I've got as far with my little project as I can get with only being able to change the alpha channel but being unable to touch the actual texture.

The problem I'm stuck with is, that many of the bright orange areas bled into the surrounding areas, probably due to conversion errors or somesuch. So I have the (theoretical) choice of either putting teamcolor over everyone of those orange splotches (which, apart from being more work, doesn't look all that good) or cleaning up the underlying texture. I'd prefer the latter, but I just can't get to the damn texture.

When I open the converted DDS file (no matter if I converted it to tga or png) in GIMP, I only see the parts that are team-colored ingame on a background of dark- and lightgrey squares.

Somewhere in the background the actual texture must also exist, because when I save the whole mess and convert it to DDS, it is restored. I just can't find any way to actually see and edit the texture in GIMP and the help files of gimp itself didn't contain anything that could help me either.

I also tried to just use the actual texture (gotten via copy/pasting out of IrfanView) and work in a new alpha channel from scratch, but I just can't get any new alpha channel into a picture without one. Again the Gimp helpfiles are decidedly unhelpfull, explaining at great length that every pixel has it's own alpha value, but never telling how you can adjust it, except for blanket-changing the transparency of a whole layer.

Oh and I also found a very helpfull article about textures in the tutorials liked in the first post of this thread. There it says under the GIMP users section of the texturing tutorial "- open your .dds in Gimp".

The only thing my GIMP had to say about that was "The opening of file xyz.dds failed: Unkown fileformat".

I'm not particularly stuck on GIMP. I only downloaded it a few days ago, specifically to be able to work with alpha channels... one good choice that turned out to be

I'm trying out paint.net now, thanks

Paint.net really isn't any better, you still have to extract the channels individually with a plug in. I just find it fast for UI work (not textures), and its not as strangely set up as GIMP for me. Photoshop is the only program I worked with that lets you see all 4 channels separately in one interface, though of course that's not free like GIMP and Paint.net. If you want to use the freebees you have to deal with some additional annoyances.

Ah, my Hero!

While I have to work on each color-channel seperately, at elast I can actually do it now

Just a minor addition to what you wrote. It certainly is true that the alpha channel is taken over into the first pic.

But what's more important to me was, that recomposing opens up a new picture, which contained all changes I made, including those in the three color channels, And that 3rd pic just needed to be saved and copied into the textures folder to work ingame.

Thanks for everyone who helped me and now I'm off to work on those four channels.

EXPLANATIONS & DISCUSSIONS

How to Add a Fourth Race

I wish I could but I can't just assume that when someone is asking for help, especially when they're new, that they've taken the time to actually read things in the OP.  It almost never happens even when they've said they did.

Instead of waiting around for someone to offer to help go over everything and do the work for you (like Sinperium  ;Þ  ), why don't you instead start posting the steps you're taking as you try to add a race.  Now I'm not saying detail every little thing out, but presenting a punch list of things you did would greatly ease the burden on the rest of us and make help come much easier.

Because honestly, if you list out a bunch of things, of which, none of them was update the entity manifest or add in the appropriate entries to the galaxy scenario def file, it's very easy for someone to come along and say to do that rather then kill off a weekend or two doing everything for you especially when there are detailed guides of how to do exactly what you're asking already posted.

I have a Question.

Actual i work on a private Minimod for Sins Rebellion.

I want to have more civilian movement on my planets.

That means:

Tradeships flying between researchfacilities

Cargoships flying between Factorys and Mines

Is there a way to do that?

The best you could do is mod in multiple refinery types-with some looking like other structures.  Hardly seems worth it really.

It really depends on the mod. Even if these mods don't overlap at all (they each add completely different races that wouldn't mess with each others stuff), English.str, Entity.Manifest, GalaxyScenarioDef, plus minor edits to a host of other files would probably be necessary.

Fighters are the hardest entity type to work with, they have a ton of restrictions nothing else has. No shields, limited abilities etc. Basically you have to use InstantAction types that use a radius, either directly or by attaching a buff to a planet or all objects at the planet. You cannot use ApplyBuffToSelf or ApplyBuffToTarget or any of the many variations of those two.

Not without making a "gatekeeper" planet that prevents all ships from escaping it until after a specific duration. The AI would probably get stuck on it though, so its fleet could get trapped there until the duration expired.

Make a new frigate, give it an ability that makes it invulnerable, disables the phase engines of all ships in the gravity well, and destroys itself after however long you want. Then place it at the planet which has the phase lane you don't want people to use.

Yeah, that just says you can shoot at one target in every direction. It can't shoot at two things at front. Also if you're doing this to a standard turret you need to add weapon points for each direction.

is there weapon hardpoints on the sides AND back of the mesh?

if no hardpoint on the side then NO fire to that side.

harpo