Palms - Any chance some mods can unite, make a few, and share them?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

CA thankfully included palms on the campaign map and in city maps, and it looks like they are all over the place, but of course they don't exist on the regular battlefield maps.

There is a real need for palm trees to exist on these battlefield maps, but I don't know of any mod who has developed and incorporated them. Whole forests of them are really what is needed, not just the single "oasis square" that you will sometimes see on a battlefield.

It just seems to me like so many mods could really use a working palm moddle on the battlemap. Virtually any mod that includes Egypt really needs them, as does any that includes north africa. And they could be used all across the middle east, or even in places in Anatolia, Italy, Spain, etc. EB, RTR, the Crusades, Res Gestae, Rise of Persia, Imperium, Byzantium TW, Terrae Expugnandae, even Hegemonia are just a few big ones that really do need them.

So is there any chance that we could try to pool together and come up with a way to get even one type of realistic looking palm into the game that we could all make use of together? This may just be asking for one kind soul to do the whole community a good deed and actually make some vegetation that they'd donate to everyone else to use, but if that's what it would take, then I guess that's what I'm asking. I've personally not had any interaction with designing vegetation for RTW, and I doubt most people have, but has anyone tried to make new vegetation themselves? What all would be needed to actually make the model and then texture, and then to import it into the game?

There are so many palms used inside their city battle maps, that it seems odd we can't get some of those out in the countryside too.

Some sample palm images:
http://www.fairchildgarden.org/palmguide/popimages.php

[professorspatula]

To be honest, I can't believe there's a mod out there that takes itself seriously that doesn't include palm trees. Just what are they thinking? It's enough for me to stop playing RTW until the lack of palm trees in the game is rectified.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

To be honest, I can't believe there's a mod out there that takes itself seriously that doesn't include palm trees. Just what are they thinking? It's enough for me to stop playing RTW until the lack of palm trees in the game is rectified.
Do you have a problem with me asking?

[professorspatula]

Nope.

Why, do you have a problem with me also being suitably annoyed at the inconsiderate modder's reluctance to address the pressing issue of missing palm trees? Can only you feel slightly vexed and befuddled that palm trees aren't a pressing issue? Because that's just not cricket if that's the case!

Whilst we're pointing out missing vegetation, it's about time there was some decent shrubbery in the game. It's pretty poor for the most part. I want to lead my army into a battlefield littered with high quality greenery, and not just a few generic looking shrubs from a Homebase or B&Q store, proper stuff.

Come on, lets have a proper modder's rally.

Shrubs and palm trees for our projects! It's not a lot to ask for.

[Epistolary Richard]

I feel an awful lot of Monty Python shrubbery jokes will soon be making an appearance.

professor, could you provide some links to pictures of the sort of shrubs you'd like in the game - perhaps it may inspire the community's modellers.

[Duke John]

I've personally not had any interaction with designing vegetation for RTW, and I doubt most people have, but has anyone tried to make new vegetation themselves?
I guess you haven't seen my tutorial (I even included a few source models):
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60901
http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload6/tut_tree_ingame_2.jpg

http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload9/rnj_pine_3.jpg
It's quite easy, especially if the palmtree used for landscape models is of any decent quality.

[Kagemusha]

Im more intrested on Cherry trees.:laugh4: But doesnt RESGESTAE have an Palm tree model already?

https://img153.imageshack.us/img153/8410/japa63233gz.jpg

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I guess you haven't seen my tutorial (I even included a few source models):
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60901

It's quite easy, especially if the palmtree used for landscape models is of any decent quality.
Oh, I've seen it. I know nothing about 3dsmax though and the modellers we've had in EB have been solely interested in making units, so that leaves me and anyone else who wants palms at square one and that's why I'm asking if anyone is interested in making a few for everyone to use. Some of us inside EB have been absolutely begging for help inside that mod to get them, for some time now, but no one has helped.

Pretty much every other climate (besides those in India possibly) can at least be deemed somewhat acceptable for all the regions most RTW mods cover except for one that uses palms as the main type of vegetation. Cherry trees look like they have been made by some of the eastern mod groups, but I don't think anything else vegetation-wise is as important as the need for palms. Having deciduous trees up and down the nile and across arabia and parts of mesopotamia and oxiana and north africa is just ridiculous.

[Kagemusha]

I will make sure from Lionskin but, i think RESGESTAE has a new palm tree model.:2thumbsup: Maybe they can give it to you guys also.

[cunctator]

Since there are already a few palm tree models working with the 3D cities, shouldn't it be possible to use them for a new vegetation set for a tropic climate?

[lionskin]

I created a palm model for the strat map, If you guys want I will send it to you :2thumbsup:

Best Regards,
T.

[Diurpaneus]

Yes.please:2thumbsup:

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Sorry I was away for a few days there.

That would be wonderful lionskin. Is there a way you could make it available to everybody this way? Do you have a screenshot of it in the game?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, no word back after a couple of weeks. Anyone else ever tried to get the city palm trees to work on the strat map?

[snevets]

So are you asking for is palms on the campaign map or the battle map? Are the existing RTW models not good enough? Honestly if someone did a redo of all the trees in RTW I think they'd keep the palms, they're not bad.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

The palms on the battle maps in the cities look very nice. But there are no palms on the battle maps outside of the cities (excepting this one little "oasis square" you will see by itself sometimes). We would love to have palms mixed together to be a type of climate that we could use all along many coastlines and along rivers in dry places. If someone knew how to use the ones that you can see in the cities and turn them into palms on the regular terrain of the battlemap (something we don't have the know-how to do), I'm sure EB could work some sort of swap for something else. Maybe even to just make it available to everyone (if we could get it to work well, I'm pretty sure it would be a popular addition to many mods).

[caius britannicus]

Once I saw this thread here I figured I'd make a palm tree for The Crusades. I finished it today (well I started and finished it today). Once crusades is done I'll probably release them the to the community.

https://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2336/palms7yo.jpg

Ignore the fact that they are in the wrong climate I put them there for testing only.

[Myrddraal]

Very nice indeed!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Agreed - very nice!

How long a wait do you think that will be by the way? :grin:

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, I thought I might try to get some of the numerous vanilla palm trees that were made for the settlement and oasis sections of the battlemap to appear "in the field" for the regular battle map. I am not that familiar with these aspects of the mod, and generally ignorant of the way CAS files and this stuff works, but it seems like there has to be a way to shift them over to work on the battlemap too. And this 'fix' would apply to any mod, not just the one I'm working on.

So, if anyone could help out here - pointing out anything wrong I'm assuming or seem to be ignorant of in these steps, I would greatly appreciate it.

Palms currently (i.e., vanilla) appear spaced throughout cities (when you have a siege) and they also appear in a small size in single clumps (an oasis) in desert areas randomly. But what I'm talking about are palm forests. All along the Nile, Arabia, along many other important rivers in the east and even in mediterranean areas perhaps. Caius Brittanicus posted a WIP image of the Crusades' palms on the battlemap above, and this is generally what I'm talking about doing too (except he made those palms, where I'm wondering if we can't just get the vanilla ones to work in other places).

So although this effort would seem to require making new vegetation models, (Duke John has provided a tutorial on how to do that = https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60901), but it isn't necessary it would seem). The thing is, there are palm models in the game. CA just didn't use them on regular battlemaps. That's what I'm trying to fix. If we used the vanilla palm models, but just spaced them appropriately and used the different variants they have, then we might not even have to descr_vegetation.db regenerate (which would be nice too).

Here are the different vanilla types in the "oasis cluster" (on the top left) and in the settlement. You can see there are four types easily distinguishable - and type2b is a much taller version of type2 it seems.
https://img288.imageshack.us/img288/2127/palmsvanilla9zn.th.jpg (https://img288.imageshack.us/my.php?image=palmsvanilla9zn.jpg)

So, why can't we just move the palms from the settlements onto the battlemaps? We would like to try them in the semi_arid climate type (ideally for us). The files that control these seem to be the following:

In the descr_settlement_plan.txt file, you see the palms are called up for any settlement when the terrain is desert or :


sandy_desert any tree_A_palm
rocky_desert any tree_A_palm

Any temperate climate type will pull up deciduous trees (we'd like to make semi-arid climates pull up palm trees here too, btw, but I don't know exactly how to do that - though it seems like this is the place to edit it).

Apparently semi-arid doesn't pull up any vegetation types, if you look into descr_vegetation.txt. It has these entries:


; Semi Arid
vegetation semi_arid_dense_forest modifies default_forest
{
}

vegetation semi_arid_dense_scrub modifies default_scrub
{
}
Whereas this is a type that would pull up and reference trees:

; Open forest
vegetation forest_open_dense_forest
{
layout 400 forest_layout.tga
radius 4.5
height_range 0.7 1.1
aspect_range 0.7 1.0
lod trees
model df_tree_01
model df_tree_02
}

The climate entry itself in climates.txt for semi-arid is this:

climate semi_arid ;green with palms
{
colour 0 114 188
heat 2

strategy summer sparse_tree palm_a.cas 10
strategy summer dense_tree palm_b.cas 20
strategy summer canopy palm_b.cas 20

battle_vegetation
dense_forest medi_dense_forest
dense_scrub medi_dense_scrub
; dense_forest semi_arid_dense_forest
; dense_scrub semi_arid_dense_scrub

battle_winter_vegetation
;dense_forest medi_dense_forest
;dense_scrub medi_dense_scrub
dense_forest semi_arid_dense_forest
dense_scrub semi_arid_dense_scrub
env_map data/battlefield/envmaps/grass.dds
}

So you can see how a climate that is semi_arid on the map would pull up for battle vegetation those same vegetation types (semi_arid_dense_forest and semi_arid_dense scrub) that we just saw had no trees referenced in them.

The first step might be getting trees to appear in the semi-arid climate type, but the second step would be to get the palms from the settlements working in the battlemap. I might think (ignorant as I am of modelling and such) that just pulling the same palm .cas and texture files from the models_building file and pasting them in the models_vegetation file would then allow us to reference them in battlemaps (provided we actually point them out to the code). The place where it references the cas file and texture I showed above. The example would be:


; Open forest
vegetation forest_open_dense_forest
{
layout 400 forest_layout.tga
radius 4.5
height_range 0.7 1.1
aspect_range 0.7 1.0
lod trees
model df_tree_01
model df_tree_02
}

You can also explain what "model df_tree_01" is in that same file - you just look further up in descr_vegetation.txt and you'll see the place where the code understands this model reference points it to a specific cas file:


; deep forest tree - Variant A
model df_tree_01
{
level models_vegetation/deepforest_tree_v1.CAS
}

So if we made a "new" model here (really, same as one of the old ones - palm_high_tree.cas is a good one to choose, and it was working in the settlements), it might look like this:


; semi arid tree - Variant A
model sa_tree_01
{
level models_vegetation/palm_tree_high.CAS
}

But when I put this in, and move the CAS and all palm texture files over to models_vegetation, and then even when I tell the vegetation type for semi_arid to reference that cas file, like this:


; Semi Arid
vegetation semi_arid_dense_forest modifies default_forest
{
layout 384 forest_layout.tga
radius 2
height_range 0.4 0.8
aspect_range 0.7 1.3
lod trees
model sa_tree_01
}

I still don't get it showing up in the game. Or at least as far as I can tell. Any particular reason? I've never modded these files - so this is my first try. If anyone can help us, we'd really like to get this working and fine tuned (that comes later of course). Any chance anyone here could help out with this? We'd love to get something looking like some of these:

(a couple of images to yearn after...)
http://www.galen-frysinger.ws/egypt/nile34.jpg
http://twins.free.fr/travel/maroc/page5/images/oasis%206_jpg.jpg

[Stuie]

Still from a MTW2 gameplay video:

https://img438.imageshack.us/img438/911/palmtree4yh.jpg

Couldn't help but think of this thread. ~:)

[Dol Guldur]

LOL.

We have much to look forward to... ;)

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Don't mock my palm thread! Argh! :grin:

Tis a noble goal!

[Dol Guldur]

Can we first identify whether or not *any* change to the descr_vegetation.txt has any effect?

[Duke John]

See my tutorial:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60901

Remove the db before editing the txt file. The engine then generates a new db when starting R:TW.

[Dol Guldur]

Thought so! Thx. John. I have a vanilla descr_vegetation.txt - i removed (renamed) the veg db file and it regenerated to give me a blue landscape with 1 clump of trees :(