Something i would really like and give to others as well

[Ravage777]

I have all of the Dow games and i am getting to the point i want to play them all through on hard to be prepared for multi-player.
My problem that im sure most people have is im tired of using the same red turnips,what with that army painter and tons of downloadable banners and badges of which i have almost 140 mgs. worth of downloaded.
I just really desire to play with a different look since i read 40k books like a bandit.
Especially since there isnt any Blood Ravens books ive seen but i have almost polished off the space wolf series and the comics got some good black templar and others.
There are other books,just not turnip,err,Blood Ravens that i know of.

So what i would like to do with some kind help is make a detailed but easy to undertsand and use instruction readme on how to make single player campaign army colors/badges/banners custom.
I would like to make the instructions nice in adobe format(if i can-im not sure)and add a picture or 2 for quality purposes and package this with all the tools neccesary to do it.
Do this for each of the four games in 4 seperate folders in that one neat package.
Then post it free at some 40k download places so everybody can fully enjoy campaigns.

I would really like some help and anybody that would like to let me e-mail them for faster help that would be greatly appreciated.
I will include this site and big helpers in the credits for the package but i honestly feel this would be the most usefull DOW free download out there.
I suspect most people dont make campaigns because they dont enjoy always using the turnips in them because all you know is from the codex and thats it.
Theres no real story to the ravens that i can find anyways.

Please help me

Sincerely
Ravage777

OH,in all my begging i forgot to mention that after searching for days i have only found a few references to this stuff and its all very old as in year or years besides the one post lower on this board.
My point is they all say hard and time consuming but i found this post which sums it up really quick and the guy that used it immediatly came back saying it worked and hes happy.
If i could only understand it(its for DC) im sure that its this easy for all of them.
Make it a paragraph or 2 longer in way more detailed instructions which i will be perfect to make since i dont have a clue.I couldnt even get a avatar picture on the site and thats gotta be pretty clueless.Personally i always thought sga was a television brand.
And the project is done.Its not hard and i bet i could have it done in a few hrs or days with somebody to just explain terms and locations to me.
I mean what is it? A total of 8 movements and a couple things like zipping and unzipping with some freeware progs?
This is what im talking about,


QUOTE
well to change campaign you would need to extract the sga with textures in and place them in the lotw folder then use this tool: Skins@HWT » Downloads » Download Details » Dawn of War Texture Tool v1.8.1 (Powered by Grots) open it up, make sure you have advanced on, go into options under edit, then go into Team Colouring Settings there you can load a scheme or press the already there colors and change them, or press one of the badges/banners and go into the badge/banner folder, now press save preferences, then press compile tga and select every file you see, then add _default_0 to the last part of the ones that don't have it's name, now press make rtx and its done!
END QUOTE

Doesnt sound like rocket science to me.Just moving something then zipping and unzipping sorta and putting it back.

Please help me so can give this to everybody but most of all so i can play an army with some story behind them,not the freakin space turnips.Who nobody but the gardener and the codex writers ever even heard of.
If anybody has something besides the codex please let me know i wouldnt mind.At least then i could see the ravens as something more than a black bird with a red poop drop which is as i feel as many times as ive played them.......

[IBBoard]

There are several Blood Ravens books available, all of which were released after the game. They are by CS Goto, and every comment I've read on forums seems to be summarised as "they're terrible and were probably written just to get money from the Dawn of War franchise".

The Blood Ravens were actually created by Relic (and approved by Games Workshop) as a chapter specifically for Dawn of War so that they had a bit more freedom in their background. If they'd used any of the main chapters then Relic would have been constrained by existing story lines, but with their own chapter they could create their own history and characters, etc. GW have then taken the Blood Ravens back in as a canon chapter.

Depending on the game depends on how you change the campaign textures. Telboy has already done it for Dawn of War in his Lamenters Mod, with some badge and banner help from Hangar-8.

The original Dawn of War just used the RSH files. To change the campaign you just changed the RSH texture. Since there was only one RSH texture for each unit then it's a simple process.

Winter Assault used RTX textures (the same textures used when you disable team colouring in a skirmish). There are generally eight RTX textures, although Telboy has added his as a ninth that doesn't follow the normal "_default_0" to "_default_7" naming. Each mission then has a SCAR file (SCripting At Relic) that defines what happens in the mission, and also defines which RTX file to use. To change to a pre-existing scheme then you can just edit the SCAR file to change what it sets or to completely replace the scheme (e.g. some people might want to improve the quality and use Hangar-8's badge, banner and textures) then you need to recompile the RTX files that have the correct number in their file name. I've never actually done it myself, although I have read the details and had a look at the files, so I do know it is possible and have seen where.

Dark Crusade and Soulstorm I've not investigated so much. Dark Crusade has a single data file that specifies the RTX set to use, the same as the scripting in Winter Assault. The difference is that it is defined in one location and re-used. The down side is that I know some people have tried editing the file and caused the game to crash rather than load a campaign. I'm not sure if anyone ever successfully got it working that way, but if not then you can still replace the RTX files in the same way as you had to do for Winter Assault.

You're about right with the process for making textures - extract textures from archive, compose coloured image, convert image to correct format, rename, recompile as different format. A lot of it is easy, and the Texture Tool tries to let you do mass extraction and compilation of files where possible, so it shouldn't take too long once you know what you're doing

That's the general theory. It's not overly hard when you have the Texture Tool, but it can be time consuming if you don't do it right. Given practice and knowledge then it should be something you can throw together in an hour or so, though

I'd recommend starting by tinkering with the Texture Tool, reading its help (which is a bit sparse but tries to explain the function of things) and asking other questions. As long as you don't delete or edit the SGA files then even if you break a texture or a model then it should be easily fixable by simply deleting the file. Don't be afraid to experiment

[Ravage777]

Thankyou for helping me
It is good to know then that it is possible to make an army with the painter and put your badge/banner combo in and somehow play with this combo in all 4 campaigns.
Im going to work on doing this and make an incredibly easy to do step by step read me for dummies on how and then package it with the freeware tools needed and share it for everyone so all the people like me can do it.
Is it possible for regular joes like me to add pictures to an adobe reader thing so i can make the readme in adobe reader format with some pictures or can only companies do that?

Ravage777

[stfas]

its easy with the .rtx version, just extract the textures you want to change colors of (the .wtp files), then press the button "Edit" in the texture tool by IBBoard, then press the "Options" button and then there is a text called "Team Colouring Settings" press that, then you can choose the colors there and even import team colour schemes, then press the "Compile TGA" and select the .wtp files you are changing, then you need to add _(number) to their names (for space marines its _0), then you can for example in photoshop or gimp change some colors more (like add extra symbols and things), then you use the "Make RTX" button, and its done

[IBBoard]

stfas's instructions about cover the process. I'd recommend trying to follow it and then seeing what screenshots would be useful.

As for PDFs, only companies (or rich people) can edit PDFs if you use Adobe's tools, but you can always download Open Office (a free and open source alternative to MS Office that supports .doc files) as it has a PDF export option. You would then just need to make the document the same as you would in MS Word before exporting to PDF.

[Ravage777]

I dont know what pdf is or ms word but i seen ms office in the store as softewre for like 150$.
I wonder if i could e-mail somebody the picture and the readme and say for 60$ they make the instructions for me.
Thats about the price of a term paper.
Where can i get ahold of people that would be interested in this?
Fixing the armys for me so i can use them in all 4 games and instructions so other people can do the same.

Thankyou
Ravage777

[IBBoard]

PDF is a file format from Adobe (Portable Document Format). Basically it's a non-editable file format that ensures the document will turn out the same no matter who views it.

MS Word is the word processing part of MS Office, which also includes a couple of other programs (Excel for spreadsheets and Powerpoint for presentations normally, plus it might include Outlook for Email). If you don't have it then I'd recommend Open Office instead as it is completely free and covers everything that the majority of people would want to do in Office.

If someone does do the armies then it would be useful if they could provide instructions. PDF might not be necessary, though, as I can always just put it in the articles section of Skins@HWT as a web page.

[Ravage777]

If somebody does the armies(confidentially to preserve peoples will for integrity)
then is it possible to put a picture or 2 on the instructions to make them look like nice intructions or is that impossible?
I figure one picture of space wolves and one picture of death angels from the warhammer series would really make the instructions feel alive.

Thankyou
Ravage777

[IBBoard]

Pictures can go in articles on the website and in PDFs/.doc files. I'm not sure where they would fit, other than possibly before and after shots, but it shouldn't be too difficult to put screenshots in there.