Search LFD editor for Tie fighter (fonts inside empire.LFD))

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Search LFD editor for Tie fighter (fonts inside empire.LFD))

Choum
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Post by Choum » Sat Mar 26, 2016 9:22 am

Hello all,

I'm looking for a software that can edit the empire.LFD file which containt the font use by the game.
I would like to use my localised version (collector 1997) with the 1998 version of fighter (which is only english).
The only problem is that the tie95 game doesn't support accented caracters like é ù ç etc...

I found with the LFDFontReader that the FNT use in the empire.LFD file differs from my version.
Mine contain 2 FNT :
font6
font8
which both support accented caracters.

The tie95 have the same file with 4 FNT inside.
font6
font8
font12
font18
without any accented caracters support.

Is there a way or tools to extract/import font from this file ?

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Sun Apr 03, 2016 1:42 pm

Like I say in the Readme, because the images are so small I didn't build in an export function since I was always making new characters, not saving them. The other problem is that I didn't build a means to add new characters. If there isn't a placeholder for the accented character then you can't bring in an image for it. When I originally made this, the notion of inserting new letters never crossed my mind.

However, I can certainly add this functionality. I can add the ability to export single characters, but what will help you the most here and I'll also add is the ability to export the entire font. That way you can take your localized character set and drop it in in its entirety.

Have to load the source onto a new machine, I'll see if I can crank this out in a couple days for you :)
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Sat Apr 09, 2016 8:08 am

Thanks

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Wed Apr 13, 2016 2:26 am

I've got import/export working like it should, both with single chars and the entire FONT resource (certainly makes converting my fonts to Aurebesh a lot faster!). Working on the character map so you see everything now.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Fri Apr 15, 2016 2:53 am

Okay, give this a go.

The "Load/Export FONT" buttons while swap out the entire font. Grab the one you want from your local version and use Export, then go back to the English version and Load over the top of the existing one. The name MUST match. This prevents accidental overwrites such as replacing a 6pt font with a 24pt font. My old Aurebesh font I've loaded this way in the screenshot below.

The entire character map is now viewable on the right. Clicking a character will bring it up on the left glyph window where it shows the ASCII code, etc. The scrollbar will activate if there's more characters than can be shown there, which for the English version at least shouldn't ever activate. For your local version with extra characters, that'll probably turn on.
v20rc.png
Let me know if this works out for you, or if you want something else. :D
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Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Posts: 24
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Post by Choum » Fri Apr 15, 2016 8:35 pm

Yes it work great, I was able to import font6 and 8.
http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/752258661.jpg

So I'm able to import and use the French mission of my collector CD-ROM into the TIE95 version without problem.

But for the 12 and 16 as they don't exist on my version I'm a bit stuck (they are used for ingame text), I don't know If I can edit the .FONT File extract from your tools, or If I can recreate them from scratch with another tool ?

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Sun Apr 17, 2016 1:15 pm

Glad it worked for those, but I would've thought the French version would've had all the FONTs. Are the larger fonts named something else, or just missing?
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Sun Apr 17, 2016 1:31 pm

The larger fonts do not exist in the french version (1997).
Larger fonts seems to be specific to the 1998 version. :kopfwand:

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Mon Apr 18, 2016 3:20 am

Yeah, redoing the concourses for the higher resolutions later allowed for the larger fonts.

If you need the larger two to also go up to ß (or if not that far, just tell me how far along on your screenshot), what I can do for you is create an extended font12 and font18 with placeholders for everything, you'll load those in to create the space, then you'll need to create the accented characters you need yourself in Paint/Photoshop/whatever, and import them one-by-one using the tool. Should be as simple as exporting the plain letter and then just saving off the accented versions.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Mon Apr 18, 2016 6:18 am

That would be great. Let's go until the ß, so the modified LFD file can be use by Spanish and german people.

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Thu Apr 21, 2016 2:14 am

Okay, here are the font12 and font18 resources extended out as far as ß is in your screenshot. Again, you'll need to provide the images for the new characters, I would presume following the same pattern as your localized font6 and font8.

Of course, the weird thing is that while it shows that the last character is ß, the ASCII for that position should really be á. Would be interesting to see if the source files have the "wrong" characters or if TIE omits/rearranges characters once you get beyond the English characters.

EDIT: Almost forgot; use the new FontReader build attached, it fixes a bug in the one-by-one import.
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Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Thu Apr 21, 2016 3:50 pm

As soon as I have import some characters in your two FONTS and save the LFD, it make the game crash at launch.
After the crash If I reopen the LFD file all imported characters has been deleted.

I have upload the the fonts6 and 8 I use and all BMP I want to add for the Font12 and 18 in attached file.

https://mega.nz/#!SBdkiQBZ!HMgj7PCRg4fU ... gRF2i2YyNw

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Fri Apr 22, 2016 12:16 pm

Alright, I'll take a look.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Sun Apr 24, 2016 10:57 pm

I had some time to look at it but the zip file only had a couple of TTF font files; it didn't have font6, font7, or the BMPs...
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Mon Apr 25, 2016 3:57 pm

Sorry I have uploaded the wrong file, here the good one : https://mega.nz/#!HI0VhSAZ!_BKC4uGB_Kwt ... lScKjwzgW0

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Fri Apr 29, 2016 2:35 am

Okay, give this a go. Found a couple things which was probably causing it to puke. I think I've got it fixed in the program, but I manually fixed the LFD with a hex editor for now. I double checked the images and PLTT with some of my other tools and everything checks out.
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Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 3:34 pm

Post by Choum » Fri May 06, 2016 3:18 pm

Thanks, but this is a failure.

As I said before, briefing and menu text was working after updating font 6 et 8 with a version with accented characters (extract from my localised version of the game).

As accented characers were completely ignore (not display) during mission, I was thinking that font 12 and 18 were used to display this text but after putting your file, still no accented characters :(

here an example of a mission i use for the test :
https://mega.nz/#!XA9UyRJR!i8DLff22LFLb ... DqPSuv6YrM

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Tue May 10, 2016 2:43 am

Which version of the game are you using? I just launched it from Steam, the Special Edition, and it's working in the concourse just fine. In-Flight, not so much, but that's because the in-flight engine uses the FNT files instead (I completely forgot about that, sorry that's my fault. Different file format, different tool, but I'll make them for you).

As far as the concourse and briefings, any mission editor you use is going to look funny since it's actually using mostly non-printing characters as placeholders for the accented characters
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Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Post by Choum » Tue May 10, 2016 11:28 am

I use the steam remastered version.

yes only the in-flight text are not working, the rest is great.

I'll check my version and it seems that MICRO.FNT, MICRO64.FNT and TINY.FNT are different but I cannot copy paste them directly without making the game crash at launch.

Concerning the placeholder characters, this is a real problem for me for the TIETEXT0.LFD file and other text files.

I try to use the TIE File Reader but I don't know what do to where there's an accented characters.
Should I use the placeholder characters (,), the real accented characters (é) or the placeholder character display by the TIE File Reader (@ or # I don't remember).
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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Tue May 10, 2016 11:11 pm

The game is expecting the placeholder characters, which is a problem since you can't actually type those. In the future I'll work into my editors the conversions behind-the-scenes the same way we use [ ] to denote highlighting even though the game expects unprintable characters. That'll let you type the actual characters and then the game will see what it expects. For the time being though, it's not friendly.

I'll test out the FNT files tonight and see if I can get figure out why it's not cooperating.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Wed May 11, 2016 3:14 am

Hmm. So TIE is completely omitting the characters, not even attempting to fill the blanks, which is odd, because the font used for the messages along the bottom and on the Message Log is TINY64, which already has all 194 glyphs (so does MICRO64) even in the English version. It might be possible that because it's a completely separate processing engine to handle the text in the flight engine vs the concourses, the English version of the FNT processor has a cap that stops the character processing before it gets to the extended set. Which is frustrating, since the LFD processor obviously doesn't have that limitation.

The only other explanation I can think of right now is that *ALL* of the FNT files need to be the same length for it to process that far, which leaves SMALL as the last one, although the file isn't reference in the EXE like the others are...

I'm at a loss right as to why it's not working in-flight. Everything is configured properly, all of the assets are there, I know the game is using said assets, I really think it comes down to the non-localized version just isn't fully compatible for the extended character set short of finding what I'm sure would be a single byte in the EXE that could fix it.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

Choum
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Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 3:34 pm

Post by Choum » Fri May 13, 2016 10:35 am

thanks for the explanation.

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