Farm_Tile_Templates Research

[Primergy]

Farm Tiles

The Farm Tile Templates are used by the Engine to create Fields but also the "Cities" on the Campaign Battle Maps.
There are several Templates for nearly each region, like America and India.
So understanding those templates enables us to change the look of the campaign Battles.

Here you have a partial assemblied puzzle of those tiles (This is the upper right corner of a 2048*2048 map, with the zero point nearly there where the red dummy is):




Structure

The overall structure is rather easy and straight forward, the names already indicating what each "list" does.

You have Entries for:

1. Farm List
2. Wall List
3. Road List
4. Wall Post List
5. EF Line List
6. Farm Tree List (2x)

After those Lists there is a bunch of coordinates where i actually don't know what they are doing.
If you type them in they sometimes are resutling in a closed ring and sometimes open.
Atleast those <u> are the number of the entries.




If you open up such a farm_list entry you have always the same structure:

1. FARM_LIST
   
   1. FARM_DATA_ITEM_OWNER
      
      • Name (Field13)
      • <u> 0
      • <u> 1
      • FARM_DATA_COLLECTION
      
      
      
      1. 
         
         1. ID LIST (244 245 247 248 249)
            
         2. ID LIST (65, 506, 507)
         3. FARM DATA ITEM LIST (Here are the field props placed like a cart)
         4. FARM DATA ITEM LIST (Mostly empty)
         5. FARM DECAL LIST
         6. ID LIST
         7. ID LIST
         
         
      
      
      
      • FARM_DATA_COLLECTION (same as above, empty)
      • FARM_DATA_COLLECTION (same as above, empty
      
      
   2. FARM
      
      • Postionend_wall_handle_list
        
        
        • Wall_List_Section
          
          • Number of the Postion of the Wall in the Template File (eg 35, 65,0)
            
          
          
        
        
      • road_handle_list
      • id_list (46)
        
      • id_list
      • Farm_Collision (More later on this one)

To be continued.

[Primergy]

A Field Entry consists of two parts - the Farm Data Item Owner which handles the objects and the look of a field and the Farm Part, which seams to controll, how the field "interacts" with other fields and walls.


Field Collision:

The Field Collision defines the size and the borders of a field.



The three v2 entries are spanning up a plane on wich the texture get placed, the size of the plane corrospondents with the size of the field texture, means one pixel of the plane is one pixel on the map.

The v2_array is a collection of coordinates, which defines the "route" of a closed spline (The Thin Green Line on the edge of a field).
It's obvioulsy the border of the field, but what happens if 2 borders are overlapping, isn't known yet.

What the U and i4_array entries are doing, i don't know. But after a quick check there seams to be a muster. The U often has a 17,1 and 3 there and the i3_array either 0, or 0,3,2 or 0,3,1.
So maybe those are used to tell the engine when a field is allowed to be placed (eg the "town field" when you fight in a city, or the "warehouse" field, when you are fighting on a slot)




POSITIONED WALL HANDLE LIST

(Later)

[Primergy]

Instead of posting dozens of pics i decided to upload a commented XML of the EU_North_template_tile

There are still things unkown, so if you have an idea what something could be or if i made somewhere a mistake, feel free to update it and upload it again.

Attachment 141566

[taw]

I probably broke your tutorial, but I added support for three tags (farm_tree, wall_post, id_list), and some xml splitting.

It should be a lot cleaner now. If you need any more help with this kind of changes, just tell me which tags you'd like to see cleaned up.

[Primergy]

When its needed that the xml folder has the same format as the newly exported one, then yes, you did .

But thank you anyway, it's now easier and faster to work with .

I finally recognized what the <flt> tags in front of the wall coordinates are doing. Those flt are the distance between the starting and end point of a wall. If those floats don't fit with the lenght of the wall ingame, the texture gets strechted.

[Primergy]

Found out what ID thingies mean:




Those refering to the farm_tree list while the first ID List belongs to the first Farm Tree List and the second ID list belongs to the second Farm Tree List.
So the Number 1024 is the 1025st Tree entry.

[taw]

I haven't been following this too closely - how far are we wrt modding battle maps and creating new battle maps?

From what I remember Medieval 2 maps were far more interesting than Empire maps, but with some modding it should be fixable, right?

[Primergy]

I haven't been following this too closely - how far are we wrt modding battle maps and creating new battle maps?

hmm, i would say it's completly possible to make valuable changes to existing templates but creating a compelte set, while doable, a lot of work since you have to type all values by hand^^.

The heightmaps is another thing, the game uses some preset templates to generate the terrain and those are atm designed that way that hills and other things are on the outside field, while the inside is mostly "plains".
Though CA was so friendly and left the colour code inside of the packs, so propably it would be possible add eg an ocean near a harbor map (atm the "slot templates" don't have a template with ocean "painted" inside, so you always get land map, when attacking an harbor).
Though it's hard to say if such changes are really working, because of the random map generation, so you have to play a lot of hours till you get the map you created.

[Primergy]

No idea if someone is interested, but i was able to place a usable wall on a custom map.

[T.C.]

This thread may be quiet, but it will prove invaluable to people making maps. Don't let the radio silence slow your progress

[taw]

No idea if someone is interested, but i was able to place a usable wall on a custom map.

So, what can be done so far?

I've been playing some M2TW lately, and it seems to have a lot more interesting and varied maps than ETW.

[Primergy]

I think more varied heightmaps is a db entry (or atleast how likly a landscape type appears).

The Farm templates itself are completly editable, it's only a lot of handwork (to place a wooden fence on my map i have to type 1080 numbers )
Possible usage would be to to get a road network on the maps between the villages (it really upsets me..^^) or if possible to add a new subculture and add vineyards to vine regions

[taw]

I think more varied heightmaps is a db entry (or atleast how likly a landscape type appears).

The Farm templates itself are completly editable, it's only a lot of handwork (to place a wooden fence on my map i have to type 1080 numbers )
Possible usage would be to to get a road network on the maps between the villages (it really upsets me..^^) or if possible to add a new subculture and add vineyards to vine regions

1080 numbers? Not that I have any free time, but in alternate universe when I had some, does it sound like it could be automated?

[Primergy]

Of course it can, walls in the xml, fences are technically not more then splines (lines) where you have to insert the coordinates of the knots. For stonewalls you have to insert only four coordinates, for wood fences nknots = length(wall)/2.

My actual workflow is, to place a spline within 3ds max, divide it with the number of needed knots, and then select one by one and copy the coordinates to the xml.
If someone knows maxscript it would be possible to extract the coordinates with few clicks in the needed format, so it would be only a copy and paste affair... but well i dont know maxscript .

[taw]

One minor thing that might help all of this - u2* types just got fixed,
so now you have <angle> type, conveniently expressed in degrees 0..360.

It makes so much more sense now:

     <rec type="FARM_DATA_ITEM">
      <s>grassmud</s>
      <v2 x="201.26654" y="559.64008"/>
      <angle>269.802</angle>
      <v2 x="10.0000581741333" y="10.0000085830688"/>
     </rec>

[The Hedge Knight]

I think the probability of tiles appearing may be in battleterrain (or etw equiv)/tiles/metadata.idx

Cant see any tables on it anyway.

[Primergy]

I assume they are choosen more or less randomly in the "field" area which is definied in the tile templates (the red areas). But there seam to be some l4-xyz entries which "specalize" a field for a certain "usage", so that the city template gets placed when attacking or fighting near city, some others are placed when you are fight on a slot (eg the "warehouse" tile"

[nowerman]

Hello

Could you reupload your images ( the hosting site has removed them)

[Primergy]

They will get reactivated tomorrow^^.

[CrisGer]

This is a very interesting thread, it is amazing to see what detail is possible.