fairline4 wrote:Thanks very much Josh - that was an excellent guide and I've used it to create new pk4 files for reskinned Duke and Stirling in Great Westrn Railway colours - the latter is a passable double for a GWR Rover Class or Dean Single.
I use PSP7 and 8 and find the NVidia DDS plugin doesn't work as well as it does with Photoshop. I therefore work in TGA format and use DDS Converter 2 to create DDS files. Now that I've cleaned up the alpha transparency channels I've sorted the 'glow-in-the-dark problem and removed residual pixels I was getting around transparency I'd added to cab and roof; the skin works well in-game now. Also figured out that including all the individual loco and tender DDS's as well as the pk4 in userextracontent allowed me to use recoloured wheels on my locos.
Next step is to upload the Duke and stirling to the downloads folder! I may make a set of GWR coaches and a GWR Great Bear pacific to accompany these.
Thanks again for your help :)
Bit of an old topic, but I've figured out what was going on here.
The way the game engine is set up, any files packed into a later PK4 (like a skin for an existing loco) will not override any files packed into an earlier PK4 (the existing loco stuff). To get files later in the chain to override earlier files, the later files have to be loose. This applies to all game assets, not just locomotives. Loco skins are a special case because they set up code to allow an override by a PK4, but they forgot to write the code so it would apply to trucks and wheels and other stuff as well as applying to the body. This is why you can't get recoloured wheels with a PK4, and why fairline4 got them with loose files.
Unfortunately I have no idea how to get around the bug with recoloured wheels not showing until after a game is saved and reloaded. I suspect we are stuck with that one.
Anyway, I ran my own tests and got the coloured wheels working. For some obscure RT3 reason it
is necessary to have all the skin stuff packed into a PK4,
plus the loose DDS skin images, to get it working. I tested other options:
1/ all files loose - didn't work.
2/ .dsc, profile.imb, profile icon in PK4, all DDS skin images loose - didn't work either.
3/ all skin stuff in PK4, plus all loco and tender DDS images loose - yup, that works.
The profile icon can just be in the PK4. That one doesn't need to be loose as well. It's only loco and tender images that map to the .3dp's that must have loose duplicates.
I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect this dodge will allow recolouring trucks too. That would be necessary if wanting to do multiple skins for Garratts, since the front and rear units for Garratts have to be done as trucks. It should also work for connecting rods, etc, although I haven't tested that yet either.
Anyway proof of concept shot, with green wheels on a green Berkshire.