[pahis]

Hello.

I was wondering how to add those nameplates into ships in FRED. I noticed that FS doesn't put those nameplates into ships automaticly. Because I did not find the answer myself, I decided to ask help from here.

Thank you.

P.S. I'm not sure is this the right area for this topic but it looked like the closest one.

[StratComm]

I had a nice, long reply for you but I was just about to post it when the forum went down.  Ah, well, lets see if I can't get it back.

First, nameplates are assigned via texture replacement, which in turn is accessed from the ship editor window in recent versions of FRED.  Click the button, and replace the texture "nameplate" with the name of the nameplate file you've created.

Secondly, you have to create the nameplate file yourself outside of FRED.  Karajorma's Freespace FAQ has links to a good nameplate tutorial and the appropriate font, and is in general a good document for a new FREDDER/modder to have bookmarked as it contains a lot of useful stuff.  The tutorial for making Orion nameplates is excellent for the Orion, but doesn't work for any other nameplate-enabled ship; those need transparent nameplates.  The difference being, an Orion plate has a specific texture that the name is added to, whereas a transparent plate is white (usually semitransparent) text over a completely transparent background.

As for the tools you'll need, if you have access to photoshop then that will do nicely.  If not, I recommend The GIMP as it's free and quite powerful.

[pahis]

Another question.

I managed to create a nameplate but in the game it is just a colourful mess. When I checked the nameplates in the media VPs, they were all dds files. Is it possible to replace textures using pcx files or do I have to convert them to dds files (and how can I do that)? What is a dds file?

Another thing is that I cannot use FRED to replace textures, it will always crash when trying to save if I replace textures. I added the replacements using WordPad. Am I doing something wrong with FRED? It crashes with already made nameplates too.

Thanks.

[aldo_14]

Another question.

I managed to create a nameplate but in the game it is just a colourful mess. When I checked the nameplates in the media VPs, they were all dds files. Is it possible to replace textures using pcx files or do I have to convert them to dds files (and how can I do that)? What is a dds file?

Another thing is that I cannot use FRED to replace textures, it will always crash when trying to save if I replace textures. I added the replacements using WordPad. Am I doing something wrong with FRED? It crashes with already made nameplates too.

Thanks.

DDS is basically another image format which, offhand, is better for graphics card use, i.e. loading into memory & storing etc.  You will probably need a special convertor for creating & viewing them; see http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html for some of them.

anyways, from a logical perspective replacing DDS with PCX AFAIK will cause no problems, although PCX is a slower format for the graphics engine to use.  I think the game will load same name DDS files ahead of PCX counterparts, though (i.e. xx.DDS will be loaded rather than xx.PCX if both exist). 

If you're using a pcx texture, the one problem that springs to mind is that you could not be using a paletted 8 bit pcx, which is the only type FS2 supports.  This is a common mistake, really, and easy to make because pcx has several different bit depth formats (to elucidate; 8-bit PCX restricts the image to a limited number of colours, and these colours are defined in a pallete that is part of the image file; end result is it can look a wee bit worse, but uses less memory - DDS I believe has similar compression, but uses even less memory and is more efficient to load and store in graphics RAM as it's designed to be that way).

So make sure it's an 8-bit pallete.  I know the launcher defines a 32bit or something flag, but as far as I know that doesn't actually allow 32 bit pcxs but rather refers to something entirely different, like memory allocation or somesuch.

[karajorma]

The other problem could be the build of FRED you are using. IIRC there was a problem with the texture replacement system a little while back which had that result. Which version of FRED are you using? Have you tried going to the recent builds forum and getting the newest versions of FRED and FS2_Open? (Save a backup before doing anything in a newer build. You may not be able to open your missions in the old build after saving them in the new one).

[pahis]

The other problem could be the build of FRED you are using. IIRC there was a problem with the texture replacement system a little while back which had that result. Which version of FRED are you using? Have you tried going to the recent builds forum and getting the newest versions of FRED and FS2_Open? (Save a backup before doing anything in a newer build. You may not be able to open your missions in the old build after saving them in the new one).

I just noticed the recent build (20060412-fred2_open_r.exe) and it seems to work.

Thank you. Everything works now.