Spring RTS Engine

Greetings all,

I'm working on my first TA Spring map, and I have a question. I'm having trouble getting geo vents to work correctly. I'm positive that I've got a single pixel of green (255) in the metal map, but I see absolutely nothing in the game (no smoke), and it won't let me build a geo on that spot.

Anyway, screenshots are below. I'm fairly pleased with how it looks so far - I'm a really lousy artist, but it looks better than I expected.







Tools used:
GIMP
POV-Ray (for textures)
Custom C program for simulating erosion

Geo rendering is iffy in spring. Try putting the pixel in a diffrent spot (like a few pixels over) and recompiling it. That looks like a nice map. A very diffrent style then what we usually get around here. Kinda cartoony looking.

I had a dream once that dinosaurs were chasing me and I was in a military unit fighting them yada yada yada, anyways, the terrain looked exactly the same as that with the deep green grass, the brown mountains and the pure blue water. Creepy.

For a first shot thats not half bad!!! Maybe a little... surreal. But in answer to your question, yes that often happens.

Its because it also needs to be on flat ground, however that bit of mapconv seems iffy and can produce weird asss results... I suggest you compile the map nearly flat (IE a heigt dif of 50) and then use the Smfed prgram to alter teh heigt afterwards... works for me

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2253

aGorm

And the Geo is not in the MetallMap, it is in the Feature Map, by the way

This looks pretty good

That's really good. I was going to say "for a first map" in fact its pretty good for first showing of any map.

Now all we need a is a Settlers mod... pretty pretty indeed.

[quote="SwiftSpear"]I had a dream once that dinosaurs were chasing me and I was in a military unit fighting them yada yada yada, anyways, the terrain looked exactly the same as that with the deep green grass, the brown mountains and the pure blue water. Creepy.[/quote]




Lay down on the Couch, Swiftspear and tell us everything. Do you think that you had Dinosaur Problems in your Childhood ?

Sorry somebody needs to say that, even to a Mod

The Map is indee a Beauty! If this goes on, FA, Qunato and AGorm will have another competitioner in the Race for Perfection.

Good-looking map, I like the style! It's probably also easier for gameplay as the height differences are very clear, you don't have to keep changing camera angles or hitting f1/f2 all the time.

I can imagine this map becoming quite popular. It reminds me somewhat of that red triangle or what was it, an OTA port.

Race for perfectiong?? I was under the impression I won that race ages ago...

(PS I by no means won it, Im talking out my hyperthetical backside)

aGorm

Thanks for the help. The problem is fixed now; yes, it needed to be in the feature map instead of the metal map.

I was confused by the help text which is displayed by mapconv.exe. It mentions geovents in the metal map section for some reason. But moving it to the feature map fixed it.

Now I just need to shift the metal map by a couple pixels to get it to line up with the texture correctly...

After finnishing the Metall Map , you can still refine it with the Lines Extractor Radius and Metall Per Pixel in the SMD - it is a high important part of Map Design.

RogerN wrote:I was confused by the help text which is displayed by mapconv.exe.

The current version was cobbled together and the help spit-out is from a unmodified version... with the new-new map format/renderer comeing it seems to be a lower priority then other features as the current state is funtional.

PicassoCT wrote:

SwiftSpear wrote:I had a dream once that dinosaurs were chasing me and I was in a military unit fighting them yada yada yada, anyways, the terrain looked exactly the same as that with the deep green grass, the brown mountains and the pure blue water. Creepy.

Lay down on the Couch, Swiftspear and tell us everything. Do you think that you had Dinosaur Problems in your Childhood ?

Sorry somebody needs to say that, even to a Mod

Heh, no, it's just trippy to see something someone came up with that resembles so closely something you saw in a vivid dream. Frankly that dream was awesome, it was like a kick ass action horror thriller movie.

Looks like a nice map! Care to share some details about your C erosion program?

@ Swiftspear

Had the Same thing, a little mor bizarre after i saw my first explosion in ego-shooter, with Bone-physic Enemys- Dreamed after that waking up in the Trench, and beeing blown into pieces by a Grenade. With Full Consience and without pain- strange thing, those dreams.

Somebody write a Patch.

hrmph wrote:Care to share some details about your C erosion program?

It's not anything fancy; I think L3DT has something similar.

It uses brute-force to simulate several thousand "rain drops" which flow downhill, picking up dirt on the way and depositing it at the bottom. I can post some before-and-after images of the heightmap later today.

Mind releasing it as a mapping tool?

P3374H wrote:Mind releasing it as a mapping tool?

Sure, but I'll need to clean it up a bit first. It's not foolproof enough for public consumption. In other words, it crashes if you don't use it exactly right :)