Addon Makers Database

[Flat!!! 0]

I have started this topic and it is for posting useful tips and hints for making addons. I will start the topic of with a little mini tutorial on how to hex edit and.

Ok suppose you want to re-texture a city bus. you will need a unpbo tool I personally use cpbo which is in a pack with other tools like a .paa plugin for photoshop. This pack with tools can be found here: Click Me

Open the folder called cpbo and dubbel click the cpbo.exe it will ask you if you want to use it as default cpbo program. Well I suppose you want to so press yes.

Now that you have that done goto your AddOns folder and find a file called wheeled.pbo dubbel click it and a black box should appear with lots of text. Wait until it has disappeared and there should now be a folder called wheeled.

Now make your own folder somewhere and now go back to the wheeled folder and into the data folder and find the bus textures. There might be alot but this is what you are looking for : Exterior: bus_city_ext_co.paa Interior: bus_city_int_co.paa

If you want both then copy both to the folder you made before. Now go out of the data folder and into the wheeled folder and find the file bus_city.p3d and place that to together with the .paa files you moved just now. Convert the .paa files to .TGA then to .JPG and you are ready to edit them. If you can't open the .paa files you need photoshop and the plugin you downloaded with the unpbo tool. to install it place the paaplug.8bi in (photoshop directory)\plug-ins\File Formats\ and it should work. I think you can also do this with TexView 2 which is a BIS ArmA tool you can get from: Click Me

Ok once you have edited the .jpg files you converted from the .paa pack them back up to .TGA and then to .paa. Now you have made your textures and it is time to Hex edit. For this you will need a tool. I have only tried one called XVI32 which you can download from: http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi/download/xvi32.zip

Now since the path to the original textures is "ca\wheeled\Data\" you will have to have a as long path (as many characters) For instance "mybusretex\text\" if you use the path I gave as an example then rename the folder where you put everything to mybusretex and make another folder in there called text and put your .paa files in there. Now to the actual Hex editing.

Now open your .p3d file with the new hex editing program and press ctrl+F and you should see something like this:

Picture (Click Me)

As you see on the press text string box and type the name of the .paa so for Exterior: bus_city_ext_co.paa Interior: bus_city_int_co.paa and then press "Text -> Hex" button and ok. It will search up the closest file with that name. Now it should look something this:Picture (click Me)

The part marked In red on the picture is what you will edit. Don't use backspace to remove characters instead click on the first letter which in this case is a C now you are to type your path instead. It will replace the default letters with yours as you typ so type mybusretex\text\ then press ctrl+f again and ok and do the same again until it will say "string not found" in an error like box. This means you can press on the red X in the top right corner and then it will ask you if you want to save the changes where you will press "YES". For you editing both you need to first go threw looking for the exterior .paa file and then the interior.paa or vice versa.

When you are done you have to make a config. This is where I can't help you much and you will have to look into other tuts or if somebody is very kind and makes a config tut here you can use it. Once you have a config.cpp right click the folder "mybusretex" and there should be some text saying "create pbo" (ofcourse only if you have cpbo). and put it into the addons folder. Now if your config is correctly made (one of the tricky parts of addon making) You will be able to use it ingame.

//Good Luck!!! Flat.

BTW: Can a mod pin this? Because I think People might find this stuff useful.