I poked at the UI for a bit when I made this mod (override for the CC wrench icon that was introduced with 1.15) and found some things that might be useful in other contexts as well:

* Many of the UI textures / icons / overlays etc are in UI.package (unsurprisingly)

* From what I have seen, _IMG resources in group 0x00064DCA seem to be the actual icons (also other images, like the world overview screens), group 0x00064DC9 backgrounds / colour overlays.

* These are ATI2N compressed files; s4pe won't display them (since it expects DXT when it sees _IMG) but you can just export them all to file and then use Windows Texture Viewer (NVidia) to browse them, that's small and pretty fast. They will display in weird colours (inverted I believe, and then some -- haven't checked yet what the channel order is exactly) but it ought to be clear enough what is what.

* To get them into a useable format and back I've used AMDCompress, see the Help viewer that comes with it for how to use. To convert one of the game resources to BMP for example, copy the file to the AMDCompress folder, then open cmd.exe and type



-- that'll result in a bmp version of your file which you can edit like you want and then convert back. It is probably a good idea to either use an editor where you can swap the channels (i.e. not paint.net), or RTFM a bit more than I did to see whether one can tell AMDCompress how to sort the channels when converting.

* Also see scumbumbo's post below on PS/NVidia plugin settings to convert forth and back in PS under Windows.


Attached is a screenshot of one of the group 0x00064DCA files when viewed in the NVidia Texture Viewer.

Can you explain in more detail how to work with these files?

What do you mean exactly? What kind of detail is missing?

This is good info, thanks! It was so long ago I made the Darker Progress Circle that I'd forgotten how the heck I'd gotten that image out and back in again in a form the game would accept (I don't think I used that program, but can't for the life of me remember what I used!) Now maybe I can try again to make an even darker option that quite a few have asked for.

I like how your plans on "completely retiring from TS4 modding" are working out .

It's entirely temporary, I assure you

I have Nvidia,AMDCompress does not work



When you change the DDS file in Photoshop are converted to BMP the game is not correctly displayed.
Instead of changing the icon changes the whole texture on a lama



To change the color of the circle which file to use ?0x00064DCA or 0x00064DC9?

Please do not triple post.

1. How do you know AMDCompress does not work for you, did you try it?
2. If BMP does not work well for you just convert to something else. AMDCompress supports a load of different formats; I just used BMP as an example because that is what I used.
3. You need to figure that out yourself. I would guess it is probably group 0x00064DC9.

AMDCompress I can not run (

Well then maybe Google for something else? (Also, for me it did not run at first because I had to install some Windows update -- if you get an error message when doubleclicking on the app, maybe try reading that.)

This information actually helped me to figure out again how I did it. I don't need the AMD Compress, just using the Nvidia compression Photoshop plug-in it can read/write the ATI2N format natively so this may help out anyone who can't run the AMD tool.

(Of course, the channel info is still confusing and looks like the example Plasticbox attached above)

When reading the file, use the "Convert Images to 32 bits" option - that will make the image easier to edit.

When saving the DDS file, select the "3Dc XY 8bpp | Normal Map" option and turn off MIP Map Generation (see attached screenshot).

Ah, thanks for that! That NVidia plugin only exists for Windows photohop, I have mine installed under OS X .. so I don't know much about the options it has.

So, I'm going to update Darker Progress Circle and as I'm editing the description I see that I had put those very same instructions in the mod description! I forgot how to edit the file AND I forgot that I'd left a note on how to edit the file! I feel such the dufus.

Haha! Well, we all know how nobody reads upload descriptions ..

Well, this was useful information for me to be able to at least try to make a functioning version of the CC wrench hider mod for the latest patch. Sadly, all I succeeded in doing was making the wrench icons slightly transparent as well as all other icons included in the image file. I guess I'll have to wait for those that know what they're doing.