Tga.option files

[Keizilord501st]

Can someone help me please? I'm a total noob to modding but i figured any msh with a targa or multiple targas need a tga.option file with the same name. My question to anyone that can help is how to create one of these files and what software to use to do it. I'm so close to getting my sides to working but this is one crucial detail i missed lol

[SleepKiller]

.option.tga files are not strictly needed but it can be helpful to create them none the less so the munger knows what to do with your texture.

Off the top of my head these should more or less be all the ones you need.

For textures with no alpha channel.

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-format compressed

For textures with an alpha channel.

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-format compressed_alpha

To convert a height map into a normal map at munge time. (Replace "compressed" with "compressed_alpha" if the height map has a gloss map.)

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-format compressed -bumpmap -bumpscale 6.0

For detail map textures.

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-format L8

For cube map textures. (Rare, only use for env maps, see modtools docs or the game's stock cubemaps to lay them out.)

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-format compressed -cubemap

For any texture (except detail maps!) where you feel the loss of quality from compression is too great you can replace the "-format <format>" with "-format a8r8g8b8" to have the texture be uncompressed.

[Keizilord501st]

How do i go about creating/editing them? Can i take an existing one say a vanilla one and use notepad++ to edit the code or can i just change the name of the file to match my tga files?

[Led]

option files are different than TGA files.

Edit TGA files with Tux Paint or GIMP.  Be sure to save your files *without* RLE compression.

That is all I can tell you.  (although there is a skinning tutorial around here somewhere--check the tutorials section).

skin tutorial:
https://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?topic=3762.0

[SleepKiller]

How do i go about creating/editing them? Can i take an existing one say a vanilla one and use notepad++ to edit the code or can i just change the name of the file to match my tga files?

Sorry yes, should've clarified .*.option files are just plain text files with a special extension. So yes you can just copy an existing one and edit it to have the contents you want or hit New file in Notepad++, put what you want in it and save that as one.

[Keizilord501st]

Thanks guys, I'm starting to get the hang of it. One more question tho how do you know/check the bit count(like say if it's 32 or ?

[SleepKiller]

Like the "-32bit", "-8bit", etc .tga.options? They're for specifying the format on the PS2 version of the game and in most cases do not do what you expect on PC, so as a rule you should leave them out of your .tga.option files.

Or are you referring something else?

[Keizilord501st]

Yeah those! So you're saying don't mess with them or just delete them?

[SleepKiller]

Just remove them, unless your making a mod for the PS2. (Which strikes me as unlikely.)

[Keizilord501st]

Alright thx. I've got one other problem now(probably for another topic) but when i munged everything i got the error and warning text from the munge log. When i boot up the game and try to test the mod i noticed it didn't have the full name rather something like "tcw%___" and when i first tried it my side models wouldn't pop up, only the clone engineer(didn't replace him) and everything says null; menu and all. When i tried it the second time with both era's i got this "fatal" message with something like tcw.con.c invalid or something any pointers on how to fix this? I could post the side folder on here if you wanna take a look