Texture poll

Texture poll

Discuss maps & map creation - from concept to execution to the ever elusive release.

Moderator: Moderators

Is this hot or not?

So hot it's COOL
15
56%
Reasonable
10
37%
Hmmmmmm...
1
4%
Getting chills
1
4%
Seriously uncool
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 27

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RedDragon
Posts: 44
Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Texture poll

Post by RedDragon »

What do you think of this texture?

Image
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RedDragon
Posts: 44
Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

And any suggestions for a map to actually USE this for would be welcome.

And perhaps does anyone know how to make the lava bits so that building on it would be impossible?
As it is now, groundbased units can't move over it, or be transported onto it (although there's a nice warping feature back to the place the unit was picked up from).
You can build on it, or land aircraft on it....which sux. Units should lose all health in a matter of (mili)seconds trying to touch it.
Any thought on that?

thanx
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Das Bruce
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Joined: 23 Nov 2005, 06:16

Post by Das Bruce »

Remove the detail thingy and align it better and it'd be awesome.
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RedDragon
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Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

What detail thingy do you mean?
And about alignment, it's just a 2x2 test map, didn't really try to align it well, allthough i think the fading lava on the walls looks realistic.
stisoas
Posts: 4
Joined: 02 May 2005, 11:04

Post by stisoas »

i found the texture fine : ->
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SwiftSpear
Classic Community Lead
Posts: 7287
Joined: 12 Aug 2005, 09:29

Post by SwiftSpear »

Nice texture, now we just need to spring functionalitly to impliment it.
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zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
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Joined: 16 Nov 2004, 13:08

Post by zwzsg »

Why not use the lava texture as a WATER\\WaterTexture smd tag?
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Maelstrom
Posts: 1950
Joined: 23 Jul 2005, 14:52

Post by Maelstrom »

To make the lava hurt things, AND make it unbuildable, have it underwater slightly. Then, make the water hurt units alot. Stops you building on it, and hurts units in it. Only problem with that is that the water will be reflective, while lava is not, and the water will have waves.

Perhaps adding a few tags to the terrain types like UnitDamage and Buildable would be handy for things like this.
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Das Bruce
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Joined: 23 Nov 2005, 06:16

Post by Das Bruce »

RedDragon wrote:What detail thingy do you mean?
And about alignment, it's just a 2x2 test map, didn't really try to align it well, allthough i think the fading lava on the walls looks realistic.
I dunno I haven't made map in ages, detailtex or some such thing.
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Post by Forboding Angel »

make it water and make it damage units
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Das Bruce
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Joined: 23 Nov 2005, 06:16

Post by Das Bruce »

And put thermal vents in it but remove the crack thing when you compile the map.
mufdvr222
Posts: 681
Joined: 01 May 2005, 09:24

Post by mufdvr222 »

Forboding Angel wrote:make it water and make it damage units
And use that texture as the water surface texture, that would top it off.
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RedDragon
Posts: 44
Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

How would that be possible?

If you ever saw a lava stream, you'd see it's a bumpy river with a lot of heightdifferences.

Too bad it isn't possible (yet) to create puddles at different heights.
Adding a water map would be usefull. If you could outline a puddle in example, make it look at the lowest grey value on the heightmap on the edge of what is to become a puddle. All you'd need to do then is to make sure the inner bits have darker grey values then the lowest one on the edge. Would such a thing make the creating of bodies of water on different heights possible?
Blue channel in example: blue 100 = puddle 0, blue 110 = puddle 1, blue 120 = puddle 2 etc.
Or does the usage of the same channel in different bitmaps cause errors?
Last edited by RedDragon on 06 Dec 2005, 02:54, edited 2 times in total.
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RedDragon
Posts: 44
Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

zwzsg wrote:Why not use the lava texture as a WATER\\WaterTexture smd tag?
This means that whereever the water level is at, rgb 0 in example, it would use this texture in stead of the water surface texture?

If so, how would you fix the transparancy? I don't want you to be able to see "trough" the texture...
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PauloMorfeo
Posts: 2004
Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53

Post by PauloMorfeo »

RedDragon wrote:And any suggestions for a map to actually USE this for would be welcome.
...
Ho man, i'm totally there! I'll just try to make a simple drawing first.
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TA 3D
Posts: 260
Joined: 12 Nov 2004, 06:08

Post by TA 3D »

Zwzsg, if you specify a custom Water texture with the smd tag "WaterTexture=mywatertexture.jpg;" thats lava then it will appear in game, then go and change the value of the tag "WaterAbsorb=0.004 0.004 0.002;" to 1.0 1.0 1.0 and it will be solid. I know this from experiance as I have played with it. The closer I went to 1, the less transparent the water became, and the watertexture becomes more visble. IE something like .002 .003 .004 will be very clear, while .8 .9 .7 will almost completey solid in appearence.
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RedDragon
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Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

TA 3D wrote:Zwzsg, if you specify a custom Water texture with the smd tag "WaterTexture=mywatertexture.jpg;" thats lava then it will appear in game, then go and change the value of the tag "WaterAbsorb=0.004 0.004 0.002;" to 1.0 1.0 1.0 and it will be solid.
If you compile a map like that, where do you put the mywatertexture.jpg file in? Would simply including it in the maps folder in the sd7 be enough or does it need a special folder?
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RedDragon
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Joined: 12 May 2005, 05:39

Post by RedDragon »

ok i've been messing around a bit, and got to this point:

Image

Ignore the sky/fog colours, it's the lava that's important.
The problem is that the watertexture mixes with the texture map; I've tried it with waterabsorb at 0.5 , 1 , 10 and even 100 but it remains as it is, not solid. The water itself is about 10 deep, making it not possible to build something in, except for sonars and torp launchers. But with the waterdamage tag i added, stuff blows up nicely when they touch the water as you've seen above. A rocko loses all health in 3 seconds 8)
Das Bruce wrote:And put thermal vents in it but remove the crack thing when you compile the map.
I've tried it, but the geo's don't work when they're below the waterlevel

Does anyone have a solution for making a watertexture 100% solid? Thanx
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PauloMorfeo
Posts: 2004
Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53

Post by PauloMorfeo »

RedDragon wrote:... I've tried it with waterabsorb at 0.5 , 1 , 10 and even 100 but it remains as it is, not solid. ...
Shouldn't that be all of them 1 (1, 1, 1)? Cause you have one of the at 0.5, meaning that half of all red passes through...

Anyway, my idea for a map with a river of lava, that i've been brewing for a long time:
Image
The idea was a map devided by a crack on the ground with lava flowing underneath it.
- That would mean no land contact so you would be left with artilery battles and airplane attacks.

(i'm refering to the XTA mod)
1- I thought of it having some 300 pixels of average wide. That is about 1/3 of the range of an HLT meaning that an HLT or missile tower quickly places in the border reaches the other side and may take a valuable position out of your enemy.

2- Starting positions should be fairly close. This map will probably lead to intense artilery battles. To have the best position, you'll want to make a quick pop-up near the border. To avoid that, you'll want deprive your oponent of those best positions with MTs and HLTs. This brings up action to the game soon enough even not having land contact (maps where the action takes 10~15 mins to be seen are kind of boring). This also means that, if you want to not struggle for the artilery control, you'll have to walk your commander to go build your factory far away from the crack so that when your enemy, eventually, build a pop-up, it won't reach your factory.

3- The crack line should make 2 bigger curves and 2 smaller ones, 2 for each side. In the bigger ones, you have the best position for artilery. The size of the map is meant that a pop up in one of those most favorable places is not entirely decisive. From the buildable edge of the bigger curve, a pop-up of 1330 of range should reach 2/3rds of the enemy map. Each 1/3 of a pop range is 443,(3) pixels. The total height of the map should be about 7~8 times (3 for each side of the curves + 1~2 for the diference between the curves) that's about 3072 pixels.

4- Explained above. 1 or 2 times 443 pixels.

5- Some hills high enough to provide cover for the longer ranged Guardian or a LRPC. So that some artilery does not become 100% decisive.

Resources- There should be enough resources within MT's/Pops range of the crack to be worth fighting. But not the majority since that would mean that taking control of that would mean a certain victory. But i'm not so sure about this. I would have to think some more about it.

Setting- The setting for that map i had thought, was planet Largos in the star system Cronos.
In there you will find a description of how the world looks and feels as well as the story behind it.

If you want to use this idea for a map, i'm offering it to be used. However, if you want to insert the map in that setting (story wise and stuff), i ask that it looks moderatly close to what i describe of planet Largos.
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RedDragon
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Post by RedDragon »

This all sounds interesting at the least.

The 1st to mention, i've tried the 1, 1, 1, settings 10, 10, 10 etc etc, with no succes....each setting results in the same output: greyish lava ruining the glowy red texture. Still have no solution for that.

About your map idea, i might have a slightly different idea, but simular to your suggestion:

Image

Needs some finetuning off course. I prefer having a map where ground units aren't (mostly) useless. Maps where no land based unit can cross will only result in 3 things:

1) Big Bertha wars
2) Nuke wars
3) Brawler / Rapier wars

When you talk about boring gameplay, this is my definition of boring.
With a lay-out like this, the map still has the feel of being divided by lava, but is also open for different strategies. Rushing a pop-up at a strategical location, going air or massing an early army of K-Bots are just 3 of the typical strategies which are most likely to be choosen.

About the texture, these are what i've got so far, and were used in both screenshots above:

Lava texture:

Image

Solid lava texture:

Image
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