IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[wilddog]

I really dont know how it works and if it is possible to improve it but I would really be happy if the pathfinding amending in IWTE would be less laggy.
Not a complaining, just a opinion.

or maybe it is just with me that it happens?

I know that's why I originally did it as a TGA so you can quickly do things using a custom editor.

I then added the IWTE version to allow single updates and then amended it again to allow more of a paint effect. If its slow then magnify the view and use a brush thats relatively small.. the bigger the brush the more its checking.

I could probably do something to speed things up further but its not exactly a priority given the number of options you have to amend as you like.... sorry

I'm also using a 5 year old PC so I'll see if it is really that bad with my newer one...

[Alexander der Große]

Hi,

I've worked a few days with the IWTE Tool and have already converted the castles into forts etc..
Now I wanted to unlock the Northern European churches for Russia, because Russia has no churches in vanilla.
But it does not work. On the picture you can see the path and my changes.


What did I do wrong.

Thanks Wilddog and Makanyane for the great Tool.

Merry Christmas.

[makanyane]

Hi,

I've worked a few days with the IWTE Tool and have already converted the castles into forts etc..
Now I wanted to unlock the Northern European churches for Russia, because Russia has no churches in vanilla.
But it does not work. On the picture you can see the path and my changes.


What did I do wrong.

Thanks Wilddog and Makanyane for the great Tool.

Merry Christmas.

did you actually put a folder on that path? If you're just trying to get it to load the vanilla NE abbey for them then the path should be;
settlements/techtree/north_euorpean/abbey/ne_abbey.world

there's been reports elsewhere about eastern_european and greek cultures not behaving properly if used in pkg files - eastern_european apparently defaults to northern_european anyway... first off check that your
EE settlement has actually got a 128x64 'Church' category tech tree slot - and that it is enabled for them in EDB and built. That may work just from the existing culture=northern_european .worldpkgdesc - if it doesn't try making a copy of the NE pkg - leave the culture as NE but add a faction specific line for your EE faction name (if necessary repeat for all the EE factions)


Happy Christmas everyone

[Alexander der Große]

Hi Makanyane,

I've tried everything, but it does not work. I do not know what I can make yet.
Where can I find the ee settlements. The Russians use but the European settlements, so there would still be slots free, right?

I load up my changes. Can you check the files even if you have time, please?

http://depositfiles.com/files/xpkaek1hu

Hope you understand my poor English.

regards

[leo.civil.uefs]

can I do something to change a settlement type?
I mean, changing e.g. city to huge city etc.

So I could make different settlements using city from vanilla and then change their type to another, like huge city and village, so I could implement they all in the game. (Since if I put all them as city they all will look the same).

[wolfslayer]

Have you guys explored the link between techtree buildings and export_descr_buildings.txt?

EDIT: I did a quick test and yes, the relation between the two is definite, for in settlement techtrees (ie., not ports etc). This only took a few minutes to set up and test in an ongoing ss6 campaign. I just created the package file and saved in same folder as the se huge cathedral, using that world model as a test for huge_cathedral_o city in the EDB.

So theoretically all those buildings in the EDB can have actual techtree models, if no pkg file exists (ex: small_church) then the slot filler will load for that slot. What needs more research is the category in the worldpkg file and how that works with the EDB.

The faction here is Kievan, city Kiev. A forced sally siege battle quickly created using "developers hotseat" mode is used to see the settlement ingame.

Basically what you have in the 1st screen is the NE huge city loading the SE cathedral for an orthodox cathedral with no "faction" specified in the settlement worldpkg file. "Faction" I am almost positive, is non functional in techtree worldpkg files. But unique building trees in the EDB should be possible, EDB ex: huge_cathedral_R city requires factions { russia, } to give factions unique techtree models.

2nd screen is a faction specific world model with the same 128 x 64 "church" techtree slot.

[makanyane]

So theoretically all those buildings in the EDB can have actual techtree models, if no pkg file exists (ex: small_church) then the slot filler will load for that slot. What needs more research is the category in the worldpkg file and how that works with the EDB.

Fairly sure the category is irrelevant in relation to EDB (as can't see any logic to 'generic' otherwise) - think it's just a matching mechanism between the slot position in the .worlds and the pkg's.

e.g. if you have a "fred" category 64x32 slot in a .world and you have 2 pkg's for "fred" category that contain "ballista_range" and "great_market" as types - then you should get whichever of those the settlement has built.

The 'size' actually works similarly - it isn't really a size, you could have size as 'a0xcd' in the .world and .pkg - if you hex edit it.... IWTE won't like it as it uses the size convention to display the position.


@leo.civil.uefs
the .worldpkgdesc is the only thing that tells the .world what settlement level it is (or if its a techtree/ambient etc)

within reason you can swap any of them around i.e. use a pkg for the village level to load a city.world model in place of the village one...

there are some issues you need to watch out for - anything you load as a settlement must have a plaza and deployment zone

if you load something with a gatehouse the walls level in descr_walls.txt must have a gatehouse entry or it will crash

you can't change the descr walls level that a village / town etc uses - but you can change the contents of that walls level so it uses higher/lower siege towers etc... but that will affect all of that settlement level throughout the mod.


@Alexander der Große
sorry there aren't EE settlements in vanilla - I was getting confused with modded versions
(I switched all the culture names in my mod to new internal names to avoid some issues, so haven't messed around with the greek/EE issues lately) - will have a look at your files when I've sobered up from Christmas.... *hic*

[wolfslayer]

"Fairly sure the category is irrelevant in relation to EDB (as can't see any logic to 'generic' otherwise) - think it's just a matching mechanism between the slot position in the .worlds and the pkg's."
generic and slot_filler are the only techtree categories mentioned in the exe, which makes sense, it's nice to know one can use hidden_resource and such in the EDB to have distinct buildings and wonders appear only in certain cities.

[leo.civil.uefs]

there is a limit for how much we can extend the terrain? The IWTE SAYS 551 IS THE LIMIT. (wich makes med 2 to crash during load.).

Actually, no matter what value I put in it always crashes.

By the way, what is those values we put in iwte when extending? its the root of the number of vertexes or what?

EDIT: ok I fixed it, its necessary to extend also the pathfinding and the vegetation to the same size.

[makanyane]

251 is enough for most things ... that should get you to the edge of the deployment area (red boundary)

terrain and vegetation have to match - pathfinding can be smaller (unless you really need to block the entire area)

[Rorarii]

ok, this is beyond funny .. although it looks funny, some Forts with ditches are ignored by attackers ?? Although I'm not sure it relates to this tool ? i remember creating my own ditches with this tool and it seemed to work - rams moved around the ditch to enter the only flat terrain infront of the door.

BTW, these small forts are mostly useless as you cannot put archers on the many towers and such, which replaces useful walls. Forts are suppose to be an advantage to defends, not death-traps.

Not sure if this is the right thread for Fort problems?

R

[makanyane]

Not sure if this is the right thread for Fort problems?

It's fine if you're intending to use IWTE to try to fix things - but no point complaining about vanilla forts here otherwise...

ok, this is beyond funny .. although it looks funny, some Forts with ditches are ignored by attackers ?? Although I'm not sure it relates to this tool ? i remember creating my own ditches with this tool and it seemed to work - rams moved around the ditch to enter the only flat terrain infront of the door.

BTW, these small forts are mostly useless as you cannot put archers on the many towers and such, which replaces useful walls. Forts are suppose to be an advantage to defends, not death-traps.

R

If you create a steep enough ditch then they can't walk through it. The steepness required probably varies according to the settings in descr_pathfinding.txt i.e. these bits;

infantry
		{
			min_slope	60		; minimum slope before penalty applies
			max_slope	80		; maximum slope the unit can handle
			penalty		1.01	; penalty per degree
			min_width	0		; minimum width = 0m

I haven't tried adjusting those - might be worth testing before getting into changing the terrain.

The other alternative is to just block the area under the ditch in the .worldpathfinding file using IWTE to change the file. That ditch doesn't look like too much of an obstacle though if you're going to block it adding more stakes or making it deeper might look more logical....


You can use IWTE to add deployment blocks to the top flat surfaces of the tower shapes - game doesn't always seem to recognise the deployment area if the surface is also part of a "tower" game object, so it might need some changes to the model groups to get that to work properly....

[Rorarii]

Thanks, i'lll give it a try. I've noticed a descr_pathfinding TXT file and DAT file, I assume you have to rename the DAT file to regenerate the TXT file ? ... will give it a try anywho

R

[leo.civil.uefs]

Herm... sorry for asking again but I still dont understand.

lets imagine I want to make 3 different custom settlements.
I do the 3 ones starting from vanilla north_european_huge_city.
If I implement one of them, all huge cities will look like it.
That means I cannot have my 3 settles beeing unique each one on the strat map.
So can I change something in the files so each one would correspond to a different vanilla level of settlement so I can have them all unique and included?
Or must I start working in every settlement using a different vanilla level?

I just want to know if it is possible or not, no need of detailed explanations.

Thanks.

[wilddog]

@Leo - You can set a specific battle model and strat model at a faction or culture level.
All settlements at the same level need to use the same walls etc as the attackers will always use the same size ladders etc for the same 'size settlement'.

That size settlement will be used for all settlements of the same size based on the criteria you set eg whether you set it for a faction or for a culture.

simples yes

PS max size corresponding to the standard map size is 221 not 251... sorry Mak! IWTE still mentions that

[makanyane]

Herm... sorry for asking again but I still dont understand.

lets imagine I want to make 3 different custom settlements.
I do the 3 ones starting from vanilla north_european_huge_city.
If I implement one of them, all huge cities will look like it.
That means I cannot have my 3 settles beeing unique each one on the strat map.
So can I change something in the files so each one would correspond to a different vanilla level of settlement so I can have them all unique and included?
Or must I start working in every settlement using a different vanilla level?

I just want to know if it is possible or not, no need of detailed explanations.

Thanks.

assuming you want three unique settlements for different factions within NE culture,
then make one the default one for NE huge city, then for the strat models make model with same name and put it in data/models_strat/residences/faction_variants/"faction_name"/
for the other two factions...

similarly for the battle model replace the NE_huge_city with your new files for the first one.... then for the others create new folder with new .world/collision etc.etc... and also new .worldpkgdesc that is faction specific for that faction.... explanation is assuming you only have 3 factions in that culture


easiest way of splitting 'unique' settlements is by stopping everyone building the top level settlements and having a unique one per faction as above (for huge_city) or two per faction if you use large_city (castle side) as well....

[wilddog]

Decided IWTE will include a vegetation sprite generator in 2012

[wilddog]

Just got to do some more detailed tests on the vegetation sprite generator and I'll write a tutorial however its going to be pretty simple. Basically just need to add the exe to a directory containing the cas model and a texture directory with the models texture as a TGA.. then press the create button.

The generator will generate the sprite, a diffuse.TGA map and a normal.TGA. You will need to convert the diffuse and normal TGA's back to DDS and then to textures. Thats about it. You can probably fiddle around with graphics packages to improve the TGA's but they seem to work fairly well as is though a little darker on the ones we've been testing.

[leo.civil.uefs]

when I try to resize my terrain, it actually dont extend the terrain. The only change that happens is that the terrain is lowered in y axis. Strange.

[makanyane]

when I try to resize my terrain, it actually dont extend the terrain. The only change that happens is that the terrain is lowered in y axis. Strange.

I just checked 6_4_1 and it seems to be working - to resize you need to put in values for both x and y (width and length) both values should be the same for settlement terrains - only techtrees are normally rectangular.

there isn't a height adjustment associated with the re-sizing process


if you're not seeing changes to the terrain length/width it's probably because you haven't edited the merge factor (alpha channel in wtbase.tga - or using edit in 2d window) - most terrains have merge 0 (black alpha) at edges and the resize process just extends whatever is at the edge outwards to the new size....

if the merge factor is 0 - it won't effect the battlemap



if that doesn't help I need more explanation / files to see exactly what you are changing