Would someone be willing to help me?

[starstruck_disaster]

I've been using APE II for the past 4-5 hours, and I'm stuck. It's a great tutorial, but I've read and re-read the troubleshooting and I can't seem to fix my problem. I'm editing the peacock, and I can't get the new one to load. I have no idea where to look for problems.

I've changed every instance of "PeafowlCommon" and "CommonPeafowl" to my chosen name (rainfowl) and that hasn't helped. I even changed the .dds files and other such things.

Are there any things I need to check aside from what is mentioned?

Also, I do not understand the part of the tutorial involving winhex. I'm able to open the .nif file, but I can't figure out what the instructions are asking me to do.

Any and all help is -greatly- appreciated. If it would help to move this to email, I can send the files to whomever helps.

Thanks guys.

--Sary

PS: I'm actually not new by the way...   I was here before the forums got revamped is all. This is my first post since then.

[penguinman]

Hmmm, well APE II does have some problems and it can be hard...

The winhex part: You need to open the .nif, and then search for ".dds" and change the codenames that appear right before it. But you CANNOT change the number of letters so you will have to make it "rainfowl_____" or something. THen you need to rename the .dds files that it corresponds to in order to include the exta ___'s. THen you need to search for .dds in the main XML files and whenever the .dds files that you changed show up, you need to add those ____'s again.

And, I don't quite understand, but does the animal just not show up in the game at all?

[starstruck_disaster]

Ah! Thanks so much for explaining the .nif and .dds part! Do I change the .dds extension to .bmp, though?

And yes. It won't show up for me to purchase/adopt at all. :/ I can get to its Zoopedia entry (Which is buggy -- I'll fix that by just leaving the template in later, and editing it back to normal) but the animal doesn't show up on screen to get.

I've changed the name in all files (that I know of?) and edited the biome. I changed it so that it's biome would be "tropicalrainforest" by adding "primary=true/" and "sensitivity" has been changed from "0" to "10", whereas I changed temperateforest's sensitivity to "0". I'll try to copy and paste directly what I have later (I'm on a different computer at the moment.)

Thanks again, by the way. I really want to get this all figured out so I can start contributing animals.

[csleesburg]

Ah! Thanks so much for explaining the .nif and .dds part! Do I change the .dds extension to .bmp, though?

Well, not to butt in to Penguinman's helping, but the answer to this question is definitely NOT! .dds has to stay .dds for it to work in the game. Even if you're editing it using dxtbmp, make sure you save it as DDS Texture, using whatever it there (dxt1, dxt3, etc).

[starstruck_disaster]

Huh... thanks cleesburg. The tutorial said "At the end is the icon extension, replace .dds with .bmp. Save and exit, then go to the next xml down (should be the animal's codename followed by _Adult). At the bottom of that file are the links to the animal's adult skins. Once again, change the .dds to .bmp on each one. Do the same thing you did for the _Adult xml for the _Young xml, which contains all the young's skins." I'm glad I didn't do that... Unless that means to do something else?

Also, here is my exact coding in the xml file:


         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
         
     

Did I do something wrong?

[penguinman]

I don't see anything wrong...

Open the main .xml file with a web browser and see if it says that there is an error. If there is, post it here.

[csleesburg]

I ran that xml through my MS FrontPage, which checks the validity of xml files, and it showed "correct and well-nested file". So, it's not that piece of your file.

[starstruck_disaster]

Hmm. Same here. I can't get it to show any errors either.

Unfortunately, I don't know where else to look for them The tutorial only lists problems with the .xml file, and says to "seek professional help" if it still won't work.

Where else in the file should I look for errors? Sorry for being so problematic!

[penguinman]

Hmm, well if you opened it in a web browser and it didn't show an error, there probably isn't one.

This means that... it may be a problem with how you archive the file. Could you please explain how you do it and I'll look for errors? :original:

[starstruck_disaster]

Alright. I select all four folders (ai, entities, lang, ui) and then right click. I go to "add to archive" in WinHex. I select "zip" rather than "rar" and rename the file "rainfowl.z2f". Then I click "okay" and move the file to a folder in the area that Ape II suggests.

[penguinman]

Ok, that sounds right, unfortunately. I don't know what could be causing it now. Maybe the best thing to do is to send it over to me.

[starstruck_disaster]

Alright. Do you want the final .z2f file or...?

[penguinman]

Sure, PM me and I'll give you my email.

[starstruck_disaster]

I'm sorry I have yet to respond. I've been in vacation, but I'll e-mail you Monday or Tuesday.