New map format

Post by **jcnossen** » 22 Jul 2006, 12:16

why not go even further and make shared dir which would contain textures, used by sm3 files out of their own sd7 file? This would save a lot of bandwith/would be 56k's friendlier and mappers wouldnt have to search for high quality textures anywhere as they will have them already with spring.

IMO that is something for the mapper community to resolve, people could make shared texture packs, and others can reference to it. The spring filesystem already supports that.

When enumerating this format for unitsync+lobby are textures taken into account? Afterall the textures in thsi format should be ignored and treated as unsynced imo.

I'm not sure, unitsync doesn't even support sm3 at the moment, that something I still have to fix.

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 22 Jul 2006, 12:17

zorbawic: just add dos periods in front "..\zorbas_texturepak\mygrass.jpg", this will allow you to access folders above your map archive I think(hope), thus allowing us to release texture packs that are one-time downloads. At least this is my plan to keep my maps down to bare minimum size, 3 second downloads. I haven't tried it yet though so feel free to report if it works.

zorbawic · Post by **zorbawic** » 22 Jul 2006, 13:32

I tried that and ... it doesnt work.
I constantly get an error when Calculating surface normals: "Bad/no terrain type file". Can anyone of the devs tell me what should be in here:
[INFOMAPS]
........{
................metal=XXXXXXXXXXXX;
................type=XXXXXXXXXXXX;
........}

when the metalmap and the typemap is in the same folder as dry_modified.sd7 file?

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 22 Jul 2006, 14:25

Okay I just tried and typing ..\ or ../ in front didn't work. Neither did using "'s around it. Any ideas?

edit: oh I need to refresh more often.

edit2: are you trying to access something outside the sd7? because that doesn't work(same problem as above), but if you place it inside the sd7 it should work. Maybe I misunderstood you though.

Weaver · Post by **Weaver** » 22 Jul 2006, 16:37

zorbawic wrote:I tried that and ... it doesnt work.
I constantly get an error when Calculating surface normals: "Bad/no terrain type file". Can anyone of the devs tell me what should be in here:
[INFOMAPS]
........{
................metal=XXXXXXXXXXXX;
................type=XXXXXXXXXXXX;
........}

when the metalmap and the typemap is in the same folder as dry_modified.sd7 file?

The size must be exactly right ie. (heightmap dimension - 1)/2

For reference path same as the examples;

Code: Select all

	[INFOMAPS]
	{
		metal=Maps/dry_data/metalmap.png;
		type=Maps/dry_data/typemap.png;
	}

Also Heightmap seems to need a path;

Code: Select all

	[TERRAIN]
	{
		ForceFallback=0;
	
		HeightScale=835.0;
		HeightOffset=-65.0;
		Heightmap=Maps/dry_data/rivertest.tif;
          
          etc

For Jelmer, some bugs & WIBNIs;

Pathing gets recalculated when it does not really need to be, like changing the sun position.

Any chance of dithered blending? Or does anyone else no how to achieve a similar effect.

On tall maps, mountains get very terraced even when using a 16bit heightmap.

zorbawic · Post by **zorbawic** » 22 Jul 2006, 17:30

Cheesecan wrote: are you trying to access something outside the sd7?

Yes. a second sd7. Thats what ive been saying from the begining.
do i have to quote my-self?

Weaver: I just modified dry.sm3 Infomaps section and copied the metalmap and typemap to the maps folder thats all

Post by **jcnossen** » 22 Jul 2006, 17:37

Pathing gets recalculated when it does not really need to be, like changing the sun position.

Weird, I can't find it in the code.

Any chance of dithered blending? Or does anyone else no how to achieve a similar effect.

No, maybe you can just add some random noise to the blendmaps?

On tall maps, mountains get very terraced even when using a 16bit heightmap.

Im not sure I know what you mean with terraced, but are you using RAW format? I don't really trust DevIL very much when it comes to 16 bit images.

Weaver · Post by **Weaver** » 22 Jul 2006, 18:03

jcnossen wrote:
Weaver wrote: On tall maps, mountains get very terraced even when using a 16bit heightmap.
Im not sure I know what you mean with terraced, but are you using RAW format? I don't really trust DevIL very much when it comes to 16 bit images.

By terraced I mean having not enough height resolution, terraces were about 12 height units apart.
I couldn't get the raw to load for this map so I used TIFF, it was a 64x64 map 7000 high which might be something to do with it. It will be impressive even if it's not playable. I'll guess I need to do more tests.

Post by **jcnossen** » 22 Jul 2006, 18:04

Here is an update, I've implemented minimaps for the lobby and ingame now. Now there only needs to be a good way to generate them...

http://user.supradigital.org/jcnossen/s ... -r1667.zip

The zip also contains a testmap that uses a seperate texture archive. The trick is to put a modinfo.tdf in your map archive with the dependency to the texture pack.

AF · Post by AF » 22 Jul 2006, 18:09

Is it me or does that minimap look clearer the the minimap it should be?

Perhaps we can add a toggle in a button underneath the minimap that only shows if the mouse is over the minimap, that way we can turn on and off simplified minimap colours ingame too.

Afterall many of the features of Spring that can be turned on/off can be changed midgame with settings.exe, as I showed when testing coloured nanospray

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 22 Jul 2006, 18:20

Great, now I can make a nice little texture pack. :)

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 23 Jul 2006, 01:16

A stupid question I guess,, but can someone for the love of god, tell me WTF this means ---->> DevIL <<---- Is it a 3d renderer? a hindu god? or some sort of bloody chant, perhaps its Usama Bin Ladens brother, who knows,, for fuc*s sake can we get a wiki authored that helps without adding confusion ?? this was a problem when Spring was first released the WIKI was just a source of confusion offering little or no help,, keep it simple please people. And while there are a few people figuring this format out can we PLEASE have more use of complete words.

Rant over.

Post by **jcnossen** » 23 Jul 2006, 02:03

ZOMG I DONT GET DAT WORD AN IM LIEK WTF.

It's an image loading library that spring uses to load all the images:
http://openil.sf.net

Buggi · Post by **Buggi** » 23 Jul 2006, 02:15

LMAO!!!

Where'd that minimap come from? <.<

AF · Post by AF » 23 Jul 2006, 02:28

The reason units are dark in this renderer is because the ambient unit lighting is set very low in the example maps. Raising the values in the sm3 fixed it for me.

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 23 Jul 2006, 02:43

jcnossen wrote:ZOMG I DONT GET DAT WORD AN IM LIEK WTF.

It's an image loading library that spring uses to load all the images:
http://openil.sf.net

Ahhh, information mmmmmmmm, thanks

You see jcnossen my field of expertise is electronics, particularly digital audio systems, I have designed and built some pretty sophisticated stuff, but I would not assume a person is stupid based on the premise their knowledge of digital electronics circuitry and associated use of acronyms is lacking, nor would I feel in any way superior to them.

Just a thought.

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 23 Jul 2006, 03:39

mufdvr222 wrote:
jcnossen wrote:ZOMG I DONT GET DAT WORD AN IM LIEK WTF.

It's an image loading library that spring uses to load all the images:
http://openil.sf.net
Ahhh, information mmmmmmmm, thanks
You see jcnossen my field of expertise is electronics, particularly digital audio systems, I have designed and built some pretty sophisticated stuff, but I would not assume a person is stupid based on the premise their knowledge of digital electronics circuitry and associated use of acronyms is lacking, nor would I feel in any way superior to them.
Just a thought.

Google or wikipedia, tis not that hard to do some independant research.

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 23 Jul 2006, 04:25

Das Bruce wrote:
mufdvr222 wrote:
jcnossen wrote:ZOMG I DONT GET DAT WORD AN IM LIEK WTF.

It's an image loading library that spring uses to load all the images:
http://openil.sf.net
Ahhh, information mmmmmmmm, thanks
You see jcnossen my field of expertise is electronics, particularly digital audio systems, I have designed and built some pretty sophisticated stuff, but I would not assume a person is stupid based on the premise their knowledge of digital electronics circuitry and associated use of acronyms is lacking, nor would I feel in any way superior to them.
Just a thought.
Google or wikipedia, tis not that hard to do some independant research.

I agree with you, but we don`t all have a comprehensive knowledge of the various image formats and their specific attributes, the wiki refered to at the beginning of this topic sends the reader on a quest for explanations for whats in the wiki itsels,, example

"Heightmap specification
The heightmap is specified with 3 tags located in the [TERRAIN] section:

Heightmap: This should be either:

An 8 or 16 bit image file readable by DevIL
A 8 or 16 bit RAW file, such as generated by Terragen"

Why not just list the image formats supported instead of this cryptic information, why not say " An 8 or 16 bit image in the following formats
.raw .jpg .png or whatever, instead I have to go make a fool of myself to find out what DevIL means and then be directed to a dev site that has the information listed. None of this would have been neccesary for the want of two lines of text in the spring wiki, don`t mis understand me I appreciate the work being done by the devs here, but if your going to commit to explaining something it should get to the point.

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 23 Jul 2006, 05:55

mufdvr222 wrote:
Das Bruce wrote:
mufdvr222 wrote: Ahhh, information mmmmmmmm, thanks
You see jcnossen my field of expertise is electronics, particularly digital audio systems, I have designed and built some pretty sophisticated stuff, but I would not assume a person is stupid based on the premise their knowledge of digital electronics circuitry and associated use of acronyms is lacking, nor would I feel in any way superior to them.
Just a thought.
Google or wikipedia, tis not that hard to do some independant research.
I agree with you, but we don`t all have a comprehensive knowledge of the various image formats and their specific attributes, the wiki refered to at the beginning of this topic sends the reader on a quest for explanations for whats in the wiki itsels,, example

"Heightmap specification
The heightmap is specified with 3 tags located in the [TERRAIN] section:

Heightmap: This should be either:

An 8 or 16 bit image file readable by DevIL
A 8 or 16 bit RAW file, such as generated by Terragen"

Why not just list the image formats supported instead of this cryptic information, why not say " An 8 or 16 bit image in the following formats
.raw .jpg .png or whatever, instead I have to go make a fool of myself to find out what DevIL means and then be directed to a dev site that has the information listed. None of this would have been neccesary for the want of two lines of text in the spring wiki, don`t mis understand me I appreciate the work being done by the devs here, but if your going to commit to explaining something it should get to the point.

Nows your chance to clear up that particular piece of wiki.

mufdvr222 · Post by **mufdvr222** » 23 Jul 2006, 08:34

I Give up

Spring RTS Engine

New map format