A question about battle map distant landscape textures (moved from Mapping thread)

[rafmc1989]

Hi people, I asked in Mapping, but the IWTE thread seems the right place.

I'm in search of help, advice about the textures concerning the distant landscape in battles...

Basically, the distant area of the map (the area inaccessible to armies) is currently with a black texture, which contrasts with the battlefield textures where the armies move instead...
Any idea about this texturing issue?

I tried seeing in battlefield folder, but the issue is not there... Even removing the folder completely was still giving me the same problem... (the battlefield textures went bak to vanilla, but the distant landscape was still black)
To give a precise idea I put a picture showing these "black textures" you see in the very background of the map... The map was obtained via the battle editor of the game...
Might be the texture files found in other folders where I didn't see?



Thanks in advance for help!

[xHolyCrusader]

The terrain in the distance doesnt use actual textures it just represents each ground texture with a single color. The RGB values for those colors you can define by opening up your mods "descr_geography_new.db" file in the IWTE (in "Veg/GeogDB" tab use the "Read/edit geography.db" button), that will give you a list with the paths to your ground textures and their RGB values for each climate.
If you want to match the colors with your custom ground textures you can use the Blur Average filter in Photoshop on your macro textures, that should give you a color value that represents the ground texture fairly well.

[rafmc1989]

Ah, ok now I see, so it was the geography file where to look...

Fine then, thanks a lot for the explanation and the help, just what I was looking for...

Thanks and rep!

[rafmc1989]

Mhm, just checked, but the IWTE tells me the array is to big and do not open.. I already regenerated the .db file with the CFG apposite entry... the ile is a bit less than 100kb

Can I as well change the RGB values in descr_climates under the entry "colour", right?

Edit:
Mhm, ok I rectify, the desc_climates values are for the tga editings...

hence, how could I manage to open the newly generated descr_geography_new if IWTE tells "the array is too big" and does not load?
Thanks and sorry for bothering!

[xHolyCrusader]

Hmm, I only ever edited the geography.db through IWTE, why it is giving that error might be a case for mak and wd..

I had a look at the .txt file version of it and it seems the RGB values are missing in it, I guess thats also the reason your textures all defaulted to black in the first place.

[rafmc1989]

Yep, just checked with Notepad++ and it seems the rgb are missing, hence the no texture graphics.. pretty weird, though!

Fine then, Ill be waiting whether Mak or WD can give some insights about the case...
In the meantime, I attach the geography .db so the experts might find a way to open it...

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oN...kyjCfltNBP19Fd

Thanks!

[rafmc1989]

Mhm, just as ordinary refreshing post...

For the IWTE experts: help to open the above geography file and give a support in the described issue (RBG colors needed)..

You'll get my fastest rep!

[makanyane]

I'm not sure at the moment why your generated .db isn't opening - had you made a lot of changes via the .txt file config route, or could you re-start again from a vanilla .db???

It's the regeneration via text/config that wipes out all the distance colours, so if you did start again from vanilla you wouldn't have to re-enter all of them. (Obviously if you do that, then make sure you've removed the text file and the 'rebuild_geography_db' option from the cfg or it will wipe it again)

[rafmc1989]

Yes, mak, I recently fixed the issue, by rebuilding the descr_geography from vanilla so that now IWTE opens it, and I added the missing RBG colors so now distant landscape is colored again...

and ok, i removed the rebuild option from the cfg file, to avoid overwriting...

Thanks again, as always!

[bitterhowl]

Mhm, just checked, but the IWTE tells me the array is to big and do not open.. I already regenerated the .db file with the CFG apposite entry... the ile is a bit less than 100kb

Can I as well change the RGB values in descr_climates under the entry "colour", right?

Edit:
Mhm, ok I rectify, the desc_climates values are for the tga editings...

hence, how could I manage to open the newly generated descr_geography_new if IWTE tells "the array is too big" and does not load?
Thanks and sorry for bothering!

Could you please show where to search those RGB values for textures?

[makanyane]

In IWTE reading a geography .db

[bitterhowl]

Thanks in advance!

I meant where to seek for right values. I'm not familiar with Photoshop, so if I'll take numbers from another mod .db which has no dark horizon it will work?

[makanyane]

If the mod has similar climate/texture use it should be fine to copy - obviously don't copy something with a climate used for 'mordor'!

If you wanted to try and work it out from your textures you could try blurring in photoshop to get an average colour, or just picking a colour with the dropper - but you'd need to adjust that to make it slightly lighter/less saturated/bluer - to similate the atmospheric effect of distance

having an exactly matched distant colour to the foreground texture colour will look wrong (too strong in the distance)

[Araval]

For the record, do I understand correctly that it's impossible to get rid of the ugly terrain overlay as such or increase the distance from where it happens?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[makanyane]

AFAIK yes there isn't anything that would move the distance where the RGB values take over.

In your pic without being able to move the view it's hard to tell what's happening. It could be you still have black distant views but that is being masked/changed by the fog colour in the lighting file, they look quite flat so it might be that...

[Araval]

This is the most annoying thing to me as a player in Med2 battle map environments.
I'll drop some more examples that I found from my image account:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: