's Boneyard ...The Best Custom Trucks in MTM2 -

<font size=1>Edited by ZOtm_BigDOGGe (17-03-2003)</font>

Yeah, I think the truck reflections look like someone laminated my vehicle. ;o)

Small problem with that "Enforcer" truck after all. It works fine for me, and it works fine for the guy who requested it. Out of the people who installed it, nearly 50% had problems. I don't know if they saw the truck or not. One kept getting AVs at the game start, and getting dumped back into the Multiplayer room. Another just kept getting dumped back into Multi after 7 or 8 minutes of play. When they unpodded, they were able to play again.

I went back and reduced the file size by removing some more unnecessary faces, and we'll see how it goes from here. It may be okay now for all I know. My friend might decide to live with it either way, or I may be back for more book-learning. I may be able to convince him to take the engine scrap out completely if he wants to share his truck with others. (It's HIS truck, Phin... I'll leave it up to HIM to post it here if he wants.)

Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford

Access Violations are generally not a truck issue. If it works fine for you, and fine for the one who commissioned it, (and it works fine for me), then I suspect problems on those other computers have little to do with the truck. I'd happily retract that if somebody could prove to me what was causing the error but I don't anticipate that happening.

Truck reflections seem to be the culprit. When they are on, the track crashes. When off, the truck works fine.

I went ahead and made an engineless version (with far fewer vertices) that works WITH reflections. I am awaiting my friend's response as to which truck he wants to keep for his personal vehicle. I will be sure to include a text file in the final version crediting the scrap makers and warning about reflections if necessary.

Clawfford, the Big Red Cat www.gameroom.com/clawfford