IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[Mr.Jox]

Hey guys!
Nothing comes to my mind how to create the terrain with needed parameters.

IMAGES

Explanations to the images:
1st image is concept for settlment. Blue tile is the place I know how to create(just extrude down the terrain). Red line is coast and black lines are places which I dunno how to make look like its a coast(how to make smooth descent).
Since I havnt worked on settlements for a while I almost forgot to work with terrain.
2nd image is a world map tile I've choosed for my custom terrain. At the moment you see untouched world terrain/tile(No changes made).

EDIT: I guess this all possible using wt_merge but in this case I'm not sure I'll be able to crete a port.

[makanyane]

Hi Jox, nice to see you back here..

That should be relatively straightforward - not sure which bits you're expecting the problems with. Just sink your terrain so that top corner is all underwater, and yes use the merge function gradually towards the edges. You might also want to resize the terrain/veg up to something like 251 or more so you can control a bigger area. If your terrain has the battlemerge section make sure that's all merged out (black) in that corner.

Assume this is for a unique settlement? If it is you can find the height for any port structures by trial and error. (You can't assume water is 0 height level in the .world file as it depends where the settlement gets place relative to the surrounding heights - but once you've got something loading there it'll stay the same and you can adjust to suit)

[Mr.Jox]

Thanks mak, I expected on bad "meeting back" because of my tonns of questions.
I've used 181 and found it perfect, I can reach that water corner.
I guess the way with trial and errors looks certainly possible. Thanks for alert.

[wilddog]

Version 14_08_A now released. Please let me know if any issues encountered.

with version 14_08_A
1) Ability to open texture, dds, tga, png, BMP, jpg files(and some other formats) to do some simple editing in the painter process. Note opening a texture file will automatically create a copy .dds file in the IWTEsave directory with the same name as the texture.
2) For some files you will have the option to save as tga, png or other format but not directly as DDS or texture. (i.e. these latter two should be saved as TGA only and then you still need to convert back to DDS and texture).
3) Allow editing of the alpha channels. note to do this you need to hit the alpha icon of the image and to close it hit the similar icon.
4) Allow setting of opacity, hardness, density settings for TGA and other image editing and the alpha channels. doesn't increase on the drag only the click.
5) Add some specific criteria around certain texture, dds, tga files in terms of sizing eg the settlement overlay mask files.
6) added options from the painter menu to convert or save DDS and texture files (individual and directory). All converted files are automatically added into the IWTEsave directory.

Wanted to get this version out before we are away for a few days. Still to add in the strat map items and the ability to work with the hgt file directly.

[Arkay]

Hi wilddog, thanks for the new version. I encountered a problem though, when clicking on both update referenced paths and update animation paths. Basically nothing loads, like if no button were clicked.

[wilddog]

Hi wilddog, thanks for the new version. I encountered a problem though, when clicking on both update referenced paths and update animation paths. Basically nothing loads, like if no button were clicked.

Hi Arkay thanks for the quick response. Basically you need to press the "Main Processes tab". It was tied around having the painter process up and then wanting to view some of the world items over them. I thought I'd defaulted the no painter processes active to leave you on the Main processes tab but I guess not. Let me know if that doesn't resolve it.

[Arkay]

Oh how stupid am I? You're right, sorry. Not a problem anymore.

[wilddog]

Thanks Arkay, Its still something I'll look at as I think I just start with the wrong view.

[xHolyCrusader]

Things seem to be working fine so far, thanks for the update, to a non-ps user like me very very welcome

[wilddog]

Hi, Thanks xHC. One thing I wasn't totally sure on. When you play with the brush settings. Particularly the density one. If you click the brush and accidentally move it. You get a smudge effect rather than a single click random. I was trying to make up my mind if I needed to put a minimum movement distance in to avoid that. Let me know if you think it may need it. Its mostly for use with the alpha channels or some blending options.

[xHolyCrusader]

Hi, Thanks xHC. One thing I wasn't totally sure on. When you play with the brush settings. Particularly the density one. If you click the brush and accidentally move it. You get a smudge effect rather than a single click random. I was trying to make up my mind if I needed to put a minimum movement distance in to avoid that. Let me know if you think it may need it. Its mostly for use with the alpha channels or some blending options.

Hmm, didnt need the density setting yet, but something really useful would be the "ctrl+z" option to undo a click with the brush, also would make us getting rid of the problem you described above.
Another addition would be different blend options for the layers, though the opacity slider should be enough.
Good job with the painting tool in general!

edit: oh sorry for accidently double posting...

[leo.civil.uefs]

Hi guys... whats up here? (All I see is wilddog throwing technical stuff through the air as always... ... No one manages to understand more than 10% of what he says but I was the only one with courage enough to admit it... )

LOL.

Im currently working like a dog in real life so no time to play or mod for now.

Currently working in the structural project of a church. The big difference between building settlements in IWTE and building it in real life is that when I commit a error in MED2 engine it can cause things like the army to die drowned in the water, while in real life if the structure collapses people will really die and I will probably pass the rest of my life in the jail.

Throught yet... yes, there is a parallel and I always remember the old good days building places like barad dur and carn dum while Im projecting BORING stuff like churches or small bridges...

Actually... some times I still look at shapes and for a second a insight blinks in my mind like "how I would model it in ms3d"... serious Im not kidding, modding lefts scars in you...

Thats it... real life is boring, but Sauron never paid me even a coin for building Barad Dur so I need to leave modding.


Cheers!

[xHolyCrusader]

Im currently working like a dog in real life so no time to play or mod for now.
[...]
Thats it... real life is boring, but Sauron never paid me even a coin for building Barad Dur so I need to leave modding.

pff, real life things will wait for your comeback!

[wilddog]

Hi guys... whats up here? (All I see is wilddog throwing technical stuff through the air as always... ... No one manages to understand more than 10% of what he says but I was the only one with courage enough to admit it... )

LOL.

Leo it helps if you looked at the part of the tool I was talking about first and then post if you don't understand it rather than posting without looking at the tool. Other than that there isn't anything 'technical' as most people would understand what an alpha channel is and the rest are standard descriptions for an English speaker.

Hmm, didnt need the density setting yet, but something really useful would be the "ctrl+z" option to undo a click with the brush, also would make us getting rid of the problem you described above.
Another addition would be different blend options for the layers, though the opacity slider should be enough.
Good job with the painting tool in general!

I'll see if I can add an undo process for a few steps. I think a single undo won't be sufficient. The problem is tied to performance and memory for holding the data. Did you mean an option to merge/flatten two layers? The opacity for the image has no effect on the painting other than what you can see of each image layer.

[Falconwatch]

Hey guys, I'm currently having an issue with gate for a custom city, basically the gate uses a new model instead of just a skin texture,
however when testing it ingame, as soon as the battering ram start hitting the gate, the gate ctd.

How can we solve this issue, is this related to animation?

[makanyane]

You can't make a new animation that matches your new gate (we did a lot of investigation into it but got stuck around the compression needed to pack things into/out of .animinstances - plus the whole process would be horribly complicated)

If you have a gate without any animation at all it won't ctd, but troops get stuck trying to go through the 'open' gate.

You can assign a gate the 'wrong' animation - that won't ctd but the gate will change back to looking like the vanilla one whilst it's open or being rammed (though you can change the texture)

Not sure why you're getting a ctd... how many groups does your gate object have? It should have 3, one for closed, one for slightly damaged and one for broken. (The open appearance only exists in the animation)

[Arkay]

You can assign a gate the 'wrong' animation - that won't ctd but the gate will change back to looking like the vanilla one whilst it's open or being rammed (though you can change the texture)

This is exactly the problem I'm facing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In Europa Barbarorum II, the barbarian city level (which has new wall and gate texture) uses the vanilla animation:

BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_blabla.anim

and this is how the gate looks when hit by the ram:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So I created a new folder called animations inside the barbarian city folder, containing the same vanilla animations but this time pointing to the new texture (Edit animation tga paths in iwte) and updated the animation paths too. Got this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

which looks even worse.. Though it should have the new texture now, shouldn't it?

Oh by the way, I also tried to assign it the vanilla city_gate_anims but then the gate has none in-game (as if no animations were assigned at all).

[makanyane]

should work - currently exceeding my brains attempt to understand what might have gone wrong - could you send the settlement, texture and anim stuff to me via pm link?

[Arkay]

Sure, thank you.

[Falconwatch]

Ahh I see, making a complete new model for gates can be problematic, guess we'll stick to the good old texture change for the gate, thanks!