IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[wilddog]

latest version released.

with version 20_04_A
1) Bug Fix - Animated milkshape should now correctly rotate the animation and its joints when requested. Previously the animation joints were not being set correctly and so the animation went out of line.
2) The Reset complex effects button on the collisions tab has been removed as has the Reset world shading on the specials tab. (functionality enhanced and replaced below).
3) On the Animation tab, new button 'Full world shading effects inc. anims' has been added. This asks for a vanilla blockset folder and optionally a mod blockset folder. It will then reset all world lighting in the world files including the animinstance data. ie the effect lighting will be reset and new shading values will be set. This replaces and enhances the functionality covered by the above two deleted functions but does take around 20 minutes for a huge city!
4) On the Animation tab, new button 'Obj world shading/effects inc anims' has been added. This will use the effects currently assigned to a complex and reset the effect lighting and shading for a specific object only.
5) When loading a milkshape animation the animation will be created with basic shading but you will need to reset it to pick up any effect or shading from adjacent objects.
6) Amended the mouse wheel function back to do up down scrolling by default. Clicking the wheel button will centre the window on the clicked position and pressing the wheel whilst rotating it will switch to zoom in/out until released.

[leo.civil.uefs]

So... are custom animations for wall catapults possible now?

[makanyane]

Nope, sorry, the animations were only for building structures being destroyed/gates opening...

Looking at some of the other bits like ladder angle / ram reverse movement might be on the list (it's only taken us a decade to get this far!)


You can't make something like a tower animate to fire (to emulate a catapult) and you can't park a normal catapult on a wall deployment area - so only way I know of that anyone's done is ; make a large area of ground hidden just under the wall surface where you can deploy a normal catapult unit - and if it's on the ground (pretend wide wall) it wouldn't need a new anim.

Have I missed something that might be possible?
'garrison' catapult units with smaller base?


(and good to see you here )

[nadalio]

latest version released.

with version 20_04_A
1) Bug Fix - Animated milkshape should now correctly rotate the animation and its joints when requested. Previously the animation joints were not being set correctly and so the animation went out of line.
2) The Reset complex effects button on the collisions tab has been removed as has the Reset world shading on the specials tab. (functionality enhanced and replaced below).
3) On the Animation tab, new button 'Full world shading effects inc. anims' has been added. This asks for a vanilla blockset folder and optionally a mod blockset folder. It will then reset all world lighting in the world files including the animinstance data. ie the effect lighting will be reset and new shading values will be set. This replaces and enhances the functionality covered by the above two deleted functions but does take around 20 minutes for a huge city!
4) On the Animation tab, new button 'Obj world shading/effects inc anims' has been added. This will use the effects currently assigned to a complex and reset the effect lighting and shading for a specific object only.
5) When loading a milkshape animation the animation will be created with basic shading but you will need to reset it to pick up any effect or shading from adjacent objects.
6) Amended the mouse wheel function back to do up down scrolling by default. Clicking the wheel button will centre the window on the clicked position and pressing the wheel whilst rotating it will switch to zoom in/out until released.

Thanks for continuing to update on this an give us support!!

[leo.civil.uefs]

I got another settlement working fine in custom battes but not in campaign.

Had this problem in the past, maybe Mak remember it. Back then I fixed it by changing the settlement height.

Not sure if anyone has a clue on this nowadays.

[makanyane]

Hi Leo,
- the thing you linked to says

EDIT: FORGET EVETYTHING I SAID ABOUT MINAS TIRITH. THE BUG IS SPORADICAL BOTH FOR CAMPAIGN AND CUSTOM BATTLES.

have you changed your mind about that now?

anyway - regarding the height - check you're playing the custom battle at the same x,y position as the settlement - that way it should be at the same geographical height, if that is part of the issue.

The only thing I've been involved with since that thread that had an issue was the Sky City I was fixing for Hyrule - that did seem to have an issue when the plaza was very high (but that was in the zone where the textures don't appear on the ground because it's beyond the height the game will display - black mini-map syndrome).

[AnthoniusII]

In theory and with your expirience n pathfinding in settlements can this be done?

My calculations to make Connstantinople's double main walls and decorative 1st wall and the motte is this.
The city is a "HUGE_CITY" . So both main wall lines are huge stone walls. In order to give the impression of different size without making AI unable to use siege machines I thought that the 1st line of walls will be in ground level one. Then in a space that allows siege machines to move and change directions like ladders and battering rams the second line of huge walls will be in a smooth ground elevation in a proper distance (atleast playing with small or medium size units that vanilla walls hundle properly in pathfinding. In fron of the 1st wall line a motte that could be accesive (simply decorative) or a ditch with many undistractable bridges.
AI will pass those bridges and ain to gates. The distance of the motte from the 1st line of walls must be also the proper one inorder units with sige towers and ladders may change direction.

[leo.civil.uefs]

Hi Leo,
- the thing you linked to says

have you changed your mind about that now?

anyway - regarding the height - check you're playing the custom battle at the same x,y position as the settlement - that way it should be at the same geographical height, if that is part of the issue.

The only thing I've been involved with since that thread that had an issue was the Sky City I was fixing for Hyrule - that did seem to have an issue when the plaza was very high (but that was in the zone where the textures don't appear on the ground because it's beyond the height the game will display - black mini-map syndrome).

Yes Minas Tirith problems were sporadical, but I'm actually talking about esgaroth, wich is quoted in the same comment.
Esgaroth was definitely fixed by height change.

How do I get to know the height of a custom battle?

[wilddog]

6) Amended the mouse wheel function back to up down scrolling by default. Clicking the wheel button will centre the window on the clicked position and pressing the wheel whilst rotating it will switch to zoom in/out until released.

Next version (not yet released) is being changed as feed back (to above mentioned change) is too awkward (which I agree). The next version will have (for the 2d view):
1) mouse wheel zooms in and out.
2) pressing centre button (wheel button) and holding whilst scrolling in the window will scroll the view (rather than having to use the scroll bars).
3) double clicking the centre button (wheel button) will centre the window on the mouse postion.

The texture list has been amended to remove duplicates to make updating textures a lot easier. ie the list will reduce and differentiate based on texture name, no alpha, alpha, or litter only.

Exporting (some files) via collada file structure is being added ( may be released in a test form prior to importing via same format). This should support direct import into 3dsmax or blender...but is really just in test until importing is fully implemented. Initial release will be for basic world file exports only ie no animations.

[makanyane]

In theory and with your expirience n pathfinding in settlements can this be done?

My calculations to make Connstantinople's double main walls and decorative 1st wall and the motte is this.
The city is a "HUGE_CITY" . So both main wall lines are huge stone walls. In order to give the impression of different size without making AI unable to use siege machines I thought that the 1st line of walls will be in ground level one. Then in a space that allows siege machines to move and change directions like ladders and battering rams the second line of huge walls will be in a smooth ground elevation in a proper distance (atleast playing with small or medium size units that vanilla walls hundle properly in pathfinding. In fron of the 1st wall line a motte that could be accesive (simply decorative) or a ditch with many undistractable bridges.
AI will pass those bridges and ain to gates. The distance of the motte from the 1st line of walls must be also the proper one inorder units with sige towers and ladders may change direction.

That sounds reasonable so long as you leave enough space, and low enough slope, between the walls for the units to move. The bold bit could be the problem, if it's just very shallow water (by reflective plane) that they can walk across that'd be fine. If it's a ditch but with raised sections of ground dressed up to look like 'bridges' for the units to cross that should be fine. Actually using bridges (like the river crossing ones) is more likely to cause problems - the AI will only pathfind over them (including when obeying move orders for your own troops) when there is absolutely NO other option, and even then it can be a bit buggy about it!

Before you get too far, set up the slopes you want in the .worldterrain, set up the layout you want with a couple of gates and a couple of walls in each perimeter, draw the rest of the layout on the .worldpathfinding so that the wall layout areas and anything you're doing with the ditch is blocked out. Test with AI defending and AI attacking to see if it looks like it's working (it obviously won't be optimal with only the few breach points, but you'll get an idea - I've had attempted layouts where the attacking AI just circles the thing, gives up and walks off )

Yes Minas Tirith problems were sporadical, but I'm actually talking about esgaroth, wich is quoted in the same comment.
Esgaroth was definitely fixed by height change.

How do I get to know the height of a custom battle?

That's quite hard to figure out - it'll only be obvious if you're high enough to get the black mini-map or low enough to get natural water!

I was mainly suggesting making sure it was the same as the campaign version by using the same x,y coordinates for the custom battle location as where the settlement is sited. (hover over the settlement in cheat mode and use 'show_cursorstat' to find coordinates, unless you can tell from the garrison position in descr_strat)

The actual height would be complicated as it'd be derived from the value of that point in map_heights.tga or .hgt then applied as a ratio to the max value in descr_terrain.txt - then where the game actually places the settlement's .worldterrain depends on how much of the battlemerge section of that you have without alpha and how it's interpreting the average height of the area of battlemap under that...


Which settlement is playing up now? Is it in the released version of the mod?

[leo.civil.uefs]

Which settlement is playing up now? Is it in the released version of the mod?

Dol Guldur. Yes.

Works fine in custom battles. But not in campaign.
Exactly like happened with esgaroth in the past and as I said, I fixed esgaroth by changing the settlement height via IWTE.

[leo.civil.uefs]

While placing a bridge over a river crossing path in the battle editor, the bridge "jumps" while you move it, so I can't place it exacly where I want. It seems that it only can be placed in invisible slots that are there dividing the map.

This causes a bug because the actual rivercrossing path of the map does not match one of these invisible slots precisely. Still I can place the bridge, but out of synchrony with the battlemap rivercrossing path (some meters aside).

So while a unit is crossing the bridge, some men go through the water and die while the others walk over the bridge normally.

Is it possible to move the bridge with precision instead of moving it through these invisible slots so to make it match the rivercrossing exactly?

[makanyane]

While placing a bridge over a river crossing path in the battle editor, the bridge "jumps" while you move it, so I can't place it exacly where I want. It seems that it only can be placed in invisible slots that are there dividing the map.

This causes a bug because the actual rivercrossing path of the map does not match one of these invisible slots precisely. Still I can place the bridge, but out of synchrony with the battlemap rivercrossing path (some meters aside).

So while a unit is crossing the bridge, some men go through the water and die while the others walk over the bridge normally.

Is it possible to move the bridge with precision instead of moving it through these invisible slots so to make it match the rivercrossing exactly?

you could see if you can view the file that the battle editor creates and see if you can spot the x,y co-ordinates - it's binary but I seem to remember the .world name for bridge etc gets written as a text string.

Otherwise maybe adjust the pathfinding for the bridge - pic is for a bridge, it's path and .worldpathfinding shown >


I'm guessing one of the pathfinding elements is 'snapping' to the 2m grid, and the other isn't or is going to point 2m off - if you extended the blocked .worldpathfinding (dark blue) area one square each way to overlap the bridge sides that might fix the falling off problem. (though you might also need a wider bridge...)

[F9WK9]

Hello here. I have few questions

Does anyone know in which order does the game read the .worldpkgdesc files? Like is it based on the file name, location, both or the info within it etc.

Is there any way to get faction specific settlements to work in custom battles or do they only affect campaign?

- - -

Thanks for your hard work on the IWTE project

[makanyane]

Hi F9WK9,
I've made a wiki page here which trys to explain that stuff.

See the note at the bottom about factions - to get it to work in custom-battle you have to make a faction-specific pkg for EVERY faction in the culture. If more than one faction is using the same .world model, you don't need to duplicate the models, just make lots of .worldpkgdesc that point at the same thing.

I don't know what order it reads them in - but useage is based on the CONTENT only - not title or location (except somewhere in \settlements or specified folder), which is why you can very easily get in a mess if you've left behind copies you don't need/don't remember the title of! Hence when I do it I try and make the title descriptive e.g. Spain-LCity-uses-MEFort.worldpkgdesc - which gives you half a chance of figuring out later why something odd is turning up!

[leo.civil.uefs]

Oh dear...

I probably asked this before, but its been almost 10 years building settlements for med2 so Im not surprised to forget something...

Game crashes right when the gate is about to lift (porticullis) or about to be hit by the ram.

Any idea?

I've already removed and replaced the entire structure, set the object as mainobject gate, set the animation etc, just to be sure, and it still crashes.

[makanyane]

ugh - not sure - normally when it can't find an anim things just don't move...

check the file path/name to all the gate animations (in world file) "update animation paths" button

maybe something like it's finding the .anim but you haven't got a .mesh file with the same name in the folder? It needs that...

if not that check that the .texture listed in the .mesh is there


(I'm assuming you haven't been re-making the anims with IWTE yet?)

[leo.civil.uefs]

I just opened a settlement in IWTE (Isengard), edited and saved it, IWTE created 3 new main files in Isengard settlement folder. OK.
But then, using the same IWTE session, I opened Erebor, edited it and saved. And what happened was that 3 new main files of Isengard settlement were created inside Isengard folder.

IWTE does not have a "close" button to shut down the editing of a settlement, you must click "read 3 binary files" to open a new settlement, overlaping the previous one, but according to the experience I just narrated here, the previous settlement is not shut down and this causes a mess.

So you need to close IWTE and open it again to load a new settlement wihout messing up things.

Considering the current version of IWTE takes some time to start, I would say a "close" button beside the "read 3 binary files" one would be useful.


Another thing.
IWTE should memorize the path of the first binary file (.world) you select while opening a settlement. This way the user would not need to navigate all the way to the folder again to select the two other files. (thats really boring for someone like me who is always dealing with IWTE)

Also, automatically saving .worldvegetation and .worldpathfinding inside IWTE SAVE folder does not seem very useful. why not simply save it inside the settlement folder where the original files came from?

[wilddog]

Hi Leo
Good comments. I'm hoping to get another release out soon so will see which of the above I can get sorted out to add in with that otherwise they should be doable for the release after that one.

general update and info on the new collada interface that is being developed.
We are testing out a collada interface to support amending the world files via blender or max rather than milkshape. It is likely the interface will encounter quite a few 'new' issues tied to the flexibilty it offers and how people use max and blender. I need to resolve how to add objects to new complexes and the process doesn't directly support deletion of complexes. ie modders have to use the existing processes for that. Naming is changing for the new processes also. As the new process has an in built hierarchy things will also depend if that helps or is a pain to use. The process will also be much slower than the existing processes for editing in terms of reloading and extracting data (I will look to speed this up later). However what it will offer is the ability to extract and edit at the complex level (or multiple complexes) rather than the structure level. It also will handle rebuilding the structures automatically. I'm just starting to look at whether to rebuild complexes automatically also. The complex rebuild will be an option as we're aware that many world models opted not to use complexes correctly and a consequence of a rebuild would be a resetting of a lot of object numbers and complex numbers.
The collada interface
- assumes a complex, -> object undamaged group -> object damaged groups heirarchy
- assumes texture is named (actually as a dds) this drives structure build.
- contains vertex shading data

The interface supports full world, single complex and single object extract from MTW2 to collada
The interface supports importing back of multiple complexes at once. Any complex supplied back will automatically add new objects or remove 'missing' objects from the re-imported files.
Similar to currently any reload of object information will result in renumbering of objects so you can't just re-edit and reload over a revised file.

[makanyane]

I just opened a settlement in IWTE (Isengard), edited and saved it, IWTE created 3 new main files in Isengard settlement folder. OK.
But then, using the same IWTE session, I opened Erebor, edited it and saved. And what happened was that 3 new main files of Isengard settlement were created inside Isengard folder.

IWTE does not have a "close" button to shut down the editing of a settlement, you must click "read 3 binary files" to open a new settlement, overlaping the previous one, but according to the experience I just narrated here, the previous settlement is not shut down and this causes a mess.

For info what it actually did was save your 3 new Erebor files in the Isengard folder and called them Isengard_2 etc.. it has actually shut down the Isengard file contents and switched to Erebor content... it just hasn't changed the save-name/location

Anyway we agree that is confusing! especially as the latest things in your Isengard folder will now actually be Erebor! - IWTE needs to be fixed to ask you for a new save-name location when you load new files, if possible, WD will look at that - meanwhile if you realise that you've just ended up with your new files in the wrong place you can just cut/paste/re-name them over into the correct folder, sorry!