IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[wilddog]

Spotted a couple of issues with last version in that a couple of the painter options weren't working. Plan to release a new version in first half of October.

Items included :
1) amendment so that items saved in IWTEsave folder stay with the same name as the original file. If that exists in that directory a back up of the existing file will be kept (only one back up though).
2) IWTE painting process will allow you to go back to 10 previous button releases assuming you machine is capable of it (i.e. doesn't hit memory issues and also doesn't check).
3) Vegetation sprite process requires textures rather than TGA's.
4) Vegetation painter process current problem fixed (bug).
5) Strat map files displayed at relative sizes (strat map processes will be expanded in later versions).
6) Painting selections where applicable allow selection of complete painter palette (OK I somehow managed to switch that off in the last release )

other items dependent on time.

[xHolyCrusader]

Oh great, gonna try it out as soon as available, everything for the tut should be ready now

Also thanks for adding the undo function.

[wilddog]

Hi, new version IWTE_v14_10_A released

with version 14_10_A
1) amendment so that items saved in IWTEsave folder stay with the same name as the original file. If that exists in that directory a back up of the existing file will be kept (only one back up though).
2) IWTE painting process will allow you to go back to 10 previous button releases assuming you machine is capable of it (i.e. doesn't hit memory issues and also doesn't check).
3) Vegetation sprite process requires textures rather than TGA's.
4) Vegetation painter process current problem fixed (bug).
5) Strat map tga files displayed at relative sizes (strat map processes will be expanded in later versions).
6) Painting selections where applicable allow selection of complete painter palette (OK I somehow managed to switch that off in the last release )
7) Animmesh process updated to use milkshape version info for writing/reading.

Please let me know if you spot any issues/problems.

XHolyCrusader - Thanks for working on the tutorial. Strat Map processes will likely be updated a few times as I amend and update. Let me know if any issues on the undo/redo it basically handles upto 10 mouse releases but I may make that a configuration thing in the end. The amount of undo is specific to each image opened in the printer process. There are also likely some redundant buttons from processes prior to the painter processes which may still be removed.

[G|I|Sandy]

Really amazing things you guys do here. I am hoping to get a hint on the problem that i have.

I have successfully made custom strat model for a fort that looks like a town and while keeping stone forts by using an additional culture. Here comes the troublesome part, the battle model. I simply copied the north european town folder and pasted into a new folder under settlements. I edited the worldpkgdescr file accordingly (with all paths correct). It is all working fine, except for the fact that the town is empty. The places where church, smith etc would be are empty. My question is, whether i could populate them with level 1 of all the tech tree buildings? If so, how?

Also, what use does "variant" have in worldpkgdescr file?

Last problem, my new town forts are recognized as higher tier settlements. When i siege the town fort, i can build rams, ladders and towers. However, in battle only ram can be used and it deals very little damage to gates (just as much as it would deal to a stone fort gate). I have changed fortification level to 1, still the same problem occurs.

EDIT: What i am trying to do here must have occurred to someone else before. If so, has anybody shared publicly custom made towns to be used as forts?

Sandy

[xHolyCrusader]

One half of the battlemap is just flooded by trees, any idea what causes this?

[makanyane]

Really amazing things you guys do here. I am hoping to get a hint on the problem that i have.

I have successfully made custom strat model for a fort that looks like a town and while keeping stone forts by using an additional culture. Here comes the troublesome part, the battle model. I simply copied the north european town folder and pasted into a new folder under settlements. I edited the worldpkgdescr file accordingly (with all paths correct). It is all working fine, except for the fact that the town is empty. The places where church, smith etc would be are empty. My question is, whether i could populate them with level 1 of all the tech tree buildings? If so, how?

they're the bits that are normally populated by 'techtrees' you can't activate techtree stuff for forts, it's a settlement/EDB relationship thing. You'd need to manually extract all the structures from the techtrees (there's lots as they're divided into silly small chunks) then merge them back together, sorting the group/object naming out... and add them in to your modified town as new structures, I can explain more if you really want to go that route - it's possibly easier to design your own stuff to fill the gaps though.

Also, what use does "variant" have in worldpkgdescr file?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ttlement-plans
apparently - I haven't tried it, and it looks like the campaign version doesn't work, but the battlemap bit might.

Last problem, my new town forts are recognized as higher tier settlements. When i siege the town fort, i can build rams, ladders and towers. However, in battle only ram can be used and it deals very little damage to gates (just as much as it would deal to a stone fort gate). I have changed fortification level to 1, still the same problem occurs.

Kingdoms .exe seems to set the forts automatically as stone fort type level, hence the ability to build ladders and towers. That's linked to the descr_walls level which will be the same one as used by castles, large_castles, and large_city's etc which have the 12m high stone wall. Unfortunately that also sets the gate strength. I've tried experimenting with various things, that fortification level in the pkg, and EDB settings (for settlements) and haven't found anything that looks like it changes things. I'd suggest maybe increasing the ram attack strength if possible, when it attacks a real stone fort/castle gate with oil etc it should still have more difficulty.

(descr_walls inflexibility tends to end up being the major problem with most of this stuff )


@xHolyCrusader
possibly a .worldvegetation file issue - if you open that in the latest version (14_10_A) what does the WVForestDensity layer look like? it should be mainly black with some light grey bits where you want forest to 'bleed through' and around the edges where the terrain file merges anyway.

[xHolyCrusader]

-

[makanyane]

@xHolyCrusader
your .worldvegetation file is sized 49x49 your .worldterrrain is 71x71 - they should be the same! re-size the veg file up and hopefully that'll fix it
(the veg file on it's own looks fine)

[G|I|Sandy]

makanyane,

I figured i had to extract buildings. I tried just that, and found that none of the tech tree buildings were in the Objects list on the right. There were many bits and parts of walls, some static decorations (carts, wagons etc), some houses. However, there were no techtrees to select. I used 2d and 3d windows to view the world - no techtrees. Must be somewhere else, like other folder where game refers to? In any case, I will need to learn IWTE in depth eventually. I think i can leave "aesthetics" for now, as i have more important things to do in my mod. Knowing that this is possible is all i need for now. Thanks for your efforts.

As for the wall level, i think there is a global setting in descr_campaign_db.xml that overrides everything else.

Sandy

[makanyane]

makanyane,

I figured i had to extract buildings. I tried just that, and found that none of the tech tree buildings were in the Objects list on the right. There were many bits and parts of walls, some static decorations (carts, wagons etc), some houses. However, there were no techtrees to select. I used 2d and 3d windows to view the world - no techtrees. Must be somewhere else, like other folder where game refers to? In any case, I will need to learn IWTE in depth eventually. I think i can leave "aesthetics" for now, as i have more important things to do in my mod. Knowing that this is possible is all i need for now. Thanks for your efforts.

The only bit in your settlement related to techtrees is the 'slot' if you go to "game objects" tab and "view techtrees" you'll see the locations, and type that they're going to load. What that actually does is when the settlement loads is call the most appropriate .worldpkgdesc for a techtree, according to what is built in that settlement in the campaign (or random stuff in custom battle). The techtree buildings are actually separate little .world sets of their own, they're in data/settlements/techtree/north_euorpean etc. To extract bits from them you'd need to load the techtree .world etc as the three binaries and write the structures to ms3d. If you're not bothered about keeping the damaged sections it'd be easier; use the "specials" tab and "write ms3d file - undamaged" which will get you just the undamaged versions of the objects, which can then get re-grouped in milkshape into one big object, merged with the other structures using the same texture, and moved to suit the location you want them to fill the gaps in the 'fort'...

As for the wall level, i think there is a global setting in descr_campaign_db.xml that overrides everything else.

Sandy

yeah I assume;

<fort_fortification_level string="3"/>

is what's setting it to that wall level - can't see anyway you can separate that from the other forts/castles though as that's telling it to use the level 3 entry in descr_walls which is hardcoded to be used for castles/large city too

[wilddog]

Items for next version (mostly aimed at strat map processes) :
1) 3D views to support editing of map_heights.HGT
2) 3D views to support editing of map_heights.TGA.
3) Conversion between map_height.HGT and map_heights.TGA (both directions).
4) A loader for a TGA (or other image file) which can then be converted into a map_height.HGT file based on color bands.


WHOOPS : Mak pointed out I defaulted current version to the specials tab. I'll correct later this week and post a 'B' Version. Hopefully include items 1 and 2 above in that version.

[Falconwatch]

These new changes look awesome.
However we have some more questions for u

So for factions from the Eastern European and Greek culture, can we use pkg and make it a different set of settlements for each culture,
but for Middle Eastern, Central American, Southern European and Northern European, it can only be one culture one set of settlements?

Hope I'm not being too confusing and u guys can understand what I meant.

[makanyane]

Hi Falconwatch
you can make faction specific sets of settlements for any faction whatever culture it's in...

what are you having difficulty with?

[Falconwatch]

Well the thing is we are actually going over the 7 culture limits for our mod, so at the moment we're trying to mix and match
all the standard settlements, capitals etc. for the different factions. It's a little messy atm.

Here's the WIP thread we've set up:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...h-Eastern-Asia

We're trying to split each culture further using the pkg method, say the "middle_eastern" culture, so for the factions within
we want to split it into two, each with different sets of custom settlements. Sort of like how the greek and eastern_european
culture are done in vanilla, but with different looking settlements as well.

So how should we go about doing this, creating the separate pkg files for the two factions within middle_eastern culture?
We tried simply changing the name of the pkg file for middle_eastern, but it seems to lose its effects and the system will no
longer read it, its file path also doesn't seem to be changeable...

P.S. Are there other ways to bypass or play around this 7 cultures limit? Also for the UI, are there anyway to make them
faction specific instead of it tied to cultures?

[makanyane]

Well the thing is we are actually going over the 7 culture limits for our mod, so at the moment we're trying to mix and match
all the standard settlements, capitals etc. for the different factions. It's a little messy atm.

Here's the WIP thread we've set up:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...h-Eastern-Asia

We're trying to split each culture further using the pkg method, say the "middle_eastern" culture, so for the factions within
we want to split it into two, each with different sets of custom settlements. Sort of like how the greek and eastern_european
culture are done in vanilla, but with different looking settlements as well.

So how should we go about doing this, creating the separate pkg files for the two factions within middle_eastern culture?
We tried simply changing the name of the pkg file for middle_eastern, but it seems to lose its effects and the system will no
longer read it, its file path also doesn't seem to be changeable...

the pkg name only matters if you're trying to 'overwrite' the vanilla one for the whole middle_eastern culture, otherwise game will read all the pkg's regardless of name that are in the folder specified in packagedb.txt - do make sure you've got a copy of that .txt file in your_mod/data/ folder...

can't tell from your thread what the actual factions are you're trying to change but as an example say your middle_eastern culture has 4 factions, england, france, spain, hre - and you want england and france to use Mongol_city and spain and hre to use Steppe_city_A
you need 4 .worldpkgdesc files (it doesn't matter what they're called) contents of first two will have

Name; (doesn't matter unless you're trying to find it in battle editor or if it's a descr_strat placed fort)
Pkg Group: Settlement
Pkg Path: settlements/your_folder/your_subfolder/Mongol_city.world
Category: unused
Size: unused
Type: city (for things other than city look up existing pkg's as they aren't all obvious)
Variant: none
Culture: middle_eastern
Environment: generic
Faction: england (2nd separate pkg will have "france)
fortificationlevel: none

3rd and 4th will have

Name; (doesn't matter unless you're trying to find it in battle editor or if it's a descr_strat placed fort)
Pkg Group: Settlement
Pkg Path: settlements/your_folder/your_subfolder/Steppe_city_A.world
Category: unused
Size: unused
Type: city
Variant: none
Culture: middle_eastern
Environment: generic
Faction: spain
fortificationlevel: none

4th pkg will be as above but with hre as faction

that should work for campaign stuff, but for custom battles you'll likely get a random selection of either Mongol/Steppe or vanilla ME

the complication to the faction specific stuff is that for greek you have to enter southern_european as the culture, and for eastern_european you need northern_european in the pkg.

P.S. Are there other ways to bypass or play around this 7 cultures limit? Also for the UI, are there anyway to make them
faction specific instead of it tied to cultures?

Someone did a UI switching thingy - which basically needs a separate .exe/.bat file that copies/replaces the ui files when it knows what faction the player has selected... not sure how easy that is to set up - you need to ask in main workshop area

Portraits though you can set by combination of culture and religion... so if your ME culture has factions of 'mongol' religion and 'steppe' religion you can separate the pics by using ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/mongol_generals and ui/middle_eastern/portraits/portraits/young/steppe_generals for religion specific versions

event_strings/pics and building ui pics I think you get stuck with, but try asking in the main workshop.

[wilddog]

OK, next version will have :

Items for next version (mostly aimed at strat map processes) :
1) 3D views to support editing of map_heights.HGT
2) 3D views to support editing of map_heights.TGA.
3) Conversion between map_height.HGT and map_heights.TGA (both directions).
4) A loader for a TGA (or other image file) which can then be converted into a map_height.HGT file based on color bands.

Item 4 is basically to load from maperitive. At the moment I'm just trying to add in some 'corrections' for when the satelite height data isn't available and gives a corrupted pixel (which can then be merged to create further corruptions). Also want to see if I can add in some tests around sea levels to reduce issues there. The basic features (ie 1 to 4) are coded and just being tested.. but the testing is also tied to a map I'm doing.

[Falconwatch]

Hey thanks Mak, we're following what you said and giving it a try. Althought another problem poped up.

The Forbidden City seems to crash the game when we turn reflections on ingame, what's wrong and how can we fix it?

[makanyane]

The Forbidden City seems to crash the game when we turn reflections on ingame, what's wrong and how can we fix it?

guessing from pics at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14108847
it might actually be a problem with the reflective plane...

is the structure for that one big plane that sits under everything? if it is then the game might be trying to calculate reflections for all of it, even the bits you don't see,

try A. delete completely the reflective plane structure, just to check if it is that.
B. if it is, try re-making it so that it's hollow in the middle, so only present in the areas you actually want to see
C. if none of the above I probably need to have a look at the files...

[Falconwatch]

Alright we're giving it a try, gonna take some time for them since it's such a large structure.

I have another question although I'm not sure if this is the right place to post it, it's about siege AI.
Because some of our custom cities have unbreakable walls (no animation), is there anyway to let the siege attacket AI
to use their artillery to target the gate instead of walls? As it has no effects at all.

[Falconwatch]

Sorry for the double post, but another urgent issue just showed up for us, its with regard to importing stone forts,
which txt file do we need to edit and how do we write the pkg file for this since u said it's different last time.