IWTE - World editing - (General Discussion)

[makanyane]

Edit: Just looked at the pathing inside the .worldterrain file, and it points to various folders. So far so good. But when I look in those folders, not a single one contains the referenced .tga files! Instead all the file names are exactly as listed, except the suffix is .texture. Further, a search of the referenced .tga files doesn't turn up a single one, anywhere in the M2TW folder structure. What am I missing here?

ahh that's an m2tw peculiarity those (and some .cas files) say they're looking for a .tga, but they actually require the .texture, just mentally convert it, so same file name but .texture instead of .tga

will have a think about unpathed stuff and answer later.

[makanyane]

That does raise another issue I had not considered. In the five files I asked about, do any of those use "pathless file references" (like the effects ones mentioned above)? If so, how can one display them such that the file references can be seen?

generally in those .world related files no there shouldn't be anything you haven't already found... but;

there's the basic relationship with the .world file, it doesn't reference it but it does definitely require the corresponding .worldcollision to have the same name and be in the same folder.

the .anim's have a similar thing they are the only ones referenced in the .world file, but the animations should have .mesh and .evt files in the same folder and with the same name

after that it's only the effects that are dodgy to follow through - they don't generally crash if not there, but you could be missing something if it was meant to have a new effect... as I said before they have to be in one of the files referenced inside descr_effects.txt so you should be able to do text searches to confirm where they are... also the settlement name at the top of the effects section in the .world file (at the bottom of the text file) will tend to reveal what the settlement was based on, if you compare that to the equivalent original file you should be able to tell if there's any differences... apart from additions I don't think anyone tries to change that.

[makanyane]

But then I did a animation path change to match my textures and everything got messed again.

when you change the animations does the path you're using have the .anim & .mesh and .evt file in the folder, and all using the same name?
- that won't effect the .world file, just starting to wonder if some of your animations not working stage is due to not having all the bits in with the re-textured file

also anything unusual about the path/folders, e.g. spaces in the folder names?
EDIT; scratch that... it works fine with spaces anyway.

[Kull]

I'm working on a project that requires taking an existing settlement from one mod and inserting it into another. So I'm not really concerned with modifying buildings (the other mod has done all the hard work in that regard), but rather trying to determine all the paths that lead from the various .world files to the folders containing the textures and animations and other files used in the settlements. Using IWTE, it's very easy to find paths in the .world file (the "World Binary to Text" button generates a text file which can be searched) and the .worldpcgdesc file (there's only one path, and it's visible when you click the "Edit worldpackage" button).

But what about .worldpathfinding, .worldterrain, .worldvegetation, .worldcollision, and .animinstances? Are there paths embedded in these files (and if so, which ones), and how can they be displayed? I've been through the tutorials and umpteen threads on this subject, but all are primarily focused on creating or modifying settlements, not importing/moving existing ones. If there are buttons in IWTE which will print and/or display the file/folder paths for the 5 files noted above, I'd be eternally grateful for tips on how to do so. Thanks in advance!

[wilddog]

New version IWTE_13_11_A ready now but unfortunatley the server is giving "Error! The upload failed (error type move)" message so waiting for that to be resolved.

with version 13_11_A
1) Changed mainobject handling to support deletion/removal of all 'default' object types. Previous versions did not handle this and caused corruptions.
2) changed breach handling to allow 1st object to be set with a breach option (bug fix)

Leo - I think both these items were what was causing the issues you encountered. I have opted to leave in a 'dummy' 'default mainobject in order to handle this but leave it with no subgroup info (ie no references to objects). This seems to work OK.

EDIT : New version now loaded.

[leo.civil.uefs]

hey mak we did some change on the cfg setting the unit detail to highest and managed to get no more sprites for units no matter the camera distance. It is possible to do the same for trees?

[makanyane]

hey mak we did some change on the cfg setting the unit detail to highest and managed to get no more sprites for units no matter the camera distance. It is possible to do the same for trees?

"veg/GeogDB" tab, "edit vegetation.db" (its in the /vegetation folder) "veg Distance table" and for "tall_vegetation" "Veg detail high" "Model Distance" try 1000 or something... IWTE won't let you put infinity in - there can be an awful lot more trees than soldiers on a battle-map, having model full distance is going to be a seriously bad idea... the other veg doesn't even have sprites to infinity!

Click "OK - write files" - go find the revised veg.db and re-name it to replace the existing one.

[xHolyCrusader]

Do I need iwte to change the detail of trees? Would be awesome for videos if there wont be any sprite-to-model-changing trees

[wilddog]

RE: the .world files Wilddog is currently working on getting IWTE to convert the DBM settlements into IWTE/vanilla type format, so that might get fixed.

I think I'm about there with being able to handle the non standard DBM settlements. I need Makanyane to test further as she tends to find things I missed and I had to change the sequence of soem check processes. It does slow the initial load down so I probably need to put a check in against whether it finds that type of non standard setup.

Currently it will move all the complexes which have been set at level 1 down to level 2 and should correctly position them in the table 1 hierarchy.
For the complexes set below level 2 it combines them up by using the first complex in the 'group' and then adding the structures from the other complexes in the group. Question is whether I missed resetting anything here. The complexes as a consequence are all renumbered but that shouldn't be an issue. The texture references are also reset as the table uses complex number plus some other internal reference tables that IWTE uses.

Most of the rebuild time is tied to having to recalculate all the complex bounding spheres but even for the huge greek city it was only about 90 seconds. I need to see if it does it even when nothing needs changing but that should be a minor 'if' check.

I may add another button in the specials to 'combine' structures (ie across many complexes in one go) so people can do that if they wish, there is though a button already for combining within a single complex but whworks on a unique structure type (tied to texture usage within the complex so may be a bit tedious) . Basically now I can see whats happening the complexes have a lot of really small structures which could be combined together. On the other hand its quite useful for milkshape As its a nice to have that will probably wait.

If testing goes OK I should release that tomorrow or Friday (I'm away for a couple of weeks after that).

Do I need iwte to change the detail of trees? Would be awesome for videos if there wont be any sprite-to-model-changing trees

IWTE supports generation of new vegetation (including sprites) for the battlemaps. You can change the distance in IWTE of where sprites start to be shown. As Makanyane posted though there is a restriction and the tool doesn't accept infinity (i.e. does not accept only models and no sprites). This is simply because you would overload the graphics with something in the far distance that you wouldn't be able to see the detail of anyway but there may be a very lot of them. If you think the values need to be changed that's very easy for me to do (I only put in what Maknayane and I thought was sensible).

[leo.civil.uefs]

"veg/GeogDB" tab, "edit vegetation.db" (its in the /vegetation folder) "veg Distance table" and for "tall_vegetation" "Veg detail high" "Model Distance" try 1000 or something... IWTE won't let you put infinity in - there can be an awful lot more trees than soldiers on a battle-map, having model full distance is going to be a seriously bad idea... the other veg doesn't even have sprites to infinity!

Click "OK - write files" - go find the revised veg.db and re-name it to replace the existing one.

Did it and got weird results. The game then shows models for far away, like it should be, but they dissapear when you move the camera. it is like if instead of changing to sprites it actually dissapear with the trees when the distance is reached. Tried it with several values for the entry you quoted and then did some mess with the low and medium entries but no deal.

IWTE supports generation of new vegetation (including sprites) for the battlemaps. You can change the distance in IWTE of where sprites start to be shown. As Makanyane posted though there is a restriction and the tool doesn't accept infinity (i.e. does not accept only models and no sprites). This is simply because you would overload the graphics with something in the far distance that you wouldn't be able to see the detail of anyway but there may be a very lot of them. If you think the values need to be changed that's very easy for me to do (I only put in what Maknayane and I thought was sensible).

What about the bugs on the mainobjects?

[makanyane]

Did it and got weird results. The game then shows models for far away, like it should be, but they dissapear when you move the camera. it is like if instead of changing to sprites it actually dissapear with the trees when the distance is reached. Tried it with several values for the entry you quoted and then did some mess with the low and medium entries but no deal.

try a lower value, I didn't actually try that in game, just that IWTE accepted it... might be that it's already getting overloaded (when I load a vanilla alpine climate battlemap with lots of forest I get it all flashing on and off, due to something exceeding graphics card's ability to cope...)

there's also another section that includes a maximum amount of things for the various veg categories that can appear in zoneA/zoneB, could be something to do with that maybe...

EDIT: just tried 450 as a value for tall veg on high... that seemed to work OK for sparsely forested area, they did switch to sprites, which was visible if you concentrated on the distant ones, but not as obtrusive as it can be with original settings.

What about the bugs on the mainobjects?

Fix on that was released, see somewhere up thread and the revised first post... the only bits we found though were problems with mainobject as object 0 and if everything in the file was at some stage a mainobject (no defaults)

try the new version - if you still get in a mess PLEASE send me a copy of the not working file... (but note as WD said above we're away for a bit over the next couple of weeks)

[leo.civil.uefs]

try a lower value, I didn't actually try that in game, just that IWTE accepted it... might be that it's already getting overloaded (when I load a vanilla alpine climate battlemap with lots of forest I get it all flashing on and off, due to something exceeding graphics card's ability to cope...)

there's also another section that includes a maximum amount of things for the various veg categories that can appear in zoneA/zoneB, could be something to do with that maybe...

I tried lesses values, the maximum before the flashing issue is 300, wich makes no difference at all for me so no deal.

Another section? explain please.

[makanyane]

I tried lesses values, the maximum before the flashing issue is 300, wich makes no difference at all for me so no deal.

Another section? explain please.

see edit above to my post I tried 450 on an area with occasional trees, not forest as such and that worked fine... will look up the area values stuff but I seriously think that the flashing is just a symptom of graphics card not coping!

erm, EDIT; can you also try your above/below 300 values on different battlefields with more/less trees?

[wilddog]

What about the bugs on the mainobjects?

Not sure why thats an answer to a quote about changing vegetation?

Anyway, the mainobjects bug on the first object should now be corrected as it related to the breach settings only .. that was the bug. The ability to handle the removal of all default objects was never programmed as we never expected to put ourselves in that situation (given the tool was originally written for me and Mak). Now you've pointed out that for some reason you decided to do that it should also have been fixed though it always issued warnings on the command window.

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to use the tool directly for a while now though (until part through this year and was undecided how much more I would do other than play with the .anim files). Mak does most of the testing mostly based on her work workload but trying to recreate situations we haven't really encountered (and supplied files don't show) is obviously hard.

[leo.civil.uefs]

did some tests with a different battlemap.

500 is the maximum value before the flickerings.
Its ok for when there is less trees but its still flickering when its a forest with lots of them.

anything more we could do? Or that is all?

what about that "coping" thing from the VGA? I dont even know what that means. Is there any way to deal with this? Forgive my ignorance.

ahh it needed more explanation you don't do it to the three binaries. Do everything else you need to do to the three files first. Then hit the 'set default worldanimlighting' button - it asks you for the .world file you want to alter, then it asks you for the saved name you want. then you get the table to set the values.

try - texture brightness 1 1 1 255
illumination - 40 254 80 140 or 0 250 0 250

click OK and it'll re-write just the .world file... if you do anything else to the files you'll have to re-do that again as all the other processes change it back to the normal default values.

OK, did it. But the result is a bit weird, everything is shinning on my settlement, all the structures.

Its possible to make just some of them to shine? Maybe a specific complex, that would be enough.
Could you please explain me these values? I would like to reduce the frequence of the shinning, and maybe we could also mess it for cool effects like green light (for minas morgul)...
In vanilla settlements, that shining comes from fire effects, while the way we can do with iwte it shines from nothing and enlights all surfaces like if the light comes from everywhere and not realistic like ray lights hitting the surface while the opposit surface keeps shadowed.

[makanyane]

re; the area values stuff I was talking about before, just in case you want to try it...
use "write VegDBtxt" to get text file... search that for 'area' you'll see a chunk like

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#---------------   placementbands    0  --------------------------------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
area_a 
11   [permittedveg]
         1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1 
# writetogrid    begindist     enddist   subdivision   cellsize  
        1            +0.00    +1200.00        11          +2.00   
4   [Number of ndistmaps] 
distribution_map_1 
distribution_map_2 
distribution_map_3 
distribution_map_4 
11   [veg limits] 
     15000     15000     10000      7000     10000     30000     30000     30000      7000      5000      7000
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#---------------   placementbands    1  --------------------------------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
area_b 
11   [permittedveg]
         1          1          1          1          0          0          0          0          0          1          0 
# writetogrid    begindist     enddist   subdivision   cellsize  
        0         +1200.00    +2000.00        11          +2.00   
4   [Number of ndistmaps] 
distribution_map_5 
distribution_map_6 
distribution_map_7 
distribution_map_8 
11   [veg limits] 
     20000     20000     30000     30000         0         0         0         0         0     30000         0

the veg limits stuff at the bottom should refer to the amount of the relevant type of veg (in the same order as the rest of the file - so tall veg should be first) you can try changing them to something a lot higher... save .txt file, use "read vegDB text" which will ask you for the original db file first (not everything ends up in the txt file) and then the txt file, and will then write you a new DB...

however I think that stuff is more likely designed to prevent you getting graphics overload issues, so increasing the values is more likely to make things worse...


Graphics card "coping" would probably depend on the card, maybe the OpenGL level it uses, maybe the DirectX version it uses, and most likely the amount of on-board memory. To help it, anything that normally does.... less models, smaller textures etc... I don't really understand much more about that either.


For making videos, like the rest of it, use the best available computer and do trial and error to work out what the max settings it can take are. For the veggy bits, if you want to, you can probably re-adjust the .db settings to suit the battlemap you're trying to record, i.e. not many trees, shove the sprite distance out... etc.

[leo.civil.uefs]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#---------------   placementbands    0  --------------------------------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
area_a 
11   [permittedveg]
         1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1          1 
# writetogrid    begindist     enddist   subdivision   cellsize  
        1            +0.00    +1200.00        11          +2.00   
4   [Number of ndistmaps] 
distribution_map_1 
distribution_map_2 
distribution_map_3 
distribution_map_4 
11   [veg limits] 
     15000     15000     10000      7000     10000     30000     30000     30000      7000      5000      7000
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#---------------   placementbands    1  --------------------------------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
area_b 
11   [permittedveg]
         1          1          1          1          0          0          0          0          0          1          0 
# writetogrid    begindist     enddist   subdivision   cellsize  
        0         +1200.00    +2000.00        11          +2.00   
4   [Number of ndistmaps] 
distribution_map_5 
distribution_map_6 
distribution_map_7 
distribution_map_8 
11   [veg limits] 
     20000     20000     30000     30000         0         0         0         0         0     30000         0

Look at the quote, i've marked in red.
So are you refeering to those 2 values?
I've changed it to far higher values, like 60000 and 80000 or even higher, but no results, forests still flick.
So I guess I end up with the 400 value or so (for the other entry we were talking before) and thats all.

Its strange anyway, why do you think it only happens in forests? maybe it is related with the amount of trees.

[makanyane]

Wilddog seems to like confections.

actually he doesn't, but I'd eat them... never mind was only joking about the bribery aspect!

for second post - yes that was the figures I meant - and yes it not helping was the result I expected, but worth a try...

[makanyane]

OK, did it. But the result is a bit weird, everything is shinning on my settlement, all the structures.

Its possible to make just some of them to shine? Maybe a specific complex, that would be enough.
Could you please explain me these values? I would like to reduce the frequence of the shinning, and maybe we could also mess it for cool effects like green light (for minas morgul)...

If we're both very, very, nice to wilddog it might be possible to get him to add an option to do it just to one structure...


I don't actually understand the values either... only thing I definitely know is that the illumination section seems to need to go
low value - high value - low value - high value to get the flickery effect (when an 'effect' light source is present)

texture brightness doesn't do so much that can't be achieved by actually altering the textures (lighter, but still grey, looking stuff would probably help for your underground stuff)


This doesn't actually work so badly on your settlements, but it does horrible stuff on settlements with multiple complexes... e.g.

that's it applied to everything in stone fort C - and one chunk has, erm, come up distinctly different! Which was about the point I gave up on trying to work out how to use it.



For background... the vanilla files had very variable numbers in those 'brightness'/'illumination' sections that helps their lighting effects look like they're working... it's not actually that the lights fade after a certain point... it's that the settings for the building vertexes changed to show more/less. There's two problems with duplicating that. 1. we don't understand it... 2. even if we did there's nowhere obvious in milkshape to store/set it, for changed models.

[leo.civil.uefs]

If we're both very, very, nice to wilddog it might be possible to get him to add an option to do it just to one structure...

Give me her adress and I will send him a pack of the best confection from the region where I live. Wilddog seems to like confections.

Seriously, that would be a nice addition, and probably enough for me.