From little things, big things grow!

[Biffa]

Brush would be low density forest and it would be up to the map maker to colour it in that way...[&:]

What about height?

For Stridors [&o] programme we are just adding forest and brush regards movable terrain, but we will need some kind of standardisation between all of the modders.

Barricades is another thing I was going to ask about, would really like to do some of those, some pictures I've seen show looted Russian villages full of furniture and belongings out on the street, not that they had many.

[Stridor]

Just a little update on the UI.

I have reorganized all the games main map assets to make it easier to select them and then incorporate them into your maps.

Here is an example of the textures you can select from by default (note there are more than this, this is just a sample)

[Stridor]

Here are the trees. Note there are more trees than these but these are the trees which will be user selectable for random forest autogen

[Stridor]

Here are the skyboxes. PCK only really uses skybox1 in its maps so lots more to choose from here

[Stridor]

Finally here is the latest SS of the Map Maker. I keep adding features all the time. It is very flexible in what it can do WRT terrain and forest generation. You have control over every aspect of map creation.

[Stridor]

How it works:

1. You draw your map in PCK colors on a 1000x1000 bmp (= AI map). 1 pixel = 1 meter. North is up, West is left, South is down and East is right.
2. You construct your heightmap 65x65 grey scale (= Height map). There are lots of ways to do this.
3. You start my Map Maker
4. Load H/Map (height map)
5. Load AI/Map (AI map) note you can use the mouse scroll wheel to change the transparency of the AI map so you can more clearly see the Height map
6. Type in a height (M_Ht0) in meters for a known fixed point on your map, or you can leave it as sea level (= 0.0 m)
7. Type in another reference height (M_Ht1) this sets the height scale.
8. You can then use the eye dropper tool on the heightmap to mark these references points on the map.
Note: Any point lower than sea level will be filled with water automatically
9. Now think about how many different layers your map will have. Usually Grass is a base layer, then forrest, then fields, then snow, the roads, etc. You decide. Try and keep the layers to a minimum if possible for performance reasons. For each layer type the name you want to use in the Masks + Textures name box and then choose the texture you want to associate with that layer. You can also enter in how that texture should be tiled and rotate so as to enhance the visual effect.
10. You can now define your tree (and brush) set. Browse for the trees you want on your map. You can set the alpha (a) which defines how "plump" the tree is, you can also define the density of that tree in # trees / 100 square meters for brush, light woods, medium woods and heavy woods areas. This allows you to customise how your tree ecology will look.
11. Select a skybox appropriate to your map. If you are doing an historical engagement there might be some data on this
12. You can set map lighting strength from total darkness (0) to mid day sun (255). You can also set the compass direction and height of the sun. Again think where the sun would be in the sky for your map.
13. Next set the diffuse and ambient lighting colors using the color picker provided.
14. The zFar plane is the clipping fog plane and defines sighting conditions. It is in meters. It equates to maximum visibility distance for your map. Use this to simulate fog or night conditions.
15. Final give your map a name and then press Build. In about 2-4 minutes depending how complex you map forest geometry is you will have a new map directory and new map ready to go!

All that is needed now is to draw on your masks which the Map Maker will have already created and named for you. You will find these in the map directory.
Example: You had a mask (layer) called Roads. Edit this "Roads.png" file in a paint editor and then draw your roads on it and save. Do the same for any other layers you have defined.

Finally go into scenedit and hand place what ever else is required for your map like houses, fences, foxholes, etc. This should not take long as the forest represents about 99.5% of all map work. And there you have it, a new map for relatively little effort, and zero extra cost [:D]

Enjoy

S.

[Stridor]

Actually I am also toying with the idea of adding an "Urban generation" module to the map maker. You would define rows of streets on the AI map and the Map maker would then fill out whole villages or cities based on user input. You would probably still need to go into scenedit and do some final tweaks, but a lot of the hack work would alreay be be taken care of ????

How about Random craters, farm animals?

Boy the list goes on.

Hopefully someone will make some bush and grass models which I can include as well.

[Erik Rutins]

Truly phenomenal, keep up the great work! [&o]

[Bil H]

John, you aren't a very good business man, you could have sold this to Matrix for a pretty penny.  [;)]
 
I love your thoughts on town creation... although I think most map builders would want more control over building placement and type of building.  Do I foresee a random map builder in your future perhaps?  [:'(]
 
I might be able to do some brush models, but not until next week sometime.  I also would still like to improve the trees... been on my to-do list for quite a while.
 
Bil

[Erik Rutins]

FYI, I got an e-mail from Marc and it seems he knows more about our existing brush models than I do (no surprise there). I'm going to chat with him about these in more detail tomorrow, but we may have something we can add to the mix as well.

[Mad Russian]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is map labels. Especially for historically based fights. Map labels give a great setting and immersion factor.
 
As to the rest of this whenever YOU say something is easy again I'm out of there!!  [:D]
 
This has been the amazing transformation I've ever watched take place.
 
You don't walk down here on the ground like the rest of us!  [&o]
 
Good Hunting.
 
MR

[Biffa]

I would start on brush if it wasn't for this problem with buying/registering MS3D with Share It, I don't have a credit card, don't believe in them, I have a Debit Card but ofc they don't take those, the other options are a pain and will take forever 4-7days.
 
I have the time just not the programme atm.
 
If someone else does the brush then cool, I'll happily carry on with finishing the first pack and starting the second with 3dsm until I can find a way for them to accept my money. I'm still not sure about the best way of modelling grass/brush anyway.
 
Note: Correction ofc, brush has it own colour, correction from my dumb comment earlier. [:o]

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

I would start on brush if it wasn't for this problem with buying/registering MS3D with Share It, I don't have a credit card, don't believe in them, I have a Debit Card but ofc they don't take those, the other options are a pain and will take forever 4-7days.

I have the time just not the programme atm.

If someone else does the brush then cool, I'll happily carry on with finishing the first pack and starting the second with 3dsm until I can find a way for them to accept my money. I'm still not sure about the best way of modelling grass/brush anyway.

Note: Correction ofc, brush has it own colour, correction from my dumb comment earlier. [:o]

They should be able to charge it to your debit card. Restaraunts do that if I understand it right.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Erik Rutins]

How about I buy it, transfer the license to you and then you can mail me a check to reimburse? If you're intereste, e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com and we'll work it out.

[Biffa]

Literally just got it to work with another friends card....[8|]

Very kind offer Erik, that's what I call customer support!

I'll try and pay back your kind thought with some decent models.

When they reject your card/details sometimes they leave it 24hours to let you know, so frustrating.

Sorry about deflecting the thread a bit, I was going mad...again.

Just back to my burning question- can you billboard foliage like explosions in PCK? It would save performance massively.




Secondly....

The trees in PCK seem to be a 'x' shape so from above they don't always look great see silhouette 1 and inset pic. It's ok because the game isn't a flight sim so rarely do we see them directly from above. Problem is you do/will often see brush from above and it won't look very good if we use the same layout. Now the main pic is from Operation Flashpoint and here you can see the trees are laid out with angled planes holding the textures which mostly look great but sometimes from some angles look weird like the one in the foreground. This shape is silhouette 2.

Anyway I'm planning to do the brush planes/textures like silhouette 3, if we can't do a billboard effect then this must be the most efficient layout for the brush models. Hopefully this will be better for low end systems and also visually since they are basically a '#' shape with a hollow centre.

I took a degree in modding but it was primarily project management so the rest of my knowledge is mainly self taught so I'm sorry if this isn't a very technical way of explaining it since I'm sure to most of you it looks like an idiot rambling...

So the question is, before I spend ages on it... is this the best way of doing it or is there a better way?

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Bil H

John, you aren't a very good business man, you could have sold this to Matrix for a pretty penny.  [;)]

Really? Hmmm?

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is map labels. Especially for historically based fights. Map labels give a great setting and immersion factor.

Labels and arrows etc could be added by my map maker however they would be permanently part of the map, you couldn't turn them off or on. Perhaps Erik can talk to K about support for labels which would need to be part of the engine (Much like hitting F12 to turn trees on/off perhaps f11 could do the same for labels?)

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

As to the rest of this whenever YOU say something is easy again I'm out of there!!

Steve even you will be able to work this one [:D] I hope. If you can't work at least a paint program you will be stuck. You will have to then wait for my next version of the Map Maker which will have a mind reading function [;)]

ORIGINAL: SAF_Biffa

So the question is, before I spend ages on it... is this the best way of doing it or is there a better way?

Biffa, I haven't tested it extensively and I will, but Billboards are possible. So your brush would be a small square plane with 4 vertices and 2 triangles. The you slap your unidirectional brush texture on it. Then in the xml it gets defined as isfacingcamera="yes", but you don't need to worry about that bit as the Map Maker will take care of it. That should help the performance quite a bit.


Now just a point on the map maker design. I have made it pretty modular so that it is easy to add new sections. For example I have now added a random battle damage crater module and cows in farms module (other farm animals to follow once they get 3D models [;)]). I am working on incorporating foxholes into the system as well (so you paint where you want the foxholes to go).

I have ideas for other modules to add as well (like the urban module, dead tanks/bodies module, etc) but I think I will release this at some stage soon to a select group of beta testers before I add too much stuff which might break it.

More points:

The system gives a final breakdown on map complexity so you can see how it is likely to perform on different machines. You can have it set to geneate a million trees if you want, but that will kill most machines [;)] Things which will affect performance is setting too many terrain layers and generating too many trees.

The forest system allows you pretty tight control on exactly what type of trees you want and where. I made it this way because most real forest only have one or two predominate tree types. Totally random forest with 15 different types of trees with exactly the same distribution don't exist in RL!

ATM the sytsem works only with the current game assets, if modding takes off and we get lots of cool new map content I will add the ability to support that in the map maker.

[Stridor]

Do I foresee a random map builder in your future perhaps?

Possibly, but that would be far in the future as I would have to write an auto template maker for the RBG system as well.

To do all that *WELL* is a huge job, I would need to look at the type of alogrithms they use in computer vision systems like 8 way Connected Component Labeling + others in less than total O(n^3) proc time + mem alloc (and we have a 1000x1000 map, it will get worse with larger maps! note some of these in a more light weight form are already in the map maker it needs to identify regions from a bitmap at least in a basic way) That is why I used the human template system for the RBG as the human occiptal cortex has massive parallel hardware designed for just such a task [;)]!

I would also have to migrate away from my current development tools for the same reason. People think I am joking when I tell them I wrote the very first useable scenario editor for PCOWS in less than 5 evenings of after work programing. Well I got the guts of the map maker done in about the same time. Most of my programing time now is spent on making the UI look nice and pretty *and* idiot proof. Part of that development speed is due to the tools, if I move to .Net it will hurt that speed.

S.

[Erik Rutins]

There's a "Cow Type Selector"? Classic. [8D]

[RyanCrierie]

Hm you know, I could try making a slightly higher poly tree, as a break from working on the King Tiger...

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Now just a point on the map maker design. I have made it pretty modular so that it is easy to add new sections. For example I have now added a random battle damage crater module and cows in farms module (other farm animals to follow once they get 3D models [;)]). I am working on incorporating foxholes into the system as well (so you paint where you want the foxholes to go).

I have ideas for other modules to add as well (like the urban module, dead tanks/bodies module, etc) but I think I will release this at some stage soon to a select group of beta testers before I add too much stuff which might break it.

Sounds like you've got the basics already in it Stridor. I'm no modder, but I'd be glad to test the map maker. I don't know 3D stuff too well, but I've done just a little editting of existing map to make Balta sceanrio (in the mods list). So I've used scenario editor and Scene Edit.

The system gives a final breakdown on map complexity so you can see how it is likely to perform on different machines. You can have it set to geneate a million trees if you want, but that will kill most machines [;)] Things which will affect performance is setting too many terrain layers and generating too many trees.

Excellent feature! I'm one of those with low-mid system and I appreciate you keepsing us laggards in mind (in fact being able to run this on my even older and more low end laptop is one of things that sold me on this game).

Better make a cutoff though, or you'll never stop adding "features"!

Thanks again for your work!

Rick