Editor problems with The Raw converter above 15x15px
Moderators: jelco, bert_the_turtle
Editor problems with The Raw converter above 15x15px
High @ll,
please first forgive me my bad english.
I like the Darwinia thing and wanna make my own Mod.
I took a look at the tutorials and there are some probs for me to understand.
The Raw Converter
Where to run this *.txt Script ? (Phyton?)
http://www.nihilesthetics.info/modding/ ... ngtime.htm
The only thing i know to run perl scripts are on webservers (difference?)
I cant find the Information, sorry for my blindness.
Thank you
please first forgive me my bad english.
I like the Darwinia thing and wanna make my own Mod.
I took a look at the tutorials and there are some probs for me to understand.
The Raw Converter
Where to run this *.txt Script ? (Phyton?)
http://www.nihilesthetics.info/modding/ ... ngtime.htm
The only thing i know to run perl scripts are on webservers (difference?)
I cant find the Information, sorry for my blindness.
Thank you
Last edited by Luftbauch on Sun May 28, 2006 11:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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- level2
- Posts: 101
- Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:18 pm
You can download perl here
Luftbauch wrote:Thank you
Sorry for doublepost, but i thanked too early.
I got my own Maps working, with the Perl - thing.
How big can a tile in the Editor be (practical?)
3000x3000?
Now im testing to get my own models in Darwinia,
i can only change a existing *.shp file and dont make own ones ?
I made a testbox.shp and put it in my mod in a shapes directory, that dont work for me only if i rename it in an existing *.shp file then i can use it with the Darwinia Editor.
How can i make a brand New *.shp and how its in the Editor (Buildings) ?
Or is ist only possible to replace ?
The Mods i downloaded to see had only existing filenames in use.
i tried to unpack the main.dat insert my *.shp in shapes directory and repacked it, but that dont worked too.
Greetings
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- level2
- Posts: 101
- Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:18 pm
Congratulations on getting the maps script working so quickly. It usually takes people a while to figure it out.
Map sizes arent really limited. As far as I am aware, its only really the performance of your machine that will limit you there. What is restricted is the resolution of your maps. You are limited to a 31x31 if you create your map in the editor, and you can even push the resolution up to 127*127 if you are prepared to use the convertor, but thats the limit. You cant go any higher. So, if you have a 127*127 map grid, you could scale it up to whatever size you like, but it wont become any more detailed, just bigger. Most people who download and play the mods would prefer maps less than 3000x3000 I would expect.
There is quite a bit of information floating around on how to get your own shapes in the game. The correct location for your shape is in <darwinia_root>/mods/<your mod>/shapes. Dont replace the files in main.dat. The only way you will be able to view a file called testbox.shp is to create a staticshape building. The actual shape filenames used by existing units and buildings are hardcoded in the game. Creating a brand new shape is complex. I would start off modifying existing shapes until you get an idea how the files work and how the gsme uses them. You can mess about with colours and orienation of existing files quite easily.
If you want to import your very own modelled shapes, create it in 3dsMax then ask here for help. There are quite a few people who will convert them for you, I expect.
N2
Map sizes arent really limited. As far as I am aware, its only really the performance of your machine that will limit you there. What is restricted is the resolution of your maps. You are limited to a 31x31 if you create your map in the editor, and you can even push the resolution up to 127*127 if you are prepared to use the convertor, but thats the limit. You cant go any higher. So, if you have a 127*127 map grid, you could scale it up to whatever size you like, but it wont become any more detailed, just bigger. Most people who download and play the mods would prefer maps less than 3000x3000 I would expect.
There is quite a bit of information floating around on how to get your own shapes in the game. The correct location for your shape is in <darwinia_root>/mods/<your mod>/shapes. Dont replace the files in main.dat. The only way you will be able to view a file called testbox.shp is to create a staticshape building. The actual shape filenames used by existing units and buildings are hardcoded in the game. Creating a brand new shape is complex. I would start off modifying existing shapes until you get an idea how the files work and how the gsme uses them. You can mess about with colours and orienation of existing files quite easily.
If you want to import your very own modelled shapes, create it in 3dsMax then ask here for help. There are quite a few people who will convert them for you, I expect.
N2
nihilesthetics2 wrote:Map sizes arent really limited. As far as I am aware, its only really the performance of your machine that will limit you there. What is restricted is the resolution of your maps. You are limited to a 31x31 if you create your map in the editor, and you can even push the resolution up to 127*127 if you are prepared to use the convertor, but thats the limit. You cant go any higher. So, if you have a 127*127 map grid, you could scale it up to whatever size you like, but it wont become any more detailed, just bigger. Most people who download and play the mods would prefer maps less than 3000x3000 I would expect.
You are kind of answering two questions here, I think, and because I had to read this paragraph a couple times over before I got the jist of it (maybe I am just stupid :), I am going to try and clarify it a bit.
First, you can change the size of the individual land tiles. Second, you can change the size of the map in which those tiles reside. You can make the map as big as you like, and you can make the tiles any size that is less than or equal to the size of the map.
Map sizes: practially speaking, you probably don't want maps that are over 10,000 units in size. You are either going to have a great deal of empty space; very little detail; or a map that chokes many, many machines. However, you can fit a lot of stuff into a space that big (or smaller), so I wouldn't worry about it.
Tile sizes: again, tiles can be as big as the actual map, and I don't see any problem with using large tiles. As nihil said, you can change the resolution of the individual tiles (to 31x31 in the editor, or 127x127 using alternate means), however, I would watch the triangle count. Anything above 80,000 will probably run slow on lower end systems; anthing above 150,000 or 200,000 will probably kill many systems, especially if you have a lot of enemies. There are two ways that you could reduce the count, if you need to.
First, you can decrease the overall detail of the level by increasing the cell size. This can be done from within the editor by opening up the land tile editor, and adjusting the cell size. The default, I believe, is 12. Lower numbers mean smaller cells, and more detail; larger numbers mean larger cells and less detail.
Second, you can avoid using land tiles with really finely detailed grid guides. Use the lowest resolution possible to get the desired effect.
nihilesthetics2 wrote:There is quite a bit of information floating around on how to get your own shapes in the game. The correct location for your shape is in <darwinia_root>/mods/<your mod>/shapes.
For other OSes:
Linux: ~/.darwinia/
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Darwinia/
Steam: \Valve\Steam\SteamApps\[user]\darwinia\
nihilesthetics2 wrote:If you want to import your very own modelled shapes, create it in 3dsMax then ask here for help. There are quite a few people who will convert them for you, I expect.
Do eet by hand! Plain text 4 eva!
xander
Thanks for the good Tips.
I got my first boxmodel with vertex paint ingame.
There are some problems for me with the Editor.
The rawfile convert only works correct in 15x15 px for me , i use the datas from http://www.nihilesthetics.info/modding/Mordor_In_The_Springtime.htm
If i try to convert a bigger size than 15x15 then i have in the half of the maptile lines like ripples, one half correct other not ??
15x15 pixel isnt so much room to create a nice slope (?) up-hillside.
Why is there in the Editor, where i can paint at the tile no option to load a heightmap file, that would be much easier.
I want to create a nice hillway(?) uphill , the form like a snake, at top one flat area, its impossible for me to paint that in 15x15 px.
If i try to split an image from 30x30 in four parts (tiles) and put it in the editor together as 15x15px pieces ,it looks not really nice.
greetings from here
I got my first boxmodel with vertex paint ingame.
There are some problems for me with the Editor.
The rawfile convert only works correct in 15x15 px for me , i use the datas from http://www.nihilesthetics.info/modding/Mordor_In_The_Springtime.htm
If i try to convert a bigger size than 15x15 then i have in the half of the maptile lines like ripples, one half correct other not ??
15x15 pixel isnt so much room to create a nice slope (?) up-hillside.
Why is there in the Editor, where i can paint at the tile no option to load a heightmap file, that would be much easier.
I want to create a nice hillway(?) uphill , the form like a snake, at top one flat area, its impossible for me to paint that in 15x15 px.
If i try to split an image from 30x30 in four parts (tiles) and put it in the editor together as 15x15px pieces ,it looks not really nice.
greetings from here
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- level2
- Posts: 101
- Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:18 pm
If understand you correclty, then what I think what you are doing is converting a 30x30 image and then splitting it manually into 4 blocks and making 4 individual tiles of 15x15 each. Is that right? If so , that wont work. If you require more detail you will have to convert a 31x31 tile( remember, you can only convert images of certain sizes - 15x15, 31x31, 63x63 and 127,127). But for a gentle slope, surely a 15x15 grid ( or in Darwinian parlance, a '4 grid' ) would be sufficient. Just scale up the resulting tile in the editor to the dimensions you want. You can add interesting features like ridges, or rocky outcrops along the edge, by overlapping tiles. To be honest, a gnetle rolling slope would be better created in the editor. The converter is good for well defined features like mazes, or hard ramps; geometric requirements like circular craters; or highly complex features like cracks or the convertion of generated heightmaps from bryce, vista, etc
So why wont your appproach work, anyway? Consider a 14x2 map.
If you wanted to split the converted output into 2 2x7 parts, you would want the bytes to be in the order 1234567 fghijkl 89abcde mnopqrs. But the output is in the order 1234567 89abcde fghijkl mnopqrs.
Now you might think the solution is to split your 30x30 raw file into 4 15x15 raw files and convert each in turn. That would certainly sort out the byte order problem above, but you would have another problem. While each individual tile would be correct, when you positioned them in the map to make up one 30x30 file, the edges would not be the same height. Again, the explanation is a little complex, (sorry Xander :p).
The game is actually converting a heightmap into an actual landscape. The height of each point in the heightmap is absolute, i.e. a height of AA in one tile is the same as AA in another tile). But the heights in the actual landscape are relative to the rest of the tile. Thats just the way darwinia works. There is some kind of adjustment calculation going on that we will never know until we see the code (and since I havnt banged on about the devCD for at least 5 minutes, Im going to mention it here ). In short, youre 4 segments will never align vertically.
Edit :
Also, make sure you have the correct guidegrid size set in map file. The converter should do this for you, but always check.
The guidegrid size here is the '6' just before the start of the heightmap
N2
So why wont your appproach work, anyway? Consider a 14x2 map.
Code: Select all
1234567 89abcde
fghijkl mnopqrs
If you wanted to split the converted output into 2 2x7 parts, you would want the bytes to be in the order 1234567 fghijkl 89abcde mnopqrs. But the output is in the order 1234567 89abcde fghijkl mnopqrs.
Now you might think the solution is to split your 30x30 raw file into 4 15x15 raw files and convert each in turn. That would certainly sort out the byte order problem above, but you would have another problem. While each individual tile would be correct, when you positioned them in the map to make up one 30x30 file, the edges would not be the same height. Again, the explanation is a little complex, (sorry Xander :p).
The game is actually converting a heightmap into an actual landscape. The height of each point in the heightmap is absolute, i.e. a height of AA in one tile is the same as AA in another tile). But the heights in the actual landscape are relative to the rest of the tile. Thats just the way darwinia works. There is some kind of adjustment calculation going on that we will never know until we see the code (and since I havnt banged on about the devCD for at least 5 minutes, Im going to mention it here ). In short, youre 4 segments will never align vertically.
Edit :
Also, make sure you have the correct guidegrid size set in map file. The converter should do this for you, but always check.
Code: Select all
500 -9.00 500 4000 0.00 0.00 652 1 1 1.00 6 AAAAAAAAFFABABABAB .....
The guidegrid size here is the '6' just before the start of the heightmap
N2
Its very good to make a full mapfile backup.
I maked one for practice, i used the 30px split tecnic , but the original had 30x 15 px , then cutted into two pieces and converted one by one.
imported in the Editor and then...
I made screenies of the thing i mean i post it here, hope its ok.
5 parts and trash in editor
Argh.., more Space...
Clean up ..
Finetuning , nice polycounter, much room to touch the look of this practice-example
I maked one for practice, i used the 30px split tecnic , but the original had 30x 15 px , then cutted into two pieces and converted one by one.
imported in the Editor and then...
I made screenies of the thing i mean i post it here, hope its ok.
5 parts and trash in editor
Argh.., more Space...
Clean up ..
Finetuning , nice polycounter, much room to touch the look of this practice-example
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- level2
- Posts: 101
- Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:18 pm
nihilesthetics2 wrote:Yep, it looks like you have mastered the use of the converter.
The Tips i got here around helped a lot.
The only thing what i dont understand is ,
why i cant use any size above 15x15px.rar and convert correct?
If i convert any of this
31*31 /63*63/127*127/255*255 .rar
i get only half map data correct the rest have ripples/waves, but for the moment im happy with the 15x15 results
thanks and greetings from here
-
- level2
- Posts: 101
- Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 11:18 pm
If you want to send me the raw file you cant convert, I will take a look and see if I can figure out whats wrong.
mail@nihilesthetics.info
N2
mail@nihilesthetics.info
N2
Thank you again for your help.
I fixed some things, now some practice with the ai commands .
I find, there are not enough units in the Editor i can replace, it would be great to have more units(buttons) to place Props and Buildings ingame.
Update
Edit thats crazy , i converted the narnfighter1.0.max on my own and played the "Enemy within part 1"(Mod) , he uses the same spacecraft in a level "Backdoor" *lol*
I swear i didnt sawn it before, or ripped it, it was a high poly model i want to convert on my own (test) , in max i only painted a bit orange of it.
It was one of the easiest to find spacecraft over google.
http://www-c.inria.fr/Eric.Saltel/download/affichage.php?dir=BABYLON5/&name=Narnfght
I fixed some things, now some practice with the ai commands .
I find, there are not enough units in the Editor i can replace, it would be great to have more units(buttons) to place Props and Buildings ingame.
Update
Edit thats crazy , i converted the narnfighter1.0.max on my own and played the "Enemy within part 1"(Mod) , he uses the same spacecraft in a level "Backdoor" *lol*
I swear i didnt sawn it before, or ripped it, it was a high poly model i want to convert on my own (test) , in max i only painted a bit orange of it.
It was one of the easiest to find spacecraft over google.
http://www-c.inria.fr/Eric.Saltel/download/affichage.php?dir=BABYLON5/&name=Narnfght
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