Other people have had this problem. Its not the equiv file. Its showing up that there are repeated textures in the pack. The GenEquivFile program has an option to test a pack for repeats.There may even be some old bmp files left in from the capture.

Without the equiv file, the pack will work only with one version of the game, and your letters wont get mapped into all levels.

Other people have had this problem. Its not the equiv file. Its showing up that there are repeated textures in the pack. The GenEquivFile program has an option to test a pack for repeats.There may even be some old bmp files left in from the capture.

Thanks Paul, I found the trouble and got everyone working together smoothly

I had suspected perhaps it was something conflicting in the first three levels (which are not stuctured solely on the equiv method ) , but as it turns out is was My equiv file and not any floating .BMP's or duplicate textures causing the problem .

I was experimenting with how the equiv file will use a bmp instead of a png in levels where no folder/file has been mapped to try and get the equiv to use different (unlike the orignial) textures for different levels in some specific cases.

also I was fiddling with mapping textures to the mip map created folders so that one can flip back and forth been textures paks .

add that to the fact that I had the some of the unfinished business folders ( both mip and normal ) included in the equiv and you see I had a number of candidates for minor managitorial disaster 😉

which brings me to : command line switches for the equiv file generator?

Is it possible to change the sensitivety of the equiv generatorto relax the association threshold a bit ( unfortuneaty a necessity is that I move files from here to there and everywhere and the equiv is smart enough to not associate textures that have as little as two pixels difference( possibly even only one I guess))?

and thanks again f
or creating that letter/version equiv I use it all the time 😀

(p.s. I would have uploaded the new files today but the ftp page"...cannot be displayed.." right now for some reason - but that's probably a wall issue at my end )

Paul,

I have been having a little trouble with the equiv generator . At first ( the the obelisk of Khamoon levels is where I first noticed this ) a few textures that should have been linked by the equiv generator were ignored . I initially assumed this was due to minor diffferences in the textures , but the problem has increased in scope until the equiv between the atlantis and mines levels now ignores most textures that definitely should be linked . I have even gone as far as actually copying the exact texture from one folder to another and still the equiv generator passes it over .

perhaps you could point me in the direction of where I am going wrong?

I have included the capture files for Natlas mines and Atlantis , plus the version of the equiv generator I am using and a couple of examples of the output files generated from those same files .

the 'blank' ( contains no data ) equiv occurred after running the equiv generator for the third time ( In subsequent runs I generated the equivn , equiv98m,and then got the "blank")

thanks in advance

(p.s. the file will not upload for some reason " Upload Error: Could not upload attachment to ./files/capmines.rar. " ) I will check the file and try again later

There are differences between the Natla's Mines textures and the other Atlantis ones - I'm not 100% sure but I think its the palette that differs. I ended up editing the equiv file manually. Bit of a bitch, but it did the job!

First the sensitivity thing: sorry I meant to reply some time ago and forgot. Its not at all easy, if indeed possible. The current algorithm uses a trick that makes it complexity n * log(n). For finding approximate matches, I know no way better than n * n. And there are extra overheads in the individual checks. It would be horrendously slow.

The thing with the palettes: it shouldn't matter, the matching considers the actual colors after mapping through the palette. I remember though something about the colour used for transparent being different. Something like a dirty brown in early levels, changing to cyan in later ones.
Could that be it? Mind you, I thought I fixed that too, so I'm sort of confused.

How are you generating the equiv files? You mention equivs between pairs of levels. Have you tried generating a single equiv file from a capture of an the entire game?

JC , thanks - On the KHamoon levels did you get a few textures that required hand editing also ?

PAul,

Paul I tried generating the equiv files in a number of ways:

A)first my standard way by adding new textures to teh "omni" (has all the textures) capture file and runnig the the equiv on that folder .

B) if the above method has some kind of trouble I check it by Isolating jus the folders I am trying to get the equiv to link .

if this fails to give the desired result then I re-try both a and b on a differenent OS ( W98 in this case ) if that fails I then try another computer altogether .

Although I must apologize to you as I think that JC is correct in that it is the textures being slightly different .

After reading his comment I double checked the textures , I was using the 'difference' method ( using PSP to drop one texture onto another as a difference filter layer , if the textures are exactly the same the result is all black ) to see if they were the same , upon re-examination I noticed that there are minor differences (very very minor like say a couple of pixels being for example black = 253 as opposed to being black=255) .

They are obviously the same textures so I would hazard a guess that the differences stemed in most cases from how the bit maps were compressed/created (by the TR team ) in the first place.

er, sorry about the sky is falling bit , looks like I wil have to hand assemble the links 😀

Its nice if the automatic equiv generation gives you exactly what you want without editing, so if you have two captured textures that differ but should be the same, just overwriting one with the other, before equiv generation, works well.

In several instances I have done that in the past , and it has worked well , but for what ever reasons a few files/folders seem to be passed over even when I have manually copied the exact textures to all spots .

one folder I am especially puzzled by is a2f.... ( from Atlantis ) , but perhaps it is simply something i am not doing .

damn , I repackaged the capture file but it still won't let me upload them ...
try here
http://www.horkquelon.greatnow.com/dl/capmines.exe

JC , thanks - On the KHamoon levels did you get a few textures that required hand editing also ?

Yes - mostly the crocodile if I remember rightly, probably others too. What happens if you run your stuff using my equivalence file? The only two meddlesome liberties I took with it involved the Midas 'M' texture that appeared in Colosseum and something that involved a flipped column texture that made it's way from Folly to later Greek/Roman levels. Other than those it is a straightforward whole game equiv file that fixes the problem of missed equivalences. Hope I make sense here...I'm a bit hung over from some late night partying!

jc,

I did try running you equiv ( as it seems that we are using the same (US?) version of TR), and it worked excellently . unfortuneately some of repeated/shared textures from the first three textures I did not share.

I though about trying a find and replace to utilize the work you had done on the equiv but I would have had to edit a lot of textures so that my first few levels would appear correctly textured.

Although....

this recent snag revealed three important things

1) sometimes something ( another program? , windows os????) interupts the capture process momentarily. This in turn produces a partial texturewith co-ordinace that look correct but do not actually connect to any real memory calls.

2) the same process ( perhaps ) occasionally produces a file that is corrupted (at a guess 1 in 3000 captures) and "is not a valid windows bitmap file"although it still has a file name and extention - when the equiv generator hits one of these it seems to ignore anythign after it and go on to the next folder

3) some of the original bit maps have one or two pixel(sometimes mopre as in the case of the brown pixels in the atlantis level) variations tha t I assume are from the bmp creation process

I haven't come up against these issues yet as I haven't got that far so can't really help out. But I used a different process to eliminate duplicates by converting all images to 24-bit PNGs and compressing them using PNGOUT -- then running the quiv tool on the results to get the file. After that, I used a duplicate file remover to get rid of the actual duplicate files.

This process eliminates all problems with palettes and the results so far seem good but it remains to be seen if the method I used will be less problematic than the way you guys have done it.

I've started a new job in London and will be moving there soon. Due to a complete change in my life, available time and other issues, it's unlikely I'll be doing anything further on TRX in the next 3-6 months so I'm glad you guys are still pumping stuff out.

I've been looking forward to having a look at these new packs ever since they were uploaded, but only just found the time. Whoa! I've just been running around a few levels. Some amazing work.

For my version of TR I need to apply the version-equiv file, otherwise there's quite a lot missing. I'm going to try to find out why that was running into problems. I think it's multiply mapped textures. I've just updated the pack-checking feature of the GenEquivMap program, so that it gives information that is more helpful to curing multiple mappings. I'll post more about that in another thread.

I've been working on Quest's packs to combine them with the version equiv file and remove the resulting double mappings. I've finished the first of the two packs, and uploaded the new version, calling it SilverLokAllVers.

I've just, for the first time, taken a look at Quest's version of Lara's home.

BLOODY HELL!!! 😳 Have you seen it? Staggering.

pics?

Here's one

thanks ,

the house level ( and lara in it ) are still incomplete/ experimental , but there are some nice bits in there. Paul have you looked the mines level ?

Also thnaks for taking the time to create the patches , do the new additions make the "all versions " download 'obsolete' ? ( i will take it down to keep the downloads area from seeming so confusing )

ANd <

the only problem with using a pure equiv file is that I knOw some of the first few levels will not display some textures as I intended ... ?? I need to get a european version of TR to be sure though .

at any rate thanks again , and I have the atlantis and great pryamid levels about 95% completed I thought I would wait and go back and finished everything before uploading them, but then again I may not(wait that is ) 😉

I'm working my way towards mines. I'm on Midas's Palace so I have a way to go, but I don't want to miss anything. I don't think I've tried your version of Cistern before, so I'm looking forward to that.

On the AllVers uploads: I'm hoping that all the others can be removed now, but I was hoping first that you could try them out to see if the problems you were seeing are gone. The problems should be gone, but I can't be sure.

If you are continuing work on this, i'ts best not to work from the AllVers uploads. The problem is, if you wish to make a texture common to several levels display differently in different levels, you need to alter the equiv file, and that is difficult to do when it has been combined with the version-equiv
file. I have some versions here that have the repeats removed but have not been combined yet. I can let you have them if you like.

I am pretty happy with most of the cistern textures . the green/ blue color scheme worked out pretty well ( even if it was a bit of a fudge from the original color-or lack of 😉

Paul I just downloaded the files and will test drive them soon .

I would like to get the uncombined files , but after I have had a chance to test the allversions stuff.

wHen you get the the khamoon levels you have the option to play with light or dark rocks . personally I think the dark rocks ( which are more like the originals) look better , but would be interested in your opinion .

the silverlok file has the light rocks , and the silverlok2 patch ( for the mines ) changes the rocks to dark -

thanks again .