Getting Started With DatMaker

Create A New File
 Start DatMaker and either click on the blank page icon on the toolbar or select File ... New from the menu. Click the Scenery Group button and then the Make It! button. This results in a blank Scenery Group document that you can work with. At the moment, this is the only type of DAT file that DatMaker can handle, but as you can see from the disabled selections, other types will be forthcoming. The ultimate goal is to be able to create custom Rides and Attractions for RCT2. Having said that, those are probably the very last object types that will be added to DatMaker since they are so complicated.

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A Word About Images
DatMaker is not an image editor. This is in contrast to Doctor J's excellent Object Editor which lets you interactively edit your images as you create your object. Image editing is planned for DatMaker in the future, but as of right now you can't do it. By the time the next version rolls around with support for more types of objects there will be some image editing tools available from inside the program. This isn't a huge problem at the moment since Scenery Group DATs only use one image! You'll have to create that image - in MS Windows BMP format - outside of DatMaker with another program. More about that later. 

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Anatomy Of A DAT
 All DAT files share some common attributes: 

Binary Data 
String Block(s) 
Images 

In addition, Scenery Group DATs have an additional attribute:

Package DATs
 
If this new empty DAT wasn't a Scenery Group DAT you wouldn't see the tree item for "Package DATs". What follows is a brief description of each of the attribute categories and what you can do with them. 

Binary Data - 
The size and meaning of the binary data is different for each type of DAT. When you click on the Binary Data tree item you will be presented in the right-hand pane with a hex editor representation of the binary data for the DAT. This is a read-write control, which means any changes you make will be saved with your DAT. Don't change anything here. DatMaker sets appropriate values for you and changing them could result in your DAT not functioning properly. The next version of DatMaker will add the ability to turn flags on and off with radio buttons. Scenery Group DATs don't have any flags to worry about, so for now there are none to play with. 

String Block - 
String Blocks contain descriptive text for the DAT. In the case of a Scenery Group, there is only one String Block for the "name" of the group. When you click on this item you will see, in the right-hand pane, a set of edit boxes labeled for the various languages used by RCT2. Fill in as many as you can for your DAT. If you open a DAT that someone else made (like the ones that came with RCT2) some of the strings may look strange. This is because they use a character set which DatMaker currently does not support. Do not change any strings you don't recognize! 

Package DATs - 
Scenery Group DATs exist to hold information about other DATs and group them together. You add object DATs to your Scenery Group DAT by dragging and dropping them from Windows Explorer onto the Package DATs tree item. 

Images - 
For Scenery Groups, there is only one image really needed, but you must drag it onto the "Images" tree item twice. This is because RCT2 actually uses your image twice. The first is used for the "inactive" state of a scenery menu tab and the second is used for the "active" state of the tab. You only need to prepare your image once since DatMaker adjusts each to work within RCT2. 

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Preparing Your Scenery Group Image
  On the left is a magnified closeup of a Scenery Group menu tab in its inactive state. On the right is a closeup of a Scenery Group menu tab in its active state. Simply put, a tab is "active" when it's the currently selected tab, and it's "inactive" when some other tab is selected. They appear almost exactly the same, but they're not and the differences are subtle. The borders and background colors are slightly different and the "inactive" tab has its bottom row of pixels chopped off to create a sunken recessed border effect for the entire group of tabs. As long as you create your tab image correctly, DatMaker will handle all of those details for you. 

You should create your Scenery Group tab image as a bitmap with dimensions 29 pixels wide by 26 pixels high. Your image should have a black background. DatMaker will interpret black pixels (RGB = 0, 0, 0) as transparent and modify your image so that the standard menu background color surrounds it. The borders will also be set up correctly so you need not worry about them. You should note that the extreme top left and top right pixels will be cut out of your image if it extends that far. Your image can use up all 29 by 26 pixels except those two. The easiest way to do it is make your image less than 29 pixels wide and just not worry about it. DatMaker will center your image for you inside the tab in that case. Similarly, DatMaker will automatically trim the bottom row of pixels for the inactive tab. Remember - only the truly black pixels will be treated as transparent. If you want black pixels as part of your image, as in the policeman's sunglasses here, don't actually make them black! The darkest part of the sunglasses in these images is not really black. It's a dark shade of blue. In most cases you won't be able to tell the difference. If the dark areas of the sunglasses were truly black those pixels would be transparent and the underlying dark green background color would show through on the menu tab. 

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Drag And Drop
When using DatMaker you add images to your DAT by dragging and dropping them from Windows Explorer file folders. When making a Scenery Group DAT you add other DATs also by dragging and dropping them onto the left-hand pane. Unfortunately, when you take a screenshot under Windows, the drag-and-drop visual cues and the cursor don't get saved, so using the following picture as a rough guide I will tell you that you should open the folder where you have your bitmap images stored and position it so that you can see both it and DatMaker on your screen. Move your mouse pointer over the bitmap file you want to add to your DAT. Then, left-click and hold the mouse button down on the BMP file. Without releasing the button, drag the mouse pointer to the vicinity of the "Images" tree item. When it is in range, the cursor shape will change to an arrow with a "+" sign. This is your indication that it is safe to let up on the mouse button now. The image will now be part of your DAT. For Scenery Group DATs you need to add two images even if it's the same image both times. In similar fashion, drag and drop the individual DAT files you want to be in your Scenery Group to the "Package DATs" tree item. 

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Limitations
If you happen to drag an invalid file over the tree on the left the cursor will not change to an arrow and you will not be able to drop it inside DatMaker. You should be able to drag any valid RCT2 DAT file into a Scenery Group except for other Scenery Group DATs. That's a no-no. In addition, DatMaker will only accept bitmaps that have 256 colors. If you have true-color images it will be necessary for you to convert them to indexed 256-color palette mode bitmaps before you can import them into DatMaker. 

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Saving Your DAT
When you have finished dragging and dropping the DATs and BMPs into your new Scenery Group it should resemble this picture. Notice that the individual DATs display their standard upper-case 8-character names. These names are taken from the information inside the DATs. The images display their file names. If you want to remove a BMP or a DAT from your Scenery Group simply click on the item and press the Delete key on your keyboard. 

If you want you can immediately use the DatMaker "File" menu and "Save As" a DAT file. Before you do this, however, there's another trick or two you can perform to make future edits to your new DAT file easier. 

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DAX Files
DatMaker defines and supports the use of DAX files to save more information about your DAT than is contained in a plain DAT file. A regular DAT file does not know nor care where its individual parts came from. When you open up a Scenery Group DAT, for example, you'll see the names of the other DATs used, e.g. KENNY, STAN, etc. But you can't tell which DAT files on your disk were used to make it. You'll see generic terms like "Image 0" and "Image 1" for the bitmap images inside a DAT file. Again, this is because the DAT file has no way of knowing exactly which BMPs you used to create it. 

DAX files solve this problem. A DAX file records which exact files you used to create your DAT. If you work primarily with DAX files instead of DAT files you can see exactly what's going into your DAT. If you change one of the objects in your Scenery Group, for example, and you don't have a DAX file, you'll have to re-create your DAT from scratch. On the other hand, if you save a DAX file first, there's no need to do that. Simply open up your DAX file and when you "Save As" a DAT file all the changes in your tweaked object file (and bitmaps!) will get saved with your DAT. A DAX file is like a recipe. It remembers everything you used - your "ingredients" - to put your object together. I recommend you save all your new masterpieces as DAX files first, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Note that although you can create a DAT file from a DAX file, the reverse is not true. The DAT file format doesn't have enough information by itself to give the program any idea of where its internal parts came from. 

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Zip Up Your Scenery Group DATs
You don't have to bother with DAX files if you don't want to or if they seem too complicated. When you're making Scenery Groups, however, there's one other important DatMaker feature you should know about, and you get its benefits only if you save your work as DAX files first. Under the main "File" menu there's an option labeled: Export. This option - available only for Scenery Groups - lets you take your Scenery Group DAT file and all the other DAT files that make up the scenery objects inside it and zip them all up into one file. From there all you or your users have to do is unzip the resulting file inside the RCT2 ObjData directory and be ready to use the new Scenery Group. This makes it a lot easier to distribute your work. In the case of the sample I used above, without a zip file you would have to copy SCGSPARK.DAT, STAN.DAT, ERIC.DAT, KENNY.DAT and KYLE.DAT separately into your RCT2 ObjData directory (folder). The Export feature does the zipping for you; there's no need to use an external program like WinZip and add each file individually to a new or existing zip archive. 

Of course, once they're unzipped into your ObjData folder you have to remove them one-by-one in case you want to get rid of them. That can't be helped. 

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Up Next
I didn't want to cram all this onto one page but I did just to have at least something. I'll clean up the online documentation - and so far this is all of it - as time goes on. There will need to be more for the image editing tools. The information on DAX files could possibly be a bit clearer but I didn't want to leave it out. It might seem a little superfluous now but if you do any serious DAT crunching it can be a real time saver. At least it is for me. I spent a week adding in DAX functionality after only a few hours of repetitive DAT making. Repeating the same tasks over and over again to make a change to one included object got old real fast. I thinnk it will be a big help also as we progress towards DATs with more and more bitmaps inside them. Who wants to open or drag-and-drop the same set of BMP files over and over again? Of course, you can edit a DAT directly and insert images anywhere you like, but if you know what images are where it's a lot easier! Remember... some flat ride DATs contain lots of images inside. 
