November 24th tried to clarify the usefulness of [Move] and gave you something silly to try on catz ;-)
August 16th added the Babyz-only [Eyelash Info] and [Polygons]
June 8th a small bit added to clarify [Add Ball Override]
June 5th 2004, a bit more explanation on the [No Texture Rotate], for the people who got confused :-)
May 16th 2004, talked a little more about [Eyes]
May 14th 2004, explained a little more about how to use [Move]
May 12th 2004, I've twiddled with the [Default Linez File] and
[256 Eyelid Color] info to make some thoughts clearer.
May 9th, I've tried to clarify the [Project Ball] section a bit -- it has some serious quirks
that can affect 2nd-gens.
May 2nd, I've fixed up even more typos -- plus I'd made the [Head Shot] unclear, have fixed that now.
April 29, I've fixed up some typos in this -- sorry if any of them confused you before.
In this chunk of the .LNZ breakdown, I shall cover the following (which,
remember, you can enter for yourself into a breedfile if you want to
override the game's defaults), along with the way they are used:
These are useful to hexers
==========================
Available in Babyz only
----------------------
[Eyelash Info]
[Polygons]
Available in all games
---------------------
[Sounds]
[Species]
[Little one]
[Default Linez File]
[Eyes]
[256 Eyelid Color]
Very important for breedz where the ballz positions are radically
changed
--------------------------
[Project Ball]
[Move]
[Whiskers]
[Omissions]
[Add Ball Override]
things which control the rendering of the pet on-screen
----------------------------
[Draw Small Balls]
[Z Shade Slope]
[Default Glue Ball]
[Line Render Mode]
[Circle Render Mode]
[Draw Linez Before Ballz]
things which control certain shapes without the effort of using [Move]
etc
------------------------------
[Ear Extension]
[Face Extension]
[Body Extension]
[Default Scales]
[Feet Enlargement]
[Head Enlargement]
[Leg Extension]
The way the head works
------------------
[Head Tilt Limits]
[Head Rotation Limits]
[Head Shot] (same as [Get Info] in Oddballz)
The real crazy-gang
------------------
[Key Balls]
[Num Ballz]
Telling the game to use certain ballz as particular body parts
========================
[Extra Head Balls]
[Extra Balls]
[Left Brow Balls]
[Right Brow Balls]
[Jowlz Balls]
[Whisker Balls]
[Tail Balls]
[Left Ear Balls]
[Right Ear Balls]
[Left Arm Balls]
[Right Arm Balls]
[Head Balls]
[Left Foot Balls]
[Right Foot Balls]
[Left Hand Balls]
[Right Hand Balls]
[Left Leg Balls]
[Right Leg Balls]
[Body Balls]
Not so useful to hexers
======================
[Lnz Version]
[Additional Frames]
[Breed Name]
[No Texture Rotate] (not as useful as it sounds)
Okay, here we go. Taking these areas in the order listed above:
These are available in Babyz only.
==================================
==================================
If you try using them in Petz games (or Oddballz) nothing will happen.
There are very specific, useful programmers' comments for both of these:
[Eyelash Info]
=============
This really is pretty simple to understand, surely? The programmers were very kind
and gave us lots of info here:
4, 5, 6, 5, 4, -1 eyelash lengths -- must end with -1
15 angle of side lashes (0 <-> 64)
50 spacing between lashes (0 <-> 100)
244 color
37, 39, 41, 43, 45, -1 left eyebrow (lashes drawn AFTER eyebrow is drawn)
38, 40, 42, 44, 46, -1 right eyebrow (lashes drawn AFTER eyebrow is drawn)
So, the lengths of the eyelashes can be specified for each lash -- and you can put as many
lashes in as you want, really. The game knows that you've reached the end of your lashes
when it comes to the number -1, which is why you must have that in there.
The angle of the side lashes and the spacing between lashes is obvious too, isn't it?
If your lashes are too close together, they will all merge together; and you want to
have the side lashes to be at a pretty angle!
The colour is the same for all the lashes, and of course you tell the game which colour
to use on the line that says color.
The left and right eyebrow information is there simply to tell the game that the eyelashes
need to be _in front_ of the eyebrow ballz. It's possible to put compeltely different ball
numbers there, and indeed you don't need any more than just one number in each of those two
lines plus the -1 in order to see what happens if the eyebrows are drawn after the lashes.
If you have only the -1 on each of those eyebrow lines, the eyelashes disappear entirely.
If you try to remove those lines of code entirely, the game will crash. The best thing,
if you want you eyelashes to work properly, is simply to leave those two eyebrow lines
of code alone.
What puzzles me is the fact that people think that boy babyz are different from girl
babyz; they look the same apart from eyelashes, and you can add eyelashes to the .lnz files
from which you would adopt boy babyz, just as you can remove them from the .lnz files for
girl babyz.
[Polygons]
==========
; -1 means use the main fill color in field number five (5).
; only the first FIVE fields are necessary. lEdge, rEdge, fuzz and texture are optional
;ball1 ball2 ball3 ball4 color lEdge rEdge fuzz texture
The idea here is that you define a polygon shape, the shape being created by the
four ball numbers in the first 4 columns, which will be filled by a colour indicated
in the color column. As the comment states, you don't need to specify the lEdge, rEdge
(being the left and right edges of the polygon lines) or the fuzz or texture numbers.
But of course it is fun to play with those quantities too! If you put a texture in the
texture column, and a suitable colour in the color column, your polygon can be filled with
a very pleasing effect. The lEdge and rEdge (left and right edge colours) are quite subtle
items, but can be effective and help give a slightly shimmery effect at the edges. If you're
wondering where exactly they are, the lEdge is the left edge of each line of the polygon,
and the rEdge is the right edge of the line. You can see how this works if you make the
texture of your polygon be the "clear.bmp" one and then look at the polygon edges on the baby
as it moves.
The programmers themselves only used the polygon feature for the mouth, but you can create
any area of a baby using it; the obvious use that I found for it was to make nice thin wingz on
my Faerie babyz. To do this I had to first create the little ballz under [Add Ball] and make
a note of which ballz were which number.
NOTE: there is an extra column which you don't see in the .lnz files but which is created in
a babyzfile's .lnz. Usually it's set to -1, which means that you would see the polygon fill,
but none of the outline edges. Setting it to 0 or -2 makes it that you see the polygon fill
_and_ all outline edges. Setting it to 1 makes it that you see the polygon fill and _some_
of the outline edges. Setting it to 2 or above, or -3 or below, appears to make it that the
whole polygon disappears, although I haven't checked evey single number to check, LOL.
I wanted smooth butterfly-like wings, so I joined them together with Linez to create the outline
effect that I wanted. This was not necessary, but I liked it. If you want more bat-style wingz,
the balls will stand out slightly and give a good effect if you don't use Linez along with the
Polygons.
Of course if you use the Linez but not the Polygons, the wings will be see-through unless you
fill them with loads of [Add Ball] ballz and/or criss-cross them with [Linez] lines. You can
also get a see-through effect that is delicately textured if you use one of the semi-
transparent textures. The point I'm making is that there are loads of possibilities available
to you if you make good use of the [Add Ball], [Linez], and [Polygons] sections.
These are pretty straightforward, but important.
================================================
================================================
[Sounds]
========
[Sounds]
\ptzfiles\cat\ca\casnd.txt
Of course ca\casnd.txt is different for different breedz. This lets you
change your breed's sounds to anything you want. What you need to do is
to create a sounds .txt file (I won't go into that here, as it's not
part of the .LNZ, but I do talk about it in other "howto"s) and suitable
sounds, put them into a directory on your hard drive off your game's
catz or dogz directory (for example zixsn.txt in a directory called
zix), and change
\ptzfiles\cat\ca\casnd.txt
to
\resource\catz\zix\zixsn.txt
[Species]
========
for catz:
[Species]
1
for Dogz:
[Species]
2
for Babyz:
[Species]
3
There is limited fun to be had with this, but try swapping a catz
species for a dogz one or vice versa...
[Little one] and [Default Linez File]
=====================================
[Little one]
dmpup.lnz
This tells the game which .lnz to use to make the pup or kitten. You
can make your pet always adult or always a pup/kitten by making the
[Little one] dm.lnz (or whichever it would be for the adult .lnz of your
breed) and making sure that the data in the .lnz is the size and shape
that you want. In fact, Babyz cheats and does exactly that with its
[Little one], and I have suggested in my Babyz-editing "howto"s the
method for getting around that and having your babyz grow.
[Default Linez File]
\ptzfiles\dog\dm\dm.lnz
This is obvious too, isn't it? Please tell me it is... It tells the
game where the adult .lnz is to be found. You can put an appropriate
.lnz onto the hard drive and redirect this url to it as shown in my
external-lnz packages. You can of course do the same with the
[Default Linez File]
\ptzfiles\dog\dogmaster.lnz
or
[Default Linez File]
\ptzfiles\dog\catmaster.lnz
files, but there's not really much point in doing so with those because
of course everything that you put into your breedfile's .lnz overrides
the "master" .lnz defaults.
[256 Eyelid Color]
=================
[256 Eyelid Color]
35, 2
Yup, the eyelid colour goes here. And as with everything, you can list
# variations under it, linked if you wish in the usual way. I go
elsewhere into variations in depth, in one or more "howto"s, so won't go
into it here. The first number is the eyelid colour, and the second number
appears to behave very like a "group" number. You should find this useful in
solving some 2nd-gen problems, with eyelids always reverting to grey or
black.
[Eyes]
======
Eyes and irises are really a special case, just as with dogz nostrils.
They behave differently in various ways. Dogz nostrils, of course,
are well known for having stubborn outlines which revert to black in
2nd-gens. In the case of irises, this doesn't happen of course, but
they do have their own quirks, one of which is the fact that they will
re-appear in 2nd-gens if you've only "removed" them by making them ultra-small.
The eyelid is tied in with the eyes, and will only appear if there is
a proper eye ball -- i.e. the eye ball has not been listed under
[Omissions].
Another point to note is that listing the iris ball under [Omissions]
does not actually remove it unless you also list the eye ball. If
you want to keep the current eye ballz but have a different ball behave
as iris, change the number of right and left iris under the [Eyes]
Key Text, as described below; you don't need to change the eyes numbers
as well as the iris numbers, but you do need to list in this section
all four of the balls which you are going to use, if you're changing
any of them.
Many hexers these days, with all the unusually-shaped breedz that are
coming out, are having problems with 2nd-gen eyes appearing in odd
places. They are puzzled, because they have the size at something like
-999. Well, the game doesn't like that kind of thing for 2nd-gens.
If you want your pet to be eyeless, then list the eye ballz under
[Omissions]. If you want eyes that work and aren't all over the place
in petz, then you need to "anchor" them suitably. There are two ways of
doing this. The first is to re-assign the eye ballz to ball-numbers of
your choice, usually add ballz. For instance, if you have created
"blind" eyes from [Add Ball] Ballz 105, 106, 107 and 108 you would
replace the eye and iris numbers with these in [Eyes]. The second is to
use [Project Ball] to hold those eyes in place.
[Eyes]
15 14 RightEye/leftEye
28 27 RightIris/leftIris
for catz, or for dogz:
[Eyes]
32 8 RightEye/leftEye
38 14 RightIris/leftIris
This simply tells the game which ball numbers are the eyes and which are
the irises. You can change these numbers to any that you wish, but
remember that whatever ball you choose to put in there will become an
eye or iris ball. LOL -- you can have lots of fun with this one.
Remember that if you use add-ball eyes and don't list the originals
under [Omissions], you'll end up with the cat or dog's original eye
ballz staring sightlessly at you whilst the new eyes blink normally
wherever you put them. Creepy :-)
I could have used add ball ballz here to give my boyz eyes, but in fact I
chose a different way, instead tying the addball to the eye ball in
[Project Ball] with the add ball in the first column, the eye ball in
the second, and 0 distance in the third:
105 8 0
106 32 0
and for catz
105 14 0
106 15 0
Which brings me to the next group of goodies:
Very important for breedz where the ballz
positions are radically changed
=======================================
======================================
[Project Ball] // stationary ball, projected ball, amt
=============
=============
There are three columns. The first is the ball to which another is
going to relate -- it's the ball which will remain "stationary" -- and
the second is the ball which is going to project from it by a certain
amount, the third column being that amount. Because it uses one ball to
steady another and keep it in the same relative distance, I tend to call
this "anchoring". I believe that has confused people in the past.
[Project Ball]
;tail
43, 44, 120
44, 45, 120
45, 46, 120
46, 47, 120
47, 48, 120
here's a tail in catz. The ballz are distanced from each other by quite
a large amount; Ball 43 is holding ball 44 at a distance of 120, and so
on. Now here we would have a much shorter tail:
43, 44, 10
44, 45, 10
45, 46, 10
46, 47, 10
47, 48, 10
Of course for a manx look you could make the distance 0, but really it's
best to list the tail ballz under [Omissions].
One thing which will be a big annoyance to breeders is the fact that, for
2nd-gens, it really matters a lot in what order the game uses the lines of
data in [Project Ball]. This is what causes jumbled heads in my 2nd-gen
chickenz; although I have the data in the breedfile entered in the correct
order to achieve the effect that I want, when the game comes to create 2nd-
gen pets it puts that data into the petfile in a slightly different order.
Same exact data, different order, creates a different-shaped pet. So if
the 2nd-gen thing matters to you, you'll need to make sure that this section
is created such that whatever alterations to it the game makes in a 2nd-gen
will result in the effect you want.
[Move]
=======
[Move]
;face
14, 4, -3, -5
15, -4, -3, -5
27, 4, -3, -5
28, -4, -3, -5
Now, this section is very important to hexers and is often used in
conjunction with [Project Ball] to get things like tail shapes right.
The first column is the ball number. The next three columns are the x,
y, z axes to which you want your ballz to be moved relative to the
defaults. If there is a fifth column, then that is the ball to which
this move should be relative. So 14, 4, -3, -5 14 would mean that you
want ball 14 to be moved sideways by 4, up by 3, and forward by 5
relative to its normal position.
This fifth column is also useful in helping to keep a ball "anchored";
it's not as firm as when you use the [Project Ball] distances as well--
for instance, angled legs in dogz breedz can throw out strangely if you
don't keep them in place with a [Project Ball] "tie" -- but it does help to
keep balls from behaving strangely. This [Move] thing will at least keep
your ballz as intended relative to the "relative" ball.
This is actually quite a handy feature to be able to use when
getting a ball to move within certain limits. For example, if you
take one ball -- such as an tail or ear ball -- and give it a "move"
position relative to a ball on one side, such as a hip or cheek, and
then take it again and give it a "move" position relative to another
ball, it will move within those constraints. If you want a laugh,
try putting this into the [Move] area of a cat breed:
9, 30, 0, 0, 48
9, -30, 0, 0, 48
11, 60, 0, 0, 9
11, -90, 0, 0, 5
But of course that's just silly :-) A more sensible use of this technique
is to keep the tail or ears moving within reasonable limits relative to
stabilising ballz, or to keep other ballz in a stable relationship to
other relevant ones.
If, say, you want your elbows to stay relevant to the shoulders, you
do your xyz move for the elbows thus, in a catz breed:
12, , , , 38
13, , , , 39
in a dogz breed of course that would be:
7, , , , 18
31, , , , 42
Note, you'd have numbers where I've got , , in the above example,
of course!
[Omissions]
===========
[Omissions] is your _friend_. Love it; hold it close; make
easter-bunnies for it. With [Omissions] you need never worry about the
disappearing toyz when headless petz pick them up, because the head and
associated ballz are still a reasonable size, they are simply "omitted"
from the screen. Don't use -999, use [Omissions], yeah baby!
[Omissions]
65 eBall_zorient, // 65
66 eBall_ztrans, // 66
37
67 utility addball for andrew
68 utility addball for andrew
69 utility addball for andrew
70 utility addball for andrew
71 utility addball for andrew
72 utility addball for andrew
73 utility addball for andrew
74 utility addball for andrew
75 utility addball for andrew
76 utility addball for andrew
It's interesting that ball 37 is always omitted in the base catz breedz.
All the other ones listed here are simply orientation balls. If you don't
list them, they will pop up like my mystery-emoticons at times of
excitement; that's how I made my chickenz and turkeyz lay "eggz".
Now, if you want to omit any other ball, just list it under the ones
that are already there:
14
15
16
and so on. You can do this with [Add Ball] balls also, and in fact this
is the best way of making variations with [Add Ballz]; simply make a
series of "#" variations under [Omissions] and list the unwanted ballz
for each variation under the appropriate # number. I talk about
variations in other "howto"s if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Whiskers in Catz breedz
=======================
Whiskers. If you try to make them -999, or list them in [Omissions],
they simply won't go away. The simple solution is to put
[Whiskers]
with no data beneath it. They will disappear.
Normally, however, some or all of the whiskers are defined:
[Whiskers]
;start, end, color
30, 57, 248
30, 58, 248
30, 59, 248
31, 60, 248
31, 61, 248
31, 62, 248
The first column is the ball at which the whisker-line starts, the
second is where it ends (the whisker ball),
and the third column is the colour. You don't actually need to put the
colour in. If you list only _some_ whiskers, the others will
disappear. If you want to change the length of the whisker, you do it
in [Project Ball].
Adding the [Whiskers] section to dogz has no appreciable effect. You
really need to do whiskers the way they are done in the chihuahua if you
want them.
[Add Ball Override]
==================
If you wanted to override ballz 95 and 96, you could do it thus:
[Add Ball Override]
95 75 99 20
96 88 88 20
the first column is the ball number and the next three are the x,y,z
co-ordinates. May be useful in variations if you don't want to use the
[Omissions] and you only care about the positioning of the ball. Note that
if you add any further columns they aren't picked up by the pet -- at least,
in my game they aren't.
Things which control the rendering of the pet on-screen
======================================================
======================================================
Now, these are fun. I found them ages ago but hadn't realised that most
people didn't know that they could put these in and have a laugh with
them, so here they are now. You can put all or some of these into your
.lnz, and change the numbers beneath. This is how I made my wireframe
calicos; I changed the [Circle Render Mode] and [Line Render Mode] to
2. Fool around with these numbers and the [Draw Linez Before Ballz] to
get some very spectacular results -- I won't detail them out here
because hey, you guys need to have some fun surprises to enjoy ;-)
[Draw Linez Before Ballz]
1
[Circle Render Mode]
0
[Line Render Mode]
0
[Default Glue Ball]
6
[Z Shade Slope]
100
[Draw Small Balls]
1
These next are handily explained by the programmers themselves.
I show them here with example numbers to show you how they
are used inside the .LNZ. They are crude methods of making
shapes easily, but if you use very large or very small
numbers you may find that 2nd-gens don't come out right.
======================================================
======================================================
You will see these in the adult .lnz, and another set in
the puppy or kitten .lnz, because they are used to make
the babes look more like bundles of fluff than the adults.
Remember, you will have these Key Texts in both the adult .lnz and the
puppy/kitten one, and what you see at the Adoption centre is the latter,
so don't go changing the adult one and getting frustrated because you
can't see the changes at the Adoption Centre. Either use brain-sliders
(see elsewhere on my site if you don't know these handy little Registry
"fixes") or change the [Little One] to point to the adult .lnz.
[Head Enlargement]
110 // percent enlargement
0 // vector expansion vs. ball size increase balance
Altering these two numbers relative to each other makes the head various
different shapes. For instance, if you use 10 and 10, you end up with
something that looks a bit like the head of a praying mantis. If you
use 200 and 100, you end up with a large but well-proportioned head. If
you use 100 and 10, the head looks swollen and the eyes squidged
together. 110 and 0 is pretty normal.
[Face Extension] // pixels
-8
A very large minus number such as -50 can make the pet's nose stick out
of the back of the head; a very large plus number can make it jut
forward a long way. The downside of this is that not all the ballz
extend forward or back with the nose, and when the head moves things can
apparently slice through the linez which join nose to head.
[Body Extension] // pixels
0
As with the Face Extension; not the best way to make very large changes
to the length of a pet. Much better to use extra Add Ballz of a
suitable size, and Linez.
[Leg Extension] // pixels
-3 // front leg
-3 // hind leg
This is where you can make your pet hunch down a little at the back, or have
the front of its body closer to the ground. The point here is that you
can extend the back legs relative to the front, or vice versa, or lift
the whole pet further from the ground, etc. As with all these
"extension" and "enlargement" sections, there is a limit to how much you
can change the numbers and have the pet look right.
[Feet Enlargement] // percentage
105 // total foot extension
0 // Similar to head, vector expansion vs. ball size increase balance
Please tell me that this is obvious to you -- please? As it says, it's
similar to the way the [Head Enlargement] works.
[Ear Extension] // percentage
90
Yup, this is effectively extending the end ball of the ear away from the
head by a percentage of the default.
[Default Scales]
150 normal pet scale
145 normal ball scale
Now, what we have here are two numbers which between them control the
size of the pet and the way the ballz are balanced in the pet.
Obviously if these two numbers are small, the pet will be small and if
large, the pet will be large. The ratio between these two scales is
actually quite important; if the pet scale is very small -- say, 4 --
and the ball scale is large -- say, 100 -- then you will get a cute ball
coming out of the AC. If it's the other way around, you will get a
strange ghostly skeleton of a pet. 0 and 0 gets you total
invisibility...
But as regards 2nd-gens, you want to be careful with these. If you have
sizes less than 75 and 75 in your adult's [Default Scales], the game
will tend to make the baby's adult stage default to 75 and 75. For
kitten and puppy .LNZ files, you can go as low as 45 and 45 or 48 and
48, and the game will pass it on to 2nd-gens, just as it does with
Lilliputz. So you can get a 2nd-gen which has a kitten/puppy stage
which has the [Default Scales] of 45/45 and which grows up to the
[Default Scales] of 75/75. Similarly, if you make your breed have
[Default Scales] of greater than 170 and 170, it will force 2nd-gens to
be smaller.
The way the head moves
======================
These set the limits, just as they say, and they are usually in the
"master" .lnz files. You can put them into your breed as with all these
[ ] key texts, and the game will do as you say :-)
[Head Rotation Limits]
-50, 50
[Head Tilt Limits]
-40, 45
These next are only meaningful in the pet's picture. They do not
have a noticeable effect on the actual pet. They can all be altered,
and you can get some flexible or inflexible results by changing the amount
of head rotation, or tilt allowed. Some difference can be made in the way
the eyelids look, too. You can actually make your pet's picture look
totally different from the pet itself -- an intriguing but useless thought.
(For Oddballz users, this is the same idea as the [Get Info], which is
an animation loop that plays in the "Get Info" dialog box.)
[Head Shot]
0 frame number
19 rotation
0 roll
4 tilt
-21 head rotation
2 head tilt
17 head cock
43, 43 R / L eyelid height
23, 23 R / L eyelid tilt
0, 0 (X, Y) eye target
The Real Crazy-Gang
====================
====================
[Key Balls]
===========
This is how the Key Ballz are entered; For dogz:
[Key Balls]
52 head
50 chest
54 neck
53 jaw
63 tongue1
64 tongue2
51 chin
55 nose
49 butt
48 belly
for catz:
[Key Balls]
24 head
6 chest
36 neck
-1 jaw
55 tongue1
56 tongue2
-1 chin
37 nose
3 butt
2 belly
Now, as you can see, they've listed certain ballz here. -1 seems to
mean "default". There's nothing to stop you from changing this list of
key ballz, pretending to the game that the chest is the head key ball
etc. In fact, if you want a good laugh, take a cat's .lnz and put the
dogz' key ballz in there. Sit back and enjoy what comes out of the
Adoption Centre :-)
[Num Ballz]
===========
[Num Ballz]
67
I experimented with this in an attempt to make game-type mice, but ended
up with a strange meccano-mix cat with partial robo-cat tendencies.
Fun, but not a mouse :-) This basically tells the game how many basic
ballz a breed has. Catz and Dogz are expected to have 67, mice are
expected to have 16, as are cockroaches. But they also use different
.scp, .bhd and .bdt files, which contain the basic information on the
shape and behaviours the game expects to see in a certain type of breed.
So if you change the number of ballz, the game tries to fit those into the
shape dictated by those binary files. Yes, I've tried swapping those
.scp, .bhd and .bdt files around, too, with consequently hilarious
mad-scientist results.
Telling the game to use certain ballz as particular body parts
================================================================
================================================================
Right, this lot is extremely useful in Oddballz, and at the Adoption
Centre in petz it can have excellent results; you can use it to list,
say, a tail ball under [Head Balls] in order to use that ball in a
complex nose creation, along with the [Move] and [Project Ball]
sections.
Unfortunately, in Petz, once you have adopted a pet and get it out of
the door in the game, the ball remains in the place that you have given
it in [Move] -- but as soon as the pet turns its head, the ball doesn't
turn along with it. You might enjoy the effects of course, creating
petz that look right at some angles but then suddenly disassemble
themselves when they move, so here they are for your amusement. I'll
show you the [Head Balls] with a typical listing for a cat; you would
use the others in exactly the same way, listing the actual ballz that
should be in those areas of the body and then continuing the list with
any which wouldn't normally be there (such as the tail, under the head)
[Head Balls]
4
5
7
8
9
10
11
14
15
24
27
28
29
30
31
37
40
57
58
59
60
61
62
[Extra Head Balls]
[Left Brow Balls]
[Right Brow Balls]
[Jowlz Balls]
[Whisker Balls]
[Tail Balls]
[Left Ear Balls]
[Right Ear Balls]
[Left Arm Balls]
[Right Arm Balls]
[Left Foot Balls]
[Right Foot Balls]
[Left Hand Balls]
[Right Hand Balls]
[Left Leg Balls]
[Right Leg Balls]
[Body Balls]
[Extra Balls]
And now the bits that are not so interesting or useful to hexers.
=================================================
The reason that these aren't so useful to us is that they really don't
do anything to help or amuse.
[Lnz Version]
=============
[Lnz Version]
2
Changing that 2 to any other number seems to make no real difference.
[Additional Frames]
===================
\ptzfiles\dog\dm\dm.bhd
There is only one breed which has this, the dalmatian. I don't think it
has any real use.
[Breed Name]
===========
[Breed Name]
Calico
Changing the breed name seems to make no appreciable difference,
although it might possibly have some effect on 2nd-gens?
[No Texture Rotate]
===================
[No Texture Rotate]
-1
This is not as useful as it sounds. I've tried various numbers under
this, and it looks as if 1 will stop the texture of ball 1 from rotating
around itself so that, say, an apple picture disappears and you get a
picture-join instead which rolls around the ball; but I have not found
any number which prevents it from rolling around the ball itself.
You may have better luck.
This explanation seems to have confused quite a few people. It's difficult
to explain, but here goes anyway... What I'm thinking of is what happens
when you pick up the pet. The pet rotates, and the texture on the ball in
question stays in the same position relative to your hand instead of what
I was hoping for, i.e the same position relative to the ball. I wanted
to pick up a donkey and have the stripe along the back stay in the middle
of the back while I picked it up.
So to give you more detail, if I put the number 0 in place of -1, the game
will stop the texture from moving around itself within the left ankle ball.
I pick up a leopard and the spot which was facing out of the screen at the time
continues to face out of the screen all the time the pet is rotating, until it
is set down. The texture has moved around the ball while the ball was turning,
but the end result is that it looks the same after as before.
If I keep it as the example above, with -1 which is the default, it tells the game
to use the default -- which is that the texture rotates loosely around the ball.
I pick up the pet, and as it revolves, the texture moves around inside the ball
so that some other splotch is facing out of the screen by the time I set the pet
back down.
You can of course have any number of ballz listed under this, such as, for a
cat whose body, shoulder, hip and cheek balls you want to have the treatment:
[No Texture Rotate]
2
3
4
5
6
25
26
38
39
And that's it. I believe I covered everything; if I didn't catch 'em
all, my apologies, it's a lot of key texts to remember, and I'll go over
this lot again soon to see if I've made any glaring mistakes or omitted
any. I hope that what I've written will help you all to see how these
things work, how you can add them to your .LNZ, and the sort of data
that you should put under them.
Enjoy!
Carolyn