Progress: My First Map - Ready for betatest !

[SirArtturi]

Hello everyone,

This is my first map making project and I think in past few days I've been doing really good. Most of the time I have been working with numbers... So with basic math and logic it hasn't been very hard. Now i've reached the two final maps of height and metal, but im still working on with texture, feature and typemap.

Ok first here is some specs about my map:
24 x 18
12288 * 9216 pixels (textures)
1537 x 1153 (heightmap)
1537 x 1153 (metalmap)
1536 x 1152 (featuremap)
768 x 576 (typemap)

First problem now when i've been testing is that most of map compiler tools doesnt work very well for 5 files.

This kind of error occurs right when i start compiling and it begins to load textures:

"Failed to open DIB file"

And at the end it says 0 features writed, There was meant to be 6 geovents with color g 255

One problem occured with typemap. My intention was to make "unpassable" zones with typemap with color 255 red marking terrain type unpassable.
After compile. There was unpassable zones but slightly in wrong places. I scaled my typemap with GIMP.

One Problem with L3DT:

Im making my textures with using L3DT 2.5 Professional. Base climate is Arctic and there's couple common textures along. One of those textures is snow. After generating and compiling the snow looked more like sand in spring, Don't get this why ?

I generated all the operations:
Water map
Attributes map - TX/HF ratio 8 * using mosaic map tile size 512
Terrain Normal - TX/HF ratio 8 * using mosaic map tile size 512
Light map - TX/HF ratio 8 * using mosaic map tile size 512
Texture map - TX/HF ratio 8 * using mosaic map tile size 512

Sorry about my bad english.. I may need to edit this to make it more readable.

I'll also add screenshot of this. " Snow - sand compilcationg"

Now some help is needed...
thanks!

Edit:

Okay here are some screens of my main issues causing me headache...



This texture is supposed to be snow. Why does it look like sand ? Is it something with lightning, maybe color of sun ? Should it be white ? or ambience ?

Im also annoyed about those small squares which this texture generator lays for those "mesas" or small slopes. They just look bad. How to get rid of them ?



Now, This grassfield layer doesnt look like result of repeated tiles. It seems more like one tile scaled to fit in this layer, leaving inaccurate result.



What is that ? After generating my map in L3DT it left those lines there. Maybe somekinda bug with mosaic maps ?

[user]

which tool are you using to compile the map?

[SirArtturi]

which tool are you using to compile the map?

I use this one

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=show&a=it&id=2589

and then some old shit from old map developing package. Dunno what version it is and what is it called...

[user]

the problem probably is that you put the wrong names on the paramters or the image dimensions are wrong

try also using this:http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/4003/mapconv/

[smoth]

I really like the map layout good luck with it.

[hunterw]

What is that ? After generating my map in L3DT it left those lines there. Maybe somekinda bug with mosaic maps ?

the problem is your heightmap being 256 color greyscale

u need 16 bit d/l the gimp convert to 16 bit then run a gaussian blur on the whole thing and then compile with that heightmap - all those shittys should disappear

[Forboding Angel]

Ok first of all. Something is jacked with that climate, or possibly the way it was rendered. I would suggest rerendering the attributes map and then rerendering the terrain map.

YOu also might consider one of the many climates that got included with l3dt specifically for use with spring...

Make sure you read this...
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3941

Hunter thinks you are talking about contours...
To completely fix TERRAIN contouring, use the -L option in the compiler line. To fix the TEXTURE contouring, you will need to re-render.

Edit like 9001:
In l3dt, rerender with a larger horizontal scaling. THis will cause l3dt to be less picky when laying land types. Take whatever number you're using and add .5 to it.

[SirArtturi]

Okay Ill reply to messages here while im rerendering my terrain. I will soon update my progress...

the problem probably is that you put the wrong names on the paramters or the image dimensions are wrong

try also using this:http://www.unknown-files.net/spring/4003/mapconv/

Is there any specific instruction how to use this? I see there is special "features" or tools like

texcompress.exe
nvdxt.exe
texconv.exe

What are these ?

the problem is your heightmap being 256 color greyscale

u need 16 bit d/l the gimp convert to 16 bit then run a gaussian blur on the whole thing and then compile with that heightmap - all those shittys should disappear

Okay. I made some fixes. I dont know if the problem is 256 color greyscale, but im certain that part of the problem was the "roughness" and sharpness of the terrain. I made some blurring and smoothing and reduced noise. Made it look much better...

Ok first of all. Something is jacked with that climate, or possibly the way it was rendered. I would suggest rerendering the attributes map and then rerendering the terrain map.

YOu also might consider one of the many climates that got included with l3dt specifically for use with spring...

I'm doing it atm. I gave up my custom settings and went straight to default climates. Now ill just try to make my terrainmap look good and smooth and use it as a betaversion and add some textures of my own afterwards.

People, I really have problems making this texturemap and i find it very difficult. Theres not much tutorials about this and i would really appreciate if you give me some nice hints and tips. Especially how to add custom textures in photoshop. How to make them fade in the other landscape and so on...

You see... The map even if it's well balanced and works well, doesn't make it interesting enough. The textures and outlook is as important as the idea.

Make sure you read this...
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3941

Hunter thinks you are talking about contours...
To completely fix TERRAIN contouring, use the -L option in the compiler line. To fix the TEXTURE contouring, you will need to re-render.

Yes I've read it. It's good stuff. Although the instructions conserning L3DT are too old to be relevant. The software has developed quite much...

Im not going to use -L options. I already have problems with height of hte map. Either it is a damn too low; making units to climb up every slopes or else its too high. making it difficult to climb any slope at all..
Or then. Maybe i just should use. Well at least i could try...

Edit:

Okay here is the update of my progress with some screens.
I changed my climate completely, dunno if its better but at least its better quality. I still have problem with those strange lines, but overall its quite good and i may going to release it as a beta version to test how it works in gameplay. Do some texturework afterwards...

Heres some screens:


Here is the overhead lookout



Why there is grass ? I havent add feature map yet...



Still having problems with those strange lines in texture. How to get rid of those quickly ? Those lines appear after L3Dt terrain generating with high res value 8 and 512 tilesize mosaicmapping.
Already sent email to Aaron about the issue...



I dont know if those shadows work very well. Do you people use shadows in texturemaps ?

[user]

it is the same as using mapconv,
and at which image it prints the message "Failed to open DIB file"?

check the image names on the file you are using to compile, they must be exactly the same as the images

the grass is because you dont have a feature map or it failed to open

shadows in texture maps dont look good in my opnion,i dont use them

[TheFatController]

That map looks really good

[SirArtturi]

Ok I've reached my map to beta version. You can download here:

http://senduit.com/5fa560

Please if there occurs any bugs or you have some suggestion or opinions about the map, let me know and ill start debugging it..

And yes I know theres some little bugs and little small fixing, but im working on it to the final version. Now i need to test it for gameplay...

I reduced the size to 22 x 16 and working on to make better textures...

Heres some beta version screens:

[REVENGE]

Map looks sick, but please use Unknown-Files for all your upload needs!

[SirArtturi]

Map looks sick, but please use Unknown-Files for all your upload needs!

For some reason im not able to upload it to UF. It says that "please fix ur issues with file before continuing any step further"

[aGorm]

I get that to, its been really getting on my tits.

aGorm

[Neddie]

You need to make sure that you're in the Spring category, since it seems broken in the general, even though Spring is all there is on the site right now.

[REVENGE]

Overall, very interesting gameplay, though I suggest at least 6v6 and also, turning the metal values down a tad.

[HeavyLancer]

Yeah, really fun large map. A good alternative to DSD. The naval play is good along the river.

[Beherith]

Nice map, Artturi, played a couple of rounds on it. Works well in large team games.

I also had the 2 wierd lines on the bottom left of texture issue, but nothing solved it, so i used photoshop's select line/column feature, and just repeated the lines above and below it.

For me the lines were 2 pixels wide, with 1 pixel of the line almost black, and the other just really dark.
Like so: A-X-X-B ,where A and B are the two proper lines above and below the black one, and X is the black line. I replaced it to A-B-A-B which made it totally unnoticable.

[SirArtturi]

Nice map, Artturi, played a couple of rounds on it. Works well in large team games.

I also had the 2 wierd lines on the bottom left of texture issue, but nothing solved it, so i used photoshop's select line/column feature, and just repeated the lines above and below it.

For me the lines were 2 pixels wide, with 1 pixel of the line almost black, and the other just really dark.
Like so: A-X-X-B ,where A and B are the two proper lines above and below the black one, and X is the black line. I replaced it to A-B-A-B which made it totally unnoticable.

Yeah I figured out that solution also. It leaves nothing to notice.

By the way final version coming out soon. I just need someone to upload it to UF since im still not able to upload anything there.

[Atorpy]

Hi All,

The problem with the two lines has been fixed in the latest dev build of L3DT Pro. It occurred when using heightmap sizes that are not integer divisible by 64, which was the case with Arttu's 1537x1153 pixel heightmap. These odd sizes are now supported.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

PS: The fault affected both the normals and texture calculations, so you must re-generate the normals, light map and texture to remove the lines.