Terrain Textures

[NoQ]

Another problem: i'm not liking how the cliffs end with a triangle tile. They shouldn't dig their scratches into the ground. Probably that's why we have cliffs made of vertical lines instead in the original game.

[cybersphinx]

Also note that decals don't look seamless.

Yeah, the "final solution" to the terrain seams, which was "liberally remove the tile borders"...

for tile in tiles do if tile->type == TILE_CLIFF then tile->decal = DECAL_CLIFF

This will break quite a few maps that used completely different tiles for cliffs (as maps can reassign tile types). For instance, in urban, many people (including the beta campaign authors) use large concrete tiles as cliffs. Updating *decals.txt seems safer.

Even easier then.

[Rman Virgil]

Another problem: i'm not liking how the cliffs end with a triangle tile. They shouldn't dig their scratches into the ground. Probably that's why we have cliffs made of vertical lines instead in the original game.

.

Even though the RL Arizona cliffs have those horizontal, sedementary, striations which are wondrous.... Pumpkin artists went with the verticals because of the artificially of the horizontal wave form through-out along with what you mentioned - the dig-in clutch at the ends looked more realistic with the irregular vertical striations.

Learning to make the best of what we have now is surely a process and overall, weighed in the balance, were this is headed is a significant advance over where its been for awhile now.

.

[Jorzi]

Is it possible to specify "end of cliff"-tiles as well? Making them would be a non-issue...
Also, does anyone know exactly how many pixels get cut off on the side? Would save me a bit of work

[Jorzi]

Made a 12 pixel border around them, looks pretty good now, except the game rotates some of them, causing them not to line up properly...
I also made them more transparent, blending them with the texture underneath to reduce the tiling.

[NoQ]

Is it possible to specify "end of cliff"-tiles as well? Making them would be a non-issue...

No
The main problem is that the cliff tile directions are specified by the map maker. It is up to him to choose which cliffs are half and which are full and which are diagonal and which are horizontal and which are upside down. You can make a tile, but there are just no maps that will make use of it. That would need an extra bit of information we don't have.

[Jorzi]

I was afraid that would be the case....

[NoQ]

they looked so great

[vexed]

Made a 12 pixel border around them, looks pretty good now, except the game rotates some of them, causing them not to line up properly...
I also made them more transparent, blending them with the texture underneath to reduce the tiling.

That looks very good, much better than what we have now.

Perhaps I am not following, but like the old system, where we used the tiles (which basically are decals) to build the cliffs, in order to not splat, and use decals instead would require code changes.

Yes...I think.

Yeah, I was thinking of doing it completely differently than what was posted here.

[vexed]

And for those of you that are curious, viewtopic.php?f=33&t=2383&p=65296&hilit=border#p65309

[Jorzi]

@NoQ: I see you have included a file called arizonadecals.txt. How does this work, all I see is numbers, but no description about what they might do. Also, did you check out my attached .zip file?

[NoQ]

@NoQ: I see you have included a file called arizonadecals.txt. How does this work, all I see is numbers, but no description about what they might do.

The first number is the number of other numbers. The rest are numbers of tiles that are being marked as decals. Eg.

Code: Select all

arizona_decals,2
34
42

will mean that tile-34.png and tile-42.png are actually put on the map as they are in tertilesc1hw folder, instead of being replaced by a new smooth terrain texture.

Also, did you check out my attached .zip file?

Emm well, we already know that the textures are amazing ... now we need to workaround with the cliff ends

[MaNGusT]

while Jorzi's decal textures for cliffs are cool, it will not be enough. We also need features that could be placed on cliffs. So, agree with Emdek.

I'm sure that special meshes in form of shipped features could be solution for "perfect" ones .

[NoQ]

We also need features that could be placed on cliffs.

They will be cool, but they won't magically appear on thousands of maps already made ... and we are now rather fighting for increasing playability of old maps than for the new generation ... i think.

[Emdek]

NoQ, yep, they won't, but it would be nice to have such engine features ready for later use, so new maps could use them and existing ones could be "upgraded" later.