Map Maker Beta ...

[Mraah]

Stridor,

Looking and working great!

Request ...

Any chance of having the builder ignore water terrain when placing craters?

Not a problem since the craters can be moved in scene editor ... but would be nice if they didn't plop then in water.

Oh, and don't forget the cows too!!!

Thanks!
Rob

[Stridor]

Features of the latest MM:

1. New HiRes mode which can be activated with the "/hires" command line switch. This will increase the base HM resolution to 129x129 which is 4x the original resolution (ground res now down to 7m). Only use this mode if you have good reason as it is much harder on graphics cards obviously.

2. As per Mraah, cows, trees and craters no longer generate underwater regardless of AI map definitions

3. Structures (houses, foxholes, trenches, etc etc) are now directly placeable on the map and can be adjusted as you like. They will even normalize to the underlying ground terrain if you want.

4. Instead of by name you can choose a structured based on its image and once loaded you can pan and zoom it around in the MM

5. The catalog of all structures is being slowly built and should be ready soon (thanks again to Mraah)

6. Much improved file dialog boxes. No more searching subdirs for what you want as the appropriate defaults are opened automatically

7. Better labels

8. Better integration with SE

Regards

S.

[benpark]

I'm looking forward to this next set of features.

Stridor, is there any way to save tree positions when you reload and re-save a map?

I would like to tweak the height map of something I'm working on, but don't want to re-place all of the trees that I have painstakingly adjusted. If I reload the map in the MM, and then re-save it, the trees will be in random placement again.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: benpark

I'm looking forward to this next set of features.

Stridor, is there any way to save tree positions when you reload and re-save a map?

I would like to tweak the height map of something I'm working on, but don't want to re-place all of the trees that I have painstakingly adjusted. If I reload the map in the MM, and then re-save it, the trees will be in random placement again.

Ben,

You could save your old scene file and then rebuild a new map in the MM. Then just copy over the newly generated scene file with the old one. That might work.

Anything which is under the structures hierarchy won't get touched by the MM so if you make tree changes just move them to the structures heading.

The problem is that if you make height changes to the map where there are saved trees, you might find those saved trees are now floating above ground or burried under ground depending on your new terrain elevations. I would need to write a special piece of code which essentially read in the old set of map object positions and the re-grounded them to the new terrain elevations. Which I could do I guess but it would be a lot of extra work.

Ideally you should make sure your ground contours are correct before adding anything to the map in scenedit. The latest edition of MM which I am working on should help with some of these issues as well.


Regards

S.

[Mraah]

Stridor,

yet another suggestion for MM ...

Would it possible (or useful) to allow editting of the height map pixels within MM?

You would have a feature where you click on the height map pixel and it would pull up a 256 greyscale pallette so you can alter that color. This would be useful because when you have buildings that would be on a slope you can simple flatten it before building the map.

Also, another useful feature to help make small changes to the mesh ... If your MM can export an ASCII file that contains the mesh Y vertex points then allow this text file to be used instead of the height map BMP then making small adjustments might help too without having to resort to a 3rd party mesh tool.

I hope all that made sense.
Thanks!

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Mraah


Stridor,

yet another suggestion for MM ...

Would it possible (or useful) to allow editting of the height map pixels within MM?

You would have a feature where you click on the height map pixel and it would pull up a 256 greyscale pallette so you can alter that color. This would be useful because when you have buildings that would be on a slope you can simple flatten it before building the map.

Also, another useful feature to help make small changes to the mesh ... If your MM can export an ASCII file that contains the mesh Y vertex points then allow this text file to be used instead of the height map BMP then making small adjustments might help too without having to resort to a 3rd party mesh tool.

I hope all that made sense.
Thanks!

Good ideas, although the last idea might be more trouble than it is worth.

The problem is that it would take significant effort to do what you suggest and it shouldn't be that difficult to do what you want in a photoeditor.

I will think about it.

Regards

S.

[rickier65]

Stridor,

Whats the latest on MM? I have .3e installed, but I saw in couple of screen shots a .5 version?

Thanks
Rick

[Stridor]

Rob (Mraah) is compiling the 3D database. The code has been fixed for some time. I didn't think there was any point releasing an update until that was done.

Regards

S.

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Rob (Mraah) is compiling the 3D database. The code has been fixed for some time. I didn't think there was any point releasing an update until that was done.

Regards

S.

Great - Thanks for the update. You're right - it can hold till the 3D database is finished. Really appreciate your work on this. As you know its summer here for us so things are a bit hectic around here anyway - limits amount of time I have for the game.

Thanks!
Rick

[Stridor]

Another update!

Some great new features are being added to the MM:

1. The complete PCK/PCOWS 3D object library! (with all thanks to Rob (Mraah) [&o] for his awesome work!)
- This allows viewing and placing map objects in a natural and efficient way

2. Heightmap sculptor is now incorporated within the MM itself!
- You can now import heightmaps from an external source and mod them inside MM or create them entirely from scratch!
- Supports Elevate, Dig, Level, Erase, Smooth, Noise & lock functions

3. PNG Masks can now be automagically generated directly from the AI map! (again thanks to Rob for the suggestion!)
- No more editing of PNG masks in an external program
- Simply associate an AI map color (terrain feature) with your new terrain mask from within MM and it will be generated for you in the correct format!

4. Labels are now also automatically generated

5. So too is the minimap, no need to worry about editing that anymore!

6. You can open scenedit automatically at the end of the map build phase to quickly check on your creation if you desire.

7. Better co-operation between scenedit and MM. You can select an option in MM to protect any work you did in scenedit.

What this effectively means is that it is possible now to make a new PCK map just using MS Paint, the MM and *nothing else*

Workflow:

1. Draw your AI map in any paint program (including MS paint)
2. Start MM, import the AI map you just made and sculpt your 3D terrain.
3. Select Vegitation, Textures, Skyboxes etc and place structures all in MM.
4. Build your map.
5. Play on your map.
(6. Optional) - If you want to make some microfine adjustments to your map you can with scenedit.

As you can imagine these new features will take some time to debug and get working right, expect an update soon ...

Regards

Stridor

[benpark]

[&o]

Thanks guys. This is going to be great.

[Mraah]

New RR Tracks and Bridges ...

Also, I'm redoing the Railroad Tracks and the Bridges ... The original models were not set to absolute zero, which means they are a major PITA when trying to align and rotate within scene editor. Also, I might make small peices of RR Tracks ... the originals are quite long and if someone wanted to make a rail road yard they could use the smaller pieces so they fit around buildings and such.

On a final note ... later on ... I'm planning to rebuild the Trench. Currently, the bottom of the trench is buried in the ground. To make the trench work you have to mold the terrain mesh to the trench ... which isn't possible without a 3rd party editor. So, I'm going to make a trench "mound" that will raise the trench up to ground level and it will be built into a very small mound. This way, you can use MM to place your trench without having to worry about it!! Plus, if you give the new trench a "hasHeight" attribute then everything will climb over the mound ... no more walking thru dirt piles. This could lead to some belly armor being exposed for tanks ... but we'll have to wait to see what happens!

Anyhow ... hopefully Stridor will release the beta with the partial database ... I'm about 1/3 done.

Rob

[junk2drive]

I'm not sure about your trench idea. Will it still have the cover and concealment of the in ground trench?
 
Maybe for your above ground idea it should be sandbags?

[rickier65]

This sounds excellent -

thanks again and thanks to Rob as well!

Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive
I'm not sure about your trench idea. Will it still have the cover and concealment of the in ground trench?

Yes ... because it's the underlying terrain map that identifies the cover.

Maybe for your above ground idea it should be sandbags?

Sandbags would be great idea too. See my screenshot of an example of the dirt mound.

[Stridor]

Actually Rob trenches which sit in the terrain can be done without altering the mesh right now.

Each map has a png called foundation.png created. By default this is 100% non transparent. What you do is to place your trench in the ground (in MM) and then in a paint editor draw transparency over the foundation.png where the trench is and there you go!

However it is not a perfect solution becuase the resolution of the png is not high enough to correctly cover the trench (it almost is). However it is an easy fix to simply extend the ground cover of the trench model such that it covers over the "steps in the png foundation mask resolution". You wouldn't need to extend it by very much either. This is kinda like what you have proposed expect this solution will keep the trench under ground so there won't be any LOS issues.

You're always thinking Rob [:D]

Regards

S.

[Mraah]

Bumped this to another thread ... The Trench Mound ...

tm.asp?m=1874526#

[Erik Rutins]

Outstanding work, Stridor and Mraah!

[Stridor]

The MM is coming along nicely. Here is the latest SS of a generated map. I quickly drew up a map in MS paint, imported it into the MM, set the mask parameters and viola this is what came out [;)] No further png editing was done [:D] Even the label was auto generated. No more placeholder graphics!

You have lots of control over how sharp or blurred or dense etc your ground masks are. It is easy to make a few changes and then press build, then review your work in scenedit. I really only use scenedit as a handy map viewing tool now as MM has almost totally supplanted it.

Enjoy

[Mraah]

Stridor,

That looks really , really good! I was afraid that the PNG masks were going to look blocky with 90 degree edges but that smoothed them out nicely. The roads are blended in nicely as well!

Rob