Terrain textures

[R'as al Ghul]

Konnichiwa,

I was wondering why we don't use the original Shogun textures for our mod?
As I've heard no one has figured out how to implement them. Well,
the required files were sitting on the server all along. So, I downloaded
them and after an hour breakfast and 3 CTD's here they are:












The original texture tiles come in a compressed Tga format while the M:TW ones
are not compressed. So I batch converted them from compressed TGA to uncompressed TGA.

However, they are not in the correct order. I'll sort and rename them for a more convenient use.
As soon as it's done I'll post the textures to Yuuki, our map-sensei.

[Revolting Friendship]

Awesome. What about the trees then? Or could I maybe be of assistance there, making a couple that suit the japanese setting better? The STW-ones might have been a bit more pixelated than the MTW, it was so long since I played STW so I hardly remember. :(

[barocca]

i am always happy to have more people donating time and making the shogun world come alive in the mtw engine,

changing the default mtw trees into a japanese style would be most welcome,


in the modelling thread you can see some models i either imported or reskinned,
including my attempt at a cherry tree model,
but that is not the model used by default for "tree" tiles

i actually have not looked at what IS the default model, IIRC it is something called tree.lbm??? (not sure - but it is an lbm file, maybe there is a file for each type of tree too..)

B.

[R'as al Ghul]

I've done all of the above in just a few minutes, so it's not perfect.
I just tried to show what's possible.
The trees are still the default MTW ones.
We do have new tree models in the model pack, like the cherry trees.

As barocca said, any change to a more japanese look is welcome.

[Puzz3D]

This is going to work. I've been able to remove the pixelation in of the STW texture tiles that R'as sent me with a small amount of gaussian smoothing without loosing the structural detail. Two maps, Aki and Totomi, that I converted with this modified STW tile set look very good. Next, I have to rotate the tiles so that they come into the MTW/VI map editor in the correct orientation. Once that is done, converting an STW map will just be a matter of placing the Japanese models on it.

[Puzz3D]

Certain tiles are identified as tree tiles. STW and MTW do not identify the same tiles as tree tiles. I have a workaround by moving some of the tiles, but does anyone know where these tree tiles get identified and where the trees on them come from? They aren't part of the textures, and they aren't coming from the models.

[barocca]

not part of the textures?
you mean the tile eh?

because
Shoguns trees are here
Shogun - Warlords\textures\Splines\
and
Medievals are here
MTW-VI\Textures\Trees\

as for what identifies a tile as a tree bearing tile, no clue

possibly it's index number

alternatively the "base colour" of the tile,

unfortunately for mtw they are 24bit tiles, so nothing i have will display the pallette.

B.

[Puzz3D]

There are 7 tree tiles in STW, and 11 in MTW. The first 4 are the same number tile, but the other 7 are not. So, I copied the 3 remaining STW tiles which had no trees to tile numbers that had trees, and moved those tiles up to the end extending the total number of tiles. I also had to move another 4 rock tiles up to the end because the rocks and grey rocky ground had trees and it looked bad. For example, 4th Kawa was covered with trees. I then had to fix all the STW maps that used those tiles, and I'm still not done with that as I realized well into it that I had to interchange two of the tree tiles that I had moved to get the forests to have the proper density of trees.

Once I have the tile set finalized I can send it out. It can't be changed or else the maps done so far will have errors. We could add texture tiles later to the end of the file without causing problems on the maps already done. I'm keeping many of the custom maps done for STW, but not all because there are well over 1000 maps including all the MTW maps. Right now I have 165 small maps from STW not counting the custom maps from WE/MI of which there are quite a few good ones and they are of the large type. Many MTW maps will also have to be discarded. I'm not sure how many maps are needed for the campaign. All the MTW maps that we do keep will have to be retextured and have the models replaced. The trees that come from the tiles are in the right place which is a big help in redoing the maps.

[barocca]

when you are happy with the tile set give me a holler and i will define the mapgroups needed (rivercoastalhilly etc etc)

then we can see how many groups there are,

and you can determine which provinces belong in which groups,


map groups
unlike shogun we cannot define a particular map for a particular province,
what we can do is clump provinces of similar features into a group and exactly which map you fight on is determined (in campaign) at random

for MP you simply take another copy of the map and name it how you like,
i would start each such MP preferred map with a zero, so they will appear on the first page

2 to 4 maps per group would be sufficient
(more is welcome, but not at all neccessary)

2 to 3 castle maps of each type is also sufficent

discard from ALL the folders ALL excess maps, all unused MTW maps and all their specials

maps for the mod do NOT need to go into a special folder as long as you discard all the current ones,
the game looks in the mod folder first, then into the main folder,
so while we need the mod folder to exist, we dont need any maps at all in it.


i would tell you now what map groups exist,
it IS more than are already included in MTW,
but my notes on the map groups is one of things that got lost when the HDD crashed.

B.

[Puzz3D]

I may have missed a tile rotation here and there because I haven't come across a map that uses that tile. It's not critical because a map can always be fixed in the editor. However, I have one more ambitious thing I'd like to do which is to utilize the 4 tree tiles that currently fall on rock tiles for some other texture because trees don't look appropriate on those rock tiles. This would provide 3 sets of usable tree tiles. I already replicated those rock tiles to non-tree tiles above #161, but don't want to replace the originals until I've finished editing the maps that use those rock tiles. This is going to delay me finalizing the tile set for a week since I can't work on this for the next week.

[barocca]

we definately have much more than a week up our sleeves,

i am looking forward to the new tile sets and maps,
from your reports it sounds like we are going to be in heaven when we get them

cheers,
B.

[Puzz3D]

I've completed texturing and applying the Japanese models to 96 of the original STW maps. These are the original province maps, and some of the custom maps. I have 5 more to do. There were 25 castle maps in original STW, and I'll be working on these next. After that, I'll do a few of the large custom maps from Warlords Edition that proved to be popular with the players. The summer tileset is final for these maps (it took considerable time to come up with the tile moves and rotations that mapped onto the original maps), and all I have to do is apply the same tile moves and rotations to the winter set. I'll then make a package of the maps and the two tilesets. This would be usable in the STWmod campaign with renaming of the maps to MTW/VI conventions.

After this comes the big job which is retexturing the MTW/VI maps with this tileset. The mapping is not good at all, although the trees are correct which is a big help. My initial strategy will be to do a couple of maps from each category so you can at least play the campaign by duplicating these maps as many times as necessary with the appropriate names. Gradually, over time this set can be filled out. I'd also like to get some of the large custom MTW/VI maps we use in MP into this initial set.

Tiles can be added to the tileset, and it won't affect the maps I'm doing. I'll take a look at the MTW/VI textures, but my feeling right now is that they won't look right against the STW textures and color matching will be a problem unless they are modified.

[Puzz3D]

There is a problem with the tileset distributed with STWmod beta_7 that will have to be corrected. This is going to involve relocating about 10 tiles within the tileset, and then retexturing the affected maps.

Certain tile positions have an impassable terrain attribute attached to them which is activated when the terrain has a gradient greater than some value. STW and MTW do not identify the same tile positions with this impassable atttribute. In the beta_7 tileset, cliffs are passable and hills with the worn grass texture are not. This should be reversed, and I can fix it by moving some tiles around.

[R'as al Ghul]

There is a problem with the tileset distributed with STWmod beta_7 that will have to be corrected. This is going to involve relocating about 10 tiles within the tileset, and then retexturing the affected maps.

Ah, crap.
How many maps are affected?
So we'd need to upload the affected tiles and maps and we're set, right?
No need for a new major install?

Did you know this?:

How to make new ground textures:


Here the basics about making new ground textures: I never used new one in my maps, because I thought the one in MTW are ok.

But here the knowledge about making them:


Open your Textures/Ground-folder:
There you will find all used MTW ground textures seperated from each other in different clima-folders .

Choose one clima, where you want to add a new texture:

As an example "Arid": Open the Arid folder and you will find 181 textures there.

If you want to add a new texture to arid, open one of the textures there or make a absolutly new one with your graphic editing software.
I use Paint-Shop pro 8.

It must have the resolution: 256x256 with 16 million colors and it must have the tga-format.

Ok, make your new texture and save it in tga format outside of MTW with a new number (as example "182").
Then open your texture again with IRFAN VIEW and save it again as tga-format and put it into your Arid folder (Textures/Ground/Arid).
If you use your tga of Paint shop pro 8 it will crash when you´re loading your map or map-editor.
I don´t know if another graphic software can save it as tga and it works except Irfan View (try it).

Now you can choose and use a new texture in the map-editor.


You can also change the existing textures if you want.


Is it possible to make a new unpassable area: No.
It seems that it depends on the number of the texture and every new texture will only be a normal texture.


And never forget that if you will add a new texture to a clima folder also the other folders in the Ground folder need it in it (changed if you want to lush style and so on) if you want to play your map also in other clima zones.

btw: You can also change the water texture: Its texture nr.: "000".




Antalis

I guess a limit of 256 tiles is reasonable to assume.
That gives us space for 75 tiles.
How many Shogun tiles do we need?

R'as

[Puzz3D]

How many maps are affected?

That's a good question, and I don't know the answer, but it's a lot not because the 10 cliff tiles are used a lot but because the tiles which currently have the impassable attribute are used a lot. They are 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 and 62, 63, 64, 65, 66. The first set are the worn grass tiles often used at the top of hills (Shinano is a good example) and the second set is within a sequence of 8 terraced rice paddy tiles which are also used on quite a few maps (Harima is a good example). The current Harima map works ok except for one tile which had a little too much slope and became impassable. I've worked out a scheme which is pretty much a straight swap of the 10 tiles, but it's not exactly a swap because the cliff tiles are in 2 groups of 4 and 1 group of 2, and one set of 4 cliff tiles had trees on 2 of them which I had previously moved to non-tree tiles so it's a bit messy but I think it will work out ok. I'm going to try to utilize the 4 currently unusable tree tiles for something useful. The only other consideration is that breaking up the 8 rice paddy tile sequence will make editing new maps more difficult. A solution for that could be to append the whole 8 tile sequence to the top end of the current tileset.

So we'd need to upload the affected tiles and maps and we're set, right? No need for a new major install?

We won't need a new full install, but I think it's going to be necessary for people to delete all the maps before installing the new map and tile sets. We don't need the large number of MTW map names used in the campaign. For instance, I don't need 25 flatinland maps, but if they exist I have to copy an STW map over each one of those names which is very time consuming. I think we'll have to maintain an STWmap distribution that can be updated from time to time with new maps. Even after the tileset is finalized, new tiles could be added above #170 and no re-editing of existing maps would be required. Incidentally, tiles 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178 have the impassable attribute and are currently snowcap tiles in lush. The transition tiles in that sequence would have to be changed to match up with the color of an existing tile in the STW set to avoid a color discontinuity.

How many Shogun tiles do we need?

I have 169 Shogun tiles. Number 170 is a black X tile, and 171 thru 178 are snow tiles from the MTW set which have the impassable attribute assigned to them. If it's important to keep the 8 terraced rice paddy tiles together, they could be added after #178.

[Puzz3D]

I reshuffled the STW tileset, and have the cliff tiles positioned properly to pick up the impassable attribute. I was also able to reposition the 8 terraced rice paddy tiles together without going beyond #169. That does mean extra editing work for me, but I decided it was worth it to keep the tileset as compact as possible.

It's possible that I haven't identified all the tiles which have the impassable attribute, but I think that's unlikely. I've already retextured the first 6 of the 122 STW maps with this new tileset, and the impassable areas on those maps are now correct. I would estimate it will take me less than 2 weeks to fix the remaining 117 maps. Some of those maps won't require any adjustment at all, but I have to look them over carefully.

[Puzz3D]

I've finished fixing the impassable terrain on all 122 STW maps.