Customizing Terrain Mods

[morcup]

I've done a little searching around here and haven't been able to find much information on the topic....
My new region is using the Missouri Breaks Terrain Mod, which is perfect, except that the snow textures end up being mostly just barren rock, and I'd like them to consist of a thicker layer of snow, something similar to what the Italia Terrain Mod has.

So, my actual question is: Which examplar controls where the snow line begins, and where it pulls the terrain file from for these textures?
Any pointers or information on this subject would be much appreciated

[Gaston]

Personnally I'd love to see a few more terrain mods made available.     Specifcally tree controllers with specific terrain mods in mind.


---Gaston

[MutantPlatypus]

Actually, I've been doing a little research myself (I recommend searching Ennedi's posts), and its not as simple as a single exemplar.  If you open CPT_No6_MisouriBreaksTerrainController.dat, there's an INI file that maps the terrain textures to elevations and moisture levels.  Looking through the textures, the snow all has instance 0x00000N8f, with N being zoom level i presume.  I assume that if you set all the values in the active table to 8f, you'll get all snow, so you'll have to tinker with the values to find out which ones give you the snow coverage you want.

Waaaay down the road, I'm thinking of making a tool that actually displays a terrain mod's terrain textures on an SC4Terraformer map based on the weather values and the values in that terrain texture tuning INI.  Forget that.  It would seem there are some "secret tools" that do something like that already.  They were mentioned back in 2009... it would be nice if they weren't so secret.  Maybe I'll ask Ennedi for them.  Maybe I'll port them to Java after that.  Right now I'm working on another project.

For now, you're stuck just tweaking them, launching the game to see what it looks like, closing the game, tweaking them again, and launching the game again.  Maybe, if we're really lucky, one of the unknown extra cheats actually releases the file locks on the the .dats the game loaded and another reloads them.

[morcup]

Thanks for the info.

[Lowkee33]

There is another way to change your snow line.  In the Terrain Properties Exemplar there is a identity called Temperature Range Factor.  Changing thing will raise or lower the snow line.

Basically, every texture has a temp. range.  By changing the TRF you will stretch/compact the amount of this range.  This will effect all of your textures.

With enough time I might be able to make a basic tutorial today   

[Rayden]

There is another way to change your snow line.  In the Terrain Properties Exemplar there is a identity called Temperature Range Factor.  Changing thing will raise or lower the snow line.

Basically, every texture has a temp. range.  By changing the TRF you will stretch/compact the amount of this range.  This will effect all of your textures.

With enough time I might be able to make a basic tutorial today  

Without changing the TRF, you can try to play with "MaxTerrainHeight". The terrain textures are spread up to the value on this variable. This means that in a map where the highest point is equal or bellow that value, you can see the whole range of textures, if the highest point it's higher than that value, some of textures might be out of sight, being the snow the first one to disappear.
Use the terrain query to find out the highest point on your map and adjust the value to something like 100 meters above that point. Terrain Query cheat (Ctrl X, then type "TerrainQuery")

[Lowkee33]

That is a useful cheat right there.  Is there anything like that for temperature?  Perhaps a data view?  I will have a Terrain Mod tutorial up within the next hour or so

Check out the tutorial!  (another Sunday of SC4...Check)