| 1st Step: Preparing YOUR MIND! | ||
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You are done with creating characters and stages and wonder how the D-Engine is supposed to include them. In order to
include characters, you need to create a new character select screen. The stages are then linked with characters and
serve as some sort of HQ for them. As you may or may not know, the D-Engine has three modes: Arcade Mode, Survival Mode
and Story Mode. Each of these modes can have a different character select screen, although you can just copypasta the
files for one mode and use them for another one. There are some other possibilities for the Story Mode, but more
on that in the Story Mode manual. | ||
| 2nd Step: Preparing the sprites! | ||
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Now that must be sounding weird, but even the Character Select Screen needs some cool sprites. Even four of them per
character. A SMALLPORTRAIT, a BIGPORTRAIT, a NAME, and a LOGO. The small portrait is always drawn to the screen, whereas
the big portrait and the name texture are only drawn if that character is selected. The logo texture is only relevant
for the Arcade Mode. Adding textures isn't compulsory, if you leave one out, it is replaced with a transparent texture
or a head with a question mark, depending on which texture you leave out. Anyway, like pretty much always, textures need to have a power of two (64/128/256...). This time around, palettes are not possible, so just use a TrueColor (normal) image type, preferably .png. Once you have gathered all the images to be used by the Character Select Screen, put the individual images in folders which match their purpose: All BIGPORTRAIT textures go in a single folder, all NAME textures in a folder, etc, etc... Sadly, PNGs won't cut it this time around, so you will have to convert them to the PKG format first. For this, you are going to need KMGENC, a tool which comes bundled with KallistiOS and Dolmexica's KOMPRESSOR, downloadable at this very site. The command line to be used with KMGENC looks like this: KMGENC -a4 PICTURE1.png PICTURE2.png PICTURE3.png... This will produce a KMG-file for every texture, Drag and drop those on the KOMPRESSOR to create the desired PKG files. Like before, the textures of each respective type have to go in the same folder: SMALLPORTRAITS to SMALLPORTRAITS, NAMES to NAMES, etc... No, you are not done yet. To finalize everything, you need to create four files with GENROMFS (download here). SMALLPORTRAITS.img, BIGPORTRAITS.img, NAMES.img and LOGOS.img. Those are created with the following line (this example uses SMALLPORTRAITS and the folder "/home/captaindc/SMALLPORTRAITS"): genromfs -f SMALLPORTRAITS.img -d /home/captaindc/SMALLPORTRAITS Repeat this until you have all four files. Congratulations, you are officially done with the texture stuff! |
 BIGPORTRAIT  SMALLPORTRAIT  NAME  LOGO | |
| 3rd Step: Preparing the data! | ||
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Before the real fun starts, download a new tool, the Fighter-Select-Dolmexiler. Once you have accomplished that,
open an empty text file with the barebone ASCII editor of your choice: Editor on Windows and Mousepad on Linux.
A text input file for a Dolmexiler takes so-called "values" as its input. These consist of an initiator, a space, an
equal sign, another space and the actual value in brackets. So if you had an initiator called SUPERCOOLVALUE, which
takes numbers as its input, it would look like this: SUPERCOOLVALUE = [34] The spaces before and after the equal sign are very important, so never leave them out, or add more spaces or something like that. In this example, the input value is a number, but this is not always the case, check the comprehensive list below for info about the various initiators. | ||
| 4th Step: Preparing the header! | ||
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Before adding single characters to the screen, you need to declare some header data. So, let's get starting with that
empty text file of yours: --- WHICH MODE = [ARCADE] First you need to declare which mode this select screen is for. There are three possibilities: [ARCADE], [SURVIVAL] and [STORY]. --- BIG PORTRAIT POSITION X-AXIS 1 = [20] The "big" portrait position of the character that has been selected. The X screen size is 640 pixels, mind you. --- BIG PORTRAIT POSITION Y-AXIS 1 = [20] The "big" portrait position of the character that has been selected. The Y screen size is 480 pixels, mind you AGAIN. --- BIG PORTRAIT SIZE X-AXIS 1 = [256] The size of that big portrait. This does not have to be the actual size of the texture. --- BIG PORTRAIT SIZE Y-AXIS 1 = [256] The size of that big portrait. This does not have to be the actual size of the texture... Y-AXIS. --- BIG PORTRAIT POSITION X-AXIS 2 = [364] The "big" portrait position of the character that has been selected. The X screen size is 640 pixels, mind you. For character two. --- BIG PORTRAIT POSITION Y-AXIS 2 = [20] The "big" portrait position of the character that has been selected. The Y screen size is 480 pixels, mind you AGAIN. For character two. --- BIG PORTRAIT SIZE X-AXIS 2 = [256] The size of that big portrait. This does not have to be the actual size of the texture. For character two. --- BIG PORTRAIT SIZE Y-AXIS 2 = [256] The size of that big portrait. This does not have to be the actual size of the texture... Y-AXIS. For character two. --- NAME POSITION X-AXIS 1 = [20] The name texture position of the character that has been selected. --- NAME POSITION Y-AXIS 1 = [276] The name texture position of the character that has been selected, too. --- NAME SIZE X-AXIS 1 = [256] Declares how large this texture supposed to be drawn to the screen. --- NAME SIZE Y-AXIS 1 = [64] Declares how large this texture supposed to be drawn to the screen... Y-AXIS. --- NAME POSITION X-AXIS 2 = [364] The name texture position of the character that has been selected. For character two. --- NAME POSITION Y-AXIS 2 = [276] The name texture position of the character that has been selected, too. For character two. --- NAME SIZE X-AXIS 2 = [256] Declares how large this texture supposed to be drawn to the screen. For character two. --- NAME SIZE Y-AXIS 2 = [64] Declares how large this texture supposed to be drawn to the screen... Y-AXIS. For character two. --- | ||
| 5th Step: Adding characters! | ||
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There is no limit deaking with how many characters can be added, although a realistic number would probably be 100.
Every segment of character data starts with three minuses (---). This tells the Dolmexiler that character data is to
follow. For the initiators necessary, check the guide belooooooooooow. --- --- Every new character data starts with three minuses. One thing to keep in mind is that you must not put three minuses at the end of the section. This will cause the Dolmexiler to crash, hehe. --- CHARACTER ID = [0] I'll be honest, this is only a dummy value without real importance to the Dolmexiler. Rather, it is meant to help you! YOu see, each character has an ID, by which it is referred to. Unlike this initiator suggests, it is NOT you who define the ID, but rather the order in which you add the character data. The first character's ID is [0], the second character's ID is [1], and so on, and so on. So you can keep track of the ID, I suggest you to add this line. Or not, it's not like the magical text on your computer monitor can force you to do it. --- CHARACTER NAME = [STICKLER] Now this value is NOT a dummy value: This is where the name of the character goes. You should know this by the time you try to add a character, but the character name has to be EXACTLY EIGHT LETTERS long. Seven letters: You're out. Nine letters: You're out. Eight letters: A WINNER IS YOU! --- BACKGROUND NAME = [BESTEVER] This value declares the character's stage. If the character is selected as an enemy, this stage is to be used. Like the CHARACTER NAME, this name has to be exactly eight characters long. --- POSITION X-AXIS = [210] This value declares the X-Position of the character's small portrait which is always drawn to the screen. --- POSITION Y-AXIS = [368] This value declares the Y-Position of the character's small portrait which is always drawn to the screen. --- DRAWN SIZE X-AXIS = [100] Well, it kinda deals with how large the small portrait is drawn to the screen. --- DRAWN SIZE Y-AXIS = [100] Well, it still kinda deals with how large the small portrait is drawn to the screen. --- TEXTURE SIZE X-AXIS = [128] Unlike DRAWN SIZE X-AXIS, this deals with the size of the actual texture. --- TEXTURE SIZE Y-AXIS = [128] Unlike DRAWN SIZE Y-AXIS, this deals with the size of the actual texture. --- GO UP = [0] This is where the CHARACTER ID comes into play. Once you press up on the fighter select screen and have the current character selected, the character with the CHARACTER ID declared here will be selected. So if you have the current character selected and press up, the character with the CHARACTER ID = [0] will be selected. --- GO DOWN = [0] This is where the CHARACTER ID comes into play. Once you press down on the fighter select screen and have the current character selected, the character with the CHARACTER ID declared here will be selected. So if you have the current character selected and press down, the character with the CHARACTER ID = [0] will be selected. --- GO LEFT = [1] This is where the CHARACTER ID comes into play. Once you press left on the fighter select screen and have the current character selected, the character with the CHARACTER ID declared here will be selected. So if you have the current character selected and press left, the character with the CHARACTER ID = [1] will be selected. --- GO RIGHT = [1] This is where the CHARACTER ID comes into play. Once you press right on the fighter select screen and have the current character selected, the character with the CHARACTER ID declared here will be selected. So if you have the current character selected and press right, the character with the CHARACTER ID = [1] will be selected. --- | ||
| 6th Step: Dolmexiling! | ||
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Save and close your text file now, it's time to dolmexile again!!
The Character-Select-Dolmexiler is a typical command line tool with the following options: -i = The text input file you made during the last few steps. -o = The output folder in which the final files will be created. So if your input file was located at "/home/captaindc/INPUT.txt" and your output folder was "/home/captaindc/OUTPUT/", your command line would be: SELECT-DOLMEXILER -i /home/captaindc/INPUT.txt -o /home/captaindc/OUTPUT/ This will create two files: FIGHTERSELECT.hdr and CHARACTERS.lst. Keep those along with the four files from before (SMALLPORTRAITS.img, BIGPORTRAITS.img, LOGOS.img and NAMES.img) and tuck 'em away safely until you put together the final Dolmexica CD. Sadly, this is a completely different guide altogether, so our little fun time seems to have come to an end... for now. 'Till then! |