In plane texture/skin

[toadpeon]

I hate servers like the 201st that make it so the out of ****pit views are turned off.

So I'm thinking, but don't know if it's possible, to reskin them to just clear?

hmmm, ill report back if I have sucess.

[toadpeon]

Hey cheaters, glad to report that I was 115% successful on my little task.

These are the things that I have done:
1. Made all the axis helmets neon red.
2. Made all the allies helmets neon green. (I didn’t like the whole skin being neon.)
3. Made ALL in plane cokpit textures invisible, NO MORE cokpit always on servers :)
4. Made ALL in tank cokpit textures invisible, which of course increases your FOV a lot – no more tiny box to look out of :)
5. Made ALL ship cokpit textures invisible – same as tank.

Next I’m going to try to find the sub periscope dds file and do a whack job on it too, but I’m to tired right now. I would upload these now, but I did this really fast so it’s not perfect yet. And I don’t want to upload it to this site until I can pump out every little exploit I can :)

I’ll tell you guys how to do it now if ya can’t wait:

In Photoshop 6 you will need to basically teach yourself how to use Layers, Filters and Masks....those are the basics. You will definitely want to use layers exclusively. The skins in this game can get a little confusing because everything is "unfolded" and flattened. If you are not using layers in Photoshop you can get stuck when you find out that the nice looking text or logo you THOUGHT you were placing on the side of the plane, ended up being backwards and copied to different areas on the plane. It can be frustrating because instead of DICE making each surface exclusive, they decided to wrap the skins and have some parts act as a copy for others parts. BUT, all you will be doing is using the eraser and going crazy with it. Remember ALL ****pit textures need to be erased, as they hinder you FOV! lol

You WILL need NVidia's DDS Plug-in...you can find it on there site. Also get the .DLL pack, located on the same page.

ACK, I'm getting sidetracked now...

Here is my method:

1. Open Photoshop 6
2. File>Open (pick a .dds file)
3. It will ask to display Mip Maps....Select NO
4. Under your Layer box double click on the "background" layer and call it whatever: example "Layer 0"
5. Edit the file however you wish, remember DO NOT change the Canvas or Image Sizes, this will cause errors later on.
6. ALWAYS save a seperate .psd file so you can keep your layers intact...these cannot be recovered from the .dds file you make later on.
7. When finished editing, File>Saveas
8. Pick the file extension "*.DDS"
9. Be sure that Alpha Channels and any other options are NOT checked.
10. Name the file the same as the original .dds file you edited (most of the time it will already be the same, I'm setup so that it will put "copy" at the end of the file.
11. Click Save
12. The NVidia DDS Setup pops up.
13. Make sure "Generate Mip Maps is selected
14. Click save
15. Now go test your skin!



Now of course to get to the .dds files you need the RFA extracter. Use RFA Extractor to extract all of the files in the texture.rfa located in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Archives to the main directory C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942. you should now have a textures folder in that directory!!. You now can delete the texture.rfa located in the Archives folder without any harm to your game. (Backup a copy of texture.rfa just to be safe).

-OR- The best and easiest way to go about this is to load the Merciless Mod onto your game. This Mod has made skinning uber easy. It sets up a texture folder in the BF1942 main directory with a directory for each map. So once you have chopped up a .dds file simply put it into the map directory that you want that skin to be used and it automatically will use that one in lieu of the one in the primary Texture.rfa. This is all good because you don’t have to keep repacking your .RFA files.

It’s really not all this hard, have fun.

O, one more thing. I need more ideas on things to exploit? Any more ideas?

[SmokeDookee]

Originally posted by toadpeon

O, one more thing. I need more ideas on things to exploit? Any more ideas?

if u have Desert Combat, hows about making some stuff for it or fixing up some of the BF stuff for it?

[toadpeon]

Yeah I play that mod, I want to wait until its fully released. Don't want to have to go thru with the process then have them update it then me doing it again.

Hey I also just made the zoom for the sniper rifle better; fullscrean zoom + more defined reticule.

[SmokeDookee]

dood, not to sway from the subject of this thread, but i just got the game, i installed and patched to 1.1. i dont wanna patch any higher right now, but i'm wondering, are there any trainers for single player Version 1.1? i found the Unlimited Ticket trainer, and it works. N00b13n00b's 1.8a trainer works on the 1.1 patched game also. i found some German ammo trainer, but it doesnt work. i need a ammo trainer for 1.1 if anyone knows of one. but anyways, back to the thread topic, when are u releasing this to the public Toadpeon? sounds like ur doing a good job so far!

[DapperDan]

wtf only 1.1 Y?

[toadpeon]

Ok, done so far. Here is what I have done:

1. neon helmets
2. improved view for all vehicles, as discussed above.

note: Planes FOV only about 85% increased as I did not want to comprimise the outer skin of the model.

It's in a rar archive and contains the .dds files. I'll leave it to you to figure out what to do with them.

[toadpeon]

O yeah, I just uploaded them thru the upload center. So they will be there as soon as the admin posts them.

Can someone put a link here to them when the are up?

[SmokeDookee]

yo, i'm here on the forum alot during the weekdays, mostly chillin on the MOHAA and SpearHead forums, but now i check out the threads in here alot, so i'll post as soon as an admin throws the file into the dl center.

[toadpeon]

Dice did some voodoo stuff on the scout zoom, im having difficulty reskinning the outer border. There is the primary skin files located under the MENU.rfa, but there must be a missing peice somewhere. Maybe it is in the .con files? or something. But when I figure it out ill resubmit another file for the scout scope, binocs, sub periscope.

I almost got the radar hack to work. I keep getting a data differs error or simply crashing the system, but again just a matter of time. Again maybe John Tesla could give me a hand but he seems unwilling to help anyone.

Ok so the rar archive I uploaded simply contains dds files. If you have the Merc mod then it is easy to install them, simply copy and paste them into every map directory located in BF1942/TextureSets/BF1942. If you don't have the merc mod just use the old method of extracting the RFA files.

l8

[DapperDan]

show some screen shots

[SmokeDookee]

ok, my host is being ghey, so i'll have to wait till later 2day to get a mirror up if u want.

[[ELF]GotBot]

check your pm, i can host it for you

[Vapor289]

Toadpeon,

Won't the upcoming release of 1.3 and RTR mess up all of your hard work?

BTW, thanks in advance for doing this.

[toadpeon]

Nah 1.3 is not going to do anything, as soon as Prolinger (Merceless modder) updates his mod this should be fine. And RtR will only bring more files to edit :)

Here are some screenies:

This pic shows improved vision in Sherman and green helmets - don't ask about the minimap:
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/toadpeon/_uimages/hmmmmm.jpg

This pic shows improved vision in Tiger an looking on at neon pink landmines/epacks:
http://pages.sbcglobal.net/toadpeon/_uimages/mines.jpg

[Vapor289]

Nice job! One small comment, how about changing the green with blue? But still very sweet.

[toadpeon]

I tried blue, but it does not show up as well.

[toadpeon]

Ok I'll share it, I just added some new stuff so here it is for download:

http://www.sharemation.com/toadpeon/

[SmokeDookee]

yo, what are the chances of making some chameleons skins or chameleon helmets?

[toadpeon]

Yeah people have already made very good ones, try looking thru the list here:

http://www.bf1942files.com/sort.files?cat=1162&ref=1159

[SmokeDookee]

ok, got my hosting fixed if any1 needs anything hosted or mirrored, just let me know.

[JohnTesla]

Hey Toad glad to see you are learning how to edit this stuff. Is that the 1.3 patch tho as some of your team members arrows on the minimap are red. I hear that is a new buddy system on 1.3

[toadpeon]

Hey John I keep getting "Data Differs From Server" when I try to use the minimap hack (seeing enemies on minimap) online.

Have you gotton past this?

If you don't want to converse here maybe you could PM me?

Also have you been able to modify the init.con files for the various maps to try to get rid of the fog?

[JohnTesla]

Originally posted by toadpeon
Hey John I keep getting "Data Differs From Server" when I try to use the minimap hack (seeing enemies on minimap) online.

Have you gotton past this?

If you don't want to converse here maybe you could PM me?

Also have you been able to modify the init.con files for the various maps to try to get rid of the fog?

You can still set the view distance but now you need to do it by map.

To get around those data differs from server dont edit the original files. Especially dont edit objects.rfa. What you want to do is create new rfa files that only contain the files with just the lines you want to change (dont forget the directories) and use them as a patch using the method I explained in the 3rd person view thread. BTW what version were you running there 1.2 or 1.3 ?

I noticed you mentioned adding of a sniper zoom. This is def in the objects.rfa and needs to be done with the method I posted. Basically you can move cameras around by x,y,z . I added it so when I crouch instead of seeing in front of my eyes it moves the camera up 70 meters and is usefull for looking over hills etc to see what enemies are up to.

[DapperDan]

well u all might as well wait till the new patch 1.3 comes out to release those skin hacks, which should be any day now.....other wise ur wasting ur time

[DapperDan]

and the 1.3 that got release the other day is bad just letting u know for those that dont

[JohnTesla]

Originally posted by DapperDan
well u all might as well wait till the new patch 1.3 comes out to release those skin hacks, which should be any day now.....other wise ur wasting ur time

Well at the lowest level the information on this editing is all the same. If you follow my post in an earlier message any 1.1 stuff works on 1.2 with some minor changes. and from reports on 1.3 it should be exactly the same. Basically this stuff is a mod. Since there is no PB system built into BF it will work fine.

[toadpeon]

I am still using 1.2.

John you keep nugding me in the proper direction. I knew that it was on an individual map basis, but I could not figure out why it was not working.

Yeah I did that 3rd person zoom thing, which is awsome.

What I was refering to was the scout scope, so far I have only been able to clear up the screen, but it is still not full screen. So I will just dig deeper - again thanks for the tips.

And Dapperman, I don't care if you use these or not. Why so you will just have to reinstall all the skinz after 1.3 big deal.

O and alittle humor:

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/toadpeon/_uimages/Clowns.jpg

It's retarded but heh?

[SmokeDookee]

nah, thats phat as hell!! lol

[DapperDan]

my bad

[Tech5]

Toadpeon your skins worked great , is this the final version?

[toadpeon]

Not at all, this was really just a beta if you will. Ill be uploading the next set soon.

[JohnTesla]

why is it that out of like 50 people who come to this bf board only like 4 or so even try to edit these things on their own? People need to stop being so lazy. Look at how much Toadpeon has accomplished because he decided to learn something and now just beg for stuff.

[Tech5]

well i took JohnTesla advice and started making my own skins, everything is fine, but how do i make objects transparent? i want to take off the windshield of the jeeps " because they get in the way when driving" I can only color them, but not make them transparent, toad how did you do that?

thx guys

[Tech5]

i figured it out, all i had to do was use pure black in a alpha channel ,i was close lol.

[NastyImp]

i love these skins ! ty toadpeon u have inspired me to learn how to edit this stuff, im trying to figure out how to get them to work on road to rome maps. maybe ill have it working by morning lol

[toadpeon]

I have already got them to work for RtR, just finishing up on the rtr skins - such as the pak 40.

Ill have it ready for download by tommarrow perhaps.

[Ecstacy]

... u completly wasted your time with the plane thing, just press f9 and it removes the **** pit

[NastyImp]

some servers dont allow f9

[toadpeon]

"... u completly wasted your time with the plane thing, just press f9 and it removes the **** pit"

-rofl

[Ecstacy]

Originally posted by NastyImp
some servers dont allow f9

never heard of them ;/

*wanders off and sticks his joystick in some fine ladys c'ockpit

[Ecstacy]

peon how about explaining to me how to get skin hack to work with desert combat

[toadpeon]

Simple, go back to the beginning of this thread, read all the generous info that I have given and do it youself.

[Ecstacy]

i dont have photoshop, cant u use your hax with DC?

[Ecstacy]

would extracting the dc texture.rfa and move it to texturesets/dc/ then override the files with your hax then change the path in the maps to texturesets/dc/map work

[DapperDan]

grrr I cant get ur skins to work in 1.3

[toadpeon]

Please see my new post for updated skin/fog hack.