kolt16

For ballistics the diffuse texture should have an alpha channel by default and thats the specular map. For the rest they have a second texture ( not the normal map ) and its red channel is the specular and green channel is the glow map. You are probably loosing the alpha channel on save. If you are using dds make sure you save it in DXT5 ARGB or at least in a format that stores alpha info.(no idea how gimp handles dds though) You may also try bmp, miked79 used it in his video tutorial, it seems to work fine with this game.

Sad indeed.. This game has potential, I just hope it won't be wasted, and we will get a decent expansion pack or modding tools, or -dare to say- both.

You can filter the textures with * while texmod runs in logging mode, just go somewhere where you can see the skyranger on screen, press and hold *, you will notice that the number indicating the amount of loaded textures goes down to a friction, now scroll until you see the skyranger highlighted. It may have several texture files, normal, difuse, specular ect. About the second question, I don't think texmod can do mass export, but it wouldn't do you much good anyway, since it names the files from there identifiers and those are hex values, meaning you'd have to open and look at thousands of files named like XCOMGAME.EXE_0xE06C48C9.dds and figure out what's what and rename them. I'd be a nightmare, it kinda already is even for 2 armor sets and a few weapons if exported at the same time :D You may look through this for more info: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/809310-retexturing/

I haven't tried marathon yet, don't know if that helps, but even if it does, we can't go above 1.9 as far as I know. The standard progression is already to much for the mod I'm playing. Fighting mutons with ballistic, it is an interesting experience.. :D Still considering we can change the research times, prices, and income to whatever we liked, it is possible to balance mods for very long games. But for this to work correctly it's necessary to balance alien progression as well. Say for example you plan the game to be 3 times longer then the original, which is not that much considering how short the game is. This would mean you might be fighting elites with ballistics, and if you survive there is no point for higher techs and the balance is wrong, otherwise you just die out.. Anyway, this is a problem, and one I'd love to see solved soon. Maybe with xshape.. :ohdear:

As far as I know you can't repack yet, as you said, but you can change anything you can see, with the tool I linked earlier. The picture you uploaded is for the flags on the backs of the soldiers, this is the one I changed to for testing, and it works just fine in game too. The flags that show in the barracks are different, you can probably find them with the interface elements (not that it'd do you much good with no repack ability :D). You can change them too with TexMod though, but it'd be tiresome as you'd have to get one soldier of each nation, and export the nations flags one by one from ingame, than do the modding and add them to a package in TexMod to be changed on start. The workflow is like this: 1. Getting stuff out: Start TexMod Select XCOM executable as the target application Set TexMod to Logging Mode Choose output folder, set output to dds, set a key you want to use thats not mapped ingame (like F9) Click Run Game will start as normal (you'll see red text on top left corner with instructions how to use TexMod while the game is running) Use filtering (*) when you can see what you want to get, so you don't have to wade trough every single texture loaded in memory. Export the textures you want to change. Quit the game. Go to the directory you selected as output. You will see .dds files with names like XCOMGAME.EXE_0x415B9DE1.dds and a .log file containing the ID to each texture and pairs them with the actual file, you may rename the files to something that makes sense to you, and move them around to other folders, just be sure to move and change the .log file accordingly. Example: 2. To get things back to game: Run TexMod, go to Package Build. Select the .log file that contains the stuff you want in your package. Click build. ( you will be informed of the outcome, will see how many textures were added to the package) This will create a .tpf file, this contains your modified textures with the right addressing. 3. To play with your new textures. Change TexMod to Package Mode, and select the package files you want added for the current session. Click run. The game will run as nothing happened, except the textures in the packages will replace the corresponding textures as the game runs. Note: As far as I understand TexMod doesn't actually change anything in the game files, or modifies the game in any way. If you don't run the game through TexMod with packages selected everything will be back to vanilla. About the works, I think it's injecting stuff into the memory replacing the ones being loaded in there by the game, if there IDs match. This probably also means if you do retexture the whole game, it might have an impact on video or standard memory usage. But I couldn't pump out enough textures for any game to make a difference in performance so far :D:D. About my texture pack, still on the works, I just don't like the camo patterns yet.

@Caiman: Thanks :D, will see about the texture pack, I'm still not quite satisfied with it. Not to mention only the base armor and the base weapons are done. @KMA / kayttaja: I'm guessing most units and items can be done, flags for sure, I tried the ones on the soldiers back that works, one could probably do the interface element ones too. Environmental textures look weird though, no idea what to do with those. A bit of general info for those who would be interested in texturing: DDS formats: DTX5 ARGB for all textures with alpha channels. DTX1 RGB for the others Texture types for standard items: Diffuse - Alpha channel has Specular data Normal (haven't touch any of these yet) Texture types for custom colorable stuff like armors: Diffuse - no alpha Normal SPC - see details below The SPC textures (looks like a red outline in TexMod) are used as 4 independent grayscales instead of an RGB and an alpha for transparency. Red Channel: Specular Green Channel: Glow? - It should be but I could see no difference in game. Blue Channel: Custom Color 1 Alpha Channel: Custom Color 2 I'm guessing something similar is going on with the environmental textures, maybe the channels are mixed between the two texture files in some way, to save space? Not that I'd plan to touch those, but someone else might, and I'm still curious.

Helmet texture and some more.. http://www.mediafire.com/?8wy5aexc8mt1lj1 While It's not specified how exactly should I get the texture into the game, I'm quite sure the method used is considered cheating :D. It's done with TexMod, a nifty tool made for Tomb Raider Legends or MassEffect maybe, but it does work with most anything. Back to the issue at hand, I didn't unpack the game resources, so no idea how stuff is stored in there, but trough texmod you generally need dif and color map (the later for items that have customizable color presets, for these dif texture matters little, so I did make a color map for the helmet too). This little experiment also brought out a bug, either with texmod or the game handling helmet textures (I hope only those, haven't seen it with anything else yet). If the character is zoomed in or the resolution is changed, probably when another step of the dds is being called, every step gets a new ID in memory. That means I have to export every id with texmod for every resolution and have my texture inserted for each instead of just the source dds. Again I have not seen this behaviour with anything else I tied retexturing so far. Fortunately I don't particularly like the helmets in this game to begin with :D Anyway if you are the type who can't wait for resource packing tools, texmod is a nice alternative solution. It works with pacakges, so in theory it's possible to upload texture packs for any game, this one included. Although I haven't seen many of these. Maybe I'll upload mine and see if it works for others. I do hope there will be some modding tools for this game though. It's a good start, but could do with a few tons of extra stuff :D