Please help me

[Ailurus]

hey all.
I have downloaded APE.i know this is not very good for a mod, but i cannot get it to work and i cannot work stuff out. here are my questions, i hope you can help:
- how do you edit animals that are user made?
- how do you make the adult a baby and the babies a different animal?
- how do you recolour animals and apply it to all the the different movement stuff?
- now i feel really stupid, how do i save the animal?

thanks

ailurus

[Yellowrose]

This belongs in the Creativity Center under Ape help Moving

[Ailurus]

can nobody help me

[Yellowrose]

I wish I could but animals is something I really know nothing about when it comes to creating them.

Tasmanian_tiger is one of the best animal creators we have here at ZA. I know she is ill at the moment but does get online every now and then. I will send her a PM and see if she can peek at this on one of her visits to see if she can answer your questions. Best I can do for now.

[Ailurus]

ok thankyou very much

[Tasmanian_tiger]

I will try answering some questions.

-if you want to edit user-created animals, the images: try opening in Ape, the uca file: open this one in notebloc.

I don't think the uca file will cause any problems, I did notice usercreated animals show strange images when I tried opening them in Ape.  The animal was sparky colored, not like ingame.  Some had it, some don't..  I'm not sure what causes this.

-how to make the adult a baby..

from the top of my head; unrar the .ztd file, open the .uca file in notebloc, change:

[AnimPath]
m = animals/66F600BC/m
f = animals/66F600BC/m
y = animals/porpoise/y

to

[AnimPath]
m = animals/66F600BC/y
f = animals/66F600BC/y
y = animals/porpoise/y

to make the babies a different animal?

There are different answers to this.  Do you want to make the babies the adults?  Then you have to do the above process, but vice versa.

to

[AnimPath]
m = animals/66F600BC/m
f = animals/66F600BC/m
y = animals/porpoise/m

To change them to animations from a different animal?  I have never done this, I see no direct way, program-wise (like above).  Or you replace all the animations by hand.  (Save the image files from ape.  Upload them in your other animal.)

Or you take the image map f.e. /m out of animal1.ztd and place it into animal2.ztd.  Problem is, each animation has the direction path encoded.  Let me explain:

If you unrar animal1.ztd then you get:

/animals/365781bc/m/surfswim/e
/animals/365781bc/m/surfswim/surfswim.ani

You also have an /n, /ne, /se and /s file under the surfswim map.  Each of these files contains the direction path if you open them in notebloc.  All the files under /m are the animation files for the adult.  You need to change these, if you want to exchange the adult animations (or young animations = /y) for something else.

The line in of text in the f.e. e or surfswim.ani file is the problem here.

In animal1, it will be

/animals/365781bc/m/surfswim/e

In animal2:

/animals/999945ac/m/surfswim/e

So if you put the animations from animal2 into the ones from animal1.  The game won't find the good animations, unless you change the line in every animation file.

I have to try if you can save two animals under the same uca file.  That would solve the problem!

-how do you recolour animals and apply it to all the the different movement stuff?

There are different guides for this.. I have to look them up again, I have no link for them now.  And yes, you can apply it to all the movement/animations.

- now i feel really stupid, how do i save the animal?

It's not stupid.  In ape: go to 'main menu' then 'save the current project'.

.. sorry for the lots of text..  I have difficulties saying what I want to tell in a short line.

[Ailurus]

thankyou very much for your help. i will update this with my progress. Can i submit downloads yet?