This relates to Topcat's thread on splines, but I'm starting this thread because it's an offshoot...
I've been trying to discover how terrain templates work.
Right now I'm trying to discover how the game places stone walls on battle maps.
I've created a custom battle map (see the WIP thread here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=370390)
The only thing it lacks is stone walls. The Lordz map modding tools aren't able to do it.
One thing we know is that stone walls are rigid splines, placed on 2D map coordinates -- there's a file in battleterrain.pack/walls called wall01_xs.rigid_spline.
Originally I was thinking it would be impossible to place walls because we have no current tool for placing splines.
But now I'm thinking that stone wall splines may already be pre-defined in ETW on its system of terrain tiles.
For example, each battle map's battleterrain folder contains a file called farms.farm_manager. When I open in in Notepad I see a lot of garbage characters, but I can read a lot of filenames listed, and they include all the farm tiles, splines and textures for walls and fences. So I think this manager file controls which farm tiles show up on the map.
Maybe a certain farm tile -- for example, american.farm_template_tile, already has a square border of walls on it. Then the only question is how to invoke that particular tile in farms.farm_manager, and have it display where we want it to on our battle map.
Any thoughts?