Gfx/Colors Works For Set/Unique Items (v1.09x)

Gfx/Colors Works For Set/Unique Items (v1.09x)

Description: by Paul Siramy

Categories: Game Mechanics




I'll talk about these
files, so a knowledge of them is recomanded, but not required :




  • armor.txt

  • weapons.txt

  • misc.txt

  • uniqueitems.txt

  • setitems.txt

  • colors.txt


  • gems.txt

  • d2data.mpq\data\global\items\palette\*.dat
    (like grey2.dat)




This doc explain the way the game use (or don't use) some colors on some
items. It covers of course unique and set items, but also the socketing
of gems, and tell why amulets and rings are all looking the same, despite
there * is * some color info in some of them.




Lets's
take an example and say you have a 'Sword of Ali Baba' in your
stash, how the game will know the right file to use, and the right colors
to put on it ?


Take
uniqueitems.txt. Search 'Ali Baba'.
It is at the row 160.



transform
= 1


invtransform = 1

transformcolor = 9

code = 9fc




Detailed
description :



transform
and invtransform are almost the
same thing. They are booleans. transform
is for the item in the animated version of the item, while invtransform
is for only the inventory (not animated) version. By animated I mean
equip yourself with the sword : your character will change a part of
his look (the right arm), and while fighting / standing / running /
... it is animated. If the item need to have its colors changed, they
are set to 1, if not they are set to 0 or left blank. Beware : in order
for the inventory version to be changed, the animated version * must *
be set to 1. In other words, you can only have 3 types of unique items
:




  • animated version
    have colors replacement, while inventory version have not

  • both animated
    and inventory versions have colors replacement

  • neither one of
    this versions will have colors replacement


It
is impossible to have modified colors only in the inventory version,
and not in the animated one. If you want to modify the colors of the
inventory version, the animated will have (nearly) the same ones (as
for the * nearly * I'll speak of it later).



transformcolor
is the 'Tint' that the item will have. If you open the colors.txt
file, you'll have a description of them. There are 21 possible tints.
Here they are :



0
= white


1 = light grey

2 = dark grey

3 = black

4 = light blue


5 = dark blue

6 = crystal blue

7 = light red

8 = dark red


9 = crystal red

10 = light green

11 = dark green

12 = crystal green


13 = light yellow

14 = dark yellow

15 = light gold

16 = dark gold


17 = light purple

18 = dark purple

19 = orange

20 = bright white




If
you're interested, you shall know that you can change these tints. Again,
I'll explain later. In our case the Ali Baba sword will be more 'crystal red'
than it is for now.





Now, open weapons.txt. Search the 9fc
item (the row having 9fc in the code
column, not in either normcode, ubercode
nor ultracode). This is the row 123
('Tulwar').




invfile
= invflc

uniqueinvfile = (blank)

Transform = 1


InvTransform = 2


uniqueinvfile
is blank, so the game will take the value in invfile
instead ( invflc ). This is the
d2data.mpq\data\global\items\invflc.dc6 file. See the setinvfile
just near ? Same thing when the game have a set item to draw : it first
read the uniqueinvfile / setinvfile
column, this will tell which dc6 to take, but if it's blank, the game
will take the regular dc6 instead (invfile).
flippyfile is the animated dc6 used
when the item is dropped.



At
this point, a special note for Rings and Amulets. Open itemtypes.txt.
Ring have :



VarInvGfx
= 5

InvGfx1 thru InvGfx5
= invrin1 thru invrin5
(dc6 files again)



This
his how the game choose random gfx for ring / amu / charm / jewel.



Transform
and InvTransform this times are
NOT booleans as you can see. They are indexs. They tell which colormap
is to be used for each version of the item. A colormap (quickly) is
a table that indicate which colors are to be changed into another. These
colormaps can be found in d2data.mpq\data\global\items\palette. They
will be used each time the game need to apply a new tint to the item
: by socketing a gem in it, or to display either a unique or a set item.
'Which colors of the item are to be changed ?' is what the
Transform
and InvTransform

colums tell : choosing a different .dat file will make another colors
to change, and therefore will make a slightly different item.



Some
tech notes (you can skip) :




The colormaps 'map' the colors, to obtain a replacement
for some of them. These colormaps are 5376 bytes. 256 bytes (a whole
palette's indexes) declined into 21 'tints'. Open the colors.txt
file, you see a description of the tints used by the game, from white
(index 0) to Bright White (index
20). Just think of a colormap as 'I get a pixel having the index
5 in the current palette. Now, I read the colormap to get the final
color. Tint is 1, so I'll use bytes from 256 to 511 in the .dat file.
Now, the pixel is index 5, so I take the 5th byte and I read : 15.
So, in the final bitmap, I put a pixel of index 15 (not 5) at these
place'. Should be enough to understand.




About palettes : you know what it is I suppose. In our case, the game
use some 256 colors palettes, found in d2data.mpq\data\global\palette.
Each directory in there contains 1 palette, in 2 format : the .dat
and the .pl2 ones. The .dat is easy : 768 bytes, Red Green and Blue
componants for each of the 256 index, ranging from 0 to 255. Be carefull
: these bytes are in the BGR order (not the usual RGB).



The .pl2 format is much more complex. I'll just say that the first
1024 bytes are the palette, in RGBA format : each color entry is 4
bytes : R, G and B componants, and a zero (for Alpha Channel), which
is not used. After comes tons of colormaps for different usage. Note
that the palette in the .pl2 is the same as the one in the .dat.


Of
course, if you're planing to make another colormaps, keep in mind
that the game use 5 palettes : 1 for each act, so you should only
map colors to the ones that never change, whichever the palette is
used (except if you want to make item that have part (or whole) of
their colors to change between the acts).



Here
is the correspondance between the index of
the
Transform
and InvTransform columns, and the
.dat colormaps :




0
= special meaning : no colormap used, item will never change

1 = grey.dat

2 = grey2.dat

3 = don't work, will do the same
effect as
0


4 = don't work, will do the same
effect as
0

5 = greybrown.dat

6 = invgrey.dat

7 = invgrey2.dat


8 = invgreybrown.dat


9
= will crash the game. Don't use value out of
0
and 8.


3
and 4 must have been for the 'brown.dat'
and 'gold.dat' files, but even if you try to use them, the
game will consider them as 0.




You
can use all available colormaps, for each version. That's it : you can
put 0, 1,
2, 5,
6, 7
or 8 in either / both
Transform
and InvTransform columns. But be
aware that Blizzard used only some of them, as accordingly :




armor.txt
: 0, 1,
2, 5
in
Transform,
and 0, 2,
5, 8
in InvTransform



weapons.txt
: 0, 1,
2, 5
in
Transform,
and 0, 1,
5, 8
in InvTransform


misc.txt : 0
(and this IS the reason why rings and amulets don't have another colors;
the .txt file tell to use the colormap 0,
which indicate 'no modifications'. Puting some value in
there will allow unique / set rings and amu (but not runes as I have
tested) to have another colors in their unique / set versions.







Back to the 'Tulwar' (you forgot it, right ?). So, our item
have a 2 in InvTrans
of weapons.txt. So, we will use the grey2.dat
colormap (remember the number = .dat table ?). These means that only the
grey colors will change, so the metal of this blade will be modified into
another tint, while the pommel (which is not grey) will stay the same.
Which tint ? The transformcolor in
the uniqueitems.txt will tell us : there
is a 9 for the 'Sword of Ali
Baba', therefore the 'Tulwar' will look more Crystal
Red
than the original 'Tulwar'. Of course, for the
advanced-user, by changing the colormaps (.dat files) you can obtain cool
effects. But this is not the subject of this topic. Same method for the
Transform
column (animated item) : the game will use the grey.dat (not grey2.dat)
colormap, and will use the same tint (crystal red).




Summary


armor.txt,
weapons.txt, misc.txt
:



Transform
= colormap to use for the animated version of the item


InvTrans = colormap to use for the
inventory version (ie : 5 means
greybrown.dat).


Somewhat
important note
: colormaps are needed for unique, set, and socketed
items. 0 will order the item to
stay the same as in its original version, whichever tint another .txt
file (like uniqueitems.txt) ask to
use. Rings, amulets and such have 0
in these columns, therefore this items always stay the same, but if
we put another value in it (say 8
for a global color modification) unique rings and amu will have tints
enabled. Check 'Dwarf Star', 'Raven Frost' or 'Atma's
Scarab' : they do have tint informations. With the use of the 8,
the tints will appears.






gems.txt

:



transform
= tint (not colormap) to apply on the item, when the gem is socketed
into it. Unfortunatly, while in misc.txt
the choice of a 8 instead of a 0
works well with rings and amulets, it don't works with runes. Runes
can't *have* nor *make* any tint effect.



Note:
in fact Runes don't have nor make colors effect only in the original
Lod. If in the file ItemTypes.txt
for the line Rune you set the equiv2
column to gem instead of the current
blank value, you'll activate the colors effect for all the Runes, just
like the current gems. Thanks to Joel for this info.






uniqueitems.txt

:



transform
= Boolean. 'Will the colormap as defined into armor/weapon/misc.txt
will be use ?'. Only for the animated version of the item.



invtransform
= same as above, but for the inventory version. Note that the inventory
version need to have the animated version to be set, to be useable itself.


transformcolor
= tint of the colormaps to be used (if can be applied) ranging from
0 to 20.
For having an idea, read the colors.txt
file.






setitems.txt

:



transform
= same
as in uniqueitems.txt.

transformcolor = same as
in uniqueitems.txt.
Used for each items of the whole set.



You
have noticed that there isn't any
invtransform
column in there. My guess is that the
transform
column is used for both the animated and the inventory versions of each
items of the set.




Conclusion


There
may be some questions left, but I hope I have made it clearer. Oh, btw
check a program I send to this site too : dc6color. It will help you to
quickly see in a glance all the colors an item can have, and it's an help
if you want to easily change some colors (or make and test you're own colormaps).
Very usefull I think.


Link to this article: Select all

[url=https://www.d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=57&sid=166e9a2ac2778942f9391b5935857162]Knowledge Base - Gfx/Colors Works For Set/Unique Items (v1.09x)[/url]