New Map Format?

[oksnoop2]

I got curious and did a search for "New Map Format" as i've heard that term tossed around here and there. I got plenty of hits but nothing really explained to me what it is. I was hoping some people who are more in the know could explain a bit about it...if it even exists.

[Pxtl]

I got curious and did a search for "New Map Format" as i've heard that term tossed around here and there. I got plenty of hits but nothing really explained to me what it is. I was hoping some people who are more in the know could explain a bit about it...if it even exists.

http://springrts.com/wiki/SM3_Map_Format

It's been floundering in and out of development for years... I don't even know if it works on the current engine. When it did work, it was buggy - no shadows, tearing landscape, etc.

Instead of a tiled system of textures, you splat a handful of repeating textures over the whole map - one layer per-texture. This is very limited in terms of what you can draw on the map, and also can produce decent looking maps with low processor requirements across extremely large landscapes.

The more texture stages you add, the more it strains the GPU... so it can be very GPU-intensive.

[cainchild]

Performance aside (which I rarely say), I think that this current format just allows me to do so many of the things I couldn't do in TA and TA:K because of the limitations of the tiles in cartographer etc. The down side for me, is that I am a crap artist, so my textures will ALWAYS look like dirt. This new format described may level the playing field, and by using the different layers might make it easier for guys like me to make maps that looked as decent as they played.

P.S. Both maps I've made so far still look like crap, but were fun, and on both of them the RAI is packing my fudge in. It makes me sad inside to lose to an AI.

[oksnoop2]

So I don't compile these sm3 maps.. I could just do wip out note pad and the relevant image files?
Are there any existing sm3 maps i can crack open, so that i may get an idea of its structure?

[FLOZi]

SM3 is effectively dead. Talk to Behe about SSMF if you want to make amazing Spring maps.

[cainchild]

lmao
So I'm learning to make maps with mapconv and all that good jazz and there going to be useless before I finish them.

I just gave a glance to the link above for the map format. I think I am reading that there is no comile? Will the stuff I've been doing the past few weeks be able to be carried over?

Also, i hope the developers will bear in mind that for those of us with ass-loads of bills and what not can't really follow the upgrade-every-six-days rule for the sake of games. Doesn't mean we aren't avid or that we don't love gaming, just that we have a budget to follow.

[Pxtl]

SM3 is effectively dead. Talk to Behe about SSMF if you want to make amazing Spring maps.

Is SSMF really all that much of a new format? I thought it was just adding bump & spec to SMF.

[Forboding Angel]

Cain... You are learning smf. Ssmf is just an extension of smf (actually it's an optional one for that matter, but I dunno why you wouldn't want to use it).

As flozi said, sm3 died a long time ago.

@pxtl: yeah that's the jist of it.

[TradeMark]

Maybe we could combine SMF and SM3 ? allow blended textures over the tiled textures.

I dont see how the maps could be made any better without tiling... its just a matter of the map maker how many tiles he wants to use in his map.

All we need is good map generator that doesnt use many different tiles.

Although, im not sure does Spring save any GFX card memory with the tiling, isnt they made 1024x1024 pieces and then rendered?

[Forboding Angel]

sm3 is technically more resource intensive on smaller maps. Where it wins out big is when you have omgwtfhueg maps. but even then, ssmf still looks 100x better.