Players edition art

[Combatengineerjrgmail]

The images of the new maps look great! So a question, has the game moved beyond Hexdraw as its basis? I know players can still make maps, will any new hexdraw art be released similar to the art in the new maps?

[CapnDarwin]

Moved beyond, yes and no. The new maps use tools William has and that is beyond HexDraw. The game still supports the HexDraw maps. The values editor is still tied to the current HexDraw art and colors. As for new art, we are not planning on doing anything right now. We will be looking at what we can do for map modding going forward with 2.1. We are still coming up to speed with what William can do. [8D]

[Combatengineerjrgmail]

I figured as much. I'll just enjoy the new art when it hits Friday. Thanks for all the work.

[CapnDarwin]

We are already looking at having the map values editor in 2.1 having user defined color ranges to identify the tile art. This should open up the ability to have much better art and much more modding flexibility. Hopefully we will also be able to do some native map making tool. Still way too early to tell, but it is on our plan.

[cbelva]

As someone who has "hand coded" several fp9 file for a homemade maps, it really is not that hard. It normally takes me 20 minutes to do one. You have to decide how you want to code areas like urban, rough, and forest. The rest is fairly straight forward. You also have to take into effect roads on these areas. But in reality, it isn't all that hard. I keep telling Rob and Jim this, but I don't think they believe me.

[Plodder]

ORIGINAL: cbelva

As someone who has "hand coded" several fp9 file for a homemade maps, it really is not that hard. It normally takes me 20 minutes to do one. You have to decide how you want to code areas like urban, rough, and forest. The rest is fairly straight forward. You also have to take into effect roads on these areas. But in reality, it isn't all that hard. I keep telling Rob and Jim this, but I don't think they believe me.

I shudder at the thought of having to hand code the Berlin map. I did have to go through and recode the visibilty layer by hand but I'm thankful that the elevation and mobility layers could be auto mapped.

[WildCatNL]

It really depends on the type of map and the input created for the map values editor whether it needs lots of manual tweaking.
If you introduce terrain not natively supported by the game (the beaches and greenhouses near The Hague / Rotterdam in Harry's map, Plodders urban detail in Berlin including rail roads, airports and the Berlin wall itself), the automatic scanning recognizing just urban / fields / roads / forest / lakes / mixed won't get it completely right. Sometimes you can use a large brush size to set values. In general, the more detail, the more manual labor.

The planned features for the 2.1 editor should address this better, and offer more freedom to define and recognize new types of terrain. And get rid of the obstacle id collisions as well.

William

[harry_vdk]

William.

First: Great improvement with the maps and nice to see a touch of Plotter.

Second: Perhaps a idea for the community maps made within a classic OTS HexDraw style.

Input: Finish (playable) HexDraw map including the [user].fp9.
Create a plain map with heights from the [user].fp9.
Scan the Urban/Trees/Roads from the [user].png and convert to the new style.
Use the [user].png as a map underlay instead a satellite/gisdata.