Shields - Small, Medium, Large and Tower.

Changing to PLT Shields

The default shields are not awful but could be improved - there are 3 main item methods:

1. "Simple" - one model, one texture. Shields currently use this. It doesn't leave you with many actual colours though since it's time consuming to redo the colours again and again for hundreds of entries.
2. "Simple with PLT" - Change to Helm-like PLT texturing. This allows layered colours (6 choices, leather 1/2, metal 1/2, cloth 1/2) on the same model. Also allows DDS overrides which allows for heraldry (but acts like simple - so need to duplicate models).
3. Complex parts based - This is kind of better - you could have shield "parts" top, middle, bottom. However: it doesn't allow PLT, and therefore again limits colours dramatically. Usually used for weapons where it makes more sense - weapons are usually just metal, not wood or anything. There is also issues if you do want a single model, you start using lots of slots for just those variants.

Converting to option 2 is reasonably painless.

Method:

• Check every existing model and check which ones are "duplicates" - eg; ashto_011, ashto_012 and ashto_013 are the same model but reference different parts of the tower texture file.
• Using the silver / closest to grey DDS file we convert to PLT and divide up into layers:
  • Metal 1 - primary metal area
  • Metal 2 - any secondary metal areas
  • Cloth 1 - primary wood area (eg wooden shields wood)
  • Cloth 2 - secondary wood area
  • Leather 1 - primary leather area (eg straps)
  • Leather 2 - secondary leather area
• Rename model files - eg; to "tower" so "tower_001.mdl" - this means renaming the PLT files to match
  • For shields with specific heraldry - we just copy over the DDS file to the new naming convention so if it is tower_010.mdl which is the daggerford heraldry we use that file naming convention for the main DDS
• Add icon PLTs and, for some reason, the toolset needs TGA files as well. Can use a 1x1 tga for this to save space. Example name: itower_001.tga / plt

Now the existing models do have existing model names. Options for this:

• Keep the same model names, eg ashto - tower shields;
  • This might retain full backwards compatibility. We simply have DDS files in use on the old models to override any PLT, and the same for icons
  • If it does work we add the new shields as 001 and up, simple enough. Maybe some as 100 and up too (increase MaxRange). The Toolset seems to check for the TGA file to validate after all.
• New model names - this is a "clean break" but breaks all compatibility