Major breakthrough: editing cities!

[SigniferOne]

I have successfully recreated the Seven Hills of Ancient Rome, and made that into a city settlement plan. Now instead of boring flat cities with small areas, huge open spaces and a few buildings, you can have huge sprawling cities, situated just as they were historically, and as difficult to besiege as they were historically.



I will place the 'capture city' square on the right side of the Capitoline Hill, where the citadel was historically (and will be recreated). So now you'll not only have to get through the outer wall, not shown here, but up the narrow slopes of the Capitoline, and fight your way through the inner set of walls into that cramped area. Basically, in terms of cities and settlements, our hands are now untied and we can do whatever the heck we please. If you want to recreate the harbor of Carthage, you can. If you want to recreate the Acropolis of Athens you can. And the Acropolis will not just be some eyecandy, like a big Imperial Palace that stands there occupying space but not being able to fight inside; no, now you can have the 'city square' up on the Acropolis, so the poor enemy will have to get through the outer walls and then fight their way up the Acropolis, through the tense wall of hoplite spears.



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Original post (4/30):
A shot of the Capitoline Hill with some upgraded textures:



The view from the top:




UPDATE (5/26):

The beta of the citadel on the Capitoline (a work in progress):



UPDATE (5/27):

I have created an introductory tutorial in the Tutorials subforum, explaining how to edit ground features which is the basic building block when creating custom cities. The tutorial can be found here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=48365

In other news, with the creation of the first tutorial I would like to organize a group of modders together, people who are interested in creating new cities, to facilitate exchange of information and for collaboration and group work.

I am considering a few names for the name of the guild, such as The Crafters Guild or The Masons Guild. I would also like to think of some names that don't have the word "guild" which has medieval connotations. In any case, PM me if you would like to join and are following along the tutorial and are seriously interested in pursuing this.


UPDATE (6/5):
Building the Servian Walls, the great, arduous, and incredibly daunting task:

[Epistolary Richard]

This is very interesting, are those grey areas impassible? The problem we have with trying to generate cliffs before was that troops could go up and down them as easily as level ground. And you can customise the positions the walls go in as well?

[Oromë]

Thats great news! So, for the sake of the community are you going to let us in on this little secret?

[Lord Adherbal]

good job

I managed to changed the layout of city walls, aslong as you keep them in a perfect closed "circuit" it works fine.

now all we need is the ability to edit pathfinding models. They can't even be exported atm :(

[eadingas]

So, was that using battle editor for ground and 3dmax for overlays/underlays?

[The_Ferret]

question, is middle earth total war the same as The Fourth Age Total War

[SigniferOne]

eadingas, the overlays/underlays ARE the ground, there's nothing else. So the battle editor was only used as a way to check my work, I'd load up my settlement plan and see how it looked, I did nothing else in it, everything was done manually. Also, once the ground was fixed, I used the coordinates in the battle editor to place my buildings.

ER: keep in mind that none of the ground you see in that picture was generated with the Battle Editor. So you have complete control over what happens on that ground. Now, for the moment the hillsides are passable, but there's a way to make them not passable. My idea is: the 'something' which makes a building unpassable is its .bpi file. Same thing with walls. So that is what I'll do, I'll place the game's wall objects all around the paths, on each side, so the units will not be able to go left or right -- the .bpi file of those walls will prevent it. And to make things non-ugly, I will make the walls invisible with 100% alpha. Presto! Unpassable cliffs.

[eadingas]

Did you play with the textures and ground types, or is it just what comes out automatically after you edit the overlays?

[SigniferOne]

Yep, everything you see on that picture is 100% under my control, I chose the textures, their UVW mappings, everything. Literally the whole thing was made by me, not just some parts. The applications of this are innumerable, another one of them being: a moat! Sorround your city by a river and force them to go on a bridge.

[Lord Adherbal]

keep in mind that none of the ground you see in that picture was generated with the Battle Editor. So you have complete control over what happens on that ground. Now, for the moment the hillsides are passable, but there's a way to make them not passable. My idea is: the 'something' which makes a building unpassable is its .bpi file. Same thing with walls. So that is what I'll do, I'll place the game's wall objects all around the paths, on each side, so the units will not be able to go left or right -- the .bpi file of those walls will prevent it. And to make things non-ugly, I will make the walls invisible with 100% alpha. Presto! Unpassable cliffs.

Have you even tested this or are you just "hoping" that'll work ? Because I'm not sure you can add more then one "ring" of walls - and there might be other restrictions.
And like I said until you can edit the pathfinding maps I doubt this will work properly - a human might be able to get his troops to the right place but the AI will probably go nuts if there are too many obstructions around, and no pathfinding map.
It's nice to see editing under/overlays works fine with the current cas exporter, but this alone will certainly not allow modders to create any city they want - atleast not without causing AI problems.

[SigniferOne]

Adherbal, I can add whatever objects I want into the game, including multiple rings of walls and such. Here's what makes the outer walls so special, though: they are not walls per se, but placeholders for walls, so that you can upgrade them and change them. So with that type of system, I don't know if the programmers have allowed us to have more than one ring of those upgradeable walls. But that's not what I'm talking about either, I'm talking about taking the actual wall object, and inserting it into the game in much the same way as I inserted the Circus Maximus and the Temple of Jupiter. The process is the same, except I'll make those inserted objects be 100% transparent, but still 100% unpassable.

No I haven't tested it out, but I know the principle. Right now the Circus Maximus is unpassable -- imagine if I line the entire side of a mountain with them, making that side impassable. It can be done, clearly, right? Then imagine I make the Circus invisible, and bingo you have the effect I'm talking about. I will use walls instead because they are simple straight objects with no curves and with a low poly count.

And yes, as I said, in addition to the possibilities of moats for castles, you can now recreate the city of Minas Tirith now with a mountain of a city, surrounded by rings of walls. The LOTR ppl should be happy :)

[eadingas]

These other walls also won't be scalable, siegable, and only passable if you destroy them with onager fire, BTW.
Also, to use 'walls' you have to copy them into a new building, since you can't any parts of existing walls without them being part of a single circle of walls around the city.

[SigniferOne]

You mean the inner walls? I'd assume that the outer walls of a city will be just like any other walls in a default city, but it's the inner walls that will be custom. Yeah, those will probably not be scalable.

[Lord Adherbal]

and what pathfinding model are you gonna use for this city ? Because you have to give one to a settlement plan. I can imagine using a random will seriously mess up unit behaviour inside the city. And even if you manage to get rid of it somehow - ever tried moving units around in a large city map in MTW ? I can imagine it will be the same in RTW. Someone with the proper knowledge (Vercingetorix ?) really has to look into those pathfinding models - that would be a "major breakthrough" for me :)

PS: I know how those pathfinding models work - I wrote some pathfinding algoritms myself in the past. If someone wants me to explain what they do just ask. What I need is the ability to export pathfinding models - and more importantly knowing how to create/edit the nodes network.

[SigniferOne]

Adherbal, I can already export the underlay files, which are in structure almost the same as the pathfinding files, which means I can export pathfinding files as well. I will soon write up a tutorial about all of this. In the meanwhile, yes please write up what you know about pathfinding.

[Lord Adherbal]

you can't export pathfinding models with the currrent exporter script cos they lack "TVFaces", which means they don't have a texture layout or something (I guess).

I'll try to explain how pathfinding works without getting technical:

You have a network of nodes, which are linked together. The links define what nodes can be reached from what node. If node A is linked to node B, that means a unit on node A can walk to node B without bumping into any obstruction, meaning that links are always straight lines.
In RTW, nodes are usualy placed on crossroads or "marketsquares", the links are placed on the cityroads.
When a unit is ordered to move to a certain place inside a city, the game will look up the corresponding node of that location. It will then calculate the shortest way from the current node the unit is standing on (or nearby), to the final destination. It will basicly pass all nodes and return the most effectient (fastest, shortest in distance) path it found. The unit will then use this path to move from node to node until it reaches it's destination.

The pathfinding models are obviously a graphical representation of the nodes network. I doubt that this model alone is enough though, there should be some way to actualy state what node is attached to what link. Maybe that is stored into the cas file but not editable in 3DSmax. Because we can't export the models we can't see if the network can be altered by just moving the link and node meshes in 3DSmax - maybe it is that simple.

It might be possible to create pathfinding models with meshes that have TVFaces, so they are exportable. I'll look into that sometime next week.

[SigniferOne]

Updated the first post with new screenshots.

Adherbal, thanks for the post, I will look into pathfinding after the city proper is finished. As a side question, can units 'stop' in between nodes, or must they always go from one node to another? Maybe this explains why units exiting a city gate have to go so far outside the gate before they can turn.

[Epistolary Richard]

ER: keep in mind that none of the ground you see in that picture was generated with the Battle Editor. So you have complete control over what happens on that ground. Now, for the moment the hillsides are passable, but there's a way to make them not passable. My idea is: the 'something' which makes a building unpassable is its .bpi file. Same thing with walls. So that is what I'll do, I'll place the game's wall objects all around the paths, on each side, so the units will not be able to go left or right -- the .bpi file of those walls will prevent it. And to make things non-ugly, I will make the walls invisible with 100% alpha. Presto! Unpassable cliffs.

That's excellent, finally a solution to the repetitive sieges in the game. And more than that, of course, a real way of editing the terrain rather than merely editing 'battles'. So much potential here...

[Teleklos Archelaou]

That's excellent, finally a solution to the repetitive sieges in the game. And more than that, of course, a real way of editing the terrain rather than merely editing 'battles'. So much potential here...

I imagine most sieges of a city like this would end with the defenders trying to break the siege instead of the besiegers actually trying to take the city. Would be great to be defending against the AI though and destroying a whole army with a few units of archers atop a citadel like that.

[Lord Adherbal]

As a side question, can units 'stop' in between nodes, or must they always go from one node to another? Maybe this explains why units exiting a city gate have to go so far outside the gate before they can turn.

no, they can be placed anywere on a node or link. The
pathfinding models are only used when the unit destination is on another node/link then the current one - if not then they unit can move around unobstructed.
BTW, walls are not part of the pathfinding models. I managed to change the position and layout of walls (even going right trought buildings and roads in a settlement) and units still interact with them fine. So they use a seperate pathfinding system that doesnt need to be edited by the modder.

[SigniferOne]

ER, oh yes there is almost unlimited potential here, if you can see the city in your head, you can see make it in the game. And it's not some cartoony game like BFME, where even if you make a great city, the whole thing still looks crappy. That's why we all love RTW, despite its problems :)

Adherbal,

BTW, walls are not part of the pathfinding models. I managed to change the position and layout of walls (even going right trought buildings and roads in a settlement) and units still interact with them fine. So they use a seperate pathfinding system that doesnt need to be edited by the modder.

Well come to think of it, the units don't try to go through buildings either. So at first glance, I'd say that it's not just the walls that are somehow superior, but all models (given certain proviso's). Anyhow, back to my question, the answer to which I didn't fully understand. Can you send a unit to 'in between' area between two nodes? If so, then what purpose do nodes serve?

[SigniferOne]

My quote from TWC:

Oh and as a side note to all, see that Circus Maximus, in the shadow of the Palatine Hill? It will actually be a lot bigger than that, because in reality it extended beyond the length of the Palatine. So it will be a lot longer, taller, and generally more monumental. Housing 280,000 spectators comfortably couldn't have been easy.

[eadingas]

Re: pathfinding and models:
I have once put a settlement on the map as 'ambient building', without pathfinding model attached. The units refused to went through it if I ordered them to go from one end to another - they went around the whole thing instead. When I guided them with mouseclicks over short distances, they did went through eventually, following the streets, but as soon as I clicked too far, they retreated and went around again, from where they came from.
Hope this helps anything...

[SigniferOne]

Actually yeah that helps, thanks.

[Lord Adherbal]

Anyhow, back to my question, the answer to which I didn't fully understand. Can you send a unit to 'in between' area between two nodes? If so, then what purpose do nodes serve?

eadingas already answered the question for the most part. Dodging a single square object isn't very hard, but finding a way through a complex city is a whole other matter. That's what pathfinding routines are for - the CPU checks all possible routes to the destination and returns the most efficient one. A human would be able to guide their troops trough the streets, but the AI player would probably go insane. The node system splits the cities up in squares connected by straight lines.

[SigniferOne]

Ohh, I get it. So the units will go anywhere, not just on the squares, because they can use the algorithm to travel large distances from square to square, and then just use localized pathfinding for shorter distances. Makes sense! In fact, it makes a lot of sense why, even though I'm using a barbarian town pathfinding file for my city at the moment, the troops still walk around properly.

[SigniferOne]

I should note on the 'limitations' point that we do have one pretty big limitation at the moment -- the cize of the battlemap tiles. This really cramps down on how big of a city you can have, and made me really have to fiddle around with scales of those hills and cut some corners (literally). But I guess, that limitation makes a lot of sense within the parameters of the game.

[Vercingetorix]

As a note, "TVFaces" deal with the uvw mappings. Just apply a uvw map to all the objects and it should export without a problem.

[SigniferOne]

My post from TWC:

First post updated with a better panorama pic of Rome, with some improved textures and a new building: the Curia, the place where the Senate sat and deliberated on matters of state; the building is located on the map where it was historically. This will likely be my only update for the next few weeks, when I finish up finals for grad school etc.

Oh and also, I will convert the Curia model into a sprawling model of the entire Forum area, because the game mechanics insist that this model should be about the trading center, not just the Senate House itself. So all three buildings you see there will be considerably modified, the Curia, the Circus Maximus will become a monumental structure, and the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus will be bigger, with a proper architecture, six rows of columns, with the statues of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno inside, and with a set of terracota statues on the roof, culminating in a four-horse chariot sculpture at the pinnacle.

[Myrddraal]

This is great, eagerly awaiting ur tutorial and upload