Portrait modding - changes not showing in game

[DeathDaisy]

the random generated portraits for the career are, lets be honest, ghastly, so I tracked down the images for them in swf/characterphoto and had the idea that I could maybe either try and make the parts less bad or make most parts transparent and change one part into different real photos (even with the risk of duplicates, it couldnt be worse). however I just cant get any changes to show up in game. as far as I can tell you just place your modded files in the correct place in the file structure and they should work? does it only work for graphics and not stuff in /swf?

[sniperton]

@DeathDaisyGreat idea, I hope you succeed.

Are you sure that

- mods are really enabled in-game?

- path is correct? (swf/il2/characterphoto/[countrycode]/...)

- you're watching the proper country/career?

Also check the "characterphoto_#.dds" files in "swf/cache/il2", they may have something to do with how those zombies show up.

Good luck!

[DeathDaisy]

8 hours ago, sniperton said:

Also check the "characterphoto_#.dds" files in "swf/cache/il2", they may have something to do with how those zombies show up.

the others Ive checked ^^ but this could be it, gonna experiment a bit and see what those dds files do. thanks!

 

UPDATE: the cache files are definitely the ones messing me up. its weird cuz they seem to exist in swf.gtp too, so removing them from the data/swf folder doesnt actually generate new ones. to me it seems the ones in il2/characterphotos are entirely arbitrary.

 

the parts in cache are defined in a .atlas file with the same name, and I dont think itd be too hard to make the game display photos instead of the parts. my plan is to change the mouths into photos since they are the most numerous, and have one for each country transparent so you can use the background layer for some extra photos too.

 

I dont know how the game interprets the portrait image and atlas files yet, but if its possible to just add extra parts by adding them into the atlas or something, you could potentially add enough to make the images not repeat too often

Edited December 31, 2019 by DeathDaisy

[sniperton]

@DeathDaisy

The last 4 numbers in the atlas files never exceed 350, so they might refer to rectangle sections in the 350x350 png file specified at the start of the line.

The first 4 numbers can be up to 1024, so they might refer to rectangle sections in the file specified in the header (customphoto_#).

Just a blind guess, not checked, not proven.

And I'm still puzzled why the individual atlas files are so different as to parts content.