[.diesel export and material.xml]

The reason for this is that the exporter needs some info on how materials are used to optimize the vertex splitting. If you export a mesh without a materials.xml you will get higher graphics memory usage.

For a very large landscape mesh this can be significantly much more memory, for most other meshes not so much.

If you are only adding a few meshes of limited size you can safely ignore this warning.

Also, the exporter will automatically look up the materials xml if you have a dynamic_object xml in the target directory which points to the materials xml.

/Viktor

[Custom Skins with Custom Maps]

As mentioned in this post: http://www.ghostrecon.net/forums/index.php...st&p=392984, custom map bundles may not contain files that override the original game files.

I see a possible solution to changing the skins of the players by editing the texture_scope.xml of the custom map: (I am unable to test this right now, so it may or may not work)

Replace the reference to the common texture scope definition to one with all the members of the common set minus the atlas_characters set in the data/levels/custom_levels/your_level/texture_scope.xml. Replace this with a reference to your own character atlas:

<scope>

<!--	<xi:include href="/data/settings/set_texture_scope_editor.xml#xpointer(/include/common/*)"/> - explicitly including members of common minus atlas_character instead: -->


<!-- <texture_set name="atlas_characters"/> -->

<!-- Include texture sets for all characters except the one we want to replace -->

				<texture_set name="atlas_characters/mex_mp">

				<texture_set name="atlas_characters/mexican_carlos">

<!-- etc...-->


<!-- include definition to newly self-constructed character atlas -->

				<texture_set name="custom_levels/your_level/your_character_atlas" />


	<texture_set name="atlas_weapons"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_vehicles"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_world/atlas_mexico_city_tiles"/> <!--backdrop textures-->	

	<texture_set name="atlas_world/atlas_sky"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_mission_spec_editor/projection_lights"/>	

	<texture_set name="atlas_props"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_plants"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_water"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_mission_spec_editor/advertisement"/>		


	<xi:include href="/data/settings/set_texture_scope_editor.xml#xpointer(/include/city/*)"/>

	<texture_set name="atlas_mission_specific/mission02_specific/cube" />

	<texture_set name="atlas_mission_spec_editor/backdrop_cube_d" />

	<texture_set name="atlas_graffiti/atlas_graffiti_01" />

	<texture_set name="custom_levels/your_level/lightmaps" />

	<texture_set name="atlas_props" />

</scope>




<!-- <texture_set name="atlas_characters"/> -->

<texture_set name="atlas_characters"/> <!-- your own, newly constructed character atlas -->

<texture_set name="atlas_weapons"/>

<texture_set name="atlas_vehicles"/>

<texture_set name="atlas_world/atlas_mexico_city_tiles"/> <!--backdrop-->	

<texture_set name="atlas_world/atlas_sky"/>

You must bake your own character atlas (in this example named "custom_levels/your_level/your_character_atlas") using atlasgen containing textures with the same name as those contained in the set(s) you are not including. The atlas definitions used are available in data/textures/atlas_characters.

You could also copy the existing set to the new location, edit the images and then edit the tdb_atlas_set.xml file to point at the new location.

[Bundler Tutorial]

Regarding spaces in filenames, the bundler tool does handle them but they need to be enclosed in quotes:

bundler quick-bundle -r "c:\my directory with spaces"

[Question about bundle files]

This is how the bundles are treated by the game:

The game mounts the bundles bundles/quick.bundle, bundles/patch.bundle and custom_levels/*.bundle.

Hence, if you have custom content you can bundle it as a custom level bundle (the bundle does not even need to contain a map).

There are some restrictions on how custom level bundles are treated:

- they may not contain files conflicting with the contents of other custom level bundles

- files in custom level bundles will not override those of bundles/quick.bundle and bundles/patch.bundle

This means that custom content can be used through custom level bundles as long as the custom content does not require overriding any of the original game files.

[Bundler.exe from the new patch]

The bundler tool can create bundles in two modes; ordered bundle (ie. the "bundle" command) or quick bundle (the "quick-bundle" command).

If run in ordered bundle mode, files will be added to the bundle in the order given by one or several file load logs. This is used to reduce loading times by having the files placed in the bundle in the order in which they will be read. This mode isn't really relevant for most custom map bundles since they do not contain so much data.

The quick bundle mode will take all files below the directory specified as root and produce a bundle by default in [root]/bundles/quick.bundle. This destination can be overridden using the -D flag.

An example:

bundler -vvb quick-bundle -r c:\graw\custom_levels\work_temp\my_level -D my_level.bundle

The flags -vv gives more verbose output, -b means "break on error".

As to what custom map bundles can contain, they can contain any type of file with the restriction that a file may not have the same filename as a file in the original game.

This makes it possible to bundle custom units with a custom map for instance.