NEW Meshes For MUA?YES Definitely!

[Noelemahc]

The 2.5 Alchemy we have may not support specular mapping. It wasn't as widespread as the two-and-a-bit years ago when this version was released. Remember, we're trying to work with a current-gen game using two-gens-ago technology

great work

(off topic)
hey tommy what happen to the fr forum?

Well, another five (or is it six) hours sorta wasted trying to get bump-maps to work.
I've now tried EVERY format that Photoshop will save in. Max wont even load half of them. The ones it does load give a CTD in the game.
The bleeding DDS format will not save as 8bit.
The bleeding alchemy exporters will not allow anything except 8bit.
Although I CAN export meshes with bumpmaps, they will not work within the game.

I've also failed at creating a new animation set.Totally.
So really not a good day for me. 

Looking inside the Game.exe, I see that there is a specular map, a normal map and a diffuse map.
So no wonder I couldn't get bumpmaps to work in game.
Since I also know zero about normal maps, time to read up on them too.

Still no joy.
Today I tried a new tactic.
Because I can do an export with a .tga bumpmap, I did this. This on it's own would crash the game. So I took a normalmap.dds and inserted it into the igb in the classic way, thinking the result would be an igb with a DDS normal/bumpmap. And it is, but it also crashes the game.
If they'd just given a little bit more information in their so-called "help" file (like what *&^%ing format to save the bumpmap in), or if there were a way to ask the devs, I wouldn't be wasting my life on this...

[Noelemahc]

You can always ask the devs. The question is, WHO will you ask? Intrisinc is dead, Vicarious Visions have gone web-dead in July '06, and Activision would likely NOT reply. Raven's site hasn't been updated in millenia. Beenox just did the port. Talking to them will only cause problems as they would probably mind us finishing their job for them.

Yes, if there were a forum frequented by any of the dev team, I'd ask.
But I don't know of one.

[Noelemahc]

The official VIP forums don't have a PM function, or a profile one. And the devs had last appeared there before the game was even released, IIRC.

[Chimoru]

Great Jim Lee Cyclops!  But is there one that will work for XML2?