era_ballparks.txt file (and prk, ootp3D & obj file) help

[LansdowneSt]

I'm trying to link custom 3D models to teams in a modded era_ballpark.txt file. I've done it before but mostly with silvam14 parks and I am expanding that usage to parks by others (Flying Cannuck, asrivkin and bctrackboi11).

Half are successfully loading the 3D model and half are not. As near as I can tell it is because they don't follow the auto-load naming convention and it cannot be changed by me because things may point to those file names/locations inside of the park files themselves. I reckon most people are manually navigating to and selecting prk and obj files whatever they are named and wherever they are located but it seems the game autoload was built with strict naming and placement locations (I think?). I turned to Google Gemini and it says:

"In Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP), a .prk file primarily contains ballpark metadata—such as park factors, wall distances, and 2D diagram coordinates—but it does not hardcode a specific path to a .obj file.
Instead, the game relies on identical naming conventions and folder structure for automatic loading:

Implicit Linkage: For the game to automatically pair a 3D model with a .prk file, the .obj file must share the same filename as the .prk file and be located within the same subfolder under ballparks/models/.

Era_ballparks.txt: This file acts as a master database for historical leagues, mapping team/year combinations to specific filenames. For automatic historical updates to work without manual intervention, the filenames listed in this text file must exactly match the .prk and .obj filenames in your models folder. "

I bolded that last part because that seems to be the issue. All the files that do load correctly have all the folders and files named the same and the only subfolder is the Textures one (also synched in name). For example, in the following examples of ones that fail to load the 3D park model, there are files with inconsistent naming. I'm at a loss on how to get them to autoload like silvam14's because the txt file only lets you point to a single file name and not a folder, a .prk and an obj file. Anyone that has taken time incorporate their modded parks into the era_ballparks.txt file, I'd love to hear from you to better understand how to get all the parks to work and not just some of them.

Thanks!

[LansdowneSt]

So after a few hours with Gemini I think I got it. Here is how Dyckman files need to be organized and named to load properly without manual intervention.

The era_ballparks.txt file (last column) needs to read "Dykeman_Oval".

The Textures folder, just in case, was renamed "Dykeman_Oval_Textures"

The .mtl was opened in Notepad and, after finding and replacing all the file location references to match the new texture folder, was resaved as Dykeman_Oval.mtl.

The Dykeman.obj file was opened in Blender and resaved as "Dykeman_Oval.obj"

The .prk file was regenerated in the Bark Profile page (export this park's data to a file" after I linked to the new .obj file via the Pictures & Coordinates tab in the Ballpark editor.

Note I synched the capitalization too to remove that variable.

The old Dykeman.ootp3d file was deleted and the I let the game regenerate it after I started the game over and advanced to see if the park would auto-load. When it did (yay!) a new file was indeed generated.

I can see I am going to have several parks to dig into today. My hope is that the next time someone googles what's wrong this can be a guide on how to troubleshoot it. And to my modding friends, please keep the same name on those key files!

[bctrackboi11]

Good info to know. Thanks for sharing!

[LansdowneSt]

I got so close to fixing it. So, so close...

I got it to auto-load in the preview section of the Ballaprk team tab and thought I was done but i somehow dorked up two textures (not big ones but something along the highway and the foreground house faces), messed up the coordinates and lastly, the player figures would not appear anymore. I think I wore out the Google AI on it and have a better understanding of it all now...

Oh so, close. It didn't break on me until I went to play a game in the park.

But the good news is that hopefully going-forward (and as time permits) the models can done and resaved by the creators so we can make them auto-loading, default parks for teams in our universe. For today, I think I am going to release the Negro League mod without the parks just so people can play it. They can still manually load the parks until it gets reformatted. I'm just a perfectionist who wanted everything locked down, autoloading and perfect for it. I'll post the ones that were giving me fits as it wasn't just yours (but I think all yours had issues, sorry!)

[bctrackboi11]

It was one of the first mods I ever made. I plan on redoing it soon. Looking forward to your mod!

[bctrackboi11]

So to recap?:
-The obj file has to be outside of the folder (the program I have been using exports it and the mtl file inside the obj texture folder)
-The obj, prk, mtl files need to share the same name and spelling
-Where does the .ootp3d file come in and where do I find it?

I'm newish to modding stadiums so I was unaware my work wasn't working for anyone else. I can fix all of these and reupload them.

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

So to recap?:
-Where does the .ootp3d file come in and where do I find it?

This file gets made by OOTP the first time it's told there's a stadium of a given name, so it lives in your OOTP ballpark folder rather than the folder where you made the ballpark (depending on how you make your ballparks). It contains the grid and the positions of the bases, the camera angles, etc. A cheat that I found is that one can copy an .ootp3d file for a working park and rename it to the new park and at least get to skip adding cameras and telling OOTP where the bases are. But given that OOTP will make the .ootp3d file when you tell it to add a new park, ideally you'd have done this copying/renaming thing at the same time that you're copying the .obj file and mtl files into the ballparks folder. And _then_ make the .prk file after that (and after you've added day/night/diagram images so that the .prk file includes those pointers.

I may have made that sound more tricky than it is.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

So to recap?:
-The obj file has to be outside of the folder (the program I have been using exports it and the mtl file inside the obj texture folder)
-The obj, prk, mtl files need to share the same name and spelling
-Where does the .ootp3d file come in and where do I find it?

I'm newish to modding stadiums so I was unaware my work wasn't working for anyone else. I can fix all of these and reupload them.

They work if you manually navigate through the file structure to find and select the files but they do not autoload because they are not named or located (in some combination) how the game expects them to be. I might be the first that set-up a world so they auto-load like any inherent park-club relationship.

I see asrivkin just replied as I type. Yup, the ootp3D gets made when you first load the model. The revised Dyckman_Oval example is how it should look. Same folder name, same prk name, same obj name, the same mtl name, all in the folder "Dyckman_Oval" that is under "models." All the internal references need those names too so it is easier for the creator to adjust. Me renaming just breaks links I can't see.

asrivkin, I will go back and see which I had trouble with from your thread. Almederes _I had an extra space before the underscore and some of the same issues. Pelican Park, W Washington Indy were others that did not autoload. I'll try to get the list out today as I want the NeL mod out today.

[bctrackboi11]

So, I've redone Dyckman Oval. I exported using SimLab OBJ Exporter (TIGs exporter freezes my sketchup for some reason). SimLab is fast, but it exports the mtl and obj inside the same folder as the textures. When I renamed the folder to Dyckman_Oval_Textures and moved the obj and mtl files outside of the folder, the attached image is what happened. The model loads fine for me if I leave the obj and mtl in the texture folder. Anybody else have this issue?

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

So, I've redone Dyckman Oval. I exported using SimLab OBJ Exporter (TIGs exporter freezes my sketchup for some reason). SimLab is fast, but it exports the mtl and obj inside the same folder as the textures. When I renamed the folder to Dyckman_Oval_Textures and moved the obj and mtl files outside of the folder, the attached image is what happened. The model loads fine for me if I leave the obj and mtl in the texture folder. Anybody else have this issue?Attachment 1098257

The path that was written in the mtl broke, I'd guess. This is where I was. Then I opened the mtl file in Notepad text editor and did a find/replace to redirect where it was looking for the textures and got them reattached. The problem was I broke where the players stood. So I could then see the model in the 3D model tab in-game fine but couldn't play a game (took me a bit to find that last part out).

Let me get some clarity from Matt or Jorin and see if they have any ideas. Maybe the best thing is for the game to have more than one column in the txt file where you can name a path. They are swamped at the moment with OOTP27 but I'll see if they can at least offer some advice on how to get custom parks loaded correctly. Silvam14 has also dealt worked with them to ensure his parks auto-load smoothly and perhaps can help.

[silvam14]

The era_ballparks file has a list of every ballpark used in each season.

The key pieces are basically the folder names of the park in the models directory and the last column on the right in the file called "Overall path"

I think the .prk file in each folder needs to be generic (ie no years after the name, but I'm not 100% sure)

[LansdowneSt]

I don't think the capitalization matters but I do think, since there is but one column in the txt file for the path the game ought to look for, that the key files all need to be consistently named. Here is the list the mod uses to assign parks. It shows the path in my txt file.

In the next post, I show five mod-created parks that load and five that do not. For some, the different file location and names are clear but for Ponce_de_Leon, I think the double underscore in the .prk file is messing it up. If we can establish that OOTP's auto-load system has a "correct" way, it wouldn't be hard to replicate - it's just no one knew since so many users end up, for good reason, needing to manually load the custom parks.

[LansdowneSt]

Here are five that load automatically showing the file names and the key file names:

[LansdowneSt]

Here are five that fail to auto-load. I can't figure out why Clover Park won't load but the others have structures that are more complicated or are could reasonably be assumed to be unseen by the game given there is only one place to tell it what to look for.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by bctrackboi11

So, I've redone Dyckman Oval. I exported using SimLab OBJ Exporter (TIGs exporter freezes my sketchup for some reason). SimLab is fast, but it exports the mtl and obj inside the same folder as the textures. When I renamed the folder to Dyckman_Oval_Textures and moved the obj and mtl files outside of the folder, the attached image is what happened. The model loads fine for me if I leave the obj and mtl in the texture folder. Anybody else have this issue?Attachment 1098257

This definitely because the files were written to look for the other files at the places they'd be upon export. I had the same issue when I tried to move files. I assume the export option screen doesn't give the ability to set different landing places for the Textures, obj and mtl pieces via the export wizard. I will continue to see if Matt or Jorin has any ideas. If you have a screen shot if the SimLabs export screen, post it and I'll add that to my running AI chat that's trying to help me.

[LansdowneSt]

So, i think a conversation with silvam14 has gotten me on the correct path.

For those parks that would not load, the .prk files were pointing to locations that were not relative paths, or older file names or were otherwise misaligned. By reloading things manually (even if the files were embedded in the textile subfolder) and then regenerating the prk file and ensuring that the prk file generated had the correct naming convention itself and that was swapped in, I've gotten nearly all of the troublesome ones to auto-load.

Once I have them all working, I will upload new versions of the park folders in the mod link.

[zappa1]

What a terrific endeavor you are trying to accomplish. I appreciate all the work you are doing on this. I have always checked each park when I start a new save because some would be right and some would be wrong so this would be wonderful.