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Posted: 12 May 2005, 05:20
by Zoombie
Also has anyone thought about moveable continents. You could build on them, and they drift around with the wind or by your controlls (or where you decide to vent your reactor fumes...). So you can brodeside the enemy base with your island and blast away at them with vulcans, buzsaws, BB's and Indimidator's. Maby iv been takeing too much pills!
Posted: 12 May 2005, 06:18
by Buggi
*backs away from zoombie*
SJ! I have a map for you... Prolly a few to many trees on it... doh.. but it's MASSIVE.
Seems 32x32 was just to big for the conversion system, it converted a 26x22 just fine.
I know it's fugly, but it is large, 26x22 or 13312x11264

<-- click to download (about 4 megs zipped.)
Whew! What an ordeal!
"Writing 241562 features"
Yeah, a few trees :D
-Buggi
Posted: 12 May 2005, 08:40
by smoth
SJ wrote:A 16*16 map is 8192*8192 texels a 32*32 16384*16384.
I dont think our bmp importer supports 16bit bmp files so that may be why it doesnt work. (internally we always use 32 bit format and it will need to hold about 2-3 copies of the map in memory at once)
I noticed another error that prevents mapconv to go beyond about 26*26 maps though so I uploaded another verison to
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/temp/mapconv.exe
thanks sy, I have an assembly final tommorrow but I will start the compile for you I hope to have a 32X32 map for you soon. I cannot however guarentee that the bumpmap will be on the spot but It works fine at 16X16.
Posted: 12 May 2005, 16:24
by Sean Mirrsen
As Buggi said here, we really need to cut down the texture size. At least to half. Because we rarely see the actual texture of the map, it is all covered by the detail textures. I mean, having a texturemap 16 times the size of the heightmap (4x4 instead of 8x8) is quite enough. You could increase the heightmap resolution instead, since it is easily compressed, and it would allow for sharper edges on metal maps, or more detail for non-metal ones (which will result in better-looking landscapes, with the terrain shading).
Posted: 12 May 2005, 17:09
by zwzsg
Current metal map having smoothed edge is due to the negligence of map makers, not to the lack of precision of the heighmap
When I ported CPIA, I extracted the heighmap of the original with Annihilator, and then I had to enlarge it for Spring.
Either I do a simple "pixel resize", and then there's ugly scales like that:
http://zwzsg.hosted.luckz.de/img/spring/scale14.jpg
Either I do some interpolation, and then the edge are smoothed, due to the fact TA heightmap wasn't as precise as Spring heightmap
http://zwzsg.hosted.luckz.de/img/spring/screen20.jpg
Either I redo entirely the heighmap, but everybody is too lazy to remake by hand a heightmap.
Ironically, a less precise heightmap would probably have resulted in sharper edges.
Then I made another map, with a handmade heighmap.
I had to remember to remove the -l option in mapconv.
The edge were too sharp and it was ugly. So I had to smooth the heightmap .bmp for a good-looking result.
http://zwzsg.hosted.luckz.de/img/spring ... eview3.jpg (non smoothed was a bit like that, but uglier)
Posted: 12 May 2005, 18:12
by Redfish
Why not download the bluemarble earth from Nasa. It's 48kx24k pixels. I believe they also have a height map and make that into a map. Would rock to play the real earth :)
Posted: 12 May 2005, 19:16
by Storm
Oh yay, that be a cool idea !!
You mean something like this?
Posted: 12 May 2005, 20:06
by mother
Hrm...

Battlefield Staya MkII?
<g>
BTW wow what a pain in the... erm... Once I have a chance to finish tweaking and do the metalmap, Ill upload...
Hopefully this isn't true...
Definitely not a straightforward thing BTW... Definite height vs texture resolution challenges... And little things like differing sea levels...
Not to mention that some 'artistic licence' is required in leveling the heighmap (ie artificially increasing contrast at some levels, clipping it at others, compressing it at others...)
FWIW I did the non-textured-water-texturefile too... it is NOT copacetic with the limitations spoken to above

And reprojecting the map to a square was just too wierd, so... And the texture was from blue, but the heightmap was custom created from topo/batho data from the US NGDC... Which reminds me, could someone write me a little proggy to read raw signed 16-bit binary from a file and spit out signed 0-65k instead? TIA..
Posted: 12 May 2005, 23:17
by smoth
smoth wrote:SJ wrote:A 16*16 map is 8192*8192 texels a 32*32 16384*16384.
I dont think our bmp importer supports 16bit bmp files so that may be why it doesnt work. (internally we always use 32 bit format and it will need to hold about 2-3 copies of the map in memory at once)
I noticed another error that prevents mapconv to go beyond about 26*26 maps though so I uploaded another verison to
http://taspring.clan-sy.com/temp/mapconv.exe
thanks sy, I have an assembly final tommorrow but I will start the compile for you I hope to have a 32X32 map for you soon. I cannot however guarentee that the bumpmap will be on the spot but It works fine at 16X16.
darnit. I tried twice to compile it last night still got an out of memory error. I am going to try a bigger machine tonight.
Posted: 13 May 2005, 01:22
by Buggi
Smoth, did you not see the big map I made available? Too many trees >_<
oh and to the world map.. SWEET!!
I thought Australia had more trees

Posted: 13 May 2005, 05:17
by [K.B.] Napalm Cobra
Theres a tree on my house damnit.
Posted: 13 May 2005, 07:06
by smoth
Buggi wrote:Smoth, did you not see the big map I made available? Too many trees >_<
oh and to the world map.. SWEET!!
I thought Australia had more trees

I understand but I spent many many hours on this map. I want to compile it. After all what is the point of me doing that if I cannot compile it. I don't see the reason to care about the fact you already made a big map because I want to get my 32X32 compiled. It is a matter of the fact I want to use the map I made one day.
Posted: 13 May 2005, 11:35
by SJ
Hmm now that i think about it mapconv will probably need about 2.1GB of mem to create a 32*32 map, which is problematic since a win32 program can normally only address 2GB of mem. Either you would have to set some system options that allows up to 3GB address space for user programs (and create lot of virtual mem) or you will have to wait for someone to rewrite mapconv to only load parts of the map into memory at once (or at least not keep multiple copies of it in mem).
26*26 maps or so should be fine though (or indeed 32*20 or whatever).
This problem is largely confined to mapconv, in spring a 32*32 map will "only" use a few hundred MB.
Posted: 13 May 2005, 13:41
by [K.B.] Napalm Cobra
"Who would ever need 840k of ram?"
Posted: 13 May 2005, 13:52
by AF
Eitherway I think the problem should be worked on in both mapconv and the engine, I didnt need hundreds of megabytes of memory to play OTA 32x32 maps though maybe 128mb-200mb besides I think it'll lead to a faster engine which is something that would be welcomed by everyone.
That world map looks good with the exception of the trees. I think the map needs to be bigger, way bigger, more like epic class sized.
Maybe fi it was just europe or asia or some other continent rather than the lot of it.
Posted: 14 May 2005, 01:48
by Redfish
Lol Mother actually did the map. However not at true resolution and still limited by the mapconv program :)
And yes the map format does need a change. But we'll have to wait for that.