Problems with the shoreline

[Kergelen]

I don't know if this is normal or not but my shoreline is irregular as you can see in the picture. And another problem I have is that the color of the water entres to the arena.



I'm using Pyreenean Terrain Mod in which I have made minor modifications as the "Max Beach Width", the "Max Beach Atitude" and the "MaxTerrainHeight" (If I remember good) to put the snow in a higher atitude. I'm using marsh's beach mod and rivit's coastal mod. But if I only use the Pyrenean Terrain mod the problem is still there.

With the Californian Terrain Mod by Heblem I have the same problem but if I don't use any terrain mod or I use Lowkee's Apalachian terrain mod, the problem is solved.

Are there some solution with the Pyreenan Terrain Mod?

[dziki333]

The problem is in rivit's water mod, which is great, but not go well with Pyrenean Terrain mod. Try another water mod suitable for HD terrain:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27272-shk-brigantine-20/
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26944-drunken-water-mods-the-blues-and-greys-in-hd/
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26528-drunken-water-mods-or-how-not-to-do-it-in-hd/

[Lowkee33]

but if I don't use any terrain mod or I use Lowkee's Apalachian terrain mod, the problem is solved.

I guess I should know the answer to this

My guess, the jagged beach is caused by a high value in the WaterMinAlpha.  Try lowering it, and if your water becomes too transparent, try increasing WaterDepthForMaxAlpha.  The light blue water entering the arena isn't water at all, it's your lower-beach texture (my guess still).  I think Marsh's mod has this texture set to a water texture so that water that is too transparent can still look like water.  Texture 0x14 is the lower-beach texture, so you could copy/paste that from my beach mod to do a quick test.

[Kergelen]

dziki333: I didn't know drunkapple water mods. I try and fits better with the Pyrenean terrain mod. Anyway I'll try to fix the problem with Rivit's mod. Thanks

Lowkee: Your guess is right.

I lower the WaterMinAlpha and the shoreline looks less jagged now.
But about the texture 0x14, I can't fix the problem. I copy the texture from your beach mod to the marsh file but I'm not sure if I did well.
Your beach mod have 14 textures but marsh one have only 10 as you can see in the pictures, and maybe this is the problem. So I copy files from 11 to 14 from yours. But then I see that the instance from 10 to 14 in yours is the same as from 1 to 5 texture in Marsh one. So I change the instances but not see your textures in the game. Surely there is something I'm doing wrong in the process.

Lowkee


Marsh

[noahclem]

Very interesting solution--I have the same problem so I've been following this closely.

I use one of drunkapple's water mod's with one of marsh's beach mods and the PTM and get the same problem as you. I've been able to mostly fix mine by making the slope of the beach very, very gentle, but I haven't looked at mine with the waves on since I "fixed" the problem so it might not look good then.

The whole thing strike's me as similar to the "jagged edges" mod on land, where the height that rock textures show up defines the height that the terrain is shaped differently (I hope the makes sense). I'm not sure what controls that property for shorelines or underwater though....

hmm, just got an idea 

[Lowkee33]

@Kergelen:  From the images you posted, you would want to copy/paste FSH number 0 through 4 into Marsh's file (instance 0x014-0x414).  Seeing that those textures aren't in Marsh's mod, I guess you're getting maxis textures in-game.  I believe DobDriver put those textures in his water mod too, so that would be another place to look.

A "beach" should be, IMHO, three textures, 0x13, 0x14, and 0x39.  Poorly ordered I would say , 39 is the above ground beach, 14 is right below sea-level, and 13 is deep sea.  Here is a picture from my terrain if you drop the alpha of the water:



The picture also shows why texture 0x14 is nothing more than a blend between the lower beach and the cliff texture.

@ Noahclem:  I never made an "official" post about the way textures blend together, but yes, they all do it in the same way.  A terrain texture is a FSH, but it also has an exemplar (of the same instance) that defines the way it behaves.  Textures have an initial strength and they also have a strength/distance blending relationship "Texture Spread Curve" (one for each zoom).  Here is an image of an all black texture blending with an all white texture using the blending curves from the Appalachian Mod (for some reason I don't like saying "my mod"):


For the textures that make up the ground in the Appalachian mod, all of the Exemplars can be found in LK_TerrainTextures_01.dat.  I didn't make new ones for the "basic" textures, because Maxis curves behave pretty well on their own.

To get technical, the property is a series of ordered pairs.  My textures (  ), use this value for the closest zoom:

0, 1, 8, 0.8, 16, 0.6, 24, 0.4, 32, 0.3, 40, 0.2, 48, 0.1

Which means, at 0 meters from the center of the texture, have 1 strength.  From 8 meters, be .8 strength. From 16 meters....  Better than the Maxis Curves I would say... 0, 1, 32, 1, 64, 0

[Kergelen]

Well, I think now I understand what hapen. At first I didn't understand you. My English level and my poor knowledge of textures and instance has betrayed me

In your first post you said the texture 0x14 is not water, is the lower-beach texture. So the "problem" is that in the Rivit's coastal mod there are two types of water:
             1- normal water with texture 0x09187300-4
             2-inshore water with texture 0x14
And the second "problem" is that the Beach mod by Marsh don't include the texture 0x14.

I made different tests: 1- combining your 0x14 texture with Marsh Mod.
                                2- copying a beach texture from Pyrenean terrain mod, changing the instance to 0x14, and copying to Beach mod.

Combination between Marsh and Lowkee (or Apalachian ) beach Mod


Marsh mod adding 0x14 texture



So if I use Marsh's mod adding 0x14 texture, or simply delated the inshore water by Rivit the problem is solved.
But now I have the problem that water is not bright enough and does not seem enough mediterranean / tropical because what I like from Rivits inshore "water" is the feeling of the Mediterranean, essential in my region Maybe with Drunkapple mods will be better.

Thanks for all the information Lowkee. For someone like me who knows nothing about program language, this is the only way to know how is the inside of the game. The texture wordl is really interesting and I can't believe that now I know how to modify this kind of things

Edit: Looking at the tutorial "Exemplars related to terrain" i think I'll try to modify the Min Water Depth For Deep Sea Bed Texture to have the texture water more near to the shoreline.

[Lowkee33]

Glad you found a solution.

I have to say, my water texture is a little special, It can be pretty much any color you want.  The texture itself has no color, all of the color you see in-game come from the image with instance 0x69efb6f8 (Yes, there is a FSH there ).  To be exact, all of the color comes from the top pixel of that 1x128 image.  Every other pixel in that image is the gradient of the water on the side of the map.

I've attached an add-on that will make the water from LK_StarterSet_Water.dat (and that water mod ONLY for now) about as tropical as it can be.  Just make sure it loads after the Starter Set water.   The other little water mod I made is this Link, which will make your water have no sun glare on it.  Actually, that other file is does a lot to the brightness of your water, so I bet you could get a lot more range from the Starter Set water. 

I guess these things could be done to other water mods too, but mine was made specifically for this feature.

[Kergelen]

Many thanks for your help Lowkee!

I'm trying your water mod and "playing" a little with some water and terrain textures.
I'll try to add to your tropical water mod a bit of blue with some texture in the instance 0x69efb6f8.

[nas-t]

I'm slightly confused. 


If I got you right, it's about those 0x14 textures that should be missing in the beachmod I use - right?
I had a look into my beach & my water mod and both have 0x14 textures, but my beaches look just like Kergelens before he could fix it.





It tried using 0x14 textures form different beach and watermods nothing changed - could you please help me out?

[Kergelen]

The problem wasn't exacly Texture 0x14.

Try lowering the property "WaterMinAlpha" in the Terrain Exemplar. Then could be that the water become too transparent so you can increase "WaterDepthForMaxAlpha". That solved my problem.

Are you using the PTM?

[nas-t]

HUH! For me lowering the "WaterMinAlpha" smooth out the edges but do not solve the issue.

Actually I don't think it's exactly the same issue but with the same symptoms. 
I was using the same mods all the time without any problems, one day the edges appear. Did you change something in your plugin folder or did it suddenly appear too?

I'm using the MissouriBreaks Terrain Mod.

[Kergelen]

Did you change something in your plugin folder or did it suddenly appear too?

I didn't change nothing. It's strange that you don't change nothing and apear the problem. May you've installed another Mod that may affect the Terrain. Did you try to unininstall and reinstall the Terrain, water and beach mods?

Anyway I think you must lower a lot the WaterMinAlpha because the "Missouri Breaks" have a WaterMinAlpha=0x60 which is very high compared to others recent mods like Apalachian and Oberland(WaterMinAlpha= 0x00) and Sunden Valley (WaterMinAlpha= 0x08). I set my WaterMinAlpha= 0x00 and the "WaterDepthForMaxAlpha"(transparency of the water) =0x15

[nas-t]

Did you try to unininstall and reinstall the Terrain, water and beach mods?

I haven't install anything. Before shoot down my computer everything was like it was supposed to be, after starting SC4 the next day these edges appear. Even restoring my plugin folder from my backups didn't change anything.

Anyway I think you must lower a lot the WaterMinAlpha because the "Missouri Breaks" have a WaterMinAlpha=0x60 which is very high compared to others recent mods [...] I set my WaterMinAlpha= 0x00

Vortext once gave me that hint too. The WaterMinAlpha already was =0x01, now I set it, as you recomment, to =0x00.


Result:




edit:
I tried out the Sudden Valley Terrain Mod & the PTM - same edges.

[Kergelen]

Do you fixed it?

If you have already tried everything I don't know what could be the problem

[Swordmaster]

I haven't install anything. Before shoot down my computer everything was like it was supposed to be, after starting SC4 the next day these edges appear. Even restoring my plugin folder from my backups didn't change anything.

Are you sure about this? That sounds very unlikely. You may have installed something that you didn't think would interact with the terrain.

Looking at your last image, I think this is the result of your seabed (0x14) textures not blending well with the beach textures (0x39). Have you played around with the settings of their exemplars? Try decreasing the TextureBlendStrength of the beach in the 0x00000039 exemplar. Also, if this problem is less when zoomed out, try to copy the TextureSpreadCurve values from that zoom level to the nearer ones.


Cheers
Willy