annabellica

Surely I could have packed my words in cotton and worded my comments nicer @Xplorer4x4, you ain't wrong.
However, I feel like this community has cared long enough to be as nice as possible trying to get points across and it never worked. A harsher tone was needed to get my point across, and I'm glad it worked. It has sparked major discussions on Discord and I'm glad about the open discourse.

My point still stands though. Gatekeeping sucks.

On 4/7/2023 at 5:24 AM, EmC-Unit said:

If you are making Miami themed reskins, it would only add to the confusion. But if other way around, you are free to do so, if you play by the book.

 

@annabellica I have seen all sorts of feedback, not even 2 but 3 sided, including people who live there and even active FHP trooper, and the main complain was a lack of 2nd fire station, witch i was thinking to add and not disclose it before.

We don't need to be saved, the mod is till been worked on, and i will adress the issues in the next verson.

You are a capable person, i am nowhere near capable in the area of experties that you have, but if you want to make Miami Great Againe, there are a plently of other assets that you can use to do so, that are not mine.

 

Don't flag me ass a some villan, mod and assets is allowed to be used by the TOS if you are willing to create some new mod, that is not Miami. (The map ussage is not banned tho).

What confusion would accurate edits cause? I find you a lot more confusing, working on Airport apparatus without planning an Airport (?), French Missionspec vehicles (?) and so many more vehicles that make absolutely no sense + that you do not even plan on releasing. You work on Nicklaus ambulances but have completely ignored the Miami Beach Fire Rescue ambulances in its entirety - even though the map is set in Miami Beach. Nicklaus isn’t even anywhere near MB. What even is FHP doing there? There is no FHP in MB. 
You rarely ever see MDFR in MB - where is the MBFD? A second firestation doesn‘t fix the inaccuracy. You‘d rather see red Miami FR Ambulances than a Dade one. It’s just all so wrong 

I strongly believe anybody out here making edits makes them for the sake of finally bringing some accuracy to the mod.

You make edits for… I don’t even know for what. 99% of the time it makes no sense.

These downvotes also just add to the comedic effect, honestly.

3 minutes ago, Freelancer said:

Saying EmC has a fragile ego and that he is gate keeping is somewhat insulting, Just because you don't like it and have access to his work to do as you please. It is up to modders to decided what happens with their work after release. I'm all for criticism too but this has to be done constructively. If your that disappointed with the mod why not take the time to learn the skills and develop one yourself?

How is stating a fact insulting? For years, nobody dared to say it publicly. Do you think it feels amazing being the only person daring to take it to a public forum? It's disappointing, yes. To everybody who has been to Miami, has a general interest in the area, or lives here. Especially those who waited a long time back then. But it wouldn't have been so disappointing if a specific person wouldn't gatekeep edits. There are so many talented people in this community, yet they aren't allowed to edit? If this is not the definition of a fragile ego, I don't know what is.
By the way - I do have the skills. I've probably done more things for and in this community than you think - which is fine. Point being is that there's not just me, but many people willing to turn this mod around and make it a true, accurate mod. Yet - we can't. Well, we can.. technically. Technically everybody can do whatever they want. And that's how communities thrive. To be open to change and knowledge, instead of buildings walls.

10 minutes ago, Freelancer said:

What an insulting comment and show's what kind of person you really are I would like to say more but I will avoid getting myself banned. I would of thought you are one of the first to complain that there isn't enough modders out there anymore, and your comment is the reason why most modders have left. Emc has given a whole lot of his free time ( more than most ) to create a mod for the community to play free of charge and what for? to be insulted by someone like you? If you don't like it why not make something yourself? I guess you can't and don't have the talents of EmC, but are much better at disrespecting people and there work.

 

You are laughable and it's a shame you are part of this community

 

If you believe what I said was insulting; then that is on you. There absolutely aren't enough modders because mods are being gatekept like this.
Any sort of criticism in this community is being met with a shocked Pikachu emoji. People get offended at the smallest things. Ego's crushed by retexturing apparatus. Do you even see what's happening? Have you even read your response to my comment? Did you even fully understand my comment at all? This mod is a living example of why the community is the way it is. "Don't edit" - "Don't retexture" - "Don't showcase". If this mod would be the epitome of a Miami experience, I would understand. But it is FAR from.
Different opinions exist, I am not judging yours. I'm just really tired of the way it's already normalized to gatekeep mods due to fragile ego's. So no, I'm not bowing down. If you believe that's a shame and laughable, keep going.

Edit: Also, I don't see how I've insulted EM-C. Stating facts is not insulting, it's really needed. Criticism is needed. If we all keep affirming bad practices, we get nowhere. What you get in the end is the EM4 community. Maybe if we wouldn't act like fragile snowflakes, we'd be in a much better position. Admitting when mods aren't the way they're supposed to be and blaming lack of content and skilled modders on gatekeeping the simplest things. Sayonara ♥

14 hours ago, nostalgcia said:

Hey EM-C.

I'm reaching out to you regarding private edits inside Miami: Is it okay to showcase the private edits in pictures but not publicly release it?

Just do it.
Realistically, what is EM-C gonna do? Gatekeeping a mod which is extremely mid (nobody dares to admit it) and so unbelievably off in basically every way imaginable is just plain insulting to everybody who lives in the Dade area. This mod is a fever dream of somebody who has no interest in accuracy and completely disregards the actual look and feel of Miami / Miami Beach. EM-C made his own weird version of Miami with this mod - How this has taken over 10 years is still absolutely beyond me. I understand the map texture itself was unchangable until I released my reverse-engineering tool, but it is so incredibly basic and inaccurate. I've talked to A LOT of people in the community over the past 12 months regarding this mod, and nearly every single person agrees (while not always publicly) that this mod is... "not as it should be". Everything about it is wrong. From the bottom of everybodies heart: showcase the edits!
Downvotes just prove my point btw. Gatekeeping sucks.

Nice work!

54 minutes ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I was also interested if your program would decompile EFTs from the 20xx series, however it looks like it causes an overflow when trying to parse the EFTs of 20xx. I am aware of some ways to circumvent a lot of the protection from mods that 20xx had, and NewFoundKing and myself were able to able to insert and load models about 8-10 years ago, but it was very difficult, convoluted, and required a copy of the game's engine. 

 

 

Chris07 and myself both have a vested/piqued interest in the implications of your project and what it could mean for the future of Emergency 4 and its modability. Would you be interested in talking about it over discord?

Sure, my discord is linked on my profile here

On 12/17/2021 at 2:14 AM, C.F.D said:

A very welcoming asset to the community, thank you for this. Can you help clarify what this can be done for those who are new to the community, what exactly sort of .EFT texture/template can you open with this tool ? Are we talking about base game map textures, etc ? 

 

Now see if you can reverse-engineer the editor and introduce more tools, haha.

We have a complete "Context" section on our GitHub page

Quote

Games like the Emergency Series are using a proprietary texture compression format called "Emergency Format Texture" or ".EFT" for important / critical in-game textures. The games (and their editor modes) can convert Targa Image files (.TGA) to .EFT format, however they cannot (or simply don't have an option to) convert these .EFT textures back to a readable format. The biggest headache here was that you couldn't examine or alter textures unless you had access to the original .TGA file.

---

4 hours ago, Chris07 said:

I would be very interested in knowing how you figured out/reverse engineered the eft format.

Magic 

3 hours ago, Grim_Wizard said:

Disregard, I was testing on EM3 files I pulled off of an old external HDD that were almost completely corrupted, causing the program to hang. Tested it out on a fresh install and everything was good. 

I was honestly worried there was a bug I didn’t catch

1 hour ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I played around with it, you can extract a targa out of the EFT file more or less. Mixed results with EM3. But EM4 maps seem to work okay. 

EM3 as well as EM4 maps work completely fine. Not sure what you mean with mixed results 

1 hour ago, Grim_Wizard said:

There was always a lack of scripters in the community, fewer still people who could compile projects outside of the confines of the game itself. The only one I can remember is the EM4 script generator. Also the EFT format has remained uncracked for 16 years, as it was used in Emergency 3, if you had waited a month and 5 days it would have been 17  

It would have probably remained uncracked for another (almost) 17 years if I wouldn't have taken an interest in it, it seems

2 hours ago, Grim_Wizard said:

I am highly impressed. This is something that has been missing for such a long time, and as someone who primarily deals with making maps from scratch would have saved so much time over the years. 

Much appreciated!
Yeah, wish I would've joined the community earlier. It took us about 5 days to crack the format - unbelievable it took 15 years in general.

Hey everyone.
Considering this is a tool, not a mod, I believe this is the right place to introduce this.

We've worked on a tool which can analyze, modify & decompress *.EFT textures back into a readable and editable format.
While this brings a lot of new modding possibilities (considering there was no method to decompress *.EFT files the past 15 years) I have to admit: With great power comes great responsibility.
This tool is an important milestone for the EM4 community, however (and I cannot stress this enough) the respectful handling of assets should always be a priority.

What can EFTX do?
EFTXplorer (EFTX) can read & convert an Emergency EFT texture without using the original TGA texture.
This allows you to reprocess "lost" textures or just convert textures whose source is unknown.

How does EFTX work?
EFTX is a "wrapper" for our LibEFT library. It reads the EFT, analyzes it and converts it via CPU into a readable format.
Feel free to read details on our GitHub page!

Download EFTX
GitHub EFTXplorer Releases - GitHub Direct link to latest release

Can you be of help?
Feel free to post bugs, suggestions, bug fixes or similar on GitHub under "Issues"!

Update 1.3:

Fixes:

1. Exporting to TARGA (*.tga) now exports to the correct 24-bit format.
   All other export options will export 32-bit RGBA.

New features:

1. You can now drag and drop an .EFT file to import it
2. Large Preview option.
3. Double-clicking .EFT files and opening them with EFTX as a standard option will open them in a large Preview window.

Adjustments:

1. EFTX now has an icon.

2 minutes ago, EmC-Unit said:

Now that you mention it is messed up for real.

 

But tbh i have a small list of units for the next update (mostly what i find to be attractive attractive looking), and i was not going to expand it that much (i mean include agencies you posted). Next update is going to be more of qulity of life improvments. So it is kinda late to drink borjomi.

 

 

You know I do have vehicle liveries ranging from the red MBFR Ambulance, MDPD / MBPD Crime Scene Unit vehicles to MPD vehicles ready. In case you want to include any of these in any future updates, let me know! Instead of doing the work twice it'd make more sense to just include it in case it's planned because tbh it makes a lot of sense xd

2 hours ago, EmC-Unit said:

Hello, thanks for feedback!  I can agree only on a part, that we are missing Miami Beach Fire Dept firetrucks, everything else i dissagree. We are not making a Miami simulator, but even by our understanding those agencies are far away from location of our map. We will be updating our fleet in the future but not expading it like that (making clones of units with same functionality serve no purpose - people barelly use 40% of the units).

PS we are not allowing submods or private mods for a good reason, and we are not planing on changing that in our TOS in future.

Thanks for your reply - but it collides with everything.
As far as I can see, it's a Miami-Dade mod, not a Miami Beach mod. You rarely ever see MDPD in Miami Beach anyway and I'm sure the fact MB was chosen for the map is simply because of EM4's size limitations. Y'all add Nicklaus CH vehicles which are in Doral and no where near Miami Beach, however Miami PD vehicles (which helps the MBPD on various occassions, Art Basel for example) are too far out of reach? 99% of the Law Enforcement Vehicles are just "reskins" - what else are the FHP vehicles in there for then? The FHP doesn't even have a station in Miami Beach. And with your focus on Miami Beach, you completely forgot that Miami Beach has its own iconic red FR Ambulance. Yes, it's only a reskin - but it's an iconic vehicle and supplements the entire experience of the mod. Gatekeeping this is honestly just limiting yourself.
Also, with your focus on Miami Beach: The only real hospital in Miami Beach is Mt. Sinai. The livery used on ambulances transporting to Mount Sinai is usually "AA / American Ambulance". Why would something even further away than Hialeah have a higher priority than things that are absolutely trivial? (Nicklaus lol)

Heya guys, first of all: Extremely well done mod!
As somebody who's actually from 305 it's cool to see it has (after all) released. Though I kind of missed the original release due to the very.. let's say "stretched" nature of the mod (been lurking on-off since probably like 2014 / 15).
However, I've noticed the lack off certain vehicle types / liveries in the mod, which obviously stand out to me as a local, and thus taught myself how to mod EM4 myself to make it a more enjoyable experience to me. I've added about 20 new vehicles, ranging from very common Miami / South-FL Ambulance Liveries, Miami; North Miami Beach; Hialeah PD Cars etc. as well as adding older MBPD vehicles. Though I've read how submods are prohibited. I have not planned on releasing anything yet, though I have to add that the vehicles make for a better overall experience and would supplement the basemod pretty well.