Ok egg, try to open it with Notepad, not wordpad. I got some serious errors with wordpad nad even crashed my PC.
Give some time so post you the skybox key and values. Like i said _color, ambient etc etc. Im on work right now and i cant
do it. In 5 hour i'll be in my place and so i'll post you the key and values.

Hey i forgot to tell you also try it in a fresh copy of rhinevalley.
Open the pk3 with packscape and export the bsp in to your desktop. Then open it with notepad and find these entries that
i told ya. Well it gave me also hard times when i was trying to
take the entries and the skybox textures too. Let me know what happend.

I don't need pakscape as I just set my winxp to treat pk3's as zip files and they open and extract fine.

Anyway I used it and extracted mp_rhinevalley.bsp from pakuo1.pk3 to my desktop. When I tried to open it with notepad it just went into (Not Responding) for ages and then opened as the weird glyphy version as seen in wordpad.

It looks like this:

IBSP;   ˜X  
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Ì  ä%6
€!  °26
†#  0T6
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L8 t¦<
= ÀÞB
€I  ÄE
à}  DeE
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  ô K
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O $÷r
 ‡  (Fw
    (Íw
  0 (Íw
textures/common/nosight_noclip                                  °@    (textures/common/clip_nosight_nothing                             @  @(textures/common/clipfoliage                                      @€  (textures/common/clip_nosight                                     @P
@(textures/common/clip_nosight_metal                               @Ð @(textures/common/clipmonster                                      @    (textures/common/clip_nosight_dirt                                @` @(textures/common/caulk                                              
  textures/italy/floors/concrete@cobblestone-05                     P 
  textures/italy/floors/concrete@cobblestone-05                     P 
   textures/ardennes/walls/rock@stonewall1                           

   textures/common/caulk                                              
   textures/common/clip_nosight_rock                                @
@(textures/common/clip_metal                                        Ð À(textures/common/clip                                             @   (textures/common/playerclip_metal                                  Ð   
 textures/ukraine/walls/concrete@w_k_t8b                           P 
  textures/italy/walls/concrete@w_s_t8                              P €   textures/common/caulk                                              €   textures/normandy/windows/wood@shutter4a                          P

  textures/common/nodraw_notsolid                                  @  
  textures/common/nodraw_notsolid                                  @     (textures/normandy/windows/wood@shutter4a                          P
   (textures/normandy/windows/wood@shutter4c                          P
   (textures/industrial/concrete@rough_1drk                           P 
  textures/sky/mp_carentan                                        4  
  

I only see one instance of the word sky/mp_carentan, so I can only change one brush, which causes this weird error when trying to run the map:
CMod_LoadBrushes: bad shaderNum: 128819

hmm so how can I mod the skybox in the bsp?

edited on Sep. 5, 2007 02:28 pm by eggbeast

Well it seems that i get the same error here. I know that something is missing and i dont get it what. Now you got the picture how you can take the entries from the stock maps. Sorry if i didnt help ya egg, but if you find a solution inform me mate.

Well I just spoke to The [)r in game now and he said its a secret lol, by the looks of it you seem close in being able to do it you're probably missing 1 really silly thing heh.

I'm not that versed in bsp hex editing yet so I can't offer much help

get yourself a hexeditor - i use hhd toolbox

open the bsp with that, and look for the sky shader

say sky/mpkursk

if you want to change it either try sky/mpkurs1, or sk/mpberlin - you can change it's directory or file name, as long as it's the same length as the original filename - especially easy for scripted shaders like skies

ok, to make the game use the modified text. look in gmi_sky.shader (or cod1's version, either work) and look for something like this

textures/sky/mpkursk
{
	qer_editorimage textures/skies/mpkursk_im.dds
	surfaceparm sky
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nomarks
	skyParms env/mpkursk 512 -
}

copy that into a new notepad document and change it to something like the below

textures/sk/mpberlin

{
	qer_editorimage textures/skies/mpkursk_im.dds
	surfaceparm sky
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nomarks
	skyParms env/mpberlin 512 -
}

or

textures/sky/mpkurs1

{
	qer_editorimage textures/skies/mpkursk_im.dds
	surfaceparm sky
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nomarks
	skyParms env/mpkurs1 512 -
}

save that as yourmapname.shader and put it in your map's pk3 in a folder called scripts

finally, find any sky textures you want to use, copy them into your pk3's env folder and call them

mpkurs1_up, mpkurs1_rt etc

you could even directly use different skies without having to copy their textures - eg loading mpkursk's sky in place of mp_kharkov

textures/sky/mp_kharkov
{
	qer_editorimage textures/skies/kharkov2_bk.dds
	surfaceparm sky
	surfaceparm nolightmap
	surfaceparm noimpact
	surfaceparm nomarks
	nofog

	skyParms env/kursk 512 -
}

i think it is possible to do in notepad as i think it remembers the nonascii characters in the bsp, but it's very slow at editing large files like these, and it's very easy to accidently change the number of bytes in the bsp this way, which will cause the errors. HHD Hexeditor is quicker at editing, and overwrites characters instead of inserting them and deleting them



Can be done similarly with all textures in the map too, and xmodel skins indirectly. Have a look at flak88_mario, it's exactly how i modded Starlight's original map - don't know why Dr is being secretive about it as editing things like this is nothing spectacular



edited on Sep. 6, 2007 08:45 pm by |DA|DarkDilbert

Your my man DarkDilbert, i thought about a Hex editor but didn't know which one to use . . . . Now i'll make some tests mate to see it in action. thnx for your help is very appreciated.
Thnx lad

Hey Raaaa maybe Dr wants to be mysterious Dr. and he wants the exclusive . . . just joking

edited on Sep. 7, 2007 04:42 am by Aloucard

this looks useful - im gonna have a go at it today - if i manage to change the map i'll offer it up for download of course.

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/HHD-HexEditor-Download-19800.html

eggbeast writes...

Dude nice one . . . hey pm me
if you finish your thoughts ok ??

ok i think ive nearly got it - one last question...

in the bsp hexeditor it just does exactly the same as opening it in wordpad as far as i can see - there is only one instance of the word sky in the bsp. i checked a few other maps and they all have one sky reference only.

so i changed mp_rhinevalley.bsp to rhine.bsp, edited the flags and stuff to make it work british instead of US, changed the script_vehicle panzeriv's to halftracks, and changed the teams in the gsc to british vs fallschirmjagercamo and that all works fine...

now for the sky, i changed the single sky texture name in the bsp from
sky/mp_carentan
to
sky/rhinenights
(both 11 letters)

now in my env file i have 6 files called:
env/rhine_bk.TGA
rhine_dn.TGA
rhine_ft.TGA
rhine_lf.TGA
rhine_rt.TGA
rhine_up.TGA

these are the original "night" sky textures renamed

and my scripts/ folder has a file called rhine.shader containing:

textures/sky/rhinenights
{
qer_editorimage textures/sky/rhine.tga
surfaceparm sky
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nomarks
skyParms env/rhine 512 -
sunfile chateau
}
and it doesnt work

now you use the following for a kharkov map being changed to kursk right?

textures/sky/mp_kharkov
{
qer_editorimage textures/skies/kharkov2_bk.dds
surfaceparm sky
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nomarks
nofog
skyParms env/kursk 512 -
}

so what does this have to do with anything?

"qer_editorimage textures/skies/kharkov2_bk.dds"

how did you arrive at that line?

what im failing to grasp is the relationship/ meaning of the following names:

A) mapname: rhine.bsp
B) bsp entry: textures/sky/rhinenights (length to replace mp_carentan)
C) 6 env images: env/rhine_bk.TGA etc (based on mapname)
D) scripts shader filename: rhine.shader (based on mapname)
E) elements in rhine.shader:
the original rhinevalley uses mp_carentan which has the following entry in sky.shader

textures/sky/mp_carentan
{
qer_editorimage textures/sky/hedgerow.tga
surfaceparm sky
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm noimpact
surfaceparm nomarks
skyParms env/mpcarentan 512 -
sunfile mp_carentan
}

So I should use the following modified bits right?

E1. textures/sky/rhinenights (name used in edited bsp)
E2. qer_editorimage textures/sky/hedgerow.tga (original in carentan sky)
E3. skyParms env/rhine 512 - (new name matching image files)
E4. sunfile chateau (stock night moon)

see thing is, it doesn't work! What am i missing?


edited on Sep. 7, 2007 11:03 am by eggbeast