01 Nov, 2005, attempt to clear up some confusion as regards the [Paint Ballz] info 18 Oct, 2005, even more detail in the [Texture List] info 13 Oct, 2005, expanding on the [Texture List] explanation. 18Sept, 2005, more explanation of [Add Ball] and the bodyarea 03June, 2005, a bit more explanation for Babyz in [Add Ball] 01June, 2005, a mention of the limit of [Linez] allowed. Also Babyz [Paint Ball] "outlineindex" added 07 Feb, 2005, expanding on the [Texture List] explanation. 28 Nov, Explaining that [Add Ball] variations are best handled in [Omissions] 11 Nov, clarifying the "pug tongue" effect in [Add Ball]. Also noting that Butterfly Chaser has made a list of useful Bodyarea numbers. 09 June, a bit more explanation on [Thin/Fat], where some people don't "get it" Also listed this chunk's key Texts at the top here 24 May, it's possible to make a breed entirely of add ball ballz only, but... 19 May, more explanation of outlines in [Add Ball] and [Ballz Info] 18 May, a little more on the extra columns in [Linez] 13 May, an explanation of the "laser-line" effect you get in some hexies when you put a hat on a pet. Look under [Linez]. Also, even more on [Add Ball]; the game crashes beyond a certain quantity, so Add Ball hexers take heed! 12 May 2004, expamded slightly on the extra column in [Add Ball] ALL BREEDZ HAVE THESE: ===================== ===================== [Thin/Fat] [Texture List] [Add Ball] [Default Linez Thickness] [Linez] [Paint Ballz] [Ballz Info] ---------------- As with the first of these information sheets, what I'm doing here is listing the actual Key Text, or command, in its [ ] brackets as the header for my information on that subject, then beneath that I'm listing the programmers' comments which come with it, including those which we hexers see as handy column headers. Then I'll show examples where appropriate and details of what all the columns are for. [Thin/Fat] ============ This is where you control the limits of how fat or thin your breed's pets can become. There are three columns, one of which is the ball number, and the other two are the limits of thinness and fatness. Just fool around with these until you get them the way you want them. As an example, take a CAlico cat. Normal for this would be: [Thin/Fat] 4, -15, 15 5, -15, 15 7, 0, 6 2, -10, 25 6, -10, 10 3, -10, 10 43, -5, 15 44, -5, 10 45, -5, 10 46, -5, 10 47, -5, 5 48, -5, 5 36, -10, 10 12, -10, 15 13, -10, 15 38, -10, 20 39, -10, 20 25, -10, 10 26, -10, 10 32, -10, 10 33, -10, 10 0, 0, 10 1, 0, 10 Well, if you want your adopted cats to look really peculiar if they are very thin or very fat, change those to: [Thin/Fat] 4, -75, 75 5, -75, 75 7, -70, 76 2, -70, 85 6, -70, 70 3, -70, 70 43, -65, 75 44, -65, 70 45, -65, 70 46, -65, 70 47, -65, 65 48, -65, 65 36, -70, 70 12, -70, 75 13, -70, 75 38, -70, 80 39, -70, 80 25, -70, 70 26, -70, 70 32, -70, 70 33, -70, 70 0, -50, 70 1, -50, 70 When 100% fat, your pet will be a cute set of blobs, and when thin it will be a thin sausage with a skinny head and disconnected feet. Obviously you would not want to be as extreme as that, LOL. Also you can add in other ball numbers; whatever ballz you want to have become fat or thin when the cat is overfed or starving, just add them in with your own idea of how big and little they should become. The same applies to dogz and babyz of course. If you want your pets or babyz never to become too fat or too thin, this is the plaec to make that happen. [Texture List] ============== ; First argument is name of texture. ; Second argument is whether texture is single color (1) or multi-color (0) ; This texture list is used both here and in add ballz [Texture List] \art\textures\hair6.bmp 1 \resource\catz\scott1.bmp 0 The "first argument" is the name of the furfile, but it's also the address, or where the game has to look to find it. The address \art\textures\ means look within the main game .dll files -- although if we wish, we can make an \art\textures\ directory on our hard drive and put the textures in there, and the game will find those in preference to the ones in the dll. The address \resource\catz\ means look in the \resource\catz directory for the furfile. The address \ptzfiles\dog\dh\ means look in the Dachshund breedfile for the furfile. (For more detail on this kind of internal texture, see further down in this chunk, under Adding Textures Internally). Usually you won't get much success if you try pointing to the furfile that's within one breedfile from the [Texture list] of another. Also note that Petz 5 has a special little quirk which causes the game to pick up on any original game furfile in preference to any other of the same name that you direct it to anywhere else. So avoid default game-name furfiles if possible in your own custom-made ones. The "second argument" is a kind of flag. 0 in that column flags up that the texture is multi-colour -- in other words, basically all the colours of that texture will be applied to the ball and your ball colour isn't going to show through unless it's in the "opaque" range (0-9 or 150 upwards). "Opaque" colours don't let any texture show at all. So if your argument is 0 and the colour in the "transparent" range, the texture is basically unaffected by the colour. If your argument is 1, the texture is entirely changed to the colour of the ball, with the texture being in faint shades of that colour. If your argument is the number of any other opaque colour such as 2-9 or 150 upwards, it apparently behaves in the same way as 0, making the Texture itself "opaque" to "transparent" colours. Any argument number from the "transparent" colour range 10-149 allows the ball colour through in any part of the texture which has that colour. So if you want your Tabby to have stripes of pink on an orange-brown background, give its body and leg textures the argument 95 and the corresponding ballz the colour 70, and if you want it to have brown stripes on a pink background, give the textures the argument 65. SUMMARY: In order to see a texture on a ball, your ball's colour has to be in the "non-opaque" range. That means, choose any colour from 10 to 149 inclusive. Any other number will not show a texture. If you put any "transparent" number in the "argument", such as 65, that number should indicate which colour in the "background" of the texture will allow your ball colour to show through. And a special note for the Wizard texture bitmap; for some magical reason, clever colour-changes which work on some people's machines do not work on other people's machines. The Wizard texture itself is identical, byte for byte, between all the games Petz 3, 4 and 5, and I've checked with different versions of the games. The problem does seem to be machine-specific, not game-specific or Operating-system specific. If you are using a texture which is not one of the game's originals, you need it to be 256-colour, it must be in a directory on your hard drive which matches the address in the texture list, and for Petz 5 it must be 32x32 pixels or multiples thereof (not exceeding 128x128 pixels and not necessarily square -- 64x32 will be okay, for instance). If you want the left ankle to be brindled in the Sheepdog, do the texture list like this for example: [Texture List] \art\textures\hair10.bmp 1 <-- this is texture number 0; the colour "argument" is 1 \art\textures\redrib.bmp 1 <-- this is texture number 1; the colour "argument" is 1 \art\textures\hair6.bmp 0 <-- this us texture number 2; the colour "argument" is 0 So that you have hair6.bmp in the list with its colour argument set to 0. Then change the number in the texture column of the left ankle in the Ballz Info, since you want to use the third texture (number 2): ;col outCol spklCl fuzz otlntTyp sizeDif group texture ball# [Ballz Info] 25, 244, -1, 5, -1, 8, 4, 2 0 ;L ankle And you would change the number in the texture column to 2 for every ball you wanted to be brindled. I found that "60" was a good number to use for the "colour argument" if you want your background ball colour to show through and still keep the brindle effect: \art\textures\hair6.bmp 60 it allows the ball colour through where the bitmap background is colour 60. Adding Textures Internally ----------------------------- You want to add your own bitmap, but not have to include it as an extra file along with your breed? This is fine, if you're making a full breedfile, but if you're simply releasing litters remember that people won't see the textures on their petz if you made the litters from a breedfile with custom internal textures. All you need to do is to open your breed in trusty LNZPro, choose "Add Resource" from the Edit drop-down menu, Browse to the bmp you wish to use, click Create, and ta-da -- your bitmap is now in the file. Save, of course. You want to add it to the Texture List in the LNZ now. The "address" will be in this form: \ptzfiles\\<2-letter mnemonic>\.bmp So, for a furfile called "mybitmap", in a Dachshund (the 2-letter mnemonic is dh in the original dachshund breedfile) \ptzfiles\dog\dh\mybitmap.bmp or in a B+W Shorthair cat (2-letter mnemonic is of course bw in the original breed) \ptzfiles\cat\bw\mybitmap.bmp Extra info about [Texture List] ----------------------------- When you look into a .pet file, you'll notice that there are two more numbers after each texture in the list. These two numbers can of course be controlled by adding them into your breedfile, which will force certain effects into the petfile. To understand what I mean, here are examples of what the game usually puts into a pet file. Say I have, in the breefile, the following: \art\textures\hair6.bmp 1 \resource\catz\quad\nose.bmp 0 \art\textures\mottled2.bmp 60 The .pet file will come out with this, which includes two extra columns of numbers, or "arguments", each of which usually contains the number 256: 1st Argument(texture address) 2nd 3nd 4th --------------------------------------------- \art\textures\hair6.bmp 1 256 256 \resource\catz\quad\nose.bmp 0 256 256 \art\textures\mottled2.bmp 60 256 256 The 3rd argument is a kind of "fine tuning" of the transparency of the texture. If your 2nd argument is 0, which means that you should only be seeing the texture and not the underlying colour, it can have the effect of making the markings in the texture more or less prominent. If the 2nd argument is 1, the 3rd argument fine-tunes the style of the texture transparency -- i.e. how much it is mixed with the ball colour. The 4th argument gives you a chance of making a part of the ball look different without having to use [Paint Ballz]. However, this should be used with care because a small number such as 32 in this column can cause problems with Linez instability. Try it, and you'll see what I mean. 16 in this column, if it doesn't make your game crash, gives the pet a very disconnected look. It may be that the programmers intended this feature to be useful but it does have its down-side. But if you want to try it, you may find it useful to use the [No Texture Rotate] feature to stabilise it in any ballz that you wish to be affected. I discuss [No Texture Rotate] elsewhere, but basically you use it like this: [No Texture Rotate] 2 3 will mean that the no-rotation feature has been applied to ballz number 2 and 3. I've not done in-depth exploration of these two extra arguments in the [Texture List], but Lynelle, who bred the brilliant Q-zots and made the breed from them, has done a lot of experimenting and has shared her results. She has this to say: ------------------- I found some really interesting effects when messing with the 3rd and 4th parameters of the textures section. If you do this: texturepath/texturefile 1 128 32 you get balls that are top-half texture, and bottom half speckled stuff. Adjusting the 4th param moves the perimeter of the speckles up and down the ball, so that at about 256 the ball is all texture no speckles. Not sure what the use of that is supposed to be! The third param controls how much the base color shows through the texture color. It only works when the second param is 1, so far as I can tell. And only certain values are valid: so far I have found 64, 128, 256, and 512 work. It also doesn't work unless the base color of the ball it is trying to mask is in the range 10-130. So it doesn't work on the blues range (too bad). But it is pretty kewl. The DZNAR5.bmp texture in the Q-Zot breedfile is defined with this effect, so you can get some unusual colors when that texture is applied. If you get a pink q-zot, or a green one, it is just a rare combination of transparent texture with base ball color. I didn't actually include pink or green or yellow or whatever in my Color Overrides. Thanks, Lynelle! I would add that there is an effect with the third param, or argument, even when the 2nd argument is 0. It affects the prominence of some features within a texture, if the texture is one with gradations. [Add Ball] ============= ;base x y z color otlnCol spckCol fuzz group outline ballsize bodyarea addGroup texture The [Add Ball] is brilliant, you can make just about any shape you want, using this section. You can build a whole breed on just one base ball, omitting all the others (as with the fishie), or you can make your babies very different from your adults, just by fiddling with this section. Note that there is a "hidden" extra column, which you always see in dogz' extra tongue ball: 63, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, -1, -1, -1, -1, 0, 0, 1, 63 If this is not put in there, the middle ball of the tongue appears to be missing. This was the error that StudioMythos made with the Pug's tongue. (To clarify this further; the reason why there was an apparent gap is that the ball size is too small to be seen, at size "0", unless its size is shown relative to a ball number listed in that extra colmn. If the ball size had been something like 20, then it would have appeared just fine. This isn't the only reason that it's good to put tongue ball 63 in that extra column, as I show below, but it's a major reason why there was a gap in the Pug's tongue). So, for Add Ball ballz that you wish to behave in a special way relative to a particular ball, put the relevant base ball number in that column. My spiders' legs, for instance, would not work right if I didn't have connections like this for the lower legs: 38, 0, 10, 60, 39, 79, 0, -1, 3, 0, 26, 1, 0, -1, 12, 0, 0, 60, 39, 79, 0, -1, 3, -1, -10, 1, 0, -1, 12 63, 0, -5, 60, 39, 79, 0, -1, 3, -1, -10, 1, 0, -1, 63 63, 0, 0, 60, 39, 79, 0, -1, 3, 0, -10, 1, 0, -1, 22 Note that this extra number also makes a difference to the size of the ball. It helps greatly, if you want your ball to be exactly the same size as the base ball (useful sometimes, really). Just put the "relative" ball in that column and then 0 in the ballsize column. As with the paint Ball section, it's a kind of scale hack, but also as I say above, a behaviour hack. Very handy. ;base x y z color otlnCol spckCol fuzz group outline ballsize bodyarea addGroup texture 2, 3, -12, -258 55 0 0 0 -1 -1 50 0 1 -1 Most of the columns are really self-explanatory, but some need a bit of extra understanding. The easy ones are: base -- the base ball that you want your added ball to be positioned relative to. x y and z -- the 3-dimensional co-ordinates of where you want your ball to be positioned relative to the base ball. If you picture the pet looking out of the screen at you and your base ball is the head ball: The x co-ordinate moves your ball to the pet's left (a smaller or more negative number) or right (larger or more postive number) of the head. If you're not sure which left and which right I mean, just experiment a little. The y co-ordinate moves it up (a smaller or more negative number) or down (larger or more postive number) The z coordinate moves it further out of the screen towards you (a smaller or more negative number) or back away from you (larger or more postive number) Color -- the colour of the ball. Note that colours 0-9 inclusive and 150 upwards are "opaque" and will not allow textures to show. otlnCol -- the ball's outline colour. Any colour other than black will usually not pass on to 2nd-gens (apart from the iris outline colours if you've designated any [Add Ball] ballz to be irises with the [Eyes] command) spckCol -- Speckle colour; this is not noticeable in Petz II-5, but is very important in catz 1 and dogz 1. In those original games, Speckles were the only way of getting some kind of texture onto a pet. Fuzz -- well, fuzz. -1 is no fuzz, 3 is quite a lot of fuzz. outline -- thickness of outline. As with [Ballz Info] ball outlines, you can specify a more minus number than -1; for instance, -2 will produce a "relief-map" effect, making the ball appear to stand proud, without giving it the harsh solid-outline effect that you would get with the positive thickness of 2. ballsize -- ball, err, ah, how can I put it? Size. Yes, that should do it -- LOL! texture -- the texture which goes on the ball, and you use the [Texture List] here just as with [Ballz Info] ballz. -1 means no texture, 0 means the first texture in the Texture List 1 means the second texture in the list, etc. The three columns which confuse people most are: group, bodyarea, and addGroup: group -- As with the [Ballz Info] section, this controls certain properties of the ball, including how the pet takes paint from the paint brush and how ball properties continue on into 2nd-gens. You would use this in conjunction with [Fur Color Areas] to force pets to pass on certain traits. bodyarea -- This is important when it comes to 2nd-gens and linez joining properly. To make sure that a 2nd-gen will pick up your linez properly, you need to make sure that all the balls that are to be joined have the same bodyarea, and if they are to be joined to a base ball, they need to have the same bodyarea as that ball. I don't have a list of bodyareas, but a good rule of thumb is that, if the ball is to be a head ball or near the head, use bodyarea 8 and for others, 1 is a pretty good catch-all. Don't use 0 because that tells the game to use defaults that it chooses. NOTE: I gather that Butterfly Chaser has put together a useful list of Bodyarea numbers which should be very helpful to people who end up with 2nd-gen double-tail problems when cross-breeding. Hers is for dogz, as that is what she hexes. I have made my own version of a bodyarea list for Dogz, also one for Catz and one for Babyz, which you will find on my main LNZ-details page. Bodyarea also has a bearing on how a ball behaves. So if you have a ball which zooms about the place every time the head moves, and you had its base ball as the chest, you most likely have the bodyarea number set to 8. NOTE For Babyz, all you really need to know is that bodyarea 8 makes the added ball behave correctly for a head-ball and bodyarea 1 makes it behave correctly for the wriggly body. There is not the precision available in Babyz, really, as there is in Petz; using other numbers produces no significant difference from that for the body. -1, on the other hand, can produce some strange effects in the babyz' shape. addGroup -- This is the column which, in oddballz, would enable certain emoticons to pop up at certain moments. In Petz these emoticon notations don't seem to work, but if you put 1 here the ball will appear at moments of excitement (as with my mystery-emoticon petz) and if you put 0 it is visible all the time. In Babyz, the number in this column is used to tell the game when to produce, for instance, tears. It would have been used also to tell the game when to make teeth grow, but those were of course disabled. NOTE 1 -- you need to know what number of ball your [Add Ball] ball is if you want to join it to other ballz with [Linez]. It's pretty simple really; just count down the lines of your added ballz, starting with ball number 77 which we are so conveniently told is the start of the animator's (that's us, folks!) addballz. Ignore all lines which start with a semi-colon -- ; -- because the game ignores them too. Just count each line of data as a new add ball, and keep a note. When I make complex breedz, I put little commented notes (starting with a semi-colon so that I can read them but the game can't) to say where I am in the added ballz numbers, and these notes can be very handy. NOTE 2 -- If you have mis-counted your [Add Ball] ballz, and you try joining with [Linez] the last ball to a ball which doesn't exist -- say your last ball is ball number 155 and you try joining that to ball 156 which has never been created -- then the line will behave in a very strange way, moving unpredictably and with one end in a puzzlingly odd position. So make sure that you count your ballz properly. NOTE 3 -- Variations. People have a lot of trouble with variations, and part of what goes wrong happens in 2nd-gens. The problem is caused by the fact that some hexers put their added-ball variation # numbers in [Add Ball], which is really the only section that doesn't handle them predictably. Think about it; the [Add Ball] section sets the game to counting extra balls, and that count can so easily go wrong if you use variations here. There are two solutions; either include the _whole_ [Add Ball] section in each variation (as you would with variations in the [Ballz Info] section) -- a clumsy solution that would make the .lnz file _huge_ in some complexly varied breedz. Or you can handle it neatly and reliably in [Omissions]. Put every single ball that you might wish to have into [Add Ball], keep a note of the ball numbers which you do not wish to have in any given variation, and then list those unwanted ballz in a variation set, or series of variation sets, under [Omissions]. NOTE 4 -- you can make your kitten/puppy grow extra limbs or change shape and colour by clever manipulation of the [Add Ball] section. I have shown rough examples of how this works in my Duckoddz and Butterflie breedz, and then I helped Vickie to make it work on those charming ravens of hers, and of course my frogoddz are making full use of the technique. This is how I do the trick: For the fluffy-duckling effect ============================== In the adult .LNZ, in [Add Ballz], I put the extra fluff ballz and I make them very small. I make a note of which ball-number each extra added ball is by the usual method of counting down the lines of added ball data. In the "kitten" or "puppy" .LNZ, I pop those ball-numbers into the [Ball Size Override] section, putting each ball number on a new line with a space between it and the size that I want the ball to be. The babies will come out with the big fluffy balls, and they will gradually disappear as the baby grows up as if the pet is moulting its baby-down. For the wings and legs-growing effect ===================================== As before, in the adult .LNZ, in [Add Ballz], I put in all the extra ballz that I want. I make the baby's fluff balls very small and I make the wings (or other extensions) how I want them to look in the adult. Now I take the adult [Add Ballz] section and paste that into the kitten or puppy area, complete and untouched. Now here comes the bit that you need to get right, or it'll be very frustrating. The number of ballz in this [Add Ballz] section needs to be the exact same number as in the adult [Add Ballz]. Try adding in an extra one or removing one, and your whole puppy/kitten add ball data will simply be disregarded by the game. Right, there are only some things that can be changed between the two; but the important things are these: The ball size and the ball position. It is much better to use this method for ball position than, say, [Move], because you can sometimes get unpredictable results (crashes etc) if you list added ballz in [Move]. You will now find that the baby comes out as you wish, and will grow delicately into a fully-fledged adult. Limits to added ballz allowed in a breed or baby ======================================== Now that Add Ballz are being used so extensively in the more complex new breedz, it seems that we are at last coming up against a limit to what the game can take. Butterfly Chaser, trying to make detailed leaves on her tree, is the first to have come up against a limit which she found to be 510. I've done some testing, and in the chihuahua base breed that I tried, I found the limit of added ballz allowed to be 445, including the 10 hidden "utility addballz". So along with the [Ballz Info] section, my game will accept a total of 512 balls (this does not include Paint Ball ballz, which are a different type). It may be that it varies slightly between breedz, but it's more likely that we went cross-eyed counting the lines and we may either or both have got the exact number wrong :-) But the point is, there is a limit and we need to be careful after we reach 500 total ballz. Any add-ball clothing item, such as a hat or glasses, adds to this count and therefore _will_ crash the game when you try to clothe your pet. Paint ball clothing (shirts, pants etc) will _not_ cause crashes, as they don't count as extra ballz in the same way. So the main point here is that if you want a breed that won't crash, make sure that you have less than 500 balls altogether between Add Ball ballz, [Ballz Info] ballz, and any addball clothing items that you want your pet to come out of the AC wearing. If you want to make sure that the breed won't crash even when wearing complicated clothing, then bring that quantity of balls down to something like 450. The same applies for Babyz; if you've got too many ballz, the game will crash when you try to adopt the baby, and if you've got a baby that's close to the limit the game will crash when you try to put a hat or other add ball clothing item onto it. In the case of Babyz, the limit appears to be around 400 ballz altogether, possibly less. It may depend on the specific lnz that you're using, I haven't had time to test that either, but I doubt that there would be any significant difference. There are limits also to the [Linez] allowed -- after 324 of them in Petz, linez simply don't appear. Clothing items on such petz don't crash the game, they just become disconnected ballz. You get a similar effect in babyz which have too many linez -- no crash, just missing lines. Breedz made only of Add Ball Ballz... ==================== It's possible to make a breed entirely of add ball ballz only, using [Omissions] to omit all the original ballz 0-76 but, if you do that, you will not be able to pet the pet. You'll be able to pick it up and feed it etc, but not stroke it. I did toy with the idea of using that feature in my PFMice breed, since we are not able to stroke the original mice, but in the end I decided it was nicer to be able to do so, so I enabled some base ballz :-) LINEZ ========= Petz, Oddballz and Babyz are made up of ballz and the linez which join them together. You can make almost any shape by careful positioning of ballz and linez. [Default Linez Thickness] 90 if the ethick and sthick numbers aren't specified, then this is what the game will default to. ; -1 mean use the associated ball color ; Only the first three fields need to be specefied ;srt end fuzz col lfCol rtCol sThck eThick [Linez] As the comment states, you only actually need to fill the numbers in the first three columns to make a line work, but in fact you can make good use of the other columns to get the effect you're after. srt -- the starting ball to which you wish to join another. end -- the end ball to which you wish to join the starting ball NOTE that if you are joining ballz from [Add Ball] with different "Bodyarea" numbers, the linez will not work for 2nd-gens. fuzz -- the fuzziness of the line. This does not always pass on to 2nd-gens col -- colour of the line. If you put -1 here, the line will be the colour of the starting ball. The line colour will pass on to 2nd-gens. lfCol -- colour of the left outline of the line. Doesn't always pass on to 2nd-gens rtCol -- colour of the right outline of the line. Doesn't always pass on to 2nd-gens sThck -- thickness of the starting-ball end of the line The thickness is a percentage of the starting ball. eThick -- thickness of the end-ball end of the line. The thickness is a percentage of the end ball. If you fiddle with the sThck and eThick numbers, you can get some useful effects, such as a unicorn-horn with a ball on the end of it. Also useful if you want to make a breed which looks like a skeleton, because you can have the ballz larger than the width of the linez. It is possible to have two extra columns here, for which we have no handy headers. They appear to affect how the line looks, making it look more definite. The first extra column has to do with the outline, and the second one has to do with how the line is drawn, whether after the ball or before, and it usually comes out as 0 or 1. If it's 0, the ends of the line look as if they are tucked inside the ball. If it's 1, the ends of the line show up as if on the edge of the ball -- it's difficult to explain what I mean here, but basically you can see the squared outline of the end of the line if you choose 1. This passes on to 2nd-gens, by the way. In Babyz, however, there seems to be more to it. It is possible to put a ball number in there under certain circumstances, and then it apparently has a relative-ball effect also. This does not appear to work in Petz, where any number greater than 1 apparently defaults back to 1 and -1 defaults back to 0. NOTE -- the "laser-line" effect which you get when putting hats on some breedz is caused by having a line joining two balls, one of which does not exist. So if your last Add Ball is ball number 130, and you try to make a line which joins, say, ball 130 to 131, you'll get this happening. The simple solution is to remove the line from [Linez] of course. Limits to added ballz allowed in a breed ======================================== There are limits to the [Linez] allowed -- after 324 of them, linez simply don't appear. Clothing items on such petz don't crash the game, they just become disconnected ballz. See also the [Add Ball] section; too many [Add Ball] ballz can actually crash the game. This applies to Babyz as well as to Petz; if you have too many linez in your creation, parts of clothing will disappear and if you have too many Ballz (in the case of Babyz the ball limit seems to be around 400) the game will crash. [Paint Ballz] ============= ;base ball diameter(% of baseball) direction color outlinecolor fuzz outline group texture base ball -- the ball to which you wish to apply the paint spot or patch diameter(% of baseball) -- the diameter of the spot or patch, as a percentage of the base ball direction -- the x,y,z co-ordinates of the spot or patch relative to the centre of the base ball. NOTE: The game doesn't like it if you try to make the ball 0,0,0 because that's the centre of the ball -- and paint is supposed to go on the _outside_ of the ball!! So you need at least one of these numbers to be greater or smaller than 0 or you'll get the "#IND nasties" that I write about in my "Why is my pet covered in black blobs (etc)" howto. color -- colour of the paint patch or spot. Note that colours 0-9 inclusive and 150 upwards are "opaque" and will not allow textures to show. outlinecolor -- outline colour of the patch or spot. In Babyz this is called outlineindex fuzz -- fuzziness of the patch or spot outline -- outline thickness group -- the group which this spot or patch belongs to. If it's -1 it is "group-less" and there can be no mutations of this spot when breeding. texture -- the texture which you wish your paint patch to have. -1 will give the patch no texture. NOTE: In Petz, the [Paint Ballz] texture does not always work in the same way as for [Add Ball] ballz, [Ballz Info] ballz, or [Color Override] ballz. You will often find that the number in the texture column refers to a base ball which has the required texture. If you have trouble making your chosen texture show up in a Paint Ball, when you know you've got the type of texture correct as well as the address etc, just use the number of a base ball which has the texture that you want instead of the actual texture number. Remember, though, that if you have a texture number in here that is, say, 13, you _must_ have 14 textures in the Texture List or the game will most likely crash when a pair tries to breed. Sometimes the game isn't very clever... Sometimes there is an extra column after Texture, as with this, for the Great Dane: ;snout spot 56, 70 -.8, -.8, -1 45 15 4 -1 0 1 0 56, 70 .8, -.8, -1 45 15 4 -1 0 1 0 As I understand it, this is a "scale hack". It seems that even the programmers had to frig some things to make them work right :-) From my experiments so far, whatever number you put there is changed to either 0 or 1, and there is a subtle difference in apparent positional appearance of the Paint Ball depending on which of those numbers is in that position. NOTE that Add Ballz have a limit of the number of ballz allowed before the game crashes. I have not yet come across a limit in Paint Ballz; even when I went up to 900, the pet was adoptable and could wear shirts, pants etc. [Ballz Info] ============ ;FUZZ --> -1 = no outline, 0 = half outline, > 0 = outline thickness ;OUTLINE --> -1 = no outline, 0 = half outline, > 0 = outline thickness in catz ;col outCol spklCl fuzz otlntTyp sizeDif group texture in dogz ;col outCol spklCl fuzz otlntTyp sizeDif group texture ball# I always thought that these columns were self-explanatory, but it appears that many people cannot figure out what the mnemonics mean. col -- ball colour Note that colours 0-9 inclusive and 150 upwards are "opaque" and will not allow textures to show. outCol -- outline colour of ball. Any colour other than black will usually not pass on to 2nd-gens, apart from the iris outline colours. spklC -- speckle colour, which has no appreciable effect in Petz II-5 but is vital in Catz 1 and Dogz 1. fuzz -- fuzziness. -1 is no fuzz, 0 is a little fuzzy, 3 is a lot fuzzy. otlntTyp -- outline thickness (or type). -1 means no outline, 0 means a dotted outline, greater than 0 means the thickness. As with [Add Ball] outlines, you can specify a more minus number than -1; for instance, -2 will produce a "relief-map" effect, making the ball appear to stand proud, without giving it the harsh solid-outline effect that you would get with the positive thickness of 2. sizeDif -- difference in size of ball from the default which the game would normally give to that ball in that breed. What this means is that if all the numbers in the sizeDif column were 0, they would still be the basic shape of balls for dogz or catz -- big round head, smaller ballz for tail, tiny ballz for ear tips and fingers etc. If you want a small head and one huge toe, you need to make the sizeDif for the head something like -25 and for the toe something like 20. group -- this helps you to group together various ballz so that they share certain properties, notably the way they take paint from the paint brush and the way they pass colours and textures on to 2nd-gens. You would want to use this in conjunction with [Fur Color Areas] to force pets to pass on certain traits. Setting the group number to -1 will effectively make it "group-less" which will prevent changes from occurring in 2nd-gens and gets around problems with the game forcing "albinos" all the time. Unfortunately this also means that not even the mutations which breeders do want can occur. texture -- the texture which goes on the ball, and you use the [Texture List] here just as with [Add Ball] ballz. -1 means no texture, 0 means the first texture in the Texture List, 1 means the second texture in the list, etc. ball# -- this is only there in Dogz breedz and is simply the ball number. In Catz, you then get a column of programming words such as eBall_ankleL, and these are not needed but are handy for us. In dogz you can see clearly that they are programmers' comments because they are commented-out with a semi-colon, as with ;L ankle That's the big ones; I'll come to the various smaller Key Texts such as [Move] and [Project Ball], and other items that you can add into the .LNZ, in part 3. Cheers Carolyn