Seven Islands remake: Released!!!

[Eaglebird]

:Edit: I've done a few playtests myself and found no problems. There may be a few irks, but all in all I think it's about ready to be shared!

:Edit2: Here it is folks!


Please post comments, questions, and problems so I can fix them and learn from them!


--Original post below--

I would give something such a try if I had a supercomputer or a trick to do it with.

I wanted to remake 'Seven Islands' for spring. I have the metal map (all red obviously), the featuremap (all black. ) and the heightmap, with the ramps and islands all set out. I have a texture taken straight from TA, but I can't figure out how to tile it.

Much less, the end dimensions come out to 20480x20480. If only I could tell the map compiler to make a 40x40 map, and tile x texture and/or y texture.


But then, I thought, what about the game? Will the game run a 40x40 map?

I think it'd be neat to find out

[hunterw]

maybe in 5 or 10 years

[AF]

It will run 40x40 maps, indeed we already have a 40x40 map.

The upper limit to the sm2 map format is near 60x60 IIRC. However the cut off comes long before that because of restrictions mapconv imposes.

Ontop of that most ATI cards dont support large enough texturemaps to render shadows correctly on maps past 30x30.

SM3 would be a much better option here as it would mean you'd have 1 single blendmap thats just a solid white image, and a single metal texture, coupled with either a heightmap for a 32x32 map or a 64x64 map.

[Eaglebird]

SM3 would be a much better option here as it would mean you'd have 1 single blendmap thats just a solid white image, and a single metal texture, coupled with either a heightmap for a 32x32 map or a 64x64 map.

Do the sm3's still use the mapconv program and the height, feature, metal, texture maps?

I am confused by this blendmap you speak of!

Anything I can do to get this actually going would be helpful.

[Eaglebird]

Also on a metal map topic, does the red metal map respond to colors 0-255 or just 0 and 255?
I sorta wanted to make the good metal deeper, in the water, near the center, in different areas, and make the islands less giving. You know, sorta like you have to drill deeper for oil than sand or something.

[AF]

sm3 != sm2. They sue totally different methods fo rendering.

sm2 takes a gigantic image and breaks it up into very small tiles. Think OTA/Starcraft etc but improved somewhat and not using tilesets.

sm3 takes a blendmap and a texture and splatters it onto the terrain based on the blendmap. Think l3dt.

SM2 is a compiled format, you compile it with mapconv
SM3 is not a compiled format, there is no compiler or compiling of any kind, just images and text files.

[Eaglebird]

Have there been any tuts for sm3 yet?

I've certainly got that old metal heck texture to splatter. The heightmap/blendmap.. eh...

For these metal maps I usually rely on the difference between white and black, 0 0 0 and 255 255 255, to convert to an almost vertical wall during compile. While it would be nice to put a separate texture on those cliff faces, something as if the metal had been extruded, again, I'm not sure how it works.

[AF]

you'd have a blendmap that just covers the walls. Look at the existing metal maps made using sm3, such as blockwars.

[Eaglebird]

you'd have a blendmap that just covers the walls. Look at the existing metal maps made using sm3, such as blockwars.

I don't have any of those maps yet, the torrent's been slow and fileuniverse is even slower.

:edit: It might be helpful to know I only have mars and small divide right now

[Peet]

http://spring.unknown-files.net is your friend.

[Eaglebird]

http://spring.unknown-files.net is your friend.

so are the pages of the wiki that haven't been vandalized xD

[Eaglebird]

Well I got the blockwars map and dissected it to see how it works.

After reading the wiki, too, I'm confused;
The wiki seems to be rather lacking in some detail, as to what size each image and such should be, where things go, and how things get put together to make the map.

[AF]

The size fo the heightmap needs to match the size in the sm3 file.

blendmaps can be any size, as cna the textures they go with.

[Eaglebird]

The size fo the heightmap needs to match the size in the sm3 file.

blendmaps can be any size, as cna the textures they go with.

Note, it also needs to be a power of two, so the original 40x40 won't work.

I got the map to load and run and go, etc. It's just big and slow, and I get desync errors trying to play it. Probably need to try a smaller map size.

[AF]

you shouldnt get desync errors, do you mean delayed sync errors? Those are a different type of error and it means 'hurry up! your lagging and my sync checking messages are taking longer than expected!'

[smoth]

40X40 would be fine but keep in mind spring will clip your view as af has already stated.

[Eaglebird]

you shouldnt get desync errors, do you mean delayed sync errors? Those are a different type of error and it means 'hurry up! your lagging and my sync checking messages are taking longer than expected!'

Yea pretty much. "Delayed response from player (9018 instead of 9055)"

[Eaglebird]

The map works, and I've made my own skybox for it (though it still looks a bit flat), and I'm tweaking things here and there to squeeze the best out of it, along with making it look good.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

huge maps fail

[smoth]

huge maps fail

I am waiting for huge maps, gundam will be able to really utilize them in the future.