Object.Spritebank Marker Bug? Modding.

[Hiram Abiff]

For those of you who understand a little about modding, I could use some of your expertise.

In the default spritebank, I seem to have extra markers that appear in the out of bounds area in the direct location where a modified sprite would be used. Creating a fresh vanilla save, I have no mods installed within the mods directory, and I have opted to "deactivate" all mods in the menu.

I have attempted to delete the spritebank all together and have allowed the "data' file to redownload from steam.. each time, the extra markers are always replaced back in the game.

When upon opening the objects.spritebank, I was able to find the markers by looking for their coordinates. To find their approximate coordinates to start (just to be a little more sure), I used Gimp image editor to combine all three sprites into one image to allow for pixel count, then divided the number by 32 to find each marker. This was done with extra help from seeing the markers in the Dev Tools F8 Sprite Bank Editor.

To be more specific about the spritebank file; if you look in your objects.spritebank located within the data file... you'll see

i176 - i188 excluding i185 - these markers all have coordinates x64+ with y64+; which means they are all entirely off of the default sprites and are causing problems with mods.

If someone could let me know if this is just a bug, I'd much appreciate it. If its not a bug and its isolated to me, some help on figuring it out would also be just a nice. I've spent over a week trying to solve this, and I feel like I've gotten absolutely nowhere..

Thank in advance.

~Hiram

[Trixi]

As i remember is the objects picture and the people picture merged together before the sprites are selected from the image. the people.png is added below the the objects.png

[Hiram Abiff]

Originally posted by Trixi:

As i remember is the objects picture and the people picture merged together before the sprites are selected from the image. the people.png is added below the the objects.png

This is the image I made in gimp which shows exactly how my spritebank is set up. Its in its original resolution, so I warn you that its pretty large in size. The red dots are the excess markers though.

https://s25.postimg.org/oawgltw9r/spritebank.png

The below link is my spritebank with the excess marker coordinates; i176 - i188 excluding i185.

http://pastebin.com/UHermfaq

[murgh]

Why would those markers interfere with a mod? I got many mods with markers and if they are loaded first (in the area where those out of bounds markers are) they never make trouble. Perhaps you should use Chad's sprite editor to define your custom markers on your object.
http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

[Hiram Abiff]

Originally posted by murgh:

Why would those markers interfere with a mod? I got many mods with markers and if they are loaded first (in the area where those out of bounds markers are) they never make trouble. Perhaps you should use Chad's sprite editor to define your custom markers on your object.
http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

Those markers are interfering with my mods, because they are not being created by mods, they're being created by the default spritebank. (which is why I posted a link to my spritebank in the comment directly before your own). That file is created all itself when I redownload the Data file from steam.

I have no mods installed, and none are active.. yet those markers spawn there everytime.

If I do load one of my mods with their own markers, the markers from the mod will spawn directly over the extra ones. This causes the mod to want to use the the excess markers from the spritebank, and not from the mod.

[murgh]

How does the definition of the object look in materials.txt?

[Hiram Abiff]

Originally posted by murgh:

How does the definition of the object look in materials.txt?

Well, I'm not sure if your talking about the mod, as like I said, these markers seem to stay in the game despite having no mods activated or even in the mods folder; which is why I thought the default spritebank must be forcing them. You can see my materials file for the mod in the link below though.. and in it, only a single marker should be created...

http://pastebin.com/aqmyJGN1

If I include a blank spot in the top of the sprites.png in the mod to allow for the excess markers to not affect my below sprite, my mod works pefect; of course, I also update the materials.txt to include the new desired (but lower) marker location.. This is what has made me think the markers are not related at all to the mod. And yes, even though the mod works fine this way, I have also read in the forums that creating sprites in this manner (with extra space) can cause other mods to bug.

After posting a similar thread on introversion forums, I've had a single other user tell me they thought it could possibly be a bug. - not a lot of life over there on the forums anymore it seems. ='(

Can you confirm for me though, whether or not your spritebank also has the markers? When you have no mods activated, and you start a new game; are the markers seen in the lower right black area when you view the editor with F8 with markers selected? If not, then I can at least know for sure that this issue seem to only be affecting myself; and therefore I need to continue to figure out how to solve it.

If you could, and if you don't mind; perhaps post a copy of your default spritebank on pastebin so I can see it? Other copies of the default spritebank that I have found, are rather old and do not have the same items or markers as the current one.

Thanks again for your time, I've had very few people even willing to give help, so I appreciate it.

[neoxes]

Don't worry about wasting space in spirtes.png. Now it works without problems

[murgh]

Use the sprite editor to put markers on the objects if things go weird. You get coordinates you didn't think of before. http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

[neoxes]

Originally posted by murgh:

Use the sprite editor to put markers on the objects if things go weird. You get coordinates you didn't think of before. http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

It's not a problem with its markers, but with markers in spritebaks. Let me explain it.
The default objects.spribank has some markers with position x>64 and/or y>64. This is not a problem if you don't use any mod, BUT, if you use some mod AND that mod has a sprite in the position of the original markers,well, that markers became active... You have to remove them from the original file if you don't want them, or don't put any sprite in those positions.

[murgh]

Originally posted by murgh:

Use the sprite editor to put markers on the objects if things go weird. You get coordinates you didn't think of before. http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

Was just a general tip when defining markers :)

File your bug at the bug tracker, that's the best place to be.

[Hiram Abiff]

Originally posted by murgh:

Originally posted by murgh:

Use the sprite editor to put markers on the objects if things go weird. You get coordinates you didn't think of before. http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

Was just a general tip when defining markers :)

File your bug at the bug tracker, that's the best place to be.

I made sure to file a bug report on the mantis bug tracker, and hopefully it will be looked into further.

Originally posted by neoxes:

Originally posted by murgh:

Use the sprite editor to put markers on the objects if things go weird. You get coordinates you didn't think of before. http://chadsmods.rdkf.net/tools/spriteeditor/

It's not a problem with its markers, but with markers in spritebaks. Let me explain it.
The default objects.spribank has some markers with position x>64 and/or y>64. This is not a problem if you don't use any mod, BUT, if you use some mod AND that mod has a sprite in the position of the original markers,well, that markers became active... You have to remove them from the original file if you don't want them, or don't put any sprite in those positions.

Thats exactly it; thank you Neoxes for clarifying, as well as providing your input on my use of the extra space in the sprite. If it works, and won't screw up other mods..than alls good with me.


Thanks again to everyone who replied.

~Hiram

[arl85]

I know this is a very old discussion, but I've found it only today.

Just for a test, I removed those markers using ingame F8 sprite editor: enable marker mode, click on one of them and press DEL key. After removing all of them, I pressed save.

A new, clean, object.spritebank is now saved in my game directory (C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Introversion\Prison Architect)

Creating a "data" folder when PA is installed and putting this file inside it, seems to replace the faulty spritebank.

I've also created a mod that simply contains the clean spritebank.
you can find it here

[murgh]

But modding the objects.spritebank will cause sprite problems when the devs update the game. Better play it safe and make sure that area isn't used by your custom sprites. Just cut out the marker stuff and add it into your spritesheet in the top left corner. I've already adjusted Manufactury 2.0 and Workshop Storage Racks a while ago and just now 'fixed' my ancient yet still mandatory visitor table mod. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=792069886 But will need to check my other mods as well, I just never came to do it. Thanks for the reminder.

[arl85]

Nice, your visitor table was exactly the mod that caused me to start investigating the issue.
I know that modding spritebank will cause problem on updates, but nowadays updates come once every 6 months or more, so I'll try to keep it updated (it's just a 5 minutes job, thanks to ingame F8 editor)

[Hiram Abiff]

I don't believe there is any more updates coming, are there?... I'm pretty sure development for this game is complete and it is considered on its final version. It was over 2 years ago that I opened this thread and added the issue to the Bug-Tracker, and the spritebank has yet to be fixed or changed.

I thought I should also mention, that modifiying the spritebank is not possible if you'd like to use other mods that do the same thing, such as the Prisoners of War mod, as they will conflict with each other... or at least I believe so... This is why I orginally opted for simply moving the sprites away from the incorrect markers as it saves the users from needing to manually replace the file or be restricted by what mods can or cannot be used.

Even if the developers somehow plan to continue updates to resolve bugs, considering their attention to their other games being developed, I doubt we'll see any more needed changes to this game... but I could be wrong; I've just been waiting for this, and few other issues to be fixed for a long time.