IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[leo.civil.uefs]

I must admit though I was amused thinking about how a concept of 'quality of of textures' would be meaningfully applied.

When you zoom in/out in battlemap you can see terrain texture changing to more/less detailed.

[wilddog]

When you zoom in/out in battlemap you can see terrain texture changing to more/less detailed.

Think you mean the viewing of the macro and micro textures or when you see grass models/sprites v not seeing them.

[leo.civil.uefs]

Think you mean the viewing of the macro and micro textures or when you see grass models/sprites v not seeing them.

No, as far as I know the macro is a texture that overlaps the micro in a bigger scale so the terrain does not look homogen and you cant see the repetitive micro texture canvas.
Im not also talking about any vegetation.

Take a look:




First picture shows the terrain from far, second one shows the same terrain from closer zoom, the more you zoom in the more detailed it gets, if you move the camera ahead you can clearly see a detailment borderline that advances togheter with your camera advance.

[Andytheplatypus]

Its not possible to change the grass viewing distance with this is it? Cant seem to get it to change no matter what value I put it at.

[wilddog]

@ Leo - OK finally understand what you are talking about (always takes me a while and Mak helps).

Mak will explain what you are seeing is tied to the use of the lower mipmaps in the DDS/Texture file.

[makanyane]

battleground done with hand made "mip-maps" on the micro texture to demonstrate what you're seeing more clearly;


then the following views with different settings in m2's Options under "texture filtering"- the coloured bands move with the camera...
bilinear;



Anisotropic x 4


Anisotropic x 16



as far as I can see at the moment changing those cfg preferences is the only thing that effects it, but there are a couple of values in the veg/geog.db files that might be worth checking - will have a look later...

[leo.civil.uefs]

as far as I can see at the moment changing those cfg preferences is the only thing that effects it, but there are a couple of values in the veg/geog.db files that might be worth checking - will have a look later...

Ok thanks guys.

As you know Im asking about this because I firstly wanted to understand the quality thing in BGT conversion in descr_geography_new.db.

@ Leo - OK finally understand what you are talking about (always takes me a while and Mak helps).

I dont get why we never understand each other, I mean, we are both dogs.

Eveytime I need to ask something here I feel like:

[wilddog]

Changes to the world terrain processes are moving along slowly. I want to change the heights TGA so end result will likely be non grey scale.. as it will be irrelevant to the new process.

[makanyane]

I finally did the grass bit of the vegetation tutorial (and moved it out of that thread as I wanted to split posts...)

@Leo - wrong sort of dog... more;


which could explain the problem

[wilddog]

As you know Im asking about this because I firstly wanted to understand the quality thing in BGT conversion in descr_geography_new.db.

I assume you now understand it as it was fairly straight forward and just needed a look at the other tabs which use the 'quality values' in the geography.db file as we've said?
I'll probably reorder the sequence of those tabs to make it a bit more intuitive.

[leo.civil.uefs]

I assume you now understand it as it was fairly straight forward and just needed a look at the other tabs which use the 'quality values' in the geography.db file as we've said?
I'll probably reorder the sequence of those tabs to make it a bit more intuitive.

[wilddog]

@Leo - Thanks for the confirmation.

Hope to get a new version of IWTE tool out this week. The process on changing the .world terrain file has completely changed. Some processes have been removed in favor of using the newer painting process. This is quite a fast process (certainly compared with the older IWTE editing process and may actually need to be slowed!) and does not have the issues of TGA scales etc.

The extra world Vegetation bits will be present.

@Alin not sure I will be able to add the vegetation.db check you were after but I'll see.

Edit : the buttons showing the triangles, 3D versions, editing terrain and view terrain will be removed as part of this. Still trying to see which of the TGA ones will remain as they aren't really used anymore.

[leo.civil.uefs]

I did Moria Halls as a custom tile, not a settlement itself.

I added the ceiling, wich is nothing but a very large 3d model, I extended it beyond the battlemap borders so the player camera will never get above it, never seeing the sky, giving you the impression you're always inside the mountain.

However, when I tried to create settlements like that, I noticed that the battlemap border on settlements (the red line beoynd what you cannot go ahead with camera) are more extense than in custom tiles, so I has to insert veeeeeery large 3d models for cave ceiling to avoind player camera seeing the sky, but the results were odd, the only real sucess I got with this type of thing is Moria Halls.

So Im asking because I want to know if it is possible somewayhow to edit the battelamp border limit FOR A SPECIFIC customs ettlement (not a generic settlement level as it would afect all them).
I know it is not something in IWTE, but, do you guys know any bit of the files that regards to it? Or is it something set generically to all settlements?

[makanyane]

We don't know any way of changing that.

If you try making a custom tile using one of your settlements as the ambient model it wold prove if it's anything to do with the .world file contents.

[wilddog]

Slight possibility its tied to the worldterrain file. The one that merges the surrounding background as its always the same size and only on settlements. IWTE doesn't allow you to change its size though and I can't remember if we ever tested it being smaller. We had assumed it was scaled to the rest of the world terrain but it isn't. So question is what would happen if it was reduced in size.

[leo.civil.uefs]

hum... as I said the tile ones are smaller, just something for the record. as I said, it would be useful for cave settlements, not a priority of course.

[wilddog]

We'll probably try some testing of the two things we've mentioned. If they don't show any differences then its likely a hard coded setting or at least nothing to do with the files involved in the settlements themselves.

[Seether]

I spoke to leo about this, but he suggested I bring it up here.

First, my original intent on using IWTE revolved around wanting to use the battle_map assets of settlements (village, town, large_town, etc.) for castles (wooden_fort, stone_keep, castle, etc.). For example, say I would like my "wooden_fort" to look exactly the same as "village" on the battle_map. I read the various tutorials and understand the principle of manipulating the worldpkgdesc files to achieve this, however I have run into a problem.

In the mod I am working on, it appears that the issue is that none of the settlements has a worldpkgdesc file... The mod is a port from RTW, and there are not any castles, only 'settlements, in the campaign. All of the battle maps for the settlements work fine (they are Asian themed).

So my question is: How would one go about using the settlement battle map assets for castles if there aren't any worldpkgdesc files to edit with IWTE?

[makanyane]

For example, say I would like my "wooden_fort" to look exactly the same as "village" on the battle_map.

Beware of that one, the village doesn't have walls, and the ai expects walls for the wooden_fort level. This causes some minor problems for the ai attacking and a complete stall if it tries to Sally Out. With vanilla settlements best match is use Town for wooden_fort, use large_town or city for stone_keep as the wall height is the same, and large_city for castle/large_castle and fortress as their wall height is the same (huge_city is taller) - but if the settlements you're using are already modded they might have already changed the heights or descr_walls settings.

How would one go about using the settlement battle map assets for castles if there aren't any worldpkgdesc files to edit with IWTE?

you need to look in the original m2tw data/settlements folder (you'll need an unpacked version)

if they haven't added any new worldpkgdesc files then they've just named their settlement files to the same name as the vanilla ones
(so it's reading their my_mod/data/settlements/north_european/settlements/town/north_european_town_a.world instead of the one in M2/data)
you could use a similar system and just copy their .world AND .worldcollision files for the town and paste them in as my_mod/data/settlements/north_european/castles/town/north_european_wooden_fort_a.world & .worldcollision

otherwise if that's going to increase file size too much get a copy of the vanilla north_european_wooden_fort_a.worldpkgdesc and edit it so the file path goes to settlements/north_european/settlements/town/north_european_town_a.world or whatever you're trying to use. Repeat for all other levels and note the only foolproof way of getting the right thing turning up all the time, including custom battles, is if you make a faction specific .worldpkgdesc for every faction and every level... it's a lot of files but they're only small!

[Seether]

Got it to work now; stone_keep now uses the large_town assets. Thank you very much for your help.