Fixed Railing, Messed Up Skyline

[olyrunner]

Yikes, I'm not sure what I did wrong, but I could use some help. I tried to make the railing behind home plate at Safeco not see-through (because it's quite distracting watching the fans' legs move when you're trying to pitch).

Anyway, I made the alpha .bmp corresponding to the railing (3 of them) completely white and saved it. Now in-game the rail looks much better (still crappy but much less distracting).

But now I've created a new problem. For some reason, now there is a big black area behind the Seattle skyline, as well as black areas between the trusses in the stadium. Why would changing the alpha .bmp for the railing affect the skyline & trusses? Any ideas?

EDIT: Here are some sreenshots of what I'm talking about:

Black Skyline:

Black Trusses:

But at least the railing isn't see-through any longer (still looks crappy, though):

[krawhitham]

I've never messed with a stadium, but is it possible one alpha could be used for more than one image in the cram32.fsh file?

what is the name of the image (or #) inside the fsh you edited?

was it pou2 (#0001)?

if so I will give it a try

what utility did you use to edit the cram32.fsh?

[krawhitham]

oops I meant fen1 (#0001)

[olyrunner]

Thanks for helping, kraw-

The file was inside the cram32.fsh file (for Safeco). It was .bmp files 0001-0a, 0001-1a and 0001-2a. I just made them all white. The default files had white where the railings were (around the edges and through the middle, horizontally) and black where the see-through part was (where all the fans were wiggling their legs).

I, too, thought that maybe the skyline and trusses shared the alpha, but with the horizontal white line through the middle, I wondered how this would work. Anyway, thank you again for looking into this. I appreciate it!

EDIT: Oops, I didn't answer all of your questions. I used EAGraph to extract cram32.fsh and nfshtool to, uh, do whatever nfshtool does to create all those little .bmp files. :D

[krawhitham]

ran nfshtool on cram32 and cram

cram has alpha images for the city skyline but cram32 does not

if I use nfshtool to unpack cram32, them make no changes and repack it I get the same problem(and a smaller file). so it is not the alphas we are changing. For some reason nfshtool is skipping the alphas for the city skyline in the cram32 file

[olyrunner]

That's odd (but a good discovery). Is there another utility that can be used to unpack and repack the cram32 file?

[five]

I tried using fshed, instead of nfshtool and I didn't have any of those problems:

If you need some help with it, get on aim and I'll tell you what I did to get it to work.

[krawhitham]

ODD I used FSHed and the game crashed

so I made alphas for the 3 images that did not have any 0048, 0049, 0051. Then edited the index.fsh files and had nfshtool rebuild the cram32.fsh and it worked

now I'm off to try fshed again

[Trues]

What five said, I only use fshed and have never had that problem.

[krawhitham]

the cram32 is compressed

fshED will load a compressed fsh, it will edit a compressed fsh, it will screwup a compessed FSH file, so it seems

ok did it three times. I loaded the compressed cram32 file in fshED changed the image, the game would crash and even fshED would not reload the compressed cram32

so I uncompressed it with eazip

eazip -u cram32.fsh

used fshED to change the image I recompessed it with eazip

eazip -c cram32.fsh

worked like a charm

[olyrunner]

Okay, so the way to do this (please correct me where I'm wrong - because I probably am at some point):

Extract cram32.fsh with EAGraph

Uncompress it with EAZip

Change the image with fshED & save cram32.fsh

Recompress wth EAZip

Import the new cram32.fsh with EAGraph

Optional: Do a happy dance

By the way, thanks to all of you for jumping in with suggestions, comments and results. You're a very helpful bunch!

[Trues]

This is the process I have always used with success.

1. Extract cram32.fsh with EAGraph

2. Uncompress it with nfshtool

3. Edit desired image

4. Import image with fshEd and save cram32.fsh

5. Recompress with gfxpak

This works very well for me. Hope this helps.

[olyrunner]

Thanks, Trues. No happy dance? :D

[Trues]

Ok, I'll do the happy dance

[olyrunner]

Sorry to revisit a week-old thread, but I'm still having this issue (same issue, new stadium). I must be doing something wrong. I'll list the steps that I take, and if anyone can see what might be causing the missing alpha issue, please let me know.

*First I open the stadium file in EAgraph (currently I am working on aaa2nite.big).

*Then I click on cram32.fsh and extract it to a folder I created on my desktop.

*It asks me if I want to decompress the cram32.fsh file, so I say yes (is this right?)

*In the folder with cram32.fsh, I also have have nfshtool (and something called mksrc and nfshtool.diff - these were included in the nfshtool download).

*I drag the decompressed cram32.fsh onto nfshtool, and it creates a folder with all of the .bmp files and an index file.

[at this point I realize that I am missing the alpha files related to the dugout railing]

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Is there another way around this? I'm sure I'm skipping some simple-yet-important step, but I don't know what it is....thanks, guys!

[five]

Sorry for not getting back to you in that PM, but hmm, let's see:

Do you think file 58 is the dugout railing?

It happens for me too.

You can always change the type of the file to DX3 in fshED and then import a .tga file with an alpha layer and it will work. If you use a .tga file you must use graphic importer.

[olyrunner]

Yes, 58 is the dugout railing, and I'm also losing the alphas related to 0007-0, 0007-1 and 0007-2 (they show up out towards left field, if I remember correctly).

I've never done anything with .tga files, but I see that save option. Do I save 0058-2 as a 24-bit .tga? Do I need to do anything with 0058-1 and 0058-0? I see in another thread you helped Hollywood with his transparency issue by suggesting 32-bit .tga

Is the .tga file saved as separate layers or do I save 0058-2.tga and 0058-2a.tga?

(can you sense my total confusion?) :oops:

I will try to be around on AIM today (looks like another rainout for the RAINiers). If you have a chance to pop on and point me in the right direction, that would be great. Thanks for all your help!

EDIT: I just wanted to take a minute and say thanks to five, who spent a good two hours of his Saturday morning walking me through .tga files and fshEd (not to mention all of the other times he's helped me out when I've done bad things to stadiums). So, thank you, five. Your patience and willingness to pass on what you've learned to others is what MVPmods is all about.