Spring RTS Engine

Only started work on this a couple of days ago and still looks rather naked, but there seems to be a need for maps with decent scaling both in total area and mountain size, the map however will be around 30mb 7zipped, can`t avoid that I tiled the flat ground and saved 15mb but most of the maps filesize is due to the mountain textures.
Anyways here are a few shots.

Link
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2299

Map size is 32 x 32

Overall, quite cool, and very atmospheric. I'd like to see it lit better, though- how's about an early-sunrise/sunset yellow-orange, or more blue for an early nightfall feel, with deep shadows? Also, the snowcap areas clearly need need to be fuzzed out... if it's going to be 30MB anyhow, then might as well go for it, and make the snow really spectacular.

umm the detail texture muddys the snow up. looks good to me.

Dude, isn't 32x32 the biggest map made yet?! Keep em coming!

And remember for map size plz:

Because of the way the map compiler work, it will greatly reduce your map filesize if you use 32x32 tiles on your texture map. So, whenever you have to fill a large area with a repeating pattern, make sure the small square you're repeating is 32x32 (or a multiple of it). Therefore, tile sizes should be one of the following: 32x32 pixels, 64x64 pixels, 96x96 pixels, 128x128 pixels etc. Tiles also do not have to be square, it is perfectly possible to make rectangular tiles.

Slamoid wrote:Dude, isn't 32x32 the biggest map made yet?! Keep em coming!

And remember for map size plz:

Because of the way the map compiler work, it will greatly reduce your map filesize if you use 32x32 tiles on your texture map. So, whenever you have to fill a large area with a repeating pattern, make sure the small square you're repeating is 32x32 (or a multiple of it). Therefore, tile sizes should be one of the following: 32x32 pixels, 64x64 pixels, 96x96 pixels, 128x128 pixels etc. Tiles also do not have to be square, it is perfectly possible to make rectangular tiles.

I already did, All the low lying green you can see is tiled with the same 512 x 512 texture, along with the snow caps, however I don`t want to tile the slopes as the result is appauling, I do know how to tile properly but don`t want to sacrifice these textures, but like I said this map project is two days old,, early days.

Did you use a jpg for your texturemap to get around the 600mb size limit?

Decimator wrote:Did you use a jpg for your texturemap to get around the 600mb size limit?

I most certainly did, in photoshop,, in the save jpg options - maximum quality is 12 I dropped the slider down a notch to 11, the output jpg was 73mb down from the original 768mb bmp with no noticeable decrease in image quality, also the time taken to compile the map was only around 15 minutes.

Sooo... just to be clear, Mothers Map Conv supports .jpeg??
I thought it only supported .bmp and just to be totally clear the 28x28 map size limit was only limited by the file size of the texture map and if I was to decrease the file size of the texture map I can make maps larger then 28x28??

I will have to try jpegs when I get home. Not just for bigger maps but also to cut compile time.

this is really intresting.. it basicly means no mapsize limit :D

However... It does explane possibly why it resulted in a larger file. Jpg compression aftifacts mean tiles would not be the same anymore, even if they were on the bmp...

Still, thats pretty dam cool, how come no-one noticed this befor? I mean several people have been using JPG's, why didnt they mention bigger maps were possible with it? Huh. Actully Im just annoyed i didn't know about it

aGorm

me wonders... is dds and other formats supported aswell?

Well, it turns the texture into a dds... so I would have thought it might be able to read it aswell... but who knows.

aGorm

aGorm wrote:However... It does explane possibly why it resulted in a larger file. Jpg compression aftifacts mean tiles would not be the same anymore, even if they were on the bmp...

Still, thats pretty dam cool, how come no-one noticed this befor? I mean several people have been using JPG's, why didnt they mention bigger maps were possible with it? Huh. Actully Im just annoyed i didn't know about it

aGorm

Well I have been using jpg`s for a while but only to save memory, three weeks ago I went out and got a new system, up untill that time I was using a p3 733 with 650mb I now have a p4 3.2ghz with a gig of ram, which made me want to have a serious attempt at a very large map, but mapconv gives a "texture conversion error" message when you try and compile a 16384 x 16384 .bmp, When I realised a lossless .jpg of the same size is only 73 mb I thought it was worth a try.
I think you have hit the nail right on the head about jpg`s messing around with .dds compression.

One more thing I almost forgot, Sometimes Photoshop gives an internal program error, whatever that means,, when I try and save the texture .bmb as a .jpg, Believe it or not I find ACD SEE32 yes the ten year old version can do the save beughtifully and is what I had to use to get this texture converted from .bmp to .jpg.

I wonder... Will it take PNG's? they have lossless compression, and certain types of images compress quite well with them. Plus it wont mess with tiling (as its lossless). If anyones home, can they test it out, if not I will when i get back.

aGorm

nope, no joy for png

No PNG support for mapconv but but the compression (lossless) was good, a 192MB bitmap went down to 61MB

JPEG in lossless mode did not do as well 118MB and mapconv created the BMP strips like normal before creating the DDS files. Not particularly efficient or fast and made a few more tile that the BMP did. But if it means larger maps are possible its still worth considering.

why and how in the hell is ur stop button is that color ?

It needs features, preferably foliage, lots of it, and not the default crappy trees. Then, maybe then, it'll be a stupendous map.

Heres my suggestions:
1) Make the fog a bit denser and bring the view distance down a bit.

2) Make the sky look like thick rain clouds. I mean the same color you have now, but filling the sky.

3) Reduce the snow to the very highest peaks, and make the rest rocky and sandy ontop.

4) Lastly get some great rocks, evergreens, decidous, and some shrubs, and it will be perfect.