sea edges

[Miraj]

I actually have a thread about the same issue. So thats three threads. But I didn't feel that thread you guys posted actually detailed how to remove and fix the coasts, they just discussed the theory behind it. It'd be cool if a more experienced guys posted a sort of tutorial on how to get perfect coasts.

[Conte Martinengo]

I actually have a thread about the same issue. So thats three threads. But I didn't feel that thread you guys posted actually detailed how to remove and fix the coasts, they just discussed the theory behind it. It'd be cool if a more experienced guys posted a sort of tutorial on how to get perfect coasts.

I hope that this merger of threads will result in some real mapping advances and lead to a better understanding of the map creation process for us all.

I have been trying the different theories and solutions mentioned here, and it all seems to work but is SO much work to sort out just a small part of a map let alone a whole map.
The corrected_regions tga did an ok job of this, although not a perfect job, far more easily.
Before I go making one and testing if the game will use it, I'll ask here if anybody has tried to use that file in MTW2.

[wilddog]

The corrected_regions tga did an ok job of this, although not a perfect job, far more easily.
Before I go making one and testing if the game will use it, I'll ask here if anybody has tried to use that file in MTW2.

The corrected regions created just that a new map based off of the heights.TGA. Depending on the package used for changing the regions you can recreate a new regions size map quite easily. At least using Photoshop it works well. I used to use an old version of Paintshop pro which didn't resize exactly the same and was misleading as to where the land tiles really were.

[wilddog]

I was fiddling around with this today. Just messing around with cliff effects (without the cliff feature) and to avoid the land into sea triangles and vice versa. Got to stage below which shows that you could create your own cliffs if you so desired and you don't get the triangles (its probably advisable to make the beach colour a little darker though as that gets picked up by the mountain edge - I hadn't done that).

Anyway below is where I got to. The edges are all Heights 50,50,50 apart from where you can see I started to drop to a lower plane. This is probably way too high for cliffs but it was just to show the theory and check for overlapping triangles etc. Note you make the sea square using a blue combination (0,0 x) so that the Light value (Hue, sat, light rather than R,G,B) of the land and sea combined comes back to 128. This is only for the sea that touches either the bottom left corner of the pixel or the top right. (this means for any increase in heights by 1 value in the RGB scale you reduce the X value by 2 not just one so 50,50,50 pairs with 0,0,155)

Anyway that's what seemed to give best results.

[Conte Martinengo]

I followed a link to this thread from the "getting rid of square looking coasts" thread.
The two threads are about the pretty much the same subject but this one is where the most useful discussion is happening.
I'll ask for my thread to be closed and leave a link to this.
This is good stuff here, and I hope to see all these issues resolved.
My foray into the mapping world is now on hold as I return to my ship and will be at sea for the next 42 days. Thanks to everybody who has helped me with the progress I have made.

I think it is time to close this thread and continue all discussion about "coastal regions" on the "sea edges" thread that covers this subject in detail.
see:http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=70584&page=2

[Trajan]

Thread merged with 'Coastal Problems' and 'How do we get rid of the square tiles on coastal regions on big maps?'.

[Baxon7]

all corner and deep in land from sea on 1,1,1..and special north-right sea on 0,0,234

hope it help little.

[Bella]

any progress with this issue?

i still can't seem to find a method that works properly in all cases.

[alpaca]

any progress with this issue?

i still can't seem to find a method that works properly in all cases.

Well yeah there's more to it still, you can mostly fix them by doing decent geometrical guesses and then a bit of trial and error (mind that you don't have to restart the game every time you change the map, simply deleting map.rwm and restarting the campaign is sufficient). The main problem is to understand how the mesh actually works, and I'm not sure how to explain it really
If you play around with height settings and watch what happens you can get a fairly good intuition as to what you have to do if you want to get your coasts right.

[GrnEyedDvl]

I agree with wilddog here. I have used 0 0 0 and it does indeed show up as a sea tile, but it caused issues with ships the one time I used it.

I use 5 5 5 for most of the land because of river issues though wild did find a way around that. For sea I have used everything from 0 0 255 through 0 0 150 depending on what land is next to it. Try something like 0 0 240 where you have those sea corners.

Also turn off fog of war when you take shots please. Especially when you are zoomed out.

[wilddog]

The reason I thought editing descr_terrain might work, is because in the vanilla setup when you increase a land square with a height of 1, you will need to lower a sea square with 29.45 / 13.24 or circa 2.2 (which you can't since RGB only goes from 0 to 255). So when using certain heights you will always have sea or land edges.

Thats one of the reasons I tend not to use the standard values that are in the terrain.txt file. Although in the end you will normally see some sort of issue if you look hard enough or if your screen can handle the magnification. You have to remember that the maths bit gets more complicated as soon as you aren't talking about a simple corner. For my map mods I tend to use depths/heights of -2500 to +7500).

Anyway, maybe its just that I'm not placeing the variation right. Should I just increase the depth and height of shared pixels (ingoing sea)? or change the height and depth of all coastal pixels?

This is a question on whether you are trying to round off corners or gradually slant coastlines in or out. You can use something like the values below with the -2500/7500 setting.

0,0,241 - 0,0,254
0,0,247 - 1,1,1
0,0,254 - 2,2,2
1,1,1 - 4,4,4

follow this logic for a gradual coastline.

[alpaca]

Yeah you see, for CA it works by creating the map in a 3d-interface by dragging heights and placing stuff with brushes. This is then exported directly to map.rwm and map.hgt as well as the image files which are probably just a remnant of some earlier way to do it in most cases.

So the max and min height are the ones you should find in the vanilla map, and which can be found in the hgt file. The latter uses floats to represent the actual height values which of course allows you to do a lot more stuff.

[cherryfunk]

It's not a port, it's a 'minor settlement', something dvk added to Roma Surrectum. Essentially just eye candy, to make the map look more 'lived in'...

[makanyane]

@ cherryfunk, is that a resource then? We've been messing with various things added as resources, but couldn't see any other way of adding models to strat map.

[WImPyTjeH]

Hmm... strange, when I try to use that technique on corners, it sometimes makes the water-in-land triangles reappear. Is there anything that can be done about this ? BTW, They were all gone using Alpaca's method but I wanted to make the map more realistic.

Nice map you've got there cherryfunk :wink:

[cherryfunk]

@ cherryfunk, is that a resource then? We've been messing with various things added as resources, but couldn't see any other way of adding models to strat map.

Yup, we converted one of the useless resources (pigs or dogs I think) to villages. They don't actually do anything, but they add a little something to the map:

Hmm... strange, when I try to use that technique on corners, it sometimes makes the water-in-land triangles reappear. Is there anything that can be done about this ?

I think you have to poke around pixel-by-pixel and see where you have too deep water or too low land, which is causing the water to 'bleed into' the land, and then modify manually by making the water more shallow or the land higher to counteract.

[wilddog]

Instead of having a useless resource why don't you make it a proper resource? Thats what I did. Admittedly mainly as a market town rather than a port but the principle's the same.

When you're dealing with something with one or two pixels wide you need to watch out as its more difficult to avoid the triangles as the example shows. I have a similar little island which is a bit frustrating to clear.

[cherryfunk]

Instead of having a useless resource why don't you make it a proper resource? Thats what I did. Admittedly mainly as a market town rather than a port but the principle's the same.

Interesting, what did you do with it?

[wilddog]

I just used it as a different resource so in terms of my market_town I simply made it a market town resource. Just treat it as any other resource.

Didn't you set it up as a resource but gave it zero value?

[cherryfunk]

But a resource that does what?