WaR mapping - behind the scenes

[Moss Orleni]

ORIGINAL: Southern_land

The following is a rough pic a sherman shooting at a JTiger. The sherman is closer to the building and can draw bead through two windows --green line-- (no interior walls coded) while the Jtiger is slightly ofset and it;s LOS --red line-- intersects the wall tile of the building

Coincidentally, I was reviewing the Stavelot map where the M-36 wreck of the previous battle was still at the same spot behind the house.
Your picture almost exactly describes what happened. The only thing different is that it was the centre of the M-36 (the target) that was offset vis-a-vis the Panther's LOS, and for that reason probably never even spotted its adversary.

Andrew: I'm not experienced enough in map coding to say something useful about this. The adding of more interior walls is probably a good solution.
But AFAIK, this kind of stuff did not seem to happen in fi stock CC4/CC5 or GJS. And squads shooting from houses worked fine as well. Did you already compare WaR element data with previous versions?

Cheers,
Moss

[Southernland]

if you have a look at the building to the left of the tanks it has both interior walls coded in (2 mauve squares) and an exterior wll of differnt height where a single floor leantoo is connected to the 2 story main structure.
 
PS this is an original cc5 map... airfeild

[Moss Orleni]

You lost me ... I suppose you mean the building to the RIGHT of the tanks, no?

You mean that this situation will occur in stock CC5 as well? It's just that apparently people seem to experience it quite often in WaR...
Might be that the CC5 maps have a lower frequency of these 'see-through' buildings?

Just guessing here...

[Southernland]

it was in response to Andrews comment about larger buildings, just showing that regular ones can also have interior walls coded without too much detremental effect

[CSO_Talorgan]

ORIGINAL: RD_Oddball

Talorgan with respect to SketchUp does that mean you can't use it at all or that you just can't create textures within it?  Sort of sounds like you have to have your textures made before putting things together in SketchUp.

Without the paid-for version you can't import a contour map and use that as a starting point. That would have been the main attraction of the program, especially as lighting is dynamic. (My shadows are hopeless.)

I never got as far as testing textures but I don't think they are affected.

[RD Oddball]

Ah I see.  Yeah doing shadows are a fairly significant issue for everyone.  Photoshop provides some decent tools in this respect but none are perfect.  They all have some handicap.  If you paint them in on a semi-transparent layer they darken the area as opposed to messing with ambience and specularity.  If you use the layer filters each has it's own drawbacks.  So I'd agree doing shadows and shading in a 3D program would likely get better results.
 
RE: LOS through two lined up windows -  Coding interior walls into the map IS the solution.  Not all situations allow for it tho.  Sometimes the house graphic is so small that if you put in interior walls there'd be no room for soldiers inside.[:D]

[Q.M]

ORIGINAL: RD_Oddball

RE: LOS through two lined up windows -  Coding interior walls into the map IS the solution.  Not all situations allow for it tho.  Sometimes the house graphic is so small that if you put in interior walls there'd be no room for soldiers inside.[:D]

Agreed. And this was the case 90% of the time in WaR. Either code the interior walls/doors, or dont and allow room for the sprites.

In WaR we found that interior coding was impossible in most cases due to the size of the building (small) and the angle of the building in relation to the pixel to be coded. One pixel coded at an odd or extreme angle could ruin a sprites whole day and make the building an untenable piece of architecture.

In the end it came down to minute adjustments post coding to ensure that sprites could access the coded building. Whether this left a snap shot opportunity through windows or not was not evident until post coding and LOS was applied.

Most were picked up and rectified. Unfortunately you must accept that in any instance some LOS through windows will still be evident.

What can I say, take the snap shot if offered. I know the lame assed AI will. [:D]

[Moss Orleni]

Probably more for the modding subforum, but since it's relevant here...

How can you check in the data files whether a given vehicle/team/sprite will fit into a building?
Do you need to compare object size or vehicular size with the coding tile dimensions of the interior? And how about non-vehicle teams (that don't have a object/vehicular size listed)?

Cheers,
Moss

[RD Oddball]

Most houses are copies from stock CC maps.  However I've drawn scads with my own creations on them and I'm sure every other mapper has done the same. 
 
The fact you can shoot through some houses is due to two windows being lined up on the path of LOS.  If that's not desired you simply code in interior walls to block the LOS.  If that's not possible then draw the house bigger so there's room.[:D]
 
Now if your goal/point was that you want to create houses where LOS can be traced through them that's not done in the graphics that's done in coding.  The only spot you'd need to indicate this in the graphics is by drawing in windows on the walls when drawing the interiors then coding those locations accordingly.  When I draw interiors I have the PS grid on and set to 10x10 pixels (1 element tile size) and make sure my window graphics line up with those grids so an element can be placed directly on top of the graphic.  That's not possible in every instance (i.e. some angled walls) but when houses are square to the map edge it generally is.
 
Your ideas about using 3D modelling to draw maps is a great one.  Would take some of the guess work out of it.  I think once a library of models is created it'd be a since to draw maps using the method you outlined.

[berndn]

Incredible work you have to do.

While doing the main 3D terrain stuff in a 3D program like blender the most important thing would be to write an export filter which would take the 3D map, rotates it so that the view would be the used 2D view from the CC series and then create the height bitmap.

Interesting stuff about coding the houses. One problem with the 2D coding seems that only the top floors and windows/breakthroughs are coded or better can be coded. A minor problem in my opinion.

With a good exported height map I could see that programming a 2D option window which would simple display the height/distance in a single curve depending on the targeting unit => the target would help to visualize the different heights instead of a more or less flat terrain. It looks the 'physics' engine seems to be able to take height differences into account when firing from a hill downside. At least given the discussion about the shermans/panthers it looks like the different angles seem to be calculated.

Anyway, thanks for all the information. Unlucky I have not enough time for working myself into blender or whatever so it's only some ideas

[Olmossoft]

Thanks for all those 'behind the scenes' info, and hats off to all involved in this release!

[Anthropoid]

Great to see this thread 'wakened up,' if for no other reason than the opening post. I've made a few maps for Civilization 3 and Civilization 4 and found it to be fairly fun. Maybe, eventually, (after I get tenure?) might take a crack at making some CC maps. New to CC series, but frankly find WaR to be about as tasty as crack-cocaine, so I'm sure I'm going to become a long-time consumer of many of the CC series . . .