Hello.
I see the maximum Area size is 32x32 tiles
Wherein each tile is a square of 10x10 meters.
Can the 32x32 limit be exceeded? (though the 32x32 = 1024 hints me "No", I ask anyway).
Can it exist a tileset made up entirely of tiles of size 2x2 meters?
How many different tiles can be defined within the same tileset?
Is it possible to create, say, Themes within a tileset...?
... some tiles for Sand, some for Grass, some for Water, et cetera?
Is it possible to define tiles that use different texture sets but that share the same geometry?
Or must every tile be coupled with its own (even if duplicate) geometry?
How many Features can a tile have?
Thank you in advance.
-fox
Some questions for Tileset designers.
Débuté par
the.gray.fox
, juil. 25 2011 06:06
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#2
Posté 25 juillet 2011 - 07:19
OldTimeRadio
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Sure, just make another area and attach the two!the.gray.fox wrote...
Can the 32x32 limit be exceeded?
32x32 is pretty big. For instance, this tile group is just 15x16. It's all about what you do with the space, IMO.Tiles, to everything I've seen, must be a specific size. You could shrink or grow everything else in the world, though. But that's not practical passed a certain point.Can it exist a tileset made up entirely of tiles of size 2x2 meters?
A lot, I imagine. The tile group I link to is almost 250 tiles plus maybe 20 more regular tiles I think. Every single one of those is different. Someone like Bannor would probably know what the limit of tiles is, if there is one. I'd be interested to find out, too.How many different tiles can be defined within the same tileset?
Sure, though I don't have experience in that myself. Check out the tileset that came with 1.69 called Castle Exterior, Rural. That's really a couple of tilesets in one. Lord of Worms Seasonal Forest has a couple of different thems in it too, related to seasons.Is it possible to create, say, Themes within a tileset...?
... some tiles for Sand, some for Grass, some for Water, et cetera?
In NWN, for the most part, all geometry is mated with a specific texture. So in your case if you have a tile which has a tree on it and you want the summer and winter versions, you're going to have to produce two tiles but the only difference would likely be the texture each uses.Is it possible to define tiles that use different texture sets but that share the same geometry?
Or must every tile be coupled with its own (even if duplicate) geometry?
A feature is a single tile. A group is a group of tiles. So...?How many Features can a tile have?
I wouldn't really call myself a tileset designer. More like a tileset tinkerer. There are lots of others who know more and will hopefully stop by to elaborate.
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 25 juillet 2011 - 07:37 .
#3
Posté 25 juillet 2011 - 08:17
Zwerkules
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the.gray.fox wrote...
Can the 32x32 limit be exceeded?
It can, but shouldn't. I'd even suggest that you stay well below 32x32. Even if you use old low poly tilesets,
an area bigger than 16x16 will cause lag if you add all the NPCs needed to populate it and the placeables to add the details. If you just want a big area with nothing going on you could make it 32x32 or probably even bigger, but who would want to walk through such a big empty area?
Better split it into smaller areas and you can pay a lot more attention to detail.
Can it exist a tileset made up entirely of tiles of size 2x2 meters?
No, because of the walkmeshes. They have to be 10x10 meters.
How many different tiles can be defined within the same tileset?
At least 4000.
Is it possible to create, say, Themes within a tileset...?
... some tiles for Sand, some for Grass, some for Water, et cetera?
Yes it is, but the more different terrain types you have in one tileset, the more tiles you need to make the combinations of different terrains possible. For four terrain types you need about 72 tiles and that is without the possibility of raising terrain, without any variations and without any crossers.
Is it possible to define tiles that use different texture sets but that share the same geometry?
Or must every tile be coupled with its own (even if duplicate) geometry?
What could be done would be using the three animloops. Each could turn on one texture set and turn off the other two, This has however serious drawbacks.
The tile models would be very big, because they'd be three tiles in one.
You couldn't use the animloops for other animations any more, so no windmills, no smoke from chimneys, etc.
You can still only have one walkmesh per tile, so the walkmesh would only match one of three tile 'themes', so if it had grass, you'd see grass growing on sand for example.
So all in all it is not a good idea.
How many Features can a tile have?
I also don't know what you mean by this. Do you refer to the polygon count of a tile?
#4
Posté 25 juillet 2011 - 09:24
Bannor Bloodfist
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The 32x32 max size allowed via toolset is defined by Bioware. It IS possible to create areas larger than this, but there are no GUI utilities to help you build it. You have to manually add the tiles to an .ERF file then import the .ERF into the module. Once that is done, you can NOT edit it in the toolset, at least not that specific area.
Not worth it anyway... Test it yourself. Build a 32x32 area, set your start location in far left, upper corner and place a placeable of some type in far right, lower corner of the area. Hit F9 and see how long it takes you to "Run" to find that placeable... takes forever.
As others have mentioned, the larger the area, the bigger the lag gets, add NPC's, creatures, placeables etc, to make the area come alive, and you will be waiting for quite a while for the area to even load. If it loads at all.
16x16 is the practical limit, most especially for a Persistent World environment. On a single PC, you might be able to tolerate a longer load time for a given area, but in any situation where you have the nwnserver involved, folks will tend to just exit the game, instead of waiting for such a long load time. It can even cause a server to crash.
Tiles are 10x10 meters, and that is absolutely required size. As Zwerkules mentions, that is the size of the walkmesh (wok) of a tile, which defines what areas are walkable/passable in a given tile. This is an engine requirement and there is no way around it.
As to "Themes" within a given tileset, sure, most of the later tilesets that have been created by the community, and even the sets in 1.69 have a large variation in the number of "terrains" that are available. Any given tileset can have as many terrains as you want, but as has also been mentioned, the tileset count goes way up.
The engine requires a given number of tiles to define a given terrain. So, flat grass, requires one tile. Most builders/designers want a few variations of that though, so most tilesets have more than one. Now, when you "raise" a tile, cliffs, or just the typical 5 meter raise of a Bioware set, you not only have to have that flat tile, but all the corner variations as well. Flat on one corner, raised on the other 3, flat on two corners and raised on the other two, flat on 3 corners, raised on the 4th. There is no tile for raised on all 4 as the engine takes the flat tile and raises the whole thing up.
As you add terrain types, say water, you not only duplicate the original tiles but you have to make tiles that merge the two terrains together. Flat grass on one corner, water on one corner, etc. Now add raised terrain to the grass, and you have to add water that is below a cliff edge, water that joins on a corner of a cliff edge etc...
Want a road? Roads. Streams, Walls, Fences, etc are all crossers. They take a min of 5 tiles to define for a SINGLE terrain, say grass. You have to have the wall ending halfway across the tile, straight. We call that the "i" (lower case eye) tile, then you have to have a Straight wall that crosses the entire tile, Typically called an "I" (upper case eye) so that you can tell the difference... then you need corners, so a "T" for 3 corners, an "X" for all 4, etc.
Now if you add water terrains, you need a variation of the walls that coincide with the different combinations of water/grass tiles, so the numbers of tiles required just keeps going up.
You can have at least 4000 tiles in a given set. That is a HUGE tileset though, and is NOT typical. Most sets are lower than 800 tiles, in fact, most are lower than 500. The larges tileset that Bioware ever released, the Castle Exterior, Rural (Called TNO by older fans) is 1260 some tiles. That is a HUGE set by most standards. However, when you start building with it, you might not see the reasons behind why it is sooo large. It has 7 different terrains, and at least 9 different crossers to allow all the terrains, walls, streams, roads to connect.
When you create an area with it, you don't have to know what tiles are being used, but those tiles DO have to exist. So, you paint an area with grass, add a road, then decide that you want a stream to cross under the road... You are talking about having to have an area that is at least 2x2, likely 3x3 to even get that started. Plain grass, Plain grass with road, and plain grass with a road that has a stream going under it. The road has to have ends, so that is 3 tiles, the stream has to have ends, that is 3 more, minus the variant that allows the road to cross over so that is 5 tiles just for a single bridge over a small stream on a short path/road.
Features/Groups are basically unlimited. Groups are more than one tile that paints at the same time... groups CAN re-use tiles that are used by other groups, provided that the first tile in the group list is not the same. So, say one corner has to always be different but the other 3 corners can be the same or use the same tiles as other groups do. You don't have to worry much about that though, as most tileset creators do NOT re-use tiles across multiple groups, it is much easier to manage when every group is defined by it's own tiles.
Groups seldom use the same tiles as a given terrain... they WILL require that a given terrain be present, IE grass to paint a farm down, or cobble to paint a merchant in a city etc.. But the actual tiles in the group are separate from that terrain. So they add to total tile count.
As to having textures change... there are two ways to accomplish that. One is to duplicate a given tile, and rename it, then re-texture it. This doubles the tile count. The other option is to have a separate hak with different textures, by the same names, available, and load/unload that hak. This can NOT be done while in game though, and can't be done where you have two different areas with the same tileset using both textures, IE, one area using one, the other using the different texture. What you are doing is "overriding" the textures in use. A PW server can accomplish this by having two different versions of a hak available, and shutting down the server temporarily, changing the hak order or what haks are required, and then restarting the server... the player would have to have both versions of the haks available on his system, but only ONE would be loaded at any given time.
Neither of those two options are ideal. Typically, a builder would just have two different tilesets available and build each area separately.
Not worth it anyway... Test it yourself. Build a 32x32 area, set your start location in far left, upper corner and place a placeable of some type in far right, lower corner of the area. Hit F9 and see how long it takes you to "Run" to find that placeable... takes forever.
As others have mentioned, the larger the area, the bigger the lag gets, add NPC's, creatures, placeables etc, to make the area come alive, and you will be waiting for quite a while for the area to even load. If it loads at all.
16x16 is the practical limit, most especially for a Persistent World environment. On a single PC, you might be able to tolerate a longer load time for a given area, but in any situation where you have the nwnserver involved, folks will tend to just exit the game, instead of waiting for such a long load time. It can even cause a server to crash.
Tiles are 10x10 meters, and that is absolutely required size. As Zwerkules mentions, that is the size of the walkmesh (wok) of a tile, which defines what areas are walkable/passable in a given tile. This is an engine requirement and there is no way around it.
As to "Themes" within a given tileset, sure, most of the later tilesets that have been created by the community, and even the sets in 1.69 have a large variation in the number of "terrains" that are available. Any given tileset can have as many terrains as you want, but as has also been mentioned, the tileset count goes way up.
The engine requires a given number of tiles to define a given terrain. So, flat grass, requires one tile. Most builders/designers want a few variations of that though, so most tilesets have more than one. Now, when you "raise" a tile, cliffs, or just the typical 5 meter raise of a Bioware set, you not only have to have that flat tile, but all the corner variations as well. Flat on one corner, raised on the other 3, flat on two corners and raised on the other two, flat on 3 corners, raised on the 4th. There is no tile for raised on all 4 as the engine takes the flat tile and raises the whole thing up.
As you add terrain types, say water, you not only duplicate the original tiles but you have to make tiles that merge the two terrains together. Flat grass on one corner, water on one corner, etc. Now add raised terrain to the grass, and you have to add water that is below a cliff edge, water that joins on a corner of a cliff edge etc...
Want a road? Roads. Streams, Walls, Fences, etc are all crossers. They take a min of 5 tiles to define for a SINGLE terrain, say grass. You have to have the wall ending halfway across the tile, straight. We call that the "i" (lower case eye) tile, then you have to have a Straight wall that crosses the entire tile, Typically called an "I" (upper case eye) so that you can tell the difference... then you need corners, so a "T" for 3 corners, an "X" for all 4, etc.
Now if you add water terrains, you need a variation of the walls that coincide with the different combinations of water/grass tiles, so the numbers of tiles required just keeps going up.
You can have at least 4000 tiles in a given set. That is a HUGE tileset though, and is NOT typical. Most sets are lower than 800 tiles, in fact, most are lower than 500. The larges tileset that Bioware ever released, the Castle Exterior, Rural (Called TNO by older fans) is 1260 some tiles. That is a HUGE set by most standards. However, when you start building with it, you might not see the reasons behind why it is sooo large. It has 7 different terrains, and at least 9 different crossers to allow all the terrains, walls, streams, roads to connect.
When you create an area with it, you don't have to know what tiles are being used, but those tiles DO have to exist. So, you paint an area with grass, add a road, then decide that you want a stream to cross under the road... You are talking about having to have an area that is at least 2x2, likely 3x3 to even get that started. Plain grass, Plain grass with road, and plain grass with a road that has a stream going under it. The road has to have ends, so that is 3 tiles, the stream has to have ends, that is 3 more, minus the variant that allows the road to cross over so that is 5 tiles just for a single bridge over a small stream on a short path/road.
Features/Groups are basically unlimited. Groups are more than one tile that paints at the same time... groups CAN re-use tiles that are used by other groups, provided that the first tile in the group list is not the same. So, say one corner has to always be different but the other 3 corners can be the same or use the same tiles as other groups do. You don't have to worry much about that though, as most tileset creators do NOT re-use tiles across multiple groups, it is much easier to manage when every group is defined by it's own tiles.
Groups seldom use the same tiles as a given terrain... they WILL require that a given terrain be present, IE grass to paint a farm down, or cobble to paint a merchant in a city etc.. But the actual tiles in the group are separate from that terrain. So they add to total tile count.
As to having textures change... there are two ways to accomplish that. One is to duplicate a given tile, and rename it, then re-texture it. This doubles the tile count. The other option is to have a separate hak with different textures, by the same names, available, and load/unload that hak. This can NOT be done while in game though, and can't be done where you have two different areas with the same tileset using both textures, IE, one area using one, the other using the different texture. What you are doing is "overriding" the textures in use. A PW server can accomplish this by having two different versions of a hak available, and shutting down the server temporarily, changing the hak order or what haks are required, and then restarting the server... the player would have to have both versions of the haks available on his system, but only ONE would be loaded at any given time.
Neither of those two options are ideal. Typically, a builder would just have two different tilesets available and build each area separately.
Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 25 juillet 2011 - 09:33 .
#5
Posté 25 juillet 2011 - 10:51
s e n
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you can't have more than 4000 tiles on a set?
#6
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 12:02
Bannor Bloodfist
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s e n wrote...
you can't have more than 4000 tiles on a set?
That is not what was said.
What was stated by two of us was that you could have at least 4000, no one has pushed it much beyond that. 4000 tiles is really about 2000 tiles too many anyway. You get noticable lag on tilesets that are above 1000 as it is. TNO as 1200+ and with the higher polycount, and increased texture sizes you are talking noticable lag with TNO as it is.
CTP_Babylon has 1321 tiles and contains 17 different terrains, with 13 crossers, MOST of which play very nicely together. That is a tileset with just basic sand as the default terrain. Sand, and water, with chasms, cliffs, etc... If we had added grass, the tile count would likely have doubled, just in terrain tiles alone, even more if we had created groups that were duplicated for all the different terrains.
Anyway, as big as Babylon is, we still did NOT need 4000 tiles. Likely wouldn't even with adding a green section of grassy tiles etc... would still be below 3k.
Folks have already complained about load times with TNO and Babylon, I can't imagine having a tileset with 4k tiles with high polycounts and high res textures that people seem to be demanding more of these days.
Practically speaking, there is no reason for a tileset to have 4,000 tiles. None. It makes more sense to break it up. You can't mix snow and summer terrains in the same area at the same time to have it look right anyway. Why have 4 versions of the same tile, with 4 different season variations in a single hak and .SET file? You are just increasing load lag time for no practical purpose... split it up, have 4 tilesets, one for each season. You are not saving anything at all by having a single huge hak and .SET file. In fact, you are making management of such a tileset a major pain, building with it requires a much larger ITP setup, which makes it just that much harder for a builder to find what he/she is looking for anyway.
Single hak download file? No reason that shoiuld make an issue either, just package all 4 versions of the hak into a single archive... everyone packs things in Rar or 7z file archives anyway, so a single file download is still possible. Heck, even a self extracting exe can handle multiple haks. About the only practical reason to NOT do that, would be on a HUGE PW that has dozens and dozens of haks already and is worried about reaching the 50 hak limit.
#7
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 07:59
s e n
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hah ok
from what i know, tilecount doesnt influence area loading time nor is cause to video lag if you run the game from the machine that stores the module (server) but the loading issues with sets having more than 2000-2500 tiles come to client users, so thats an issue for pws but not for single player modules
from what i know, tilecount doesnt influence area loading time nor is cause to video lag if you run the game from the machine that stores the module (server) but the loading issues with sets having more than 2000-2500 tiles come to client users, so thats an issue for pws but not for single player modules
#8
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 08:30
CID-78
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actually many tiles and with many terrain and therefore many terrain rules give a laggy toolset. Who want to build with a tileset that slow down the toolset so it takes seconds to see your modifications. or to see if the box will be green or red..
if no one builds with it, there won't be anything that can be laggy for the player.
if no one builds with it, there won't be anything that can be laggy for the player.
#9
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 09:14
s e n
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true, fact is me and many others prefer working on versatile tilesets that allow to build (even with toolset lag) with fantasy than using a 2 tiles of grass tileset, since your patience will be rewarded on the output; not saying the bigger lag in toolset is not caused by tilecount but by the single tile size, so if you aware of this, with a bit of experience you can easily avoid such lags
#10
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 11:17
the.gray.fox
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I thank you -- everyone.
Your responses are so exhaustive that I do not have other questions.
Sadly, that means that my upcoming project is dead.
I was still in the probing phase, so I have not wasted many hours on it -- lucky me.
The questions I made were for key features I required.
Alas, all are mandatory and pretty much none is practical -- or even possible.
The inability to have tiles of 2x2 is the main "project stopper".
But even if that could be worked around, there would be more stoppers lurking past it.
-fox
Your responses are so exhaustive that I do not have other questions.
Sadly, that means that my upcoming project is dead.
I was still in the probing phase, so I have not wasted many hours on it -- lucky me.
The questions I made were for key features I required.
Alas, all are mandatory and pretty much none is practical -- or even possible.
The inability to have tiles of 2x2 is the main "project stopper".
But even if that could be worked around, there would be more stoppers lurking past it.
-fox
Modifié par the.gray.fox, 26 juillet 2011 - 11:18 .
#11
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 06:04
_six
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Nonsense!
To be honest, if you're insistent on the 20m x 20m tiles, just create the tileset consisting of 2x2 tilegroups, and paint them down manually rather than using terrains (look at how the CCS tileset works for an example of that using 1x1 tiles - though the CCS tileset does a really bad job of it admittedly). I actually think 10 metre tilesets are way too large, myself. Because you can create geometry to a size of any multiple of one tile, so if one tile is big to begin with, you have no options to go smaller. But if one tile is small to begin with, you have lots of room for maneuver.
That said, unless your intended project is quite simply a tileset of 2x2 tiles as an experiment, then frankly I think you're being more than a little defeatist, completely unnecessarily. Would you care to explain what exactly you have in mind?
To be honest, if you're insistent on the 20m x 20m tiles, just create the tileset consisting of 2x2 tilegroups, and paint them down manually rather than using terrains (look at how the CCS tileset works for an example of that using 1x1 tiles - though the CCS tileset does a really bad job of it admittedly). I actually think 10 metre tilesets are way too large, myself. Because you can create geometry to a size of any multiple of one tile, so if one tile is big to begin with, you have no options to go smaller. But if one tile is small to begin with, you have lots of room for maneuver.
That said, unless your intended project is quite simply a tileset of 2x2 tiles as an experiment, then frankly I think you're being more than a little defeatist, completely unnecessarily. Would you care to explain what exactly you have in mind?
Modifié par _six, 26 juillet 2011 - 06:06 .
#13
Posté 26 juillet 2011 - 06:29
_six
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Oh, er, excuse me being blind
In that case, I'd still like to know why this is an issue. If he's planning to model everything himself and its for a highly specific project, he might be better just modelling the entire area as a single group. That way, you'd avoid the really blocky look that 2 metre tiles would give you too.
In that case, I'd still like to know why this is an issue. If he's planning to model everything himself and its for a highly specific project, he might be better just modelling the entire area as a single group. That way, you'd avoid the really blocky look that 2 metre tiles would give you too.
Modifié par _six, 26 juillet 2011 - 06:32 .
#14
Posté 29 juillet 2011 - 10:22
the.gray.fox
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Forgive me, I did not notice these last replies earlier.
And do not worry, _six, there is nothing to excuse.
Hm. To model a whole Area as a single Group...
The project was highly specific indeed -- And I am crazy enough to go as far as to model all that for real.
But...
Do you mean __a single group of tiles__? As in a group of 3x3 tiles (each of 10x10 meters, so making it a complex of 30x30 meters) that you paint in 1 shot, but ultimately they still are 9 separate tiles?
-OR-
Do you mean a single _huge_ Tile that covers the entire Area surface?
As in _one_ single super-Tile of size 512 meters by 512 meters that would _be_ the whole Area of play. Then -internally- my scripts would "split" that much surface into logical tiles of 2x2 meters size, so carving a grid of 256x256 square tiles out of it?
Which of the two can be done?
For the record, the maximum Area size I require is of 256x256 _tiles_.
Keeping in mind that each _tile_ would be 2x2 meters, that would make an Area as big as 512x512 meters.
At best I could drop to 240x240 tiles (480x480 meters).
(but I could further cut on the meters by reducing the logical tile size, maybe to 1.5x1.5 meters)
Could a tileset this peculiar be handled by NWN without killing the performance nor crashing?
That would incidentally spare me the use of a miriad of objects across the Area, easing by far the load on the CPU.
If it matters, my logical tiles would not need much geometric detail.
And their textures too do not need to be photorealistic.
-fox
And do not worry, _six, there is nothing to excuse.
Hm. To model a whole Area as a single Group...
The project was highly specific indeed -- And I am crazy enough to go as far as to model all that for real.
But...
Do you mean __a single group of tiles__? As in a group of 3x3 tiles (each of 10x10 meters, so making it a complex of 30x30 meters) that you paint in 1 shot, but ultimately they still are 9 separate tiles?
-OR-
Do you mean a single _huge_ Tile that covers the entire Area surface?
As in _one_ single super-Tile of size 512 meters by 512 meters that would _be_ the whole Area of play. Then -internally- my scripts would "split" that much surface into logical tiles of 2x2 meters size, so carving a grid of 256x256 square tiles out of it?
Which of the two can be done?
For the record, the maximum Area size I require is of 256x256 _tiles_.
Keeping in mind that each _tile_ would be 2x2 meters, that would make an Area as big as 512x512 meters.
At best I could drop to 240x240 tiles (480x480 meters).
(but I could further cut on the meters by reducing the logical tile size, maybe to 1.5x1.5 meters)
Could a tileset this peculiar be handled by NWN without killing the performance nor crashing?
That would incidentally spare me the use of a miriad of objects across the Area, easing by far the load on the CPU.
If it matters, my logical tiles would not need much geometric detail.
And their textures too do not need to be photorealistic.
-fox
#15
Posté 29 juillet 2011 - 10:49
_six
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Rather than directly answer your questions (because I still have no clue why you're planning on doing any of this, so probably can't say much useful), here are your limitations
1. All individual tiles must be 10 metres
2. Walkable area can be no larger than 32x32 10 metre tiles, regardless of what you do
3. It is fully possible to model a full group in one piece, attach it to a single tile, however...
4. Every tile needs a walkmesh, and that walkmesh must only cover that specific tile
So if you make a huge mesh, you'd need to cut the walkmesh up into 10 x 10 pieces, and attach each of those to a separate aurorabase, then add those as a group. You could theoretically make the mesh extend beyond those tiles as far as you like, but it can't be walkable.
1. All individual tiles must be 10 metres
2. Walkable area can be no larger than 32x32 10 metre tiles, regardless of what you do
3. It is fully possible to model a full group in one piece, attach it to a single tile, however...
4. Every tile needs a walkmesh, and that walkmesh must only cover that specific tile
So if you make a huge mesh, you'd need to cut the walkmesh up into 10 x 10 pieces, and attach each of those to a separate aurorabase, then add those as a group. You could theoretically make the mesh extend beyond those tiles as far as you like, but it can't be walkable.
#16
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 12:43
the.gray.fox
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I understand. Just a bad idea, then.
NWN can not handle what I had in mind. I will have to see if NWN 2 can.
Then again, I never liked the Lego-way to build areas.
Good for bandwidth, ease of building, and speed of rendering.
Bad for art, and control, and freedom.
Thanks for all your input.
-fox
NWN can not handle what I had in mind. I will have to see if NWN 2 can.
Then again, I never liked the Lego-way to build areas.
Good for bandwidth, ease of building, and speed of rendering.
Bad for art, and control, and freedom.
Thanks for all your input.
-fox
#17
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 01:05
Bannor Bloodfist
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I am also curious why are you stuck on this 2x2 meter idea? What advantage would that give you? that is a HUGE number of small objects to build, and align correctly, into a group.
512x512 in meters converts to over 1679 feet in length... That is over 5 football fields long (including both end fields of 10 yards each) per side, that is one HUGE amount of space.
As to Art, control, and freedom... NWN pretty much offers the best that is available for building with. NWN2, is limited in total area size as well, and much more limited in outdoor areas to only 5 textures (I think, may be wrong on the max texture count)... so, grass, stone, dirt, leaves, bark, doesn't give you any room for buildings, which is why they went with placeable buildings etc. Regardless, NWN 2 also has max size limitations for a single area.
As _Six mentioned, you could create a single group, that is 32x32 tiles in size, and handle it in one of two ways, create the entire group, and walkmesh for same, then slice the group up into the individual tiles (there are tools already available to help with that), create your own tileset, with a single extra 10x10 grass tile to give it something to paint when initially creating the area in the toolset, and a single group entry in the set file and itp file, to allow you to paint your entire group down.
Or, as _Six mentioned, you can create the entire visible sections as one tile, and create the walkable area and just slice the walkable stuff off into 10x10 sections to assign to the tiles of the group. The ground would still end up with 32x32 (1024 total) tiles, but only ONE of them would have visible material attached to it. The other 1023 would only have the walkable surface restrictions on them.
Thus you would be limited to the max of 32x32 tiles, or 320x320 meters, which is still over 1000 feet to play around in... that is a HUGE area.
Likely, if you would just give folks more information, they can give you optional ideas on how to create the "feel" of the area you wish to have, without having to resort to something even larger than 1024 square meters of space requirements.
I seriously doubt that anyone wishes to "steal" an idea for an area requiring that much size from you, so you truly don't have to worry about losing the idea.
512x512 in meters converts to over 1679 feet in length... That is over 5 football fields long (including both end fields of 10 yards each) per side, that is one HUGE amount of space.
As to Art, control, and freedom... NWN pretty much offers the best that is available for building with. NWN2, is limited in total area size as well, and much more limited in outdoor areas to only 5 textures (I think, may be wrong on the max texture count)... so, grass, stone, dirt, leaves, bark, doesn't give you any room for buildings, which is why they went with placeable buildings etc. Regardless, NWN 2 also has max size limitations for a single area.
As _Six mentioned, you could create a single group, that is 32x32 tiles in size, and handle it in one of two ways, create the entire group, and walkmesh for same, then slice the group up into the individual tiles (there are tools already available to help with that), create your own tileset, with a single extra 10x10 grass tile to give it something to paint when initially creating the area in the toolset, and a single group entry in the set file and itp file, to allow you to paint your entire group down.
Or, as _Six mentioned, you can create the entire visible sections as one tile, and create the walkable area and just slice the walkable stuff off into 10x10 sections to assign to the tiles of the group. The ground would still end up with 32x32 (1024 total) tiles, but only ONE of them would have visible material attached to it. The other 1023 would only have the walkable surface restrictions on them.
Thus you would be limited to the max of 32x32 tiles, or 320x320 meters, which is still over 1000 feet to play around in... that is a HUGE area.
Likely, if you would just give folks more information, they can give you optional ideas on how to create the "feel" of the area you wish to have, without having to resort to something even larger than 1024 square meters of space requirements.
I seriously doubt that anyone wishes to "steal" an idea for an area requiring that much size from you, so you truly don't have to worry about losing the idea.
Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 30 juillet 2011 - 01:07 .
#18
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 03:19
the.gray.fox
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There is no secret to hide.
I wished to remake an old 2D game from 1998. Today we would define it an Action RPG.
It had a very addictive gameplay, and it was a merciless game.
If you succeeded in it, to any extent, nobody could claim you did not earn your stuff -- because often a tiny mistake would cost you dearly (starting with the loss of the entirety of your belongings -- which you then had to go retrieve... with your killers lurking right there, no less -- and you logged out, bye bye your stuff -> gone forever).
Probably that was its undying beauty. And no, I am not talking of Diablo games. Forget them. There was better stuff out. Just not as famous.
Well in this game you could edit your maps.
Maps were built our of a regular grid of vertices. You would raise or lower them vertices to create hills and valleys. Then you would apply the textures to form patches of grass, sand, and what not.
Square tiles would form on the grid, and could make up a matrix of up to 240x240 tiles (256x256 really, but a bug would cause the game to subtract 16 from each dimension).
The whole gameplay was ruled by tiles and the fact that a single tile could only accomodate 1 single creature. Bigger creatures would occupy several tiles, to the point that in too narrow a space such creatures would no fit and could not chase you.
Learnig to take serious advantage of narrow spaces was part of the recipe for staying alive in that game.
Now you see why I insist on wanting tiles that are 2 meters by 2 meters.
It is a "safe" space ino which I can accomodate a single NWN Medium-size creature (given the due edits within the 2DA, of course), and yet avoid to have too big a crowd on the screen.
But the current tilesets of NWN all suck. They are too big. And force me to lay down wide open spaces, so murdering any and all Strategy and Taking Advantage of narrow spaces.
What "narrow spaces"? In NWN?? Where???
All is an airport in NWN. You may land a Cessna onto the typical city street. Ridicolous.
So I am going to need a custom tileset.
And it is going to be a custom tileset for each map I wish to replicate from that game.
At least this would give me all the detail I want. But it would make map editing impossible anyway, because all such NWN tiles would be unique and meant to be used only in that specific place and to have only those specific neighbours.
In point of fact each such map would be an uneditable and huge Group of tiles.
If you wanted to change anything, go back to edit the very tileset -- Ridicolous again.
If only I could make maps bigger than 32x32 NWN tiles... I could then scale up every other object (by 5x) so that a tile of 10x10 meters effectively becomes like 2x2 meters.
Haha -- But that too is not possible.
I still would have to redesign the tilesets to eliminate those decorative objects that would appear way too tiny if everything else was scaled up.
Conclusion: NWN 1 can _not_ handle this.
If not even NWN 2 can, oh well, I can give up too.
-fox
I wished to remake an old 2D game from 1998. Today we would define it an Action RPG.
It had a very addictive gameplay, and it was a merciless game.
If you succeeded in it, to any extent, nobody could claim you did not earn your stuff -- because often a tiny mistake would cost you dearly (starting with the loss of the entirety of your belongings -- which you then had to go retrieve... with your killers lurking right there, no less -- and you logged out, bye bye your stuff -> gone forever).
Probably that was its undying beauty. And no, I am not talking of Diablo games. Forget them. There was better stuff out. Just not as famous.
Well in this game you could edit your maps.
Maps were built our of a regular grid of vertices. You would raise or lower them vertices to create hills and valleys. Then you would apply the textures to form patches of grass, sand, and what not.
Square tiles would form on the grid, and could make up a matrix of up to 240x240 tiles (256x256 really, but a bug would cause the game to subtract 16 from each dimension).
The whole gameplay was ruled by tiles and the fact that a single tile could only accomodate 1 single creature. Bigger creatures would occupy several tiles, to the point that in too narrow a space such creatures would no fit and could not chase you.
Learnig to take serious advantage of narrow spaces was part of the recipe for staying alive in that game.
Now you see why I insist on wanting tiles that are 2 meters by 2 meters.
It is a "safe" space ino which I can accomodate a single NWN Medium-size creature (given the due edits within the 2DA, of course), and yet avoid to have too big a crowd on the screen.
But the current tilesets of NWN all suck. They are too big. And force me to lay down wide open spaces, so murdering any and all Strategy and Taking Advantage of narrow spaces.
What "narrow spaces"? In NWN?? Where???
All is an airport in NWN. You may land a Cessna onto the typical city street. Ridicolous.
So I am going to need a custom tileset.
And it is going to be a custom tileset for each map I wish to replicate from that game.
At least this would give me all the detail I want. But it would make map editing impossible anyway, because all such NWN tiles would be unique and meant to be used only in that specific place and to have only those specific neighbours.
In point of fact each such map would be an uneditable and huge Group of tiles.
If you wanted to change anything, go back to edit the very tileset -- Ridicolous again.
If only I could make maps bigger than 32x32 NWN tiles... I could then scale up every other object (by 5x) so that a tile of 10x10 meters effectively becomes like 2x2 meters.
Haha -- But that too is not possible.
I still would have to redesign the tilesets to eliminate those decorative objects that would appear way too tiny if everything else was scaled up.
Conclusion: NWN 1 can _not_ handle this.
If not even NWN 2 can, oh well, I can give up too.
-fox
#20
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 05:20
_six
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I don't know if you've seen Chandigar's maze terrain for his Gothic Exterior tileset, but it may give you some clues...
#21
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 06:31
OldTimeRadio
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Just took a look. I'd forgotten that he'd turned maze intro a terrain. Amazing work, as usual. I'm just curious to look up a gameplay video on YouTube and simply see whatever it is that they think NWN can't handle.
#22
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 06:40
Bannor Bloodfist
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City Exterior Alleys would also likely be close to the limiting features you want, but 99% of tiles out there have a wider space because the engine uses something called "perspace" which stands for personal space, and which is related to creature size and everything by default is designed for something slightly larger than a human in size as most creatures end up being that big... so, the moveable space is larger to accommodate those larger creatures.
Some of the sewer tilesets have narrower channels of walkable space as well, but you have to be picky with how you lay out your areas.
Not sure what else could be suggested though, creating a tileset that has that sort of limitation in moveable space has not ever been a design criteria in NWN. There are sets with some terrains/crossers that offer some limitations, but they are only a piece of a much larger space.
You COULD create a tileset that was based primarily on crosser type connections, with only the centers of the sections being available for walking, and could accomplish what you are asking for with that. As to how it would look, that would be determined by what you wanted it to look like... interior cave type systems would be easier to visualize, but you could also accomplish it with exteriors, and if you create enough variations on each tile as in a01_01, a01_02 .. a01_21 etc... you could likely create exactly what you are looking for. The disadvantage to this scheme is that you are building with wasted space, blocking space, more than what is walkable.
Anyway, it CAN be done, just not to such huge size as you were orignally asking for.
Forget your 2x2 meter limitation in regards to tile-size, and consider the 2 meter bit to just be the width of the walkable space, or less as you choose. To gain a larger map, you would have to build it in sections, and create multiple areas with area transitions connecting them together.
Some of the sewer tilesets have narrower channels of walkable space as well, but you have to be picky with how you lay out your areas.
Not sure what else could be suggested though, creating a tileset that has that sort of limitation in moveable space has not ever been a design criteria in NWN. There are sets with some terrains/crossers that offer some limitations, but they are only a piece of a much larger space.
You COULD create a tileset that was based primarily on crosser type connections, with only the centers of the sections being available for walking, and could accomplish what you are asking for with that. As to how it would look, that would be determined by what you wanted it to look like... interior cave type systems would be easier to visualize, but you could also accomplish it with exteriors, and if you create enough variations on each tile as in a01_01, a01_02 .. a01_21 etc... you could likely create exactly what you are looking for. The disadvantage to this scheme is that you are building with wasted space, blocking space, more than what is walkable.
Anyway, it CAN be done, just not to such huge size as you were orignally asking for.
Forget your 2x2 meter limitation in regards to tile-size, and consider the 2 meter bit to just be the width of the walkable space, or less as you choose. To gain a larger map, you would have to build it in sections, and create multiple areas with area transitions connecting them together.
#23
Posté 30 juillet 2011 - 08:54
OldMansBeard
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Would it suffice to use 2x2 placeables to represent terrain and lay them over blank tiles ? With one NWN tile accommodating 5x5 of these placeable "mini-tiles" ?
If some mini-tiles have blocking pwk's and others are walkable, you will get tactical complexity.
Perhaps the perspace and creperspace entries in appearance.2da could be standardised to multiples of 2.0 to constrain creatures to "one per square".
Pathfinding might be laggy, though.
Just a thought.
OMB
If some mini-tiles have blocking pwk's and others are walkable, you will get tactical complexity.
Perhaps the perspace and creperspace entries in appearance.2da could be standardised to multiples of 2.0 to constrain creatures to "one per square".
Pathfinding might be laggy, though.
Just a thought.
OMB
#24
Posté 01 août 2011 - 02:53
the.gray.fox
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@ OldTimeRadio:
The game name is: Rage of Mages II: Necromancer.
But I think it is off topic if we start talking of it here.
PM me if you seek more details.
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@ Bannor Bloodfist:
Tilesets are not my "field" -- scripts are.
Could you explain that again, maybe aided with a simplified drawing to schematize the thing?
It sounds interesting, and may lead somewhere productive.
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@ OldMansBeard:
A matrix of 2x2 meters placeables would mean a total of 25 placeables per NWN tile of 10x10 meters. Thus, a medium area of -say- 8x8 tiles would spawn 1600 placeables.
Not counting the creatures, the items they carry and wear, and the scripts to play the whole.
Too much :-)
The game would crash or just hang while loading the Area.
-fox
The game name is: Rage of Mages II: Necromancer.
But I think it is off topic if we start talking of it here.
PM me if you seek more details.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@ Bannor Bloodfist:
Clearly you know what you talk about. But I do not.Bannor Bloodfist wrote...
You COULD create a tileset that was based primarily on crosser type connections, with only the centers of [...]
Tilesets are not my "field" -- scripts are.
Could you explain that again, maybe aided with a simplified drawing to schematize the thing?
It sounds interesting, and may lead somewhere productive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@ OldMansBeard:
A matrix of 2x2 meters placeables would mean a total of 25 placeables per NWN tile of 10x10 meters. Thus, a medium area of -say- 8x8 tiles would spawn 1600 placeables.
Not counting the creatures, the items they carry and wear, and the scripts to play the whole.
Too much :-)
The game would crash or just hang while loading the Area.
-fox
#25
Posté 01 août 2011 - 06:19
Bannor Bloodfist
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Ok, quick answer on the possible crosser solution, and it won't be real quick, sorry...
Crossers are things like roads/streams etc. They connect slightly differently than the way normal tiles do, at least from a builders viewpoint.
Crossers have a series of letters that can loosely represent their shapes, and this is loosely. They typically have a lower case "i" (eye) for a single end of the road. A single tile that expects no connection to road on one 3 sides, but has a single connection to a road on the last side. IE, the "end of the road". Crossers also have an Upper case "I" (eye) where it connects on two sides, IE the road completely crosses the tile from one side to another. Then you have a corner that connects top, and one side (this tile can be rotated to connect any of the two sides that way... IE, top-right, top-left, bottom-right, and bottom-left. Typically we just refer to that type of tile as a "c" tile. Then you have one that is a "T" (tee) shape, where it connects to any of the three sides and meets in the middle. And finally and "X" (ex) tile that connects from all 4 sides and meets in the middle.
Now, take any of those single tiles, and you can make variations on them. Different things, objects, walls, trees, whatever, to block passage except where you want that passage to be. These blocking objects don't even necessarily have to physically exist, but the walkmesh of the tile can be used to allow/block access and if you choose the correct pathnode for the tile, one that actually represents the true walkable passage, then your pathfinding in game will work as well.
For rough visual clarification, here are the pics of the various pathnodes that NWN offers NWN Pathnodes
The pathnodes, are used by NWN to allow your PC or NPC's and creatures, to more easily find a path when you click farther away than a single tile. In the images, 40 of them are usable, 2 are reserved. If you think of your individual tiles that you might need to accomplish your goal, and can find an close approximation in the pathnodes, you should be good to go. The Black lines are ALWAYS walkable. the white sections may or may not be walkable depending on how you build the tile. They can be rotated by 90, 180, and 270 degrees, just as your tiles can be rotated when you paint them in the toolset.
Anyway, I am suggesting that you think of the tiles as crossers, as it will make it easier to keep in mind how you want the player to be able to proceed in a given tile. You will still be creating tiles, and still need the variations to accomplish the goal, but it IS possible to create a tileset to do what you want. It will just take a bit of work to get all the variations.
Typically, I cheat when creating tiles... I know I need sometime to match up to the next tile in the set, so I copy/paste whatever I can from one that I already have. Rotate objects around, etc, to save me in creation time. That way I typically only have to assign textures and map them properly on the first one, then the copies will all be mapped the same etc... Sometimes this saves a lot of time, sometimes it won't work, but generally, re-using bits and pieces from various other tiles that I have already created, saves hours and hours of total time in a tileset creation, most especially when creating a very large tileset.
As to the variations, say you want your road end tile to only allow someone to walk 2 meters in, then be blocked... the next variation of the same tile, you want them to walk 4 meters, and then 6 meters, then 8 and finally the full way across, always following a straight line. the first 4 variations would all use the "i" (lower case eye) pathnode. The final tile is actually NOT a variation, but a new tile that uses the Upper case I (eye) pathnode, and typically has a different letter combination in the name. Typically, in Bioware sets in general, the lower case "i" (eye) tiles are all numbered as tctl0_h05_01 -> h05_04 in the case mentioned above, and the fifth tile would be named tctl0_h02_01.
Anyway, it IS possible to create what you want, and using the variations on the different tiles, you can make it fairly easy to build with. Might take a couple extra clicks of the mouse to get a specific tile allowing movement exactly where you want, but it can be done.
Crossers are things like roads/streams etc. They connect slightly differently than the way normal tiles do, at least from a builders viewpoint.
Crossers have a series of letters that can loosely represent their shapes, and this is loosely. They typically have a lower case "i" (eye) for a single end of the road. A single tile that expects no connection to road on one 3 sides, but has a single connection to a road on the last side. IE, the "end of the road". Crossers also have an Upper case "I" (eye) where it connects on two sides, IE the road completely crosses the tile from one side to another. Then you have a corner that connects top, and one side (this tile can be rotated to connect any of the two sides that way... IE, top-right, top-left, bottom-right, and bottom-left. Typically we just refer to that type of tile as a "c" tile. Then you have one that is a "T" (tee) shape, where it connects to any of the three sides and meets in the middle. And finally and "X" (ex) tile that connects from all 4 sides and meets in the middle.
Now, take any of those single tiles, and you can make variations on them. Different things, objects, walls, trees, whatever, to block passage except where you want that passage to be. These blocking objects don't even necessarily have to physically exist, but the walkmesh of the tile can be used to allow/block access and if you choose the correct pathnode for the tile, one that actually represents the true walkable passage, then your pathfinding in game will work as well.
For rough visual clarification, here are the pics of the various pathnodes that NWN offers NWN Pathnodes
The pathnodes, are used by NWN to allow your PC or NPC's and creatures, to more easily find a path when you click farther away than a single tile. In the images, 40 of them are usable, 2 are reserved. If you think of your individual tiles that you might need to accomplish your goal, and can find an close approximation in the pathnodes, you should be good to go. The Black lines are ALWAYS walkable. the white sections may or may not be walkable depending on how you build the tile. They can be rotated by 90, 180, and 270 degrees, just as your tiles can be rotated when you paint them in the toolset.
Anyway, I am suggesting that you think of the tiles as crossers, as it will make it easier to keep in mind how you want the player to be able to proceed in a given tile. You will still be creating tiles, and still need the variations to accomplish the goal, but it IS possible to create a tileset to do what you want. It will just take a bit of work to get all the variations.
Typically, I cheat when creating tiles... I know I need sometime to match up to the next tile in the set, so I copy/paste whatever I can from one that I already have. Rotate objects around, etc, to save me in creation time. That way I typically only have to assign textures and map them properly on the first one, then the copies will all be mapped the same etc... Sometimes this saves a lot of time, sometimes it won't work, but generally, re-using bits and pieces from various other tiles that I have already created, saves hours and hours of total time in a tileset creation, most especially when creating a very large tileset.
As to the variations, say you want your road end tile to only allow someone to walk 2 meters in, then be blocked... the next variation of the same tile, you want them to walk 4 meters, and then 6 meters, then 8 and finally the full way across, always following a straight line. the first 4 variations would all use the "i" (lower case eye) pathnode. The final tile is actually NOT a variation, but a new tile that uses the Upper case I (eye) pathnode, and typically has a different letter combination in the name. Typically, in Bioware sets in general, the lower case "i" (eye) tiles are all numbered as tctl0_h05_01 -> h05_04 in the case mentioned above, and the fifth tile would be named tctl0_h02_01.
Anyway, it IS possible to create what you want, and using the variations on the different tiles, you can make it fairly easy to build with. Might take a couple extra clicks of the mouse to get a specific tile allowing movement exactly where you want, but it can be done.
Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 01 août 2011 - 06:22 .
