New Skins in Multiplayer

[bigalsunit]

My buddy, the graphic design undergraduate, has FINALLY started to make skins in CS3. He has cranked out some good skins and I added one of them to my PC via the usual routine. I copied the CDDS and pasted into Bazar\ World and I added the necessary lines of data to Ka-50.skins, db_countries.lua, graphics config, and Ka-50.lua using Notepad++ as recommended.

 

Here's the problem. In singleplayer the new skin textures load up without a problem and look great. However, when I load up one of my coop missions over our LAN, the new skin I had just flown with and had selected for both me and my roommate (client in this case) to fly with shows up on my helicopter yet his helicopter is loaded up with a different skin. We have checked, rechecked, and checked again all of the edited files on both his end and mine and everything looks good. They load up fine on his computer in singleplayer and they load up fine for me as well. It is only in multiplayer that this skin is replaced by another.

 

The only thing I can see that is different between his setup and mine is the fact that his sequence of skin values in the Ka-50.skin file is different than mine. This is also true regarding the sequence in graphics.cfg, db_countries.lua, and Ka-50.lua. I am not sure if this would make a difference but the skin that loads in place of the wanted skin is his latest skin creation which is sequentially listed as the last entry in all of these files. It might just be a coincidence but the skin that I am trying to select for him is the last one I have added so it is listed as the last entry on my system.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

Alex Badaglialacqua

[RCN_Moose]

The value numbers have to match between computers. So if you install skin x, y z and he installs skin y, z, x the skins will not match. IE, if you host and have skin x, he would see skin y.

The skinning methods and requirements are definitely NOT mulitplayer friendly.

[bigalsunit]

Thanks for the quick reply RCN_Moose.

I figured that was the most likely culprit and you have just confirmed it.

Not a big deal. I know how quickly and easily flight sims can turn ugly on you only after, it seems, you have devoted countless hours to a project meant to improve it. I am just thankful that ED spent the time with the nasty stuff so that I wouldn't have to (For the most part).

 

By the way, I cannot thank you enough for your skinning tutorial. My roommate is a pretty experienced CS3 user and he insists that none of his new skins would have possible were it not for your help. When he is done with this next skin we plan on posting all of them for download, so keep an eye out.

 

Also, my buddy has been wondering if there is any way to open the CDDS files of existing paint schemes for edit. I read somewhere recently that you can use the ModMan's CDDS explorer to open them. Is this true? If so, can the .bmps then be edited and resaved as a new paint scheme?

 

Thanks again for all of your help.

 

Alex Badaglialacqua

[RCN_Moose]

Alex, thanks for the thanks :)

 

Yes MODMAN includes a cdds viewer that you can use to extract the files. (there's an example in the tutorial as thats how I get the PAINT3 missing texture) The only downside is they are bmps, so no layers.

[bigalsunit]

Got it.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

Alex Badaglialacqua