DescentBB

would someone explain to me how to create a texture that has transparent areas. i have tried to sample the palette from a sample texture that had a see thru area. but i still got a solid texture.

is there a special format. dle and dmb2 i think extracts textures as a *.bmp but i read somewhere that seethru graphics won't work as *.bmp's.???

anyone, help please?

You need to make sure the bitmap you're importing is, firstly, 256-colour - and that it uses the same palette as you get in the level.

Past that, it's all using the same colours.

ok thanks. as it turns out, i thought i couldn't get the tga file that i made into dle. silly me i forgot about the pog file and dle will accept high res tga files whereas the texture editor won't take em.
so problem solved. thanks.

you know what i'd really like to know is more about the robot joint data and other stuff in the robot type definition element. polymodels i get. what do the numbers stand for in the list of joints. i understand the fire points. (i think) i have no clue and can't find one about how to correctly setup the joints and the submodels.

Oh, if you look under 'Robot Types' in HAXMEDIT32, and examine a robot, you'll see a list of references to "Joints Gun #x" down the bottom. These reference the joint element numbers. 5 joints per submodel past the first, one for each phase of the animation.

It's not the most integrated or coherent way to work these things, but it does work. It's just a pity HAXMEDIT32 doesn't really have any automatic handling of them.

(Oh, and yes, this does mean you can create copies of a robot with different animations. I don't remember it being done, but it doesn't mean you can't.)

ah, the light dawns. but what is contained in the joint data elements and how do you read them? would you (consider/have the time) to jot down some of your knowledge of the robot construction if you send it to me, i'll put it into some coherent form and publish it here. you can gues about that stuff and i thought that might be what's going on, i didn't think it would be too complex of a system but you never know and who wants to spend time trying to experiment. i have tried to reach any of the folks who worked on haxmedit32 but the mail comes back or the links are broken.

Oh ... hmm.

They use these PBH co-ordinates, as opposed to XYZ. The difference here is XYZ denotes a position in space, whereas PBH will give you a rotational position (which is what matters for robot joints; the centre of rotation is set in the polymodel itself).

I only learned this relatively recently while studying Descent 3D code:
P = pitch
B = bank
H = heading

In effect, pitch is up/down rotation; bank is rotation around the direction you're facing; heading is left/right rotation.

I would recommend editing these with Garry Knudson's Robot Edit program so that you at least have some idea what you're doing with it (unfortunately it isn't precisely accurate, but it sounds as though no-one yet has a tool that is).