VNDragon's ZT1 Projects

[Fern]

From Jay: Since Jm_OstrichDimorph_Hack.ztd has f.pal and y.pal, most likely ZT Studio was used. It is also possible to use a hex/binary editor, which is how it was done before ZT Studio existed, but it is a lot of work. It involves renaming the new f pal file to have the same number of letters as ZT's pal file, copying the m animations to a f folder, changing all ani files in the f folder to use f instead of m, using a hex/binary editor to change all animations in the f folder to use the new pal file, and having the uca file use "f = animals/.../f" instead of "f = animals/.../m". As for having a volcano use ZT's animations but with different characteristics, using a new internal name isn't much more than a hack. That would be renaming volcano.ai to volcavnd.ucb, changing "idle = idle" to "idle = objects/volcano/idle/idle.ani", changing "used = used" to "used = objects/volcano/used/used.ani", and changing the cPurchaseCost setting to make it obvious which is which in the purchase menu.

 

From me: I can do all the underwater stuff easily without making it a hack same as I did all the foliage so it is not dead on land.

I have been thinking of recolouring some of the vents anyway.

[VND]

Ah it makes sense if a dedicated program is used. I do have ZT Studio, but aside from recoloring I have no idea how to perform other (potential) functions of the program.

 

I tried replacing the paths in the animation files manually using a hex editor. However, the challenge with doing it manually is that bisons don't have sexual dimorphism. So the palette path is "animals/bison/bison.pal". 

 

At first, I replaced it with "animals/bison/f/f.pal" but the difference in the number of characters resulted in a crash. ZT Studio also could not open the file after the path change. Notice how "\" is flipped to "/" after going through the hex editor.

  

 

 

I then switched to renaming the palette files while keeping the same parent folder structure (and character number), so the female uses "bison/fison.pal" while the young uses "bison/yison.pal". This method worked for the young sprites, but the female continues to use the same colour as the male. 

I am attaching the bison file here for debugging if you or Jay are interested.

femalebison - debug.ztd

[Fern]

From Jay:

In that ztd, all of the ".ani" files should be changed to use "dir2=f" instead of "dir2 = m". That will have ZT show different graphics for the female adults compared to the male adults. To have this be a new animal instead of a hack, bison.ai can be renamed to bisonvnd.uca and cPurchaseCost can be changed to make it obvious which is which in the purchase menu. Being that it still uses cNameID as ZT's bison, it would still become available at the same time as ZT's bison, which is the 6th game month. But the Developer Menu could be used to make it available immediately for testing. To make it available at the start of the zoo, the preferred way would be to have cNameID set to 19000, to have [defaultLCID] and [1033] sections, and to have a 1033.txt file.

[VND]

3 hours ago, Fern said:

From Jay:

In that ztd, all of the ".ani" files should be changed to use "dir2=f" instead of "dir2 = m". That will have ZT show different graphics for the female adults compared to the male adults. To have this be a new animal instead of a hack, bison.ai can be renamed to bisonvnd.uca and cPurchaseCost can be changed to make it obvious which is which in the purchase menu. Being that it still uses cNameID as ZT's bison, it would still become available at the same time as ZT's bison, which is the 6th game month. But the Developer Menu could be used to make it available immediately for testing. To make it available at the start of the zoo, the preferred way would be to have cNameID set to 19000, to have [defaultLCID] and [1033] sections, and to have a 1033.txt file.

Thank Jay for getting back to me. I also finally figured that out myself and got it fixed. I have no interest nor time to configure these as separate animals, but, as always, anyone interested is welcome to do so. 

 

The dimorphism was Heather's idea to help bring more palette options available into the game. However, it does require configuring the .ai file. While it is now technically possible to combine attribute files during play using OpenZT, that is not a realistic expectation for the majority of players. Conflicting attribute file is the biggest complaint around hacks in ZT, so I will be offering non-dimorphic versions that should not interfere with any existing hacks. 

 

Here are the versions that I will release, with the standard bison as comparison. Note that all versions only differ in the adults. The calf palette edit is the same across versions.  

 

First version is dark, reddish-brown. I refer to this variant as "choccy" for short. 

 

 

Second version is quite a bit lighter and warmer with a note of orange. I refer to this version as "tangy".

 

Coming up after the bison.

[Fern]

There are some white bison (buffalo) around by both genki and JohnT. And JohnT also did a black one.

[MarineIguana97]

Otters sexual dimorph?

holy peak

[VND]

2 hours ago, Fern said:

There are some white bison (buffalo) around by both genki and JohnT. And JohnT also did a black one.

I'm aware. I have been using JohnT's bisons as a way to test multiple colour palettes before the dimorphism suggestion.

 

37 minutes ago, MarineIguana97 said:

Otters sexual dimorph?

holy peak

This one is in fact not dimorphism! It bothers me to no end that Blue Fang seems to be referencing the wrong animal for their "sea otter" in both ZT1 & ZT2. Here is what real sea otters look like:

 

So where did that brown come from? I suspect it's from the South American marine otter, also the only other sea-faring member in the group:

 

So. the solution? A .pal recolour of the base sea otter, while the original colour is cloned for use by a new marine otter. The marine otter is pretty much ready to roll, but I'm debating whether I need to make sure it's compatible with shows.