Question about modding

[LionRockd]

Hi,
if this has been answered already please remove this post or post a link to the topic.
I tried to search about modding but all i found was these cool mods.
I've been interested about this game and thinking about purchasing it.
Is it easy to mod the hexes/maps?
Is there any limitations what you can do graphics wise?
What I have in mind is to make some 3d renderings (woods with shadows, little shadows/speculars for mountain hexes etc) for hex graphics.
I have a feeling tho that the game resolution is too low to support detail like this, right?

Thanks for your replies!

[ralphtricky]

Check out the scenario design section, there is a linked thread there with some of the graphics mods, you can donwload a few and take a look at what can be done. The tiled ones are the terrain. There are tanks, etc. but most of the people play with the counters.

It's BMP files, so anything 3D is out, I'm afraid.

Ralph

[LionRockd]

What I had in mind is to make some top view renderings and convert them to bitmaps but if the resolution used is pretty low it's probably gonna look pretty bad:) But I'll check out that thread and what can be done. Like in bakkesmod rocket league
thanks for reply!

[damezzi]

The resolution isn’t the real problem. The most common zoom level is the one you see in most AARs in this forum. You have one more level of zoom in and I think you can create graphics specifically to this level, but nobody did it until now.

The real problem creating graphics from a 3d source is that you must make them fit at hexes borders and usually you get a repeated pattern look; you may have graphics looking beautifully in your 3d software just to discover they don’t look well in the game after the tiles are distributed. You’ll finish up tweaking them manually in photoshop and getting a completely different result from what you got in your 3d software.

The second problem is the lack of alpha channel. This means that anti aliasing  for borders is gone; that’s why I embedded the hexes borders in the tiles in my mod, so that I could get a smoother and cleaner border outline. The lack of transparency is perhaps the worst handicap in Toaw graphics system. You can simulate transparency by pixel intercalation, but that is very limited.

The third problem is that tiles for different types of terrain must combine in the same hex, so that you have to plan and don’t have the freedom to place them at will, unless you want them to overlap, making some features invisible when displayed. Even if that is a limiting factor I must recognize it was done in a VERY competent way in the original game. Multiple terrain features in Toaw fit very well in the same hex and hexes aren’t very big pixelwise. They fit so well that I tried to maintain their average shape when modding, with some exceptions where I tried a more organic look.  

Due to the lack of transparency and the need to make terrain features fit together, casting shadows will be a challenge. I thought about casting shadows only on the counters, but wasn’t able. Intercalating pixels didn’t look natural and counters must be made smaller in order to give space for shadows, since they all come together in the same file, side by side.  

Well, those are my impressions about Toaw graphics system. Even with it’s limitations I must say it is great fun to tweak gaphics, Each new tile group you tweak you see the whole idea taking form and change your mind sometimes during the process. And new graphics mods are always welcome; at least for me. I think graphics create the ambience and I laugh at the purist argument against the “childish necessity of nice graphics” which serious military minds don’t need, after all, the real generals aren’t preoccupied with the feel of it, but only with the crude and objective logic… but I’m not a real general… so, give me some extra graphics.

[ralphtricky]

How much help would an Alpha channel be?

It may (and may not) be simple to do.

My big concern would be how it impacts performance.

Do you have a couple of terrain bitmaps around with an Alpha channel.

Ralph

[damezzi]

I think alpha could do a huge difference. More on the quality of the final look than on the style. Take, for instance a game using resolutions from 640x480 to more than 1600 in width. If you are used to high resolutions, when you bring it down to 640, even if the graphics (shapes, textures, etc) are the same, you have a feel of great drop in quality. Alpha channel would allow much cleaner and smoother shapes with the same resolution, would allow some shadow casting where necessary, snow cover could be simulated with a white semi-transparent layer, not hiding what’s behind while being uniform, etc. The look would seem more up to date, even if the style remains the same.

Look at this link: fb.asp?m=2120251. Here I posted a font done in photoshop. The only differences to the bitmap fonts in Toaw is the way it processes the outline (filling all the pixels around. Toaw bitmap fonts leave letters borders unfilled) and the transparency which allows anti-aliasing effect making them seem much smoother and readable. You can see that for a boardgame look, it seems as if printed… much better than the one above (windows fonts - two or three posts above) and the original Toaw bitmap font. The forest shape you can see in this picture would have the same kind of improvement, with smooth borders; the simulated transparency you see around the mountain shape, for example, would be more gradual and imperceptible, not like the dotted outline it is at the moment. Also, changing the way counters are cut from the counters file (while allowing for alpha use) would allow to simulate soft shadows, making them really seem above the board.
In my opinion, the three best improvements for the Toaw graphics system would be:  

- allowing alpha channel, for tiles and for the hex overlay also (this is important, or the hex jaggy edges would spoil the effect of a clean board.

- Giving more space to counters (at least three rows/lines of pixels beyond two adjacent sides of the counter). In fact, making each counter a separate file would make tweaking counters through script a lot easier… but the extra space would be more than enough.

- Allowing for the use of alpha channel with the bitmap fonts and eliminating the automatic outline of the bitmap font. That way, we would be able to create the bitmap font already with outline in it and the alpha channel would allow a clean look. Fonts could look exactly like the little picture of the link above.  

Those three changes alone could make a huge difference in graphics quality. Not in the subjective characteristics, like colors, shapes, textures, etc, but in making them look less outdated.

I have no idea if those are easy changes and of the impact in performance. If not easy, it may not be worth the effort, since even if I like graphics, I agree that there are more important issues to improve. But, if those are easy changes, I think it’s really worth doing it.


EDIT - I don't have terrain with alpha available, since I already did them all without it, but if you need any for tests, I can produce. Perhaps the easiest way would be to begin with the hex outline, since it is simple and you would be able to notice the difference very clearly above any map available, while seeing performance issues, since it covers all the map. If you need I can produce a nice hex outline with alpha... just tell me.

[damezzi]

Ralph, another advantage I forgot to mention is that, with alpha, doing the HUGE size graphics (I think we can do graphics specifically for the huge view, or not?) would be plausible, since we could do them and then scale them down for use in the 'normal view'. As it is, scaling down doesn't work, since after interpolation by the graphics software, a lot of semi white pixels are created, which display in the game as undesirable artifacts. Being so, we would be forced to redo it all for the 'normal view' size (which is the most used one). Since this is a lot of work, one will always opt for doing the normal view tiles and forgetting about the huge ones. With alpha, interpolation won't create the artifacts, doing graphics in huge size would be better, because of better control (more pixels available) and scaling it down would be easy.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: damezzi
EDIT - I don't have terrain with alpha available, since I already did them all without it, but if you need any for tests, I can produce. Perhaps the easiest way would be to begin with the hex outline, since it is simple and you would be able to notice the difference very clearly above any map available, while seeing performance issues, since it covers all the map. If you need I can produce a nice hex outline with alpha... just tell me.

If you've got a font or terrain file with an alpha channel, I'll see if it works. Evertyhing except for the splash and buttons look like they go through one routine. Nothing is ever that simple,but I can hope [:'(]

Ralph

[damezzi]

I've sent you an e-mail.

[ralphtricky]

That was about as frustrating a time as I've had for a while.

You'd think that using Win32 to load a bitmap WITH ALPHA and then to display that bitmap over another image WITH ALPHA would be trivial, wouldn't you.

Maybe it, is, but I sure coudn't figure out how to do it any simpler, what a mess. The sad thing is that MS pretty clearly put in the hooks in AlphaBlend in order to make it work, but they never finished it.

The steps you have to go through are ridiculous, including walking through all the bits in a prepass to premultiply by the Alpha.

I've got a prototype here for the weather only. It's going to take a little bit more to work it into the code correctly.

One issue is that the current code uses 'Masks.' Any write to the screen is actually two writes. The first one is to clear out the bits that are colored and the second one actually puts the bitmap on the screen. This doesn't play at all well with 'Alpha'

I'm going to have to flag all bitmaps as being either a 'composite' bitmap, or a bitmap with Alpha and treat them differently, I will also try modifying the code to see if I can create everything wiht Alpha only and see if there's any major speed difference.

I can walk through the bitmap pretty easily to see if it's got Alpha information (I hope.) If not, I'll just say that pngs have Alpha and BMPs don't.

Ralph

[damezzi]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

That was about as frustrating a time as I've had for a while.

You'd think that using Win32 to load a bitmap WITH ALPHA and then to display that bitmap over another image WITH ALPHA would be trivial, wouldn't you.

Maybe it, is, but I sure coudn't figure out how to do it any simpler, what a mess. The sad thing is that MS pretty clearly put in the hooks in AlphaBlend in order to make it work, but they never finished it.

The steps you have to go through are ridiculous, including walking through all the bits in a prepass to premultiply by the Alpha.

I've got a prototype here for the weather only. It's going to take a little bit more to work it into the code correctly.

One issue is that the current code uses 'Masks.' Any write to the screen is actually two writes. The first one is to clear out the bits that are colored and the second one actually puts the bitmap on the screen. This doesn't play at all well with 'Alpha'

I'm going to have to flag all bitmaps as being either a 'composite' bitmap, or a bitmap with Alpha and treat them differently, I will also try modifying the code to see if I can create everything wiht Alpha only and see if there's any major speed difference.

I can walk through the bitmap pretty easily to see if it's got Alpha information (I hope.) If not, I'll just say that pngs have Alpha and BMPs don't.

Ralph

It's a pity I can't help you here. I really don't know how the premultiplication works in the programming level.

I've seen games that use both (png and bmp) formats, but bmp is always treated with the mask process... no alpha. In fact, I'm almost sure that bmp doesn't accept alpha channel (at least, I was never able to create one). Photoshop, for instance, will always flatten the image before saving and transparency for the bmp is substituted by a color background. It's possible to save a 32 bits bmp image, but those 8 extra bits aren't used as alpha, as far as I know.
I never really knew (since I don't understand it on the programming level) why some games kept some graphics elements as bmp while all others were png. It's frustrating to be planning clean graphics and come across a file which doesn't accept alpha.

[damezzi]

Ralph, just for comparison and evaluation, this is the way photoshop processes alpha for the same tile. I noticed that clouds in the image you have posted seem darker on the white outline (mainly on the left part of it). Maybe it's only the compression of the image, but this reference maybe useful.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: damezzi
It's a pity I can't help you here. I really don't know how the premultiplication works in the programming level.

I never really knew (since I don't understand it on the programming level) why some games kept some graphics elements as bmp while all others were png. It's frustrating to be planning clean graphics and come across a file which doesn't accept alpha.

I've got the premultiplication figured out, it's just really annoying that nowhere is it clearly documented, except for a couple of obscure references.

I've decided that for TOAW, PNGs need Alpha, and BMPs use masks, that keeps it simple. I can also do some other formats that are supported by Gdiplus if someone needs them.

It looks like it's possible to edit Alpha with Paint.Net, so it's open to anyone. It requires an add-on, and I haven't tried it, but it should be possible.

I think the reason that some games do BMP is because it's trivial to read it in, and it's supported by the cross-platform libraries like SDL, while I'm not sure that it's as easy to support PNG and the alpha channel if you're doing cross-platform, unless you're doing OpenGL, which really ups the entry cost for the programmer.

Ralph

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: damezzi
Ralph, just for comparison and evaluation, this is the way photoshop processes alpha for the same tile. I noticed that clouds in the image you have posted seem darker on the white outline (mainly on the left part of it). Maybe it's only the compression of the image, but this reference maybe useful.

I cut the Alpha in half to emphasize the effect [:D]