One of the best features of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire is its wonderful modability - which, thanks to SMACer Ford_Prefect, has now been expanded.
SMACX, although a science fiction game, is a robust enough engine that modders have frequently want to do retro-mods. There is a massive WWII scenario extant, and much work was done several years ago on a Middle-Earth TCM.
In such cases, the drawback of the SMACX platform was the proprietary, and obsolete, .cvr format units were in, which no one in the fan community could modify from their science fiction look, or alter into different science fiction looks. Now, Ford_Prefect has created the first .cvr editor available to SMACers - and he’s looking for technical help to expand its modest capabilities.
AC2 interviewed Ford about his creation in April:
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AC2: How did you first take an interest in this project?
Ford_Prefect: I wanted to try to make a smac clone. So I googled around and found out no one knew how to read the calviar format(.cvr). So I figured, what the heck... I'll give it a try.
AC2: Why the .cvr part in particular, though?
Ford_Prefect: It was the only major graphics component that no one could read. I could use any of the other images for the terrain, faces, gui, etc, but the actual units were in the cvr file format. I thought it would be quicker and easier to figure out the .cvr format than it would be to recreate the units from scratch in blender. (I was wrong.
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AC2: What can be done with your .cvr editor?
Ford_Prefect: The editor allows one to re-texture any unit found in Alpha Centauri in its native cvr format. Each part of the unit can be viewed independently for painting. The editor also can export what it knows about the current cvr file into a human readable text format.
AC2: Could I turn the colony pod into a covered wagon with it?
Ford_Prefect: No. Currently, the tool only allows you to change the colors of the units, not their shape. It is a paint tool, not a modeler.
AC2: What do you think can be done in the future, assuming some breakthroughs?
Ford_Prefect: Currently, there is enough known about caviar (cvr) to create a 3d version of the editor. I might try to create this after I've improved my 3d programing skills.
One breakthrough would be if someone figured out where the rest of the color values are stored in the file. Right now the last 10-20 colors are unknown for each model. If someone figured it out, I could quickly fix the color palette to display the colors correctly.
A major breakthrough would be if someone figured out the values for normals... then almost anything would be possible. Normals would allow us to truly modify the units to appear however we wanted them to be. Knowing the normals would also allow us to export the units to blender and other games.
AC2: Okay, define normal for non-tech types to whom that last would make no sense.
Ford_Prefect: A normal tells the software how light should reflect off of a surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mappingI made a wiki page to hold what I know about the caviar file specification.
Caviar (.cvr) specification. (WIP)
AC2: What do you want people to know about the project?
Ford_Prefect:
Modders can now give the SMAC units a paint job.
Help is needed to figure out the rest of the caviar file format.
The units in SMAC are a voxel based 3d (like minecraft)
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More information and a link to the editor can be found here:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=7866.0 Ford, and the rest of the SMACX modding community, would greatly appreciate your feedback and support.
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