sea edges

[alpaca]

Add trade value and allow merchants to trade there I'd say.

@wimpy: Yeah unfortunately can't really do the maths for those sea edges perfectly because there's a lot of weird stuff that happens in certain projections. You'll arrive at quite a few useful rules of thumb by simply playing around until you find stuff that pleases you.

[WImPyTjeH]

Tnx to Alpaca, cherryfunk and and wilddog for the answers :wink:

[J@mes]

Is it possible to make beaches wider then just one pixle i cannot check this out untill i have my new machine working.

[alpaca]

Is it possible to make beaches wider then just one pixle i cannot check this out untill i have my new machine working.

The beaches only exist on the border between sea and land I believe (at least the wave meshes do).

[SigniferOne]

There's absolutely no good reason for why this incredible thread should've gone into thread oblivion. I don't know what you mappers have been doing with yourselves since 2007. Frankly, how can you even look yourselves in the mirror?!

So now, lets restart the discussion on sea-coasts. I'm rather struggling at this right now, trying to go from this:



to this:




Wilddog (who did that amazing coast) ... share some of your secrets!

[SigniferOne]

These are some stunning coasts (from LTC). I don't know how you do it wilddog.

[dragonsign]

Holly, i want to do that to.....

[wilddog]

@SigniferOne - good idea to resurrect as quite a few map previews have gone for the cheap and dirty coastlines (sorry guys). The maps shown were some quick ones I did for Lusted based on the existing MTW maps (they were simply multiplied up and then hand edited rather than working from a satellite base).

There's a few fundamentals when doing maps and coasts and items in general such as (PS its while since I did a new map just in case anyone disagrees or knows better) :-

1) make sure you know which pixels really count (ie from a 0,0,0 corner in map heights its odd, odd only). I saw someone did a tool to show you that.
1) You need to stay at 5,5,5, (see GrnEyedDvl posts) to have animated rivers flowing - or you see the rivers but they don't flow.
2) Really try and avoid rivers flowing up hills! Use your river positions to force valleys (even if you're using satellite data!). Remember rivers are petty much the biggest feature on the map in terms of the actual space they require due to the rules associated with them (they're also a great cause of map crashes particularly if you don't add in crossing poits or enough regions as you build your map).
3) When doing the coasts really watch out for going for the quick 1,1,1, coastline. After that you try and get back back to a higher coastline in order to give flexibility.
4) When doing your coasts increase depths as a way of pushing coasts in in the same way that increasing heights pushes seas out.
5) You will never really clear all triangles (most, but probably not all) as it depends partly on viewing angle (I still come across some on a map associated with my PKH mod although I then fiddle around trying to remove them).
6) For some added variety but they are really fiddly you can also add in different textured cliffs eg white cliffs of Dover versus, brown/grey cliffs of Cornwall. This is mostly eye candy as it doesn't do anything in the battles but for a few odd places can be quite nice (like rivers though they need room).
7) You can now change the Geography files and therefore climates so this should give a lot more flexibility also to both the look of the strat map and the battle maps (I need to get into this bit a bit more myself now that it solved the climate adding problem).

[SigniferOne]

Wilddog --

I'm sticking just to editing coasts at the moment, not worrying about rivers or anything else.

Lowering sea depths has absolutely no side effects, since no matter how low you make it the sea will always appear the same, right?

My problem is that sometimes editing the seas does absolutely nothing for my coast, and I don't understand why. For instance notice the sharp edges in my above map: I can make the diagonally opposite water pixel be 200, maybe even 150 or 100, and the ugly land pixel still remains.

The most important thing is that odd, odd rule. Does it work like in terrain_types (where only odd,odd pixels are actually used for generating the terrain)? This my number 1 priority to understand right now, could you link to it or perhaps explain it yourself?

I will try to do my best to help with your models problem tomorrow. Please upload as much pertinent data as you think would be needed, and I'll take a very good look.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Lowering sea depths has absolutely no side effects, since no matter how low you make it the sea will always appear the same, right?

Wrong.

Higher sea will push into the coast. I have some examples around here someplace, I will look for them.

A quick version is in this post at the bottom.

[atraps]

My problem is that sometimes editing the seas does absolutely nothing for my coast, and I don't understand why. For instance notice the sharp edges in my above map: I can make the diagonally opposite water pixel be 200, maybe even 150 or 100, and the ugly land pixel still remains.

I'm not sure if you still have this problem, but there is a solution if you have one of those land triangles that not even a 0, 0, 1 sea color will get rid of. Increasing the maximum sea depth in the descr_terrain, will increase the sea's pushing power on the land. Be careful though as this changes the depth globally for all sea pixels so in places where the sandbars were removed before with the weaker(shallower) depth, the sea will start to put excessive pressure on the land which may cause water triangles on the land, or even push in the coast so it looks different. This may sound bad but as long as you have your sea color 0, 0, 255 (Except in areas where you need to remove the land triangles) the stronger(deeper) sea will not have effect on the land. For some reason it seems, well for me anyways, that the maximum sea depth does not have any effect on a 0, 0, 255 sea, as in if you have a maximum sea depth of -100 the 0, 0, 255 pixels will have the same pushing power as with a much bigger maximum sea depth as for example -10000. I hope this makes sense. Also note that these observations are with RTW not M2TW, but since both games use the same engine it's probably the same for both, I hope.


Now for my question.
How exactly do you guys make your coasts so incredibly smooth and rounded?

3) When doing the coasts really watch out for going for the quick 1,1,1, coastline. After that you try and get back back to a higher coastline in order to give flexibility.

You mean the coast has to be very low for it to be smooth?

[SigniferOne]

GED I'm on the same level with your newbies. My triangles are gone, it's the perfect and complete smoothness that I want. See this image in your tutorial:



The eastern isle has a straight line, and two corners. Wilddog's magic somehow converts that into a mathematically smooth parabola...

[SigniferOne]

Progress has been achieved... Things went from this


To this:

[Göteborgare]

Wow...

[Gigantus]

I managed to get rid of the triangles, but the chunky look is still there. What did I miss?

[SigniferOne]

You missed finessing edges.... what I've come to call the 'wilddog magic'..

Triangles are the easy part!

[SigniferOne]

How to make a square into a circle:



The magic of "massaging" a coast...

[atraps]

How to make a square into a circle:



The magic of "massaging" a coast...

Hm I see, very nice. What would happen if the land around the circle was higher? Like say 100, 100, 100? Would it still look rounded like that?

Could you give a bit more in-depth explanation?

Dragonsign look at the dark water pixels touching the land. Darker blue pushes the land in more, so around a courner you want to massage the corner almost like a blur so the water darkens more as the corner becomes sharper.

[SigniferOne]

Yes that was just a faction border, not a river.

Hm I see, very nice. What would happen if the land around the circle was higher? Like say 100, 100, 100? Would it still look rounded like that?

The land you see there is already raised to 6,6,6 pixels. At 100 it becomes distorted, but here it is at 50:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Land height doesn't affect coasts practically at all (which was utterly confusing to me). At 50 it becomes a little bit distorted (from a higher angle), but if you stay within 10, you should be completely ok. All my coasts are 6, as I said.

Darker blue pushes the land in more, so around a courner you want to massage the corner almost like a blur so the water darkens more as the corner becomes sharper.

It's something that is very difficult to explain, but much easier to show. I was not able to follow the earlier discussion in this thread, and only seeing Wilddog's hand-made example really explained to me how this is to be done. If there's enough interest I could later on post a screenshot and a .tga, which people would then be able follow and incorporate.

[wilddog]

SigniferOne - Great progress

You mean the coast has to be very low for it to be smooth?

- No I meant if you go to a 1,1,1 level to quick you may force the coast to have little hills and if you smooth out too early your rivers won't flow.

Do you have any tips and tricks on making fjords look good?

You apply similar techniques. Its a bit harder and I still find odd triangles (just spotted one taking this!) but it seems to work out OK. I wouldn't recommend adding different coloured cliffs though as they basically need aligning like rivers and so take up too much room.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: