Terrain Mods, question

[Zovs]

So I have been 'tinkering' again, I wanted to lighten up the Telmur map graphics a bit. I got the right background color I like but for some reason when the map paints there are some hexes that are bleeding through.

In particular the unplayable (black) and the deep water hexes.

Here is a screenshot.



Any ideas on how to clean it up?

[Lobster]

See if it's still visible if turning off hex outlines.

[Telumar]

Zovs - i just read your PM. If it's not hexes, it might be tiles_misc, the greenish/yellow open terrain tiles in that file. Check if you somehow have colored pixels outside the defined hex shape.

[Zovs]

Okay, thanks fellows. So far I did one more tweak by using a slightly different tiles_misc, but I am still seeing 'weirdness' in the out of playing area. From what I can tell the rest of the map/images look great, its just the out of play areas.

@Telumar, not sure if you have time (or if someone else wanted to see if they can fix the issue) but I can send the files if I get an email addy.

Here is a screen shot or two.

Large:


Huge:


Note, you can tell I am trying to mimic old board war game colors a bit and I have also tweaked the font ini file a bit just for map place names.

[Zovs]

I think your right, I turned of the location grid and we can see that something is off. Essentially all I did was to take your misc tiles and recolor them a little lighter. I also did the same to the other fellows misc tiles and it behaves the same way.

So something is slightly off in that hex or row of hexes.



Not quite sure yet how to track it down to find out which pixels are off and the culprits...

[Lobster]

Can you post a screen shot of an area without oceans and without non playable hexes? Just curious to see if it persists regardless of terrain.

[Zovs]

Here are the 3 sizes without the location grid and it does appear to be fine (with or without the location grid). So to me it appears to be either the non-playable hexes or the water hexes?

[Zovs]

Here is a good view, showing land, water and unplayable, for some reason water and unplayable (with out the hex grid) shows those funky hex bleed overs...

[Zovs]

Okay, there is defiantly a bug in the original artwork.

I took the 3 graphic files for tiles_misc and recolored out the green color and when you open up the game you get the same effect as what my screenshots are showing.

So its a bug with the original graphics.

[Lobster]

I don't suppose coloring one or two pixels beyond the original graphics would take care of it?

[Zovs]

I am trying to figure that out. Its a pain because you have to max zoom in. There is a bunch of pixels on the outside of the hexagon, at first I was (and I am still not sure) if I should un-color them or color them.

Here is some demonstrations (black and red).

You can see when you flood fill the terrain you want to modified that there is a single hex line that either needs to be filled in all the way or removed all together.

There are 3 files (s_tiles_misc, h_tiles_misc and tiles_misc) and they all need to be modified. Also, as far as I can tell (from my simple tests of coloring the entire hex blue or red for demoing) the two upper left hexes are not used for anything, only the 3 strips of hexes to the right seemed to be used.

Once I sort if I need to add or remove the color line then I can modified all 3 and should be good to go. It's just madding getting there...

But once complete my tweaks along with the font.ini makes the map look surprisingly good at least from the old board war games perspective.

Frick


&

Frack

[Lobster]

I never bother with the fading in or out or whatever it's called look. I'd fill in the faded part with solid colors on some of the hexes and see what it looks like before doing all of them. I've never run across the problem you are having so I'm just groping in the dark here. [;)]

[Zovs]

Success!

I have fixed the issue for the normal layer!

Now I have to correct the other two (huge and small).

It was a meticulous pain in the ass. This graphic issue (BUG) is in the default artwork, the art spills over, you can't just recolor it, I had to copy small little squares of empty pixels and paste them to cover the spillage. So I started with the left clear hex and then copied that to the second clear hex and then to the other 3 open hexes, then recolored the two out of play hexes. Then I had to copy the two adjoining left hexes to the right, three times to get the first row correct, then I copied the 5 hex swath and pasted it on down till I got to the exclusion zone hexes and then shift those to the right for the other two rows four hexes. Then since Paint.Net was being stupid, I had to open it up in Gimp and flood fill the neutral or out of play hexes and then I had to export it out of Gimp back into itself.

Sounds confusing, its not really but a big fat pain in the ass. Took me the whole day to figure this mother of pearls out. Probably will take me 4 more hours or so to do the other two (small and huge) layers.

Looks lovely though...



But first back to playing some Panzer Campaigns for a while and letting the pixels dry ... [:D]

[Lobster]

And you still have your sanity...I hope. [:D]

[Zovs]

Almost, lol.

I have almost got the huge conversion done, there is a slight issue I need to correct.

Can't believe no noticed the original bug after all these years, lol.

[Zovs]

Okay I have successfully (well 98% anyway) converted all the misc tiles to fix the original artwork bug.

The reason I say 98% is because of the huge misc tile. Try as I might I just can't get it to 100%, it is not playing nice with coastlines that are drawn and made unplayable. Most likely how the code is throwing bitmaps onto the screen.

I am done fiddling with graphics for now. I'll have an update for those that are interested.

I.E. my Dropbox graphic mods for Board War game map and counter look and feel, i.e.: my flat 2D counters, new icon symbols (border guards, assault guns, heavy (siege) artillery, and Static units) my map mods and font mod for the place name name you see below, warning it's also set for 4k monitor, so if you don't have one of those, just copy the hex color down to your ini).

Ultra Tiny:


Tiny:


Small:


Large:




Huge:


Notice the issue here in highlight (aka the 98% percent):




Here you can see the coastline that bleeds out/over, I am tired of fiddling with this, and saying its good enough:

[UnionWarDog]

Wow! Absolutely a GREAT job, Zovs. Really like it.

How do you get the Mimimap to update the new terrain styles. Haven't played with that yet. I've update my TACW map but the mini-map still show the old hex types. I'll have to fiddle with that later today.