chuck_starchaser wrote:1) It's a maintenance problem, because, for instance, in PU there are many model textures that just don't show, probably due to filename issues
like capitalization; but there is no way to find out except by converting ALL models' bfxm's to xmesh and looking at the names specified.
2) It's an efficiency problem because you can't have, say, pirate, militia and retro talon textures sharing a common bfxm; they need to have
separate bfxm's.
I don't see how additional tracking in an external tool would help you identify problems. It's double work tracking externally textures in the case of an update. I hope the following will help you remove the cause instead of remedying the symptom.
Re 1) With UC you can now simply point to a bfxm and, in the "Textures" tab, it will show you in the textures used in the bfxm file. Here you can easily check if spelling is correct or if/where/which texture is referenced from that file.
Re 2) For faction textures the standard is to prefix your normal textures with the faction name, no need to have a separate bfxm file for factions. E.g. your ferret.bfxm has texture="ferret.png". For the "civilian" faction you would just add the "civilian_ferret.png" texture to the same directory where ferret.png resides, then maybe add "pirate_ferret.png" and so on for other factions. That's all. True, in UC faction naming is currently hard coded for VS factions, which shall be changed to be read from factions.xml.
Such things as the faction textures convention should be documented and it's on my plate, just don't know yet how I'll organize all the info. The portal page for models creation and integration will be
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... Guidelines though I haven't even properly started. OT, just today I did restructure the
Development page. It should make more sense now.
UnitConverter v0.34 is done with following functional additions:
* integrated simple forward/backward browser through units.csv
* added editing facilities for speeds and accelerations (both, linear and angular)
* added editing of capacitors, jump drive, overdrive, SPEC drive
* added editing of radar parameters, cargo
* joined marker-based mounts (turrets, subunits, docking ports, engines) on one tab
* renamed "Mount" to "Marker" for required obj file name part