Essentials Series/Industrial Park basics

This page is part of the Essential Series modding tutorials. It will cover the basics of using Industrial Park.

When you open IP (that's how I'll sometimes refer to the tool) for the first time, you'll see an empty main window and the About box. You can close the About box for now.

HIP/HOP Files, Layers and Assets
To open a HIP or HOP file in IP, click the Archive Editor tool strip item and open a new one. Use File -> Open to open a HIP or HOP file; open a second Archive Editor and do it again to open the second one in the pair (for example: JF01.HIP and JF01.HOP). You'll usually want both the HIP and the HOP of a level open in separate Archive Editors when editing it (this doesn't apply to Scooby which has only HIPs for each level). HIP and HOP files are, in fact, one single format (which is HIP); the difference between a HIP and a HOP is simply the type of asset which is usually stored in each of them.

HIP archives are composed of multiple layers, and each layer can contain many assets. Assets can be of various types, and each type has a different function in the game. Learning how to mod BFBB is basically learning how to work with different asset types (unless we're talking about code hacks, which is different from what we're doing here). We're going to look at each asset type in detail in the tutorial.

View Controls
Keyboard controls:


 * W, A, S, D: move view forward, left, backward, right
 * Shift + (W, S): move view up, down
 * Ctrl + (W, A, S, D): rotate view up, left, down, right
 * Q, E: decrease interval, increase interval (view move speed)
 * 1, 3: decrease rotation interval, increase rotation interval (view rotation speed)
 * C: toggles backface culling
 * F: toggles wireframe mode
 * G: open Asset Data Editor for selected assets
 * R: reset view
 * T: snap gizmos to grid
 * U: toggle UI Mode
 * V: cycle between gizmos
 * Z: toggle mouse mode
 * F1: displays the View Config box
 * Ctrl + Shift + S: save all open HIPs
 * F5: attempt to run game
 * Delete: delete selected assets

Mouse controls:


 * Left click on an asset to select it
 * Ctrl + Left click to select multiple
 * Middle click and drag to rotate view
 * Mouse wheel to move forward/backward
 * Right click on screen to choose a gizmo or template
 * Shift + Right click to place a template
 * Ctrl + Right click and drag to pan (move view up, left, down, right)

Mouse mode (Z): similar to a first person camera. The view rotates automatically as you move the mouse. Use the keyboard to move around.

You can review those controls in IP in Options -> View Controls. Don't worry if you don't know what all of the things above are yet, we will cover everything in the tutorial series.



View Config
The View Config allows you to view and set Industrial Park's 3D view's current position, rotation, movement speed (separate for position and rotation), maximum draw distance and field of view. Open it from the Options tool strip or by pressing F1.



Display
In the Display tool strip menu, you can choose a few options related to Industrial Park's renderer:


 * Asset Types: choose which asset types are currently being displayed. If you're looking to hide the obnoxious large colored boxes/spheres from the view, these are the MVPT, SFX and TRIG assets.


 * Colors: use this to set colors for the widgets of different asset types (useful if the color scheme of the level you're editing is similar to one of the default colors, for example)
 * No culling: disables backface culling.
 * Wireframe: view models in wireframe mode.
 * VSync: uncheck this option to disable the framerate limiter.
 * Lower Quality Graphics: check this option to use 16 bit depth and stencil buffers and disable anti-aliasing, depth clip and anisotropic filtering (by default, 32 bit buffers are used and those options are on).


 * UI Mode and UI Mode AutoSize: toggles UI Mode. See ../User Interfaces/ for more info.
 * Use LODT For Rendering and Use PIPT For Rendering: uses the data on those assets to control the renderer. See ../Stage Controllers/ for more info.
 * Hide Invisible Meshes: hides models which are set to always be invisible through their atomic flags. Those meshes can be parts of bigger, visible models and can never be made visible ingame. See MODL for more info.
 * Movement Preview: see Platforms for more info.

Projects
Industrial Park projects are a resource to help users with level editing. A project file is a text (JSON) which saves an open instance of the program, meaning it contains:


 * Opened HIP/HOPs
 * View position, rotation, FOV, draw distance, speed
 * Settings sucha as wireframe, culling, custom colors
 * Texture folders
 * Which assets are currently visible
 * Gizmo grid

All of those are restored from the file, meaning you can quickly restore Industrial Park to a previous state. From the Project tool strip in IP's main window:


 * New: closes the current project instance and resets Industrial Park to default.
 * Open: choose a project JSON to open.
 * Save: saves the current instance as a project JSON, overwriting the previous one. Does not save edits on HIP/HOP files on the Archive Editors.
 * Save As: saves the current instance as a new project JSON. Does not save edits on HIP/HOP files on the Archive Editors.


 * Auto-Save On Closing: automatically saves the currently open project JSON when closing Industrial Park.
 * Auto-Load On Startup: automatically loads the previously open project JSON when opening Industrial Park.

If Auto-Save On Closing is enabled and no project JSON is specified, a file called default_project.json in the same directory as Industrial Park will be created and used. Project files can be opened and edited in a text editor, where you can manually edit them if you want to, although I don't recommend doing this.

File Associations
There are two useful file associations that will make your modding life easier (these are the default programs that open when you double-click a file in Windows Explorer). Both of them are optional.


 * HIP/HOP files with Industrial Park: you can set this by clicking Associate HIP/HOP files under the Tools tool strip menu in IP. This creates an association for HIP and HOP files on your registry so they'll open directly with Industrial Park if you double-click them.


 * DOL files with Dolphin: you cannot do this through Industrial Park, so you have to create the association yourself either by double-clicking a DOL file and setting the default program to open it as Dolphin or by choosing Dolphin as the progam for DOL files in the Default Programs settings which you can open from the Control Panel on Windows. DOL files are GameCube executables; you can find it named as boot.dol under the sys folder which you extracted earlier.

The reason why we do this last one is to use the Run Game (F5) function, under the Tools tool strip menu. Clicking on that will attempt to close the current running instance of Dolphin if there is one and launch another one with the DOL of the game, but you need the association this to work, and it only works on the dev releases of Dolphin (not 5.0). When you do this, the boot level in the INI file will be set to the level of the first opened HIP/HOP.

Editing Assets
Now that you know how to work Industrial Park, see the next page in the tutorial to get started with editing assets.