Ask the Experts / RCT2 object editor help

  • stef%s's Photo

    wasn't sure how to move this over because I put in in the wrong thread. anyway after I create a file I go into the object selection under the debug menu to select my new file and it's not there to be selected. it's listed in the obj data list but just does't show up in the game. any help is greatly appreciated-Stef

  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo

    Ensure that you have selected to show custom objects - OpenRCT2 adds a filter to show only vanilla objects to the object selection window. I don't think it's on by default, but you may have changed it and forgot to change it back.

     

    Next, ensure the name is what you think it is, and the object definitely isn't listed. Searching for the name is the easiest way to confirm something is not in the list.

     

    Finally, ensure the object is actually being loaded by the game - run the game in the terminal and look for any errors. If it's not loading, the file may not be a valid object file, and the error is on your side. Try to decode it. Fails? It was never encoded properly. Try saving the file with no RLE. If that works, the error is in your encoder (both the chunk RLE and image RLE are hard to implement correctly, most of the bugs I've had that resulted in invalid files were in this code). If not, it's somewhere else. I have many times had to pick throught the file with a hex editor to find where the incorrect byte is.

     

    If the object is loaded but definitely doesn't show, then IDK what's going on but it's probably a bug - maybe try in vanilla to see if it's something OpenRCT2 introduced?

  • stef%s's Photo

    what do I have to do to make sure it's valid? I loaded a pic with .bmp like it says. then saved it with the .dat. It's def not the first 2 issues you listed. not sure about this rle stuff I'll have to look that up and study it I guess. It's a backdrop that I'm trying to do similar to the backsnow.dat series listed in the downloadable object list on this site. it only needs to be seen from one angle so I just put the same pic in the editor in for each angle. I really have no clue about computers so I'm learning as I go. trying to find an object editor trouble shooter guide type of thing. thanks for responding btw. is there some place you can pay for this type of thing? I feel like I may be in over my head

  • X7123M3-256%s's Photo

    If the object was created with the object editor then it should be valid, otherwise there's a bug in the object editor. You do not need to worry about RLE if you are not implementing your own encoder. In fact, most of what I wrote above is if you're writing your own encoder, because a finished tool ought not to be producing invalid objects. But many of these tools aren't actively maintained,so a bug in the tool isn't completely out of the question (question for anyone that uses that tool: are there known bugs that could cause this?).

     

    The easiest way to check if it's valid is to try to load it - in most cases, it won't load if it's not (the only case where it would is if the structure of the file is correct but some fields have invalid values). The first thing I would check is whether it is being loaded by the game - generally, any loaded object will show in the object selection even if you can't then select it.

     

    Do you see any error message along the lines of "failed to load object" when you start the game? Do you see the message "updating object list cache" when you run the game for the first time after modifying your object file (if you don't, that means the game isn't even trying to load it - check if you've put it in the correct directory). What happens if you try to load it manually via the console? Honestly, if the object is definitely being loaded but still doesn't show I would submit a Github issue as it could well be a bug in the game.

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