Overview
Using texture bug for creation of recoloring emblems
Mechanics description
First of all, how this custom badges system works:
1) game loads all user emblems from “Badges” folder (which is located under this path: “…My DocumentsMy GamesDawn of War II – Retribution“);
2) all appropriate emblems (in “.dds”, “.tga” and “.png” formats) get converted into inner texture-format, it’s very similar to DXT3/5 dds – it has Red, Green, Blue and Alpha channels, first 3 used to mix the color, and 4th determines transparency;
3) when emblem selected, it’s painted by game engine over the original unit’s texture.
So we can exploit it: if we’ll create a tga image without an alpha channel, when it will be painted it will erase original unit’s texture, so all the model will be black. Changing the colors in the scheme will have very slight altering effect, because the emblem is painted over it.
Color change:
The same effect can be achieved with opaque png if we will save it in the gray mode where every pixel has only 1 byte brightness value, not 3 RGB bytes as in default mode.
Advantage of this approach is that it will be correctly displayed in the emblem list, while the tga images without alpha channel will not. Disatvange is that it can’t be used to store colors, only different shades of gray.
If we will make a png image withno transparency it will be painted over original texture just fine. It will not be blackened because default empty alpha channel wil be added upon conversion, which game engine performs to every user badge. BUT on some units it will has slight overlay altering effect, because edge border pixels will be smudged over the rest of original texture.
For example it will affect a Chaos Lord model like this:
And final bug exploit will be usage of special DXT formats for dds emblems.
If we will save a dds image with V8U8 EMBM spec (it is also known as “DuDv” or “8.8 VU Signed 16-bit”) it will have only 2 channels: Red and Green. So during painting of this badge it will reset the blue channel of the original texture, and the model will look like this:
Similar effect will happen if we’ll save a dds image as R16F (it has only 1 Red channel with 16bit float values). So upon painting it will reset Green and Blue channels of original texture like this:
P.S. There r other dds formats like “16.16 GB” or “16.16 RG”, but unfortunately game can’t load them.
Screenshots
Installation
1. Download emblem:
Black:
Spark[drive.google.com]
Blue (V8U8):
SparkVU[drive.google.com]
Whity (R16F):
SparkR16F[drive.google.com]
2. Put in a folder:
C:UsersNAME OF YOUR PCDocumentsMy Gamesdawn of war ii – retributionBadges
3. Start the game and select badge in the Army Painter! GOOD LUCK!