..:: Althora Construction Screen Shots ::..

[Forboding Angel]

you guys don't understand the effect of rendering at high height. I have used it many times, no one has even ever noticed because it looks natural.

Dragon, be quite, you have no idea what the height scale in spring is anyway as far as mapping goes.

Typically I can go fps in a map and know almost exactly what heights it was compiled with.

BTW, the sizes in the compiler (as with most rendering programs) is in meters. Most of my maps use a height difference of 300 (whish is best for gameplay).

This is cathralda with it's current height scale (which btw is min 1 max 600)

[img=http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/6808 ... 8zo.th.jpg]

Now this is cathralda with an edited height scale (by me) of min 100 max 400 (height difference of 300 for those of you who don't like math).

[img=http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2852 ... 0ir.th.jpg]

Both are with a flash tank selected and f2 on. As you can see, cathralda as it is cannot even support vehicles becasue of the 599 height difference whereas with a height scale of 300 difference vehicles are now an option.

Don't listen to forboding! He eats puppies! Wink

Serious: Don't use "visual tricks" to make your maps appear prettier at the expense of gameplay (which forboding is suggesting with his height-scale fudging). If I see a giant ridge, it sohuld bea giant ridge, not some little piss thing that the mapper just thought looks good from one angle or another. There was one map I remember that was absolutely *terrible* to play on because of this same problem; it was made from composite satellite WWII images or something, with a large lake on one side and a giant mountain on the other and just positively SUCKED. If it looks like it should be huge visiually, then the heightmap shold reflect that.

what are you talking about, expense of gameplay? This is my method of doing maps. Name one map I have done that has issues with pathfinding.

As for me, I'm done with this thread. You can either take my advice or leave it and I don't really care which, cause when a map you make (not referring specifically to ice) sucks because of height and pathfinding issues, don't come asking me for help.

I have touted again and again that huge heights in gameplay just don't work for many reasons. I'm not going to explain it over and over again.

Here is an idea for you. You can use weavers nifty tool (which I have been using since before he released it publically) to change the height scale up and down and look at f2 on the minimap with a flash tank selected (i use a flash tanks because it is average among vehicles). and scale it up or down to get the maximum effect. However I swear to you on a stack of bibles, you're never gonna get away with over 500 (and you'll be lucky if you can even get that much).

Bah, I'm done.

[aGorm]

Just thought Id back Forboding up, hes 100% right. Plus, you were misentruprting him anyway.

The engin has no problems with high heights, for instance, If i had a whole map that was littraly a slope from one end to teh other then i could easly have teh map height difference very big. into the 1000's probablie. The pathfinding is fine. The problem is that units have MAX SLOPES. And there the things that make parts of maps inecesible. Not that they shouldn't have max slopes, this is realistic, a tank cant drive up a brick wall after all.

All my maps are render at way bigger a height difference than the actully map is, and it looks fine. Just check aftershock, its renedre at a height difference of 1000, but its only 400 or so high. And K-bots can walk all over it (which is what I wanted) AND it looks good from all angles.

However using huge height diffreences on areas that you want units to climb IS stupid, because in reality they wouldn't be able to go up them anyway.

Rambeling I know... but honestly. What are you lot like?

The botom line is, if you want big height diferences, fine, but thne expect them to fudge with gameplay (and thats not due to pathfinding, its due to the fact units dont drive up cliffs...).

aGorm

[mother]

With all due respect to you two, stop confusing apples and orangatans.

You are rendering terrains with height ranges in feet/meters/whatever.

The units you compile with are completely arbitrary, lets call them heightelmos, and while I'm sure you could bother smoth into figuring out what the rough ratio is between the two, it's not 1:1

And that is pretending that the height scale in your rendering proggies actually corrolated to anything outside the 'climates' you've defined. It still outputs a heightmap with a range of 255. If you properly changed your settings you could render at 300m height difference and end up with essentially the same texture bmp as rendering at 30km difference.

Please stop confusing the arbitrary settings in your program of choice and Spring's arbitrary unitless units.

IMHO:
Maps with larger height differences require thought (maybe not trivial amounts of it) towards how they will play. If you stay 'low' then you make life easy on yourself.

I am also not sure if they ever fixed the problem that maps with heights about ~600 sometimes destabilized the engine.

That said, I've lived in places with actual hills and mountains, and I don't like all these maps that look like the midwestern US! It takes much more mental work and tedius waiting to do maps that aren't essentially flat- and adjusting the height scale (Weaver pwns) is only a small part of the testing/adjusting process... You will need to recompile with tweaked heightmaps over and over again.

BTW IIRC ballistic weapons *could* shoot much farther from heights, but I don't think the engine allows them to target anything farther then their defined range. On maps with >100 gravity it might allow them to shoot their full range though.

[Forboding Angel]

mother, not offense intended but...

l3dt is in meters for example...

If you render at -100 200 in l3dt and process the water table... the waterline is in the EXACT spot that it is in spring. If you really want me to I can prove it.

I don't have time to reply to your entire post atm, sorry.


Edit:

BTW, you know this how? Because you ahvn't tested and I know this for a fact. And also... when's the last time you put out a map? Good thanks, now leave the discussion to the people who aren't just trying to argue for the sake of it.

IMHO:
Maps with larger height differences require thought (maybe not trivial amounts of it) towards how they will play. If you stay 'low' then you make life easy on yourself.

No it doesn't, not any more than any other map. It just requires a different train of thought, but definately not more.

[mother]

No offense intended? LOL I guess that was before your edit!

There is very little I could say back that wouldn't be ad hominem. [Which btw is what your 'edit' was]

I will say this:

1/3 under 2/3 over is the same regardless of the units. And.. I really cannot say any more without attacking you instead of your [imho flawed] ideas.

PS I think my post was very reasonable and relatively non-arguementative. And I have played with Terragen and the non pro l3dt. The fact that I understand how spring heightmaps work and for some strange reason I know one or two things about how mapconv works, is irrelevant because all that is reguired is a bit of critical thinking to understand what I was saying about height ranges between environments is accurate.

Gotta go my game is starting and Im getting /ring'd

[Forboding Angel]

Please stop confusing the arbitrary settings in your program of choice and Spring's arbitrary unitless units.

A map rendered at -100 and 200, then compiled with the same settings and the waterlines match up perfectly would be the same unit of measurement.

It just so happens that l3dt uses meters. So does damn near(if not) every other rendering program. They may not be real life measurements, but they ARE ACCURATE and to SCALE with each other.

Springs "useless" units happen to the the same as rendering programs "useless" units.

ok for once and for all I will explain how heightmap stretching works (for the most part).
You have your heightmap, dark is lowest, light is highest. THe more distance that you put between low and high changes the slope.

For example a slope that is 20 degrees on a 0-300 mapmight be 60 degrees on a map that is 0-600. You might think that the slope would only be 40 degrees at that point (and it might very well be), but the point I'm trying to make is that the heightmap does not become bigger when you set high heights, it only becomes taller, therefore making your gentle slopes very steep.

And that is pretending that the height scale in your rendering proggies actually corrolated to anything outside the 'climates' you've defined. It still outputs a heightmap with a range of 255. If you properly changed your settings you could render at 300m height difference and end up with essentially the same texture bmp as rendering at 30km difference.

Once again, it would be nice if you when what you were talking about. Climates only define land types. The climates have nothing to do with the heights/scale you use. All they do is assign textures based on the steepness of the terrain etc etc, using baseprobabilities and gradcoeffs.

BTW for those of you who are not aware, unless I'm very mistaken, the new map format uses a system much akin to this (it's a very good system for that matter, a little hard to figure out at first, but quite good once you understand it).

...it's not 1:1

1/3 under 2/3 over is the same regardless of the units

You just contradicted yourself. It IS 1:1

And.. I really cannot say any more without attacking you instead of your [imho flawed] ideas.

You can try...

WHy must you argue about this. I understand you want higher maps. I DO TOO! But with the current system it is impossible for gameplay reasons because of my previous explaination. For now, we have to go with what works. Not with what makes you excited.

Mother as deci said a while back. Make a map with high heights that actually works gameplay wise, and I'll be happy to listen to you.

Ok, now I really am done with this thread. You can follow mothers opinion if you like, but you will only end up with problems.

[mufdvr222]

Forboding I want you to download "Battle Range" and study unit movement across the high mountains, that map has this height setting in mapconv
-x 1000 -n 10 and units have no problems with getting up the mountain ranges, actually they will scale near vertical cliffs.

Like I said, Springs pathfinding is fucked up if a level 1 construction kbot can climb that.

http://www.mufdvr.222clan.com/climbing.gif

[mother]

snip

The fact that proportions stay constant at best is an arguement in support of my position. That said, its obvious that you've not gotten the hang of what proportions are and what they mean.
[Guess what, if you compiled the map with -50 to 100 the water line would STILL line up... same with -200 to 400... All still irrelevant!]

Thank you for explaining slope. For what it's worth it's simple trig to figure out the slope given a change in height. However I am baffled as to how it is relevent.
[were you responding to someone elses post?]

And my bad.. I must have been thinking about terragen where you define the terrain types by start/end altitude and slope constraints... Therefor simple by modifying those numbers you could generate just about the same terrain bmp with -100m to 200m or -10000m to 20000m... Just factor everything in the terrain settings by 100. Must be weird getting snow on all flat areas, l3dt must suck.
[Or maybe you are intentionally obfuscating the issue by arguing semantics? ]

You've thus far not made a single arguement relative to the question you claim to be challenging me on.

To remind people, my point was The units of height in your rendering tool are not equivalent to those in Spring. Statements were made that people were 'rendering much taller,' because they used bigger numbers in their rendering program then in Spring. That is a false premise. It is exacerbated by the fact that the height differences used in a rendering program are basically only relavent to the settings you define in your rendering program.

I repeat: you are not 'rendering much taller' simply by the fact that you use -1km to 2km in your rendering tool and -100 to 200 in Spring.

In a nutshell:

If Chewbacca is a wookie, you must aquit!

As far as I am concerned the discussion is over.

People who are capable of understanding what I originally posted make their own judgements.

PS I did release that map... Long before you ever showed up. It's called Caldera. I never polished it up because spring was crashing randomly with the intended 1k height, and some people were getting a blinding white screen bug trying to play on it. Frankly it's nothing great but the high heights work fine gameplay wise [and its >>300 height delta]. I don't want to drag other mappers into this uninvited, so I'll not point at anyone elses work.

PPS Delta means 'difference between' aka |a-b|

snip

[Forboding Angel]

snip

[mother]

snip

Do you not understand that by rendering at high heights the map visually looks more majestic that it actually is? All it is is an optical illusion.

Foreboding... you could achieve the same effect by adjusting your rendering settings and using -100m to 200m. Shocking I know.. Thats what I said in the beginning.
snip

[IceXuick]

Great that Battle Range map! How come your units do crawl up to that mountain? no feature map? what mapconv dit you use? what format heightmap?

Okey, for those who wants to play a new version of cathralda, to see if pathfinding = better with lower height-ranges (1-300 instead of 1-600).

The new Cathralda v0.95 is now ready for download, and has the next new features:

- redone texture (surfaceblurred => compresses better = lower file size)
- redone heigtmap (greater contrast but more blurred. The aim was to get the maximum elevation (mountains) AND good pathfinding out of it.
- all new feature map (that does work - simple and nice)
- grass

No stones, ruins or new trees yet, but it aint the official v1.0 release (yet) :D

Download here:
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2729

Check it out!

[Forboding Angel]

Do you not understand that by rendering at high heights the map visually looks more majestic that it actually is? All it is is an optical illusion.

Foreboding... you could achieve the same effect by adjusting your rendering settings and using -100m to 200m. Shocking I know.. Thats what I said in the beginning.

Oh really? Then mybye you would like to explain the differnt looks here:

rendered with a height scale of 0-2000


rendered with a scale of 0-500


Big difference no? BTW news to you, the - in front of the min alt number causes the water line to raise (it also makes the map taller in that respect, but 0 is the number that water starts to appear at).

you could achieve the same effect by adjusting your rendering settings and using -100m to 200m. Shocking I know.. Thats what I said in the beginning.

THe 2 look nothing alike, unless I live in your world and can just forget about the massive amount of rock texture on the mountains in the first ss.

I'll give you another chance to pwn yourself now...

[Dragon45]

Try that same map but post one screenshot of BigNumber - BigNumber for heightmap range along with a parallel screenshot of LittleNumber - LittleNumber for heightmap range...

As I said, fudging visuals to make a map look more majestic than it really is just elads to unpredictable and annoying gameplay.


And no, most of us play with shadows off.

[Forboding Angel]

Forboding I want you to download "Battle Range" and study unit movement across the high mountains, that map has this height setting in mapconv
-x 1000 -n 10 and units have no problems with getting up the mountain ranges, actually they will scale near vertical cliffs.

Like I said, Springs pathfinding is fucked up if a level 1 construction kbot can climb that.

http://www.mufdvr.222clan.com/climbing.gif

That can be achieved with a typemap I believe. I do not know if one was used (btw I mentioned to icexuick that he could do the same thing that you are showing here with a typemap). Also, the max slope of a con kbot is pretty high iirc. Me looks in aa 1.44 file...

It has a max slope of 20 which is pretty steep from what certain modders tell me (that could be up for debate).

[Forboding Angel]

Try that same map but post one screenshot of BigNumber - BigNumber for heightmap range along with a parallel screenshot of LittleNumber - LittleNumber for heightmap range...

As I said, fudging visuals to make a map look more majestic than it really is just elads to unpredictable and annoying gameplay.


And no, most of us play with shadows off.

Dragon. Rendering at 2 grand is very extreme as far as fudging goes (imo). I'm simply using it because it's a convenient size. Generally I only fudge on 1 grand or less (BTW glacier pass was rendered at a height of 1000). However, no one that has ever played glacier pass would have guessed that.

Like I said, all it is is an optical illusion. Not a very big one at that.

Can you explain your post a bit more for me? Your wording is a bit hard to follow. I asked a few other ppl and they had the same question I do (so i don't believe it's just me not understanding correctly). Can you just explain in a bit more detail for me?

Thanks

[mufdvr222]

Forboding I want you to download "Battle Range" and study unit movement across the high mountains, that map has this height setting in mapconv
-x 1000 -n 10 and units have no problems with getting up the mountain ranges, actually they will scale near vertical cliffs.

Like I said, Springs pathfinding is fucked up if a level 1 construction kbot can climb that.

http://www.mufdvr.222clan.com/climbing.gif

That can be achieved with a typemap I believe. I do not know if one was used (btw I mentioned to icexuick that he could do the same thing that you are showing here with a typemap). Also, the max slope of a con kbot is pretty high iirc. Me looks in aa 1.44 file...

It has a max slope of 20 which is pretty steep from what certain modders tell me (that could be up for debate).

Every vehicle and kbot you care to make will climb the same hill, I just grabbed shots of the first unit I saw going up.

The map uses a typemap,, actually I made the typemap because the pathfinding was even worse than depicted in that .gif




PEEWEE ROCKO JETHRO climbing a near verticle hill.

[mother]

Do you not understand that by rendering at high heights the map visually looks more majestic that it actually is? All it is is an optical illusion.

Foreboding... you could achieve the same effect by adjusting your rendering settings and using -100m to 200m. Shocking I know.. Thats what I said in the beginning.

Oh really? Then mybye you would like to explain the differnt looks here:

rendered with a height scale of 0-2000
<img deleted>
rendered with a scale of 0-500
<img deleted>

Big difference no? BTW news to you, the - in front of the min alt number causes the water line to raise (it also makes the map taller in that respect, but 0 is the number that water starts to appear at).

snip Why dont you try changing your climate / settings so that the terrain types / textures and slope tolerances are all cut to 1/4 their previous and try that again.

You've got a massive problem following simple directions.

THe 2 look nothing alike, unless I live in your world and can just forget about the massive amount of rock texture on the mountains in the first ss.

snip
They look different because you didn't correct your settings for to render the mountains on a 0-500 scale. However if you had it set to properly render the textures at 0-500 your 'mountains' would be all rock and none of that lichen texture.

Additionally, if you really cared or could comprehend what is going on here, those are still renders and not screenshots of a map in Spring.

But then again if you paid ANY attention to what I've been saying you wouldn't have tried to bullshit up a supposed 'test' which is in fact irrelevant to the discussion.

Way to waste your time trying to divert attention to a different issue and confuse yourself.


Let me reiterate: You screwed up your climate/whatever settings when rendering 0-500, you used settings that dictate that mountains render correctly at "0-2km."

AND THAT STILL HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HEIGHTS YOU USE IN SPRING.

Like I said before you just don't get it.

snip

[Forboding Angel]

You don't seem to understand that what I was saying in the beginning is that whatever height you map is rendered at does not matter. What matters is the height you compile it with. But then you wanted to argue with me about scale in render progs as opposed to the scale spring uses (it's the same btw, which is the point I've been trying to get you to understand the entire time).

So what do you want to argue now? Scale in rendering progs as opposed to spring? Or something actually useful?

So now we have come full circle and you wanna argue the main point again. Maybe I'll jsut quote myself.

Warlord Zsinj wrote:

My only other suggestion is that you make the high bits higher, so that there is a more clear distinction between "low ground", "middle ground" and "high ground". Greater contrast makes for a more interesting map, too.


Bad idea. You can trick the eye by rendering with huge altitudes so that it LOOKS like the hill is hugely high, but when you use mapconv to compile... Only have a height difference of 300 for example:

-x 400 -n 100

Reason being, is that if you have your hills over that even kbots will have a tough time getting over them, plus, while high heights look really cool, they play like crap.

Go try Horst and Graben if you don't believe me. 2 valleys is another good example (even though it actually manages to get away with super high heights well enough, Not good, but well enough). If you disagree with me thats fine, but trust me, I know this.

high heights = bad gameplay



ce, you can use typemaps to achieve unit movement... I reccommend against it though. Types maps generally do more for screwing up a maps playability than helping it.

The best thing imo is to render the map at a huge height and then compile it an normal heights. This way it tricks your eyes into thinking that something is higher than uit really is.

you guys don't understand the effect of rendering at high height. I have used it many times, no one has even ever noticed because it looks natural.

Dragon, be quite, you have no idea what the height scale in spring is anyway as far as mapping goes.

Typically I can go fps in a map and know almost exactly what heights it was compiled with.

BTW, the sizes in the compiler (as with most rendering programs) is in meters. Most of my maps use a height difference of 300 (whish is best for gameplay).

This is cathralda with it's current height scale (which btw is min 1 max 600)

[img=http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/6808 ... 8zo.th.jpg]

Now this is cathralda with an edited height scale (by me) of min 100 max 400 (height difference of 300 for those of you who don't like math).

[img=http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/2852 ... 0ir.th.jpg]

Both are with a flash tank selected and f2 on. As you can see, cathralda as it is cannot even support vehicles becasue of the 599 height difference whereas with a height scale of 300 difference vehicles are now an option.

Quote:
Don't listen to forboding! He eats puppies! Wink

Serious: Don't use "visual tricks" to make your maps appear prettier at the expense of gameplay (which forboding is suggesting with his height-scale fudging). If I see a giant ridge, it sohuld bea giant ridge, not some little piss thing that the mapper just thought looks good from one angle or another. There was one map I remember that was absolutely *terrible* to play on because of this same problem; it was made from composite satellite WWII images or something, with a large lake on one side and a giant mountain on the other and just positively SUCKED. If it looks like it should be huge visiually, then the heightmap shold reflect that.


what are you talking about, expense of gameplay? This is my method of doing maps. Name one map I have done that has issues with pathfinding.

As for me, I'm done with this thread. You can either take my advice or leave it and I don't really care which, cause when a map you make (not referring specifically to ice) sucks because of height and pathfinding issues, don't come asking me for help.

I have touted again and again that huge heights in gameplay just don't work for many reasons. I'm not going to explain it over and over again.

Here is an idea for you. You can use weavers nifty tool (which I have been using since before he released it publically) to change the height scale up and down and look at f2 on the minimap with a flash tank selected (i use a flash tanks because it is average among vehicles). and scale it up or down to get the maximum effect. However I swear to you on a stack of bibles, you're never gonna get away with over 500 (and you'll be lucky if you can even get that much).

Bah, I'm done.

[Forboding Angel]

@ mufdvr

Very nice. You pulled it off very well. Question, can I see your heightmap? and did you use a typemap for it?

[IceXuick]

oke people! let's not get carried away. My topic is getting bloated with this

For as far as i want to mengle in this:

- gameplay is #1
- Higher 'height' can add to this
- Let's go test the new released map editor

take it eazz peepz. It's just a game

:)