649 réponses à ce sujet

[MerricksDad]

I figured them all out on my own, and wasn't too happy with the list

 

Last time I did this I had the program calculate them for me in GMAX, and then I put the coordinate details in an exportable property on the model, like comments. Then I read the comment out of the MDL file and had the external script pack them all into the SET file, and calculate the required pathing type and direction from that data. I remember it took me like 2 months to get right back then. Now it isn't too hard. Especially on coffee.

[s e n]

http://neverwinterva...le-raise-system

 

anyway if you need it, I found it, its there inside the 7z archive. it tells also why you did not get it work in toolset, basically that's needed a -1 or less base value and the other values scaled by consequence when a multiple raise is in place lol thats tricky, also you need to adjust the model height for certain tiles. by the way a quadruple raise system is just 95 tile variations

[MerricksDad]

It is 95 tile variations if you only do the basics. I'm counting crossers too and even with two height changes and max 3 variants per tile (pre crossers) and then water and pit, and I'm already at 404.

[s e n]

lol yes but with "just" 95 you can taste the strenght, and get drive boost to move on expanding it with other stuff

 

A suggestion I feel to make you is to consider use a slightly high height value (such 4, 5 or 6) , with say 5 a quadruple raise allows to move 20 meters height in the space of 1 tile, thats a lot (I think BM rocky mountains have 24 max and LR rocky mountains something like 18) and use a grass smooth terrain to create gentle hills for the 01 raise basic variations. thats a nice compromise to get both gentle hills and steep mountains in place with just a few tile variations needed

[MerricksDad]

I see your spreadsheet shows why it works without rules. That is some fancy trickery.

[T0r0]

I also used sen's excel sheet to implement the 10m cliffs in the rural expansion. Which was why in the end, it went from an override to a full expansion. Much belated thank you to sen !

[MerricksDad]

Either of you:

I am going through the -1 values in the spreadsheet, trying to find a reason for the different values. What is the logic, do you know? Because from what I am seeing, you might be trying to express the rules portion as the logic with the -1 values, otherwise the adjacent tile doesn't know what to do. In this scenario, you basically circumvent the rules and go directly to defining the adjacent tile with this number.

[MerricksDad]

in the example of 0300, you assume that you will have built up a region 3 units high, but in the example of 0200, the logic assumes you are not initiating level 2 by the same method. Was this fashioned via hunt and peck?

[MerricksDad]

I got the combos for level 3 ad added to my set, but I don't have the smooth combos for those. This includes mixing with water, and removal of the pit terrain type from the roster, as planned and saving a lot of work.

 

I can now transition from water at -3m to an upper mountain region at +9m through any combination of those, including diagonal mid-tile ramps which connect any two levels no more than 3m apart.

 

Kid is monstering out, so I should finish the white set tomorrow.

[s e n]

MD I dare you to find a rule that adjusts for all those cases. I can't remember if I did, but I am almost sure I went the trial and error way (because I hate rules and logic) for the tiles that wouldnt paint with the most logical values

[MerricksDad]

Hunt and peck it is then. Fascinating that you took the time to go through all that.

[s e n]

I think the big was the first insight I needed a -1 value for gettting it to work, then the rest was very straight, probably just an afternoon of work to get all in place

[s e n]

by the way, if you get the edgetiles working let me know, it may be the right drive to start working again on my stuff

[MerricksDad]

I don't use edge tiles as much Surround terrain type functions better for me, with well placed area exit and entrance strategies already lain out. I don't like open ended boxes leading out into gray space. I prefer a confined area with well drawn borders, connected together with limitless possibility, over gray space you just push through. Artistically, it invites more interesting views within the enclosed area, and the transition from area to area can be imagined, rather than immediate via inch by inch progression. If I had live-loading areas while you nudged up against a border plane, I would switch to that, but that is not within the operation of Aurora (until we get the source code )

 

I think the only edge tiles you will see in my set are open water, or open unreachable ground, down slope from a higher area, so as to be actually out of the viewable fog cutoff from the player.

 

Also, if the edge tile 2da you supplied in your override bucket is an indication, it explains why the edge tiles don't work, because you omitted probably half the required parts. I have not yet looked at your edges 2da in the other package.

[s e n]

I think surround system hak has no edgetiles 2da while thte terria override does, but don't remember what state of testing I did include, I am just sure the tiles for say 0022 0033 0044 do not paint or paint on a wrong height, its just the engine coding for the edgetiles mapping that probably works different and doesn't allow them, at least to my testings

 

what do you mean with surround terrain instead of edgetiles?

[MerricksDad]

I had explained the surround terrain I think two pages back. Unless I blabbed more than I thought, in which case, try 3.

[MerricksDad]

If you assume that the background in these photos (from Neverwinter Online) are actually tiles which paint detail off the edge of a map (especially for use with long fog cutoff maps like I use) then these pictures give a great representation of what the surround terrain is used for:

 

city:
https://sfx.thelazy....enshot90040.png

 

distant structure:
https://sfx.thelazy....enshot87769.png

 

forest:
http://i.ytimg.com/v...xresdefault.jpg

shaped mountain peak:
http://www.gamer.ru/...nal/vellosk.jpg

natural mountain peak:
http://media.bestofm...e-mountains.jpg

In online MMO's of today, in some cases you actually reach the distant object, as drawn. In other cases you see it at a distance, and actually reach a similar object fully fleshed out. In NWN, of course you would never reach the tile it is drawn on, but instead, the tile containing the distant place is actually located within the map boundaries, not as an edge tile. The intention is to never actually see or reach the outermost tile in any given area, but use it, or other adjacent tiles, even extending to center-ish tiles, to place unreachable, impassible, and in may cases un-look-past-able, regions of your map.

[s e n]

ok got it! nice idea but what about texture resolution to match the detail of the tileset?

[MerricksDad]

How do you mean? At a distance, the same texture applied to a distant object should render accurately at a distance. The goal is then to pick textures which are not repeating over short distances on the 3d surface, or otherwise use neutral tone textures so that at a distance, they more often fade to a single low saturation hue, as do real life objects at a distance.

 

Do I misunderstand the question?

[s e n]

No I mean, from distance is good, but when you go near there, say a tile from it, will you notice they get low res if compared to the tile models all around? Also, to get a bit of variation there will be the need of plenty of textures

[MerricksDad]

The surround tile has the same option of taking on decal texures as does the rest of the tileset. The thing with the distant objects is that all the variation you need on a texture should already be there via the texture you use. If you want the distant object, say if it isn't that distant, to have the same tone and color as less distant objects, you simply use the same texture as close objects. I mean for like stone mountains, trees, grass, etc. The engine does the rest for you. If you want physical variation, make actual physical variation. Just don't add all the shadow to your object at a distance.

 

The way I am building my tilesets, the majority of detail is physical variation anyway, not texture, as in the old sets. I've become more and more skilled at making tile models with physical shapes which do not break the engine, and of making shadows which fit the need, but don't overserve the game experience to the point of crashing.

 

So if you are able to actually go near the surround tiles, you should be in a place where, say with my mountain tilesets, you will be at a wall you cannot climb. Basically you will be looking at a collection of 3d faces that create a good bit of detail, and it will otherwise be no different than being up against your rock cliff in your own tileset.

 

I can elaborate more, but for now I need to fetch my child from the bus.

[s e n]

Got it, I was thinking you were using just flat panorama textures and no model shaping, now sounds even better, given its a lot of work but should be worth the time spent!

[MerricksDad]

ok, so when I do the karst caverns set, my goal is to have a lot of bridging areas or tunnels with unwalkable offshoots which you can see down. At the back ends of those tunnels, I want to have billboards of other features to reduce the quantity of actual modeling required way outside the walkable area. I think the same thing can be done with a lot of the off map stuff with the surround tile type. Same as I did with the tree wall in my redwoods set that I showed two pages back.

 

The redwoods one was pretty low quality textures, but even then I tried my best to make sure that the plane you saw, at whatever distance you saw it, was the same texture and scale of texture that I used on the actual trees. To do that, I actually modeled the trees you would see in the distance, textured them, screen shot from gmax to preserve the texture as is, and then created the billboard with that tree image on it. But in the redwoods set, I restricted movement toward the billboard with lots of thick vegetation, of which you only get to see part of on my old models. The rest is lost to a dead hard drive.

 

In that same fashion, I might be able to restrict movement toward the surround plane I use above the mountain terrain by using boulders and scree slopes, which would not only add more detailed texture to the area, but also take away from my need to supply on-texture artifacts which represent texture.

[MerricksDad]

Exporting the 582 files for the blanks set right now... for the 3rd time.

 

I have this interesting set of scripts which determines the elevations of the corner verts on all tiles, and a group of scripts that create walkmeshes and aurorabases just by selecting ALL the tile sections in a scene and running the script. What my script failed to take into account was that GMAX shows me a position accurate only down to 5 or 6 decimal places. Unknown to me was that I had apparently rolled the mouse wheel while editing 200 or more tiles, and my mouse wheel setting is so low that it only moved deep fractions of a centimeter. My scripts were not set up to round to the nearest integer, and so it made a very large mess. I didn't discover this until my other script, which puts all the tiles in a directory into a SET file, told me I had nearly 200 tiles for four corners at base ground zero. WHAT?!

 

Anyway, I think I got it now. Just waiting on nwmax to export them all at once. The "(not responding)" message seems to stay up for 10 minutes or so before the nwmax icon goes red for another 5-10 minutes.

 

So what this set has so far, other than a lack of texture, are the following height changes.

 

water at -3m

base ground

height changes of +1 +2 and +3, at 3m each

smooth crossers for every instance where maximum height change between two corners is 3m.

up to 3 varieties of some tiles, especially diagonal tiles where ramps might be best placed in the center of a tile.

 

I still have not yet finished walls or streams, but at this point, that should be another issue of automation. Before it was an issue of making sure I didn't miss something... which I had. About 6 combination groups with no base level. Not sure how I missed that.

 

The walkmesh is entirely open for now, and all dirt. So you can walk anywhere, up any height slope. And I am using Sen's spreadsheet to get the heights to interchange correctly in the toolset by just using the +/- tool.

 

If all checks out, I will pack and release the 582 tiles and SET file so far, possibly tonight. That should at least show how it works.

 

I've z-axis painted the tiles with a 5 color gradient for better specific tile locating in my GMAX file. But I left the uvw map in that order when I exported them. If you keep the texture I pack them with, instead of white, they'll show blue where water is supposed to go, and raise up through green, fall gold, gray, and to bright gray. These colors do not correctly transfer from tile to tile over border edges. It is just to show height changes on a specific tile.

[MerricksDad]

ok wow, word of warning: do not place tile entries below the groups section in the SET file. Set File beta 0.85 does NOT read the file as an INI file and will hang.