Map Editor

[Mraah]

Stridor,

The summer setting wasn't exactly the problem (it was default for models) ...

I inadvertently left the MEDIA setting in the template to read Level5, not my new map folder ... argh ... I'm so dense.

Anyway .... SUCCESS!!! See screen shot.

Hmmm, now what else to change [:D]. Oh yeah, the mini-map.

Thanks again Stridor!!! Appreciate ya!

Rob

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Mraah


Stridor,

The summer setting wasn't exactly the problem (it was default for models) ...

I inadvertently left the MEDIA setting in the template to read Level5, not my new map folder ... argh ... I'm so dense.

Anyway .... SUCCESS!!! See screen shot.

Hmmm, now what else to change [:D]. Oh yeah, the mini-map.

Thanks again Stridor!!! Appreciate ya!

Rob

Rob - well if you really want to mess with it, you might want to take the snow off the evergreens, and maybe from around the building - *s* well -- you asked!!!

Mraah - You are so far ahead of most of us with this stuff (well expcept for the cadre of experts of course).

Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick

Rob - well if you really want to mess with it, you might want to take the snow off the evergreens, and maybe from around the building - *s* well -- you asked!!!

Mraah - You are so far ahead of most of us with this stuff (well expcept for the cadre of experts of course).

Rick

Rick,

I was debating whether or not to make it a full blown summer map or just a kind of mixed version. I'll get rid of the rest of the snowy look and stick to a summer look.

When I'm done, I'll upload the files ... so far only 3 (not including the template, I'm not done with that). Then, I'll let the user do the leg work and create another folder to put them in for preperation of the JSGE activation.

Anyway, for the moment, it would give everyone an extra summer map. The name would be easy, Summer_Level5. It's a cool map ... that river has a nice protective zone to provide cover.

Rob [:)]

[Stridor]

Rob,

Excellent work [8D]

I think you have taken to map modding like a duck to water.

The community is crying out for more maps, so Sir, you are doing a great service.

You will now need to explore scenedit to replace all the snowy bling to summer bling. It really ain't hard, just a bit time consuming [:D]

[Mraah]

Erik / Stridor / Mobius,

WALL TERRAIN

Ok ... walls. I don't see any models for a wall in Pck v1.0 release ... which is fine.

Now, I want to identify a wall by drawing in the wall terrain on the map ... which leads me to questions ...

1. Is the wall height determined by the terrain model which sit's on top of the wall terrain map? ie, if I put a fence on top, is that the height it will block for a hull down tank sitting next to it? or If I put a wire obstacle on top of the wall terrain map will it block shots based on the height of the wire?

Only one question for now...

thanks,

Rob

[koiosworks]

ORIGINAL: Mraah

Erik / Stridor / Mobius,

WALL TERRAIN


1. Is the wall height determined by the terrain model which sit's on top of the wall terrain map? ie, if I put a fence on top, is that the height it will block for a hull down tank sitting next to it? or If I put a wire obstacle on top of the wall terrain map will it block shots based on the height of the wire?

yes. we draw a ray from source to target. when that ray 'hits' poly's we then drill down to the 2d map to see what sort of terrain was hit. hope that helps.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: koiosworks
yes. we draw a ray from source to target. when that ray 'hits' poly's we then drill down to the 2d map to see what sort of terrain was hit. hope that helps.

Yes ... it answer's my question exactly!! Thank you.

Rob

[Mraah]

Kios Works / Stridor / Erik / Mobius,

Does changing Zfar under lighting effect the sighting calculator at all? or ... is it just to give the feeling of lower visibility .. ie fog?

If it doesn't effect the sighting calculater ... perhaps it could? I mean, you could really make a low vis map (dawn/dusk) with a lower base value for the sighting calculator simply by changing the Zfar and create dawn/dusk battles without changing anything else.

Thanks!

Rob

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Mraah


Kios Works / Stridor / Erik / Mobius,

Does changing Zfar under lighting effect the sighting calculator at all? or ... is it just to give the feeling of lower visibility .. ie fog?

If it doesn't effect the sighting calculater ... perhaps it could? I mean, you could really make a low vis map (dawn/dusk) with a lower base value for the sighting calculator simply by changing the Zfar and create dawn/dusk battles without changing anything else.

Thanks!

Rob

Agree, and unfortunately it doesn't although it should. See if Erik can add it to the list.

[Erik Rutins]

Hm, I thought it did work - have you tested this?

[koiosworks]

ORIGINAL: Mraah


Kios Works / Stridor / Erik / Mobius,

Does changing Zfar under lighting effect the sighting calculator at all? or ... is it just to give the feeling of lower visibility .. ie fog?

If it doesn't effect the sighting calculater ... perhaps it could? I mean, you could really make a low vis map (dawn/dusk) with a lower base value for the sighting calculator simply by changing the Zfar and create dawn/dusk battles without changing anything else.

Thanks!

Rob

it should effect sighting. zfar is really a performace variable. things outside the zfar range should not be drawn, therefore no mesh to spot. the 'fog' effect is added to cover up that there is nothing there.

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hm, I thought it did work - have you tested this?

Actually, no .. I haven't. I figured the Zfar was eye candy and it didn't effect the unit's spotting ability beyond what you are actually seeing.

Is it possible to have something in RBG that selected weather conditions ... and this would temporarily change the Zfar? I think you mentioned this for the future ... to have variable weather affects. Seems that if it does it looks to be a simply addition, I duuno.

Thanks,

Rob

[rickier65]

Hey - Thanks to Erik, Stridor, and Mraah - did my first map edit (well first successful map edit). It wasn't much - just followed the steps in Erik's "Stridor Explains it " post. Except instead of editing the tile_grass.dds - I used an already created snow dds.

I haven't gotten fancy yet - didn't change trees or sky-box, or even roads, but I did go in and give myself a platoon of German tanks and Soviet Tanks in a new scenario, just to see how it looked -

So small step for me -- now I'll get back to working with the Balta SL scenario.

Thanks folks (and to also to JMass for directing me to a DDS plug-in for GIMP.

Rick

[rickier65]

I'm not sure you want basic map editing questions here in this thread, or if YOu'd prefer a new thread for questions. So let me know if you want to keep this thread clean.


BACKGROUND:
I'm editing the Kharkov L5 map for a Balta scenario. I finally figured out I needed to keep the map folder name and the scene.xml file name the same (at least I assume thats why it started working.

I've been able to delete some of the structures, using scene edit. And I used scene edit to change one of the roads to clear terrain. I loaded up, a basic scenario I set up for checking map and LOS tool confirms terrain is ok.

However - it still looks like dirt road. Looking at the directory, there is a file named Kharhov_L5Aroad.png.
I copied that to a file called Balta_L5Aroad.png, then went in and edited the Scene.xml file to use the Balta_L5Aroad.png. Then I created a media.xml to point dinteify the file. Loaded it up in game to make sure it still worked. (this was actually a trial and error since I forgot to do various steps - finally got it running in the game).

So now I assume I need to edit the Balta_L5Aroad.png file to get rid of the road looking terrain. I loaded the Balta_L5Aroad.png file into Gimp. It shows as a checkerboard grayscale image with predominant white areas where there are dirt roads (as well as plowed fields, So I"m guesing the white areas represent "dirt". In Gimp, I wasn't able to copy an adjacent area over the top of the dirt road, so I loaded into Paint.net and proceeded to copy and paste from adjacent open areas to over the top of the dirt road I wanted to get rid of (as well as some of the plowed fields.


QUESTION:
Long background but: Is there an easier or better way to get rid of the dirt roads (not all of them just some of them). ONe concern I have is that I tested this out on just a small very small stretch of road, and the Balta_L5Aroad.png file size almost doubled, from 682KB to 1107KB, and I hardly changed anything. Maybe I need to try different ways of saving?


Thanks,
Rick

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick
QUESTION:
Long background but: Is there an easier or better way to get rid of the dirt roads (not all of them just some of them). ONe concern I have is that I tested this out on just a small very small stretch of road, and the Balta_L5Aroad.png file size almost doubled, from 682KB to 1107KB, and I hardly changed anything. Maybe I need to try different ways of saving?
Thanks,
Rick

I had problems with roads as well ... my problem was adding them, not getting rid of them.

Anyway, note .. you probably need to change the DDS file it references (kharkov_road02.dds) ... see screenshot. You'll find the kharkov_road02.bmp and dds in the terrain/textures folder. To easily change the color of the road, pick a new bmp that looks like the color you want. The PNG file might contain an Alpha, which you can't extract ... the "white" area are actually the Alpha superimposed over the original bmp to make it look that way. So, if you edit the png it might not work.

Can you post a screen shot of the MAP bmp showing which roads you want removed? I can use that as a reference and try my hand at removing the roads for you, and then explain how I did it ... that is, if I'm successful!

I have to do it myself first to see if and where you might be going wrong.

Rob

[rickier65]

Mraah,

I'll try to attach pic. This is portion of eastern part of the Balta map (based on the Kharkov L5A map. I've oriented to a top down view. I've gotten rid of some bldgs., and and I have the terrain looking the way I want it in the circled area, but the Road mask doubled in size in the process. I may experiment with some other setting, since there was a lot of options when i saved my work.

I've got a lot more work to do on map, more bldgs to remove, some blds to move (already moved some and added a few, more plowed fields, and roads to remove, then I'll be adding some light woods, as well as a little heavy woods.

Not sure what else. I thought about adding a road segment, but decided I'd save that for my next learing project.

I dont' think I should change the Kharkov_roads.dds, or even a referenced copy of it, since I want the rest of the roads to stay as they are.

If those white area I see are somthing called alpha, then Gimp gave me an option to substract alpa - maybe I'll play around some more and see what happens. Ive got lots of work to do on the map, then I need to work on the minmap (that should be pretty simple actually) .

There's also an image file labeled plan.png, I'm not sure what i'ts used for, but I probably need to mess with it as well.

Thanks for looking at this -- any suggestions welcome - I know next to nothing about graphical stuff - I thought I'd always be able to pick hex tiles off of a hex-grid editor and make maps!

But I enjoy this kind of thing - its somthing new for me.

Thanks,
Rick

[rickier65]

Ok - I looked at using Gimp again - and tried some different setting - was able to toatlly get rid of dirt road and plowed fields - and the file size of the .png mask actually dropped.

Now I need to go in and write down what I did before I forget.

Thanks!
Rick

[Stridor]

Well Done Rick,

As you have discovered the roads are (mostly) just png masks for the "road" texture to be applied. Of course the best roads are subtly impeded into the mesh, but that is a master class for the future.

[Mraah]

Ok ... in reference to the terrain MAP bmp ... look at my attached photo.

On left is Before ... right is After. Check right corner and note missing terrain, ie, road, houses, field.

Is that what you're trying to do? I like using the terrain map to help me reference what needs to be removed and then going to the scene edit to modify.

Rob

[Mraah]

ORIGINAL: Rick
Ok - I looked at using Gimp again - and tried some different setting - was able to toatlly get rid of dirt road and plowed fields - and the file size of the .png mask actually dropped.

Now I need to go in and write down what I did before I forget.

Thanks!
Rick

Wicked nice!! You were like me ... while waiting for a reply I carry-on with the project ... only to realize I figured it out myself!!

Nicely done.

Rob