Map design software?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 23 Nov 2006, 08:22

Forboding Angel wrote:See that thing is SS, a slopemap is of no use if it does not tell you certain things. For example. I output slopemap, I need to know what the maxslope value of that slope is at Y height values. Otherwise it is no good to me. You can tell how drastic your slopes are by simply looking at your heightmap. A slopemap without hard values is simply not useful.

You want a specific colorcode according to whether infantry or vehicles can move there? Say red for noone, blue for infantry, green for vehicles and infantry?

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 23 Nov 2006, 08:25

that would be so perfect.

You are soon becoming my best friend. Dude, you're a fricking machine! thanks for helping us!

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 23 Nov 2006, 11:12

Indeed that would quite own... I was wanting the slope map mostly as a method for easy photoshop only texturing, but with that kind of information being accessable as well it would be incredibly valuable.

NOiZE · Post by **NOiZE** » 23 Nov 2006, 11:29

should be distributed with spring IMO.

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 23 Nov 2006, 17:00

NOiZE wrote:should be distributed with spring IMO.

that's what I was thinking.

bamb · Post by **bamb** » 23 Nov 2006, 23:11

Wouldn't it be a quite small step to "realistic" (in some sense) mountains from this with the new map format: You have a basic texture of grass (a tile) and it's on the whole map. You export the slope map and then use that as the alpha channel (?) to apply a rock texture (another tile) to the steep slopes. -> instagoodlooks

I'll have to go back and read more about how the new mapformat actually works...
Would save a lot of time and there would be no need to "find" the tilings from a huge single texture like with the current map creation process.

Heightmap generation, you could copy over the rain erosion some other guy posted a couple months back.

bamb · Post by **bamb** » 23 Nov 2006, 23:26

Holy crap, I didn't remember the new map format was so sensible:
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/SM3_Map_Format
You can assign textures to a blendmap (you can put rock texture slopes on grass, the blendmap determines where the rock texture shows, yeah all the mappers already knew this), and the blendmap can be generated from the slopemap on map load! You don't have to compile it beforehand:
blendmap_value = SlopeTerm * HeightTerm * coverage * noise

That'd make some really speedy-ass map generation software as you just need a heightmap generator and a few small textures. Sure, they'd look dull but anyway...

Please tell me that the new map format is in next version?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 24 Nov 2006, 15:38

New release. The file pointed to by the zip in the head post has been updated.

Major changes:
- added UI
- added frustrum culling
- improved level of detail engine
- added flatten brush
- added brushsize slider
- added load/save dialogs
- added mapsize dialog
- added coloring to slopemap: green = vehicles(< 0.08 ), blue = infantry (< 0.33 ), red = extreme

Minor changes:
- improved normal self-consistency, to remove cross-hatching
- edit cursor no longer becomes overly large when viewed close-up

Bug fixes:
- corrected a crash-bug when loading a heightmap
- corrected bitmap size on save (used to add an extra pixel to width and height)
- corrected scaling on heightmap save, to normalize to minheight and maxheight

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 24 Nov 2006, 20:57

New release, file pointed to by URL at head of thread has been updated.

Changes:
*x-y scale multiplied by square_size. The exported slopemap colors will make more sense now.

Screenshots:

User interface:

Corresponding heightmap:

Corresponding slopemap, with colors (black means zero slope, blue is infantry, green is vehicles, red is extreme):

LOrDo · Post by **LOrDo** » 25 Nov 2006, 00:27

Am I missing something? Why bother making slopemaps when spring dosn't even use them? What do they even do?

rattle · Post by **rattle** » 25 Nov 2006, 03:37

Huh? It shows you what's able to pass what on your map hence the slope map. It's not for use spring I think. It easens a mappers life a bit...

First think then post.

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 25 Nov 2006, 04:21

So, like... it just needs to display texturemaps (er, low-rez versions, obviously, but that's what Photoshop Actions are for) and some way to update it with a hotkey... and then it's perfect, pretty much.. man, that's really, really kewl. Should make working with the new map format a breeze.

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 25 Nov 2006, 09:19

Maybe it could be possible to add features to the map, ie a 3d version of jcnossen's FeaturePlacer?

hughperkins · Post by **hughperkins** » 25 Nov 2006, 09:21

Argh wrote:So, like... it just needs to display texturemaps (er, low-rez versions, obviously, but that's what Photoshop Actions are for) and some way to update it with a hotkey... and then it's perfect, pretty much.. man, that's really, really kewl. Should make working with the new map format a breeze.

You're saying make it so it can read an md3 texture blending file, and make an approximate view of what's in it, and have a hotkey to re-read that?

Argh · Post by **Argh** » 25 Nov 2006, 11:24

If you can make it do THAT, then I suspect that people will promptly switch to that format. Even my (crappy) early test runs have indicated that that format is really quite incredible and powerful. Make it easier to work with blendmaps, and you've basically solved the last niggling issue- I already did some tests with workaround methods, but a visual editor that would let me paint in Photoshop and update on the fly would RULE.

Post by **jcnossen** » 25 Nov 2006, 13:51

A SM3 editor? Yes please:)

However showing the texturing is a bit of a problem, you can either

put the C++ terrain code in a dll and bind to it, but then you have all the code versioning problems if useful changes happen in springs sm3 code, and you can't really have realtime updating of the texturing
implement your own sm3 texturer, specially for editing. It isn't much work if you don't optimize and do the simple non-bumpmapped texturing with GL_ARB_texture_env_combine. Just render everything multipass...

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 25 Nov 2006, 14:47

LOrDo wrote:Am I missing something? Why bother making slopemaps when spring dosn't even use them? What do they even do?

If I'm making a new SM3, first I work up a height map and then I go to texture my map. The way SM3 texturing works is that you get a tileable texture complete with bump maps and other coolness and then tell it where to apply on the map with a splat map, which is like a typemap where black = totally transparent texture and white = totally opaque texture. So there will be various stages of transparency available. Now say I have a snow texture and want to create a realistic snowfall. Well, first of all I know snow coverage tends to be higher altitude, so I'll grab my select color tool in GIMP/PS, select the appropriate range (in the whites) and then select a large portion of the whites and light greys in my height map. Then I'd go onto the layer I have containing my spat map and turn all the high altitude area from the height map white. While this will work quite nicely, realistically we know that snow doesn't JUST stick on high altitudes, the slope of the terrain is really important to the snow formation as well, snow will fall deep on flat terrain, and shallow, if at all, on steep terrain. Without a slope map I can't really emulate that effect at all in GIMP/PS, so I'd be screwed right there, my snow would form ugly rings around the altitude splits of my high altitudes and that's the best I could do without manually going in and screwing around with the splatmap, which I will likey do anyways, but determining slope by eye to realistically emulate the effects it has is VERY VERY difficult.

With the new format slopemap hugh's editor is generating, not only can I do this, but I can also select by color from the slopemap area's where kbots or vehicles can respectively walk, or places where they can't and make them clearly visually defined by the textures I use. I can select slope ranges for texturing mountainsides quickly and automatically without ruining the flat ground texture ranges or the mountaintop texture ranges. I can see immediately weather my height map is producing the gameplay access phenomena I'm desiring without having to load up the game and test manually on a half finished map. Not only is it a marginally usefull tool for SMF mapping, but it's an EXTREMELY useful tool for SM3 mapping. With hugh's editor and photoshop I likely need no other software for effective SM3 editing, I've got everything I need right there. Where as in the last gen I quite likely would have been feature swapping between 2-3 different terrain generators, photoshop, and possibly other applications for results half as satisfying as a decent quality SM3 map thrown together relatively quickly with these tools will be.

[edit] Argh: the only reason I haven't started pumping maps out in the new format is a) I'm not comfortable with the creation of map scripts yet and b) it isn't fully implemented to spring yet, it's just not as fun with shaders not included. In terms of generation of heightmap and texture maps this format is SOOOOO much more logical to me for mapping. And the ability to never have to play with images over 5000x5000 in size is massively appealing as it doesn't explode my ram. I also don't have to piss around with terrain generation software that takes hours to render results and 90% of the time does a piss poor unsatisfactory job anyways. Plus bumpmaps are cool.

bamb · Post by **bamb** » 25 Nov 2006, 19:07

Slopemaps are the essence. But I think you don't even have to export them, if they're allright to you as-is, you can apply stuff to slopemaps directly in the sm3 file...

Forboding Angel · Post by **Forboding Angel** » 25 Nov 2006, 19:55

hugh, maybe this will help you. THis is an sm3 map with quite complicated texturing, and a lot of blendmaps etc.

I wasn't sure if you know the sm3 deal yet, so this map help

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/1521 ... xw4.th.jpg

^^It's supposed to look like that ^^

http://download.yousendit.com/605CB74B254ED608 <linky

On another note, jc made a feature placer and it's in the wiki somewhere. I dug for a little while but I can't navigate that wiki to save my ass. Anyway, it's there. May be worth taking a peek at. Come to think of it, jc prolly has the source laying around somewhere.

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 25 Nov 2006, 20:30

bamb wrote:Slopemaps are the essence. But I think you don't even have to export them, if they're allright to you as-is, you can apply stuff to slopemaps directly in the sm3 file...

Yes you need to export them, they significantly drop in usefulness if you don't have access to them in photoshop. Immediately they are a great visual tool, but they are an invaluable SM3 blendmap generating tool, and in order to be used in that function you need to have them set as one of the layers in PS.

Heightmap as one layer, slopemap as one layer, and the blendmap you are currently working on as the third layer.

Spring RTS Engine

Map design software?