how to make animals missing in ape xp

[dr rick]

hi folks - there are some animals missing from the APE XP i got some time ago from zt ABC, e.g. some of the whales and larger dinosaurs.  i can easily enough extract all the images using zoot, but re-loading them into a new animal created in APE is extremely laborious, e.g. for making a recolour using a different pal file, where the graphics are needed in the uci.

I also wondered if i could avoid having to do this altogether in making a variant of an animal that likes a different habitat, so needs new icons, but is otherwise similar.  Can a zt animal uci simply refer to the in-game graphics?

[johnrn1]

I feel your pain Rick.    Jay helped me out with this a couple of years ago. I will let him tell you what he told me. That is: how to get the missing animals into ape. It's really pretty neat. I hope I still have his tututoral on this and the list he game me of the missing animals.    I haven't used these tuts since I lost a lot of my files to that awful lightening strike!    I'll bet his stuff on this is still somewhere in the "qestions for designers" section here. 

[Jay]

there are some animals missing from the APE XP i got some time ago from zt ABC, e.g. some of the whales and larger dinosaurs.  i can easily enough extract all the images using zoot, but re-loading them into a new animal created in APE is extremely laborious, e.g. for making a recolour using a different pal file, where the graphics are needed in the uci.

APExp is actually the official APE program but with a much larger configuration file. Since it uses the same APE program, any problems with the APE program are also in APExp. There are a lot of problems in the APE program and, therefore, in APExp. Two of these problems affect trying to load certain DD, MM, and CC animals. The first problem is that APE cannot load any line in any [...\BehaviorSet\...] section that has more than 9 commas. The second problem is that APE cannot load any line in any [...Animations] section that does not have either "=" or ";". If APE tries to load one of these types of lines, APE crashes. But it is possible to use the original APE to create a new animal based on an in-game animal with these types of lines. The following are the steps, using the manta ray as an example. Other animals might need to use different "animals....ztd" files from different and possibly even multiple ZT folders.

1. Extract everything for the "animals/mantaray" folder from animals9.ztd and from animalsa.ztd that are in ZT's XPACK2 folder. Also extract "animals/mantaray.ai" from animalsa.ztd that is in CC's Updates folder or, for those without CC, from the official Endangered Species Download pack.
2. Rename mantaray.ai to mantaray.uca. Edit mantaray.uca and remove all lines in all [...\BehaviorSet\...] sections that have more than 9 commas. Although it does not apply to the manta ray, also remove all lines in all [...Animations] sections that do not have either "=" or ";". For example, the apato.ai file has "From stand" instead of ";From stand" in the [y/Animations] section.
3. Zip the "animals" folder (which contains the mantaray folder and mantaray.uca file) into mantaray.ztd. When you do this zipping, you should be including the "animals" folder itself and not just what is in the "animals" folder.
4. Run the original APE and click the "Open an existing project" icon. Click on mantaray.ztd and click Open.
5. Click New. Click "Animals". Click "mantaray <- User added". Click Create. Click the red X. Click Yes. All of this created a new manta ray with a new APE ID and then deleted the original one from the current project.
6. Click Manage. Click the "Save the current project" icon. Save the new manta ray to a new file, such as newMantaRay.ztd.
7. Now you can do any work you want on the new manta ray. When you are done making all of the graphical changes that you want and you no longer need APE, edit the ".uca" to replace all [...\BehaviorSet\...] sections with the ones that were in the original mantaray.ai.

Note: Another thing I noticed about APE and APExp is that it appears the first ".ai" file is loaded for an animal. So original ZT animals that were updated to use tanks, such as the polar bears, penguin, sea lion, crocodile, and probably others, will not have any of the tank related info in their ".uca" files. There can be other differences as well. So one should still go through the entire ".uca", comparing it to the most recent in-game ".ai" file, to see if it needs adjusting. APE and APExp also cause other problems and inefficiencies. So one should still use the Uca Editing Guide at ZKL to help go through the ".uca" and other files of the ".ztd" and, if possible, one should still use at least one of the animal configuration checker programs:
http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?t=116
http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?t=1203

I also wondered if i could avoid having to do this altogether in making a variant of an animal that likes a different habitat, so needs new icons, but is otherwise similar.  Can a zt animal uci simply refer to the in-game graphics?

Yes, a ".uca" file can and should refer to in-game graphics when the graphics are not changed. The ".uca" has an [AnimPath] section. To use the in-game graphics, this section should look like the [AnimPath] section that is in the in-game ".ai" file for the animal. For example, if you were making an animal that should use the in-game graphics for the manta ray, the [AnimPath] section in the ".uca" would look like this:

[AnimPath]
m = animals/mantaray/m
f = animals/mantaray/m
y = animals/mantaray/y

Depending on the animal, you might also need to change the [Sounds] section to refer to in-game sounds. The Uca Editing Guide mentioned above says how to do so. You will probably also want to make other changes to the ".uca", and the Uca Editing Guide can help with those as well. There are multiple ways to create the initial ".uca" and ".ztd" files. One way is to use APE, although one then should remove any "m", "f", and "y" folders and any unnecessary ".wav" and ".pal" files. Another way is to create the ".uca" manually from the ".ai", create manually the icon and plaque folders with their ".ani" files, and use Zoot to load the icons and plaque. I prefer this second approach since it is the most flexible and closer to the Blue Fang way of doing things, and I would make up an 8-character ID ending with "jy" (for "Jay"). But most people would probably understand the first approach more, since that approach is more useful to do things such as recolors.

[dr rick]

ahah!!  thank you jay - i knew it must be possible! 

... any problems with the APE program are also in APExp. There are a lot of problems in the APE program and, therefore, in APExp. ...The first problem is that APE cannot load any line in any [...\BehaviorSet\...] section that has more than 9 commas. The second problem is that APE cannot load any line in any [...Animations] section that does not have either "=" or ";". If APE tries to load one of these types of lines, APE crashes.

well that explains it!!! APE, for all its flaws, is the basis of almost everything we designers make, so, like a lot of other people, i have a love/hate relationship with APE!

more questions to follow but need to go let the chickens out...  got two new rare breed eggs hatching in the incubator - much excitement!!