Hi all, This will be where I show my terrain projects :).
The thing that got me interested in making terrain mods was finding that the Weather Exemplar is functional. After tweaking it to display all moisture levels I found that existing terrain mods are not totally cohesive.
I start this by editing the Terrain INI to make CP's (Cycledog's) textures simulate seasons. A good picture of the end result can be found Here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11701.msg353182#msg353182). If you would like to test this out, please send me a PM. Feedback is the only requirement.
Now I work on making my own textures. The start of this project is Here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11701.msg362693#msg362693). The conversation is ongoing, so feel free to join in :).
I will be working on a new terrain mod for everyone to enjoy. The reason for this is that the CP terrain mods do not consider/modify the weather in SC4.
Terrain Textures are decided by two factors: Temperature and Moisture. Not altitude. We see snow at high altitudes is because it is colder up there (and cold is where CP put those textures).
There are quiet a few weather properties that can be tweaked, and I am trying to understand them. I have moisture pretty much figured out, but as the mod gets more refined I will learn about temperature.
The most exciting thing about this is that we can have texture that can drastically change from winter to summer (in fact, it is possible to have a texture change every week).
I have found a good balance of the weather properties ad now I am making the texture map. These are two pictures I have so far. The first is in Winter (wettest) and the second is in Summer (driest). They are the same map with the same mod:
Winter:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg443.imageshack.us%2Fimg443%2F8162%2Fwinteryg.jpg&hash=23c7e1d343506b454488e972b309ce9bd3de1555)
Summer:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg690.imageshack.us%2Fimg690%2F769%2Fsummerv.jpg&hash=5f1c18b0d6c6261d159ac10f56cdc9553d1db85e)
The reason I chose this picture was that there was talk about making glaciers. Here we can see that the glacier has dried up during the year. This was a choice I made, and the glacier could be year round.
I decided to post this because I want some input from all of you. My biggest interest is snow right now. Snow generally takes up about half of the terrain on a CP terrain mod. Do people like this? There could be more or less.
One thing that I have made happen is snow on the warmer temps (lower altitude) that melts during the year. This effect can happen anywhere. What is the lowest that people want to ever see snow?
Another piece of help would be more terrain textures. All I know of are the CP no3 and 4 texture packs.
Thanks
I think this is a great idea! &apls I've held off of installing snow mods as I do not want them year round. :-\
However, with regards to your question, I would be surprised if there would be unanimity on the amount of snow. ::)
This may be thinking too far ahead, but depending on how the parameters are modified, is it feasible that the end user could choose how much snow they wanted during install of the mod (ie: dusting, mild, average, heavy, blizzard)?
Editfish
Wow, there is something new! Like editfish, I've held off snow mods so far, but this may now change is the future. As for levels where snow appears, I'd be tempted to go as far as sea level, so long as you can make it completely disappear for a least half a year.
There will eventually be multiple mods to suit different tastes. The end user already has the option to make snow appear anywhere. See the tutorials I posted for info on how to do that. There are variables for how much moisture there is and how much it changes.
I can make snow (or any other texture) appear in lengths of a week.
An interesting variable is hills/wind. Wind blows on one side of a hill and make it drier by a variable amount. The slope that makes something a hill is variable, and there is also a hill moisture boost variable. Finally, where two hill slopes meet there is a "valley", and this has a variable moisture boost variable.
In my first post I forgot to mention Gizmo's rain mod. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it basically makes rain and fills pond-type terrain slopes with water. The downside is that use it too much and you raise the whole sea level.
Well, this is because it increases moisture. My idea is that the reason it does not save is because when you load a game you run the moisture simulation and thus loose the moisture you added with rain. I am looking in to being able to have the moisture simulation make rivers for us!
There is also a variable that appears to be how much game water effects the surrounding moisture levels. I have not seen it do anything, but I hope that an Oasis type feature could be possible.
You should try to contact Ennedi, when I got some relief from RLS, I'm pretty sure it will share all he knows about terran mod
I think the c.p. terrain mods are weather-sensitive actually (change seasonally). As far as I can remember both the Meadowshire and Italia terrain mods change seasonally. But I may be wrong. Could someone verify/falsify this please?
I have a feeling that when Ennedi gets back these textures are going to be obsolete. There is no reason why we can't understand the Weather Exemplar though. Right now it is wet in the winter and dry in the summer, and I believe that if we could load other texture maps than Tropical we would find different weather patterns.
All of the terrain mods have some season change to them, but none of CP's change the default weather pattern. In all of my tweaking I still have not been able to see the coldest and driest texture. Wet is no problem (back to the Tropical theory). Now that I think of it, I don't think I have seen the 2nd driest column either. I wouldn't be surprised if we have never seen a quarter of the possible textures because of this. The default moisture changes are just so low.
I have made the 32 layer texture map. All of the rows have the same texture so that moisture is not a factor. For this I was just drying to get a feel of what I thought would be the warmest temps to the coldest temps. It will be the template for the viens of seasonable textures that will go through. Let me know what you think.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg822.imageshack.us%2Fimg822%2F2707%2F32layer.jpg&hash=6dcf0eabcab5775b401ce25a82700bdaff64f8fa)
There is a Maxis texture there too. It is the darker rock texture. The rock textures will be spotted to places that make sense. The following is a picture of a coldest layer test. This layer is important because of the TempRange. Ennedi can explain it better, but basically the TempRange changes the speed that textures change. When the altitude gets to the limit of that change the coldest temp texture is used. If your MaxHeight is much higher than that limit you will have a whole lot of that one temperature row.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg693.imageshack.us%2Fimg693%2F4566%2F0layertest.jpg&hash=f8800c2b9d6d4952af4ae9c37ad32eddca94fbae)
In the winter this is all solid white snow. I am going to have to figure out how to fit cliffs in, but for now I am focused on the weather pattern.
Snow at sea-level land:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg251.imageshack.us%2Fimg251%2F8853%2Fjanqb.jpg&hash=6fb307f80a8ac2569e5e783d486ad995bd96e50e)
The reason there is snow here is because the side of the hill is so moist. This snow can be removed with one click of a mayor mode terrain tool. The snow lasts from December to March. This is a picture of July, the driest month.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg827.imageshack.us%2Fimg827%2F5808%2Fjulyb.jpg&hash=e69b083ae32e5f1f1f4c8f74d37f9031f977ccc7)
Theoretically it would be possible for the game to show 512 textures throughout the year.
As for moisture and sea level, I don't think these relate in any way. Moisture is higher near shores, but this is due to water proximity, not the sea level. The Sea Level (a property) is a global setting, and this has two (at least) adverse effects:
- Prohibits having water at any elevation above the "sea" level. Mapmakers know how hard it is to make rivers (often you have to lower the whole area near the banks, otherwise slopes would be insane). I made a map containing two lakes which in reality have a different surface elevations, and I had to perform quite a few tricks (incl deformations) to overcome the water level issue.
- Makes it impossible to differentiate between salt and fresh (or "surface" if you prefer so) water. SC4 seems to make no distinction, it has no salt or fresh water, just water.
Interestingly though, there are some properties that prohibit placing water structures at a distance longer than the specified limit, from "salt water" and "fresh water". These are both unused in the ingame water pump, so you can place them even on top of a hill or mountain, or in an area with 0 moisture. I have never tested these, but it might be really interesting, one could make the water pump possible to be placed only near freshwater, and a "Desalination Plant", possible to be placed only near saltwater (such BATs are already released on the STEX). So someone would have to figure out first how to make the game regarding a certain area as "freshwater" (it was your post that triggered this idea :)).
It would be real neat to see the output of a water pump be related to the moisture level. Going through SimCity_1.dat it seems like they had big plans for water that never panned out. Rivers were defiantly one of them as they talk about water from a river changing the color of the water it flows into. There are also hints to erosion that could happen in-game. I guess it wouldn't be fun if your downtown got washed away :)
Edit: Sometimes I wonder if some members of SC4D actually helped develop this game. I don't mean to offend anyone by saying "they" as if "they" failed at something. If you helped develop this just just know that in my opinion you have made the best game out there. (Patrician 3 and X-3 Reunion are pretty sweet too)
Also, I could see moisture levels effecting farm desirability, although for realistic times of the year farms should probably be set to like dry areas. Seasonable jobs would be cool.
I'm pretty sure Maxis had quite a few plans that they had to cut back eventually when releasing the game, or the add-on. I haven't looked at all the stray files in detail, but I also noticed that there are properties for different climatic zones and such. Unfortunately, many of those things are probably EXE-controlled, and while we were able to unlock a few of them (rain tool, dirt roads aka. ANT aka. RHW), others will be locked forever. But it's great to see someone else poking his nose into those files, and who knows, maybe you'll discover something that nobody noticed before. Good luck with that! :)
Thanks Andreas. Part of me wishes I was around for the ANT days.
I have to correct myself. There are only 255 possible textures. The grid is 16x32, but we input the last two digits of the TGI...
Anyway, It seems impossible to ever have the first two (the driest) columns show up in-game. I was able to make winter dry and summer wet though by making the Ambient Temp a negative number. Maybe these Terrain Map choices can be a .DLL.
Well, its late here. I will put this on the shelf tonight.
Did a little research, and figured out how the thing with the water proximity works. Water utilities have a property named Water Source, which specifies where they get the water from. In all three SC4 utilities this is set to 2 (Aquifer) an underground source of water. It is assumed that... drilling anywhere in your city would always find you water. So... you can place them where you like.
Other possible walues for Water Source are 0 (Fresh Water) and 1 (Salt Water). These must be placed "close" (well!) to surface water bodies. This is specified by the "Fresh water pump reach" and "Salt water pump reach" (in the Utilities Simulator exemplar), ie the max distance from fresh/salt water, pumps pumping fresh/salt water can be placed at. Default values are 0x100 (=256), which means that the feature is effecticely "dsabled", even for large cities (they city only needs to have "some" water anywhere. So this exemplar must be modded too. I tried small values (a few tiles). The game doesn't prohibit the player plopping them more afar, but in such a case the pump won't be providing any water (and you will have to bulldoze it). So you must place them close to water. Aaah, and in some... magic way, water is regarded as both fresh and salt! That is both types can pump the same water. Just the two "pump reach" properties affect their corresponding pump types only.
So for a realistic-looking city, you could do the following:
- Place your Water Towers preferably at some decent elevation.
- Place your (normal) pumps preferably near the base of a mountain or tall hill, or in some depression. If elevation is really low, you can even dig a trench or small canal and place the pumps around it.
- Mod the Desalination Plant (make it a real saltwater one) and place it close (ashore) to what is considered "salt water" (sea or saline lake).
- Make a new "Fresh Water Pump" BAT or Lot (mod it as such too) and place it close to what is considered "fresh water" (lake, pond, river etc). You could even use the ingame pumps here.
Cool find there. There is also a "Fresh water distance loss" property that is set to %100 by default. I noticed a difference between fresh water and sea water also. My pump was set to sea-water and my tower was set to fresh-water. I set the "fresh water distance loss" to %50. With no game water both pumps had %0 output. When I made water (both terraform and rain tool) the pump went to %100 and the tower went to %50. The aquifer is always at %100.
Water related simulation seems like a huge thing that Maxis took out at the end of development. The Terrain INI talks about the player turning rain off so that we can see how the things we have placed effect moisture. I really want to see a river formed from the moisture effects I am doing, but that is trial and error process while I test my texture placements. It seems like the function always gives a percent while the river is waiting for a 1.
As for water utility placement. A pump at the base of a hill would be the most effective as far as moisture goes. At that point the moisture gets a boost as it is considered to be in a valley. We know in real life that the best place for a water tower is the top of a hill. In-Game though, this is the second driest place (first being the side of a hill that the wind hits).
The things I am doing to moisture are not exactly realistic right now, but mostly I am trying to get the most texture changes. I am still figuring out two of the moisture variables. There is Moisture Variation and Moisture Variation Factor. It seems like moisture variation changes the moisture level four times a year. The amount is the variable we can plug in. The moisture variation factor seems to make the land drier and drier in between these four times of the year. The variable there too is by how much.
These variables are a little off balanced right now. I made the lowest (hottest) terrain level today, and my biggest concern was making it so that flat land is never snow. I am also trying to make flat land change every month, but sometimes the texture is annoying to see repeated constantly (such as yellow flowers). One setting I had did flat land pretty but it was lost as I tried to balance the snow. Oh well, here are two pictures of the first terrain levels. The first is winter and the second is summer. Now, maybe I haven't been very realistic (the hottest/driest place should be desert), but for now it just needs to blend. I am beginning to learn these textures by Instance...
Winter:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg178.imageshack.us%2Fimg178%2F6855%2Fl31wintersept15.jpg&hash=7fbf0ffff9afa626527f05dfbebdd3c26e02f75b)
Summer:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg16.imageshack.us%2Fimg16%2F167%2Fl31summersept15.jpg&hash=5945ca8c3c067bd185b54e9b8cb0617f2d18ea8a)
(I haven't been able to get winter to make my GPU colder :))
The side of the hill looks a little too green in the winter, but changing it would mean loosing it in the spring. This again gets back to balancing the variables.
My favorite is September, but it looks pretty much the same as July right now. I am trying to get the more colorful textures to be spotted in the terrain, but they are distracting when they exist on flat land. You can see the "flat land test" on the left side of each picture.
Please tell me what you think. Remember, this is just the first of 32 layers of textures. Perhaps we all need to see more to tell how it all fits in. Perhaps the hottest layer never gets snow or lush grass.
My look at fresh/sea water was not very exact. I forgot to change the reach of the sea-water-pump. No real conclusion to come to. I guess the main thing is that Moisture levels have nothing to do with it as the fresh-water-tower did not change output at all even though it was on a tile that went from very dry to very wet.
One variable that I don't understand yet is the SeaModerationRadius/Factor. I would imagine that it effects the moisture coming off of a "sea", but my testing has not shown any changes in moisture yet.
About the terrain mod, the hottest layer (#31) is not very noticeable when using the default MaxHeight. I think the Mod will have to make the MaxHeight much higher, which is easy enough. I would also like to drop the sea-level, but most of the maps we can download use the default sea-level as a base. I also don't know the height that our LEX mapmakers like to make things. As I get closer to a complete mod I will have to talk to them about the way they make maps, or perhaps them starting to use a dropped sea-level. I think snow should be year round at the height that it is on Earth. On Earth there is also a tree line, but that gets into tree controllers.
The whole other thing is the Tree Controller. I think Maxis trees grow by themselves, and I would like custom trees to grow by themselves as well. I have noticed the c.p. terrain mods have the flora exemplar in them, and the settings they are at will plant maxis trees and eventually crash SC4.
There are two properties there. Basically they are the amount of random trees planted, and the time it takes. c.p. has these set at x01 and x18. Could someone test this by running a blank map for a couple years? I believe there will be Maxis trees planted (even with a tree controller). I thought these setting were very interesting, but when I tested them a xFF and x01 I received a crash within 2 months. Even a setting like x01 and 0x01 eventually crashed (the patterns of trees was interesting before the crash though).
I am at school today, so no level #30 update.
My knowledge about tree controllers is somewhat basic, but I know that Maxis basically has three sets of trees (deciduous, pines, and shrubs) with five different models each (small tree, large tree, two trees, group of trees etc.), which will be planted based on elevation. Those trees can serve both for God Mode and Mayor Mode via the various properties in the exemplar files.
When Cycledogg created his set of tree controllers, he expanded the number of different trees hugely, but each tree controller holds the very same set of exemplar files, which allows us to switch between them without crashes. However, once a CP tree controller has been used, you need to keep it, even if you switch back to Maxis trees (hence the "Maxis" variant that is included in the set). Different tree planting patterns are controlled by a different layout in the kSC4FloraPreferencesProperty, and if you don't want a certain tree, you simply zero out any of the 256 REPs.
Since I didn't like all the trees that were growing with a certain tree controller of my choice (there were still a few Maxis pines and such), I browsed through the whole set of exemplar files and changed the model ID in the Resource Key Type 1 property, pointing to a different tree model. My SFBT Tree Replacement Mod that changes all Maxis trees to Cycledogg trees (also the Mayor Mode and God Mode ones, but only using the Maxis exemplar files) works the same, and thus, replaces the tree models "on the fly", without the risk of crashing that might occur by adding/deleting/changing the ID of the exemplars.
Interesting. I can say that the trees that a controller places in January are different than the trees it will plant in July (you will get more in Jan). The reason for this is moisture, and that windy side of the hill is going to be much wetter in the winter (even with default settings). The direction of the wind also changes during the year.
Progress is very slow on the mod. I was able to make a good first layer, but I have to change my strategy to make the rest. My best idea right now is to make clump-type-things, which are basically have a cool-yet-out-of-place texture in the center which is surrounded by blending textures. Then it is a matter of blending the clumps together while maintaining a somewhat temp-moisture level realistic-ness. It just seems like they all have to be placed perfectly and at the same time.
I was able to get the two driest texture levels today with some crazy variable settings. Here is a picture of the re-vamped moisture data view at the time:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg299.imageshack.us%2Fimg299%2F329%2Fcrazy1p.jpg&hash=a4f7edda3025199c5080b3e25567aa474c3041bc)
You can see I have the driest (desert) and wettest (snow) within ten tiles of each other on FLAT LAND!
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg710.imageshack.us%2Fimg710%2F2801%2Fcrazy2v.jpg&hash=0c56667278bd3da22644f1f4ce85e6ad7df0a9f6)
I hope I can get the dry textures without craziness like that. The good thing about it is that with the right settings I may be able to get three temp levels with all 16 moisture levels at the same time. I think it will help the mod process. With these settings I have also been able to set the TexTileFactor to .6 which is 3x the crispness of the cp terrain mods.
Last post I was a little overwhelmed with the scope of this process. Yesterday I managed to get past that and focus myself at one texture at a time (now sometimes 2 or 3). Basically I open SC4, copy the screen into paint, switch a couple textures, and repeat.
I am making some good progress with an ETA at about a month, but I want some feedback. I have three questions for you all about this picture:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg534.imageshack.us%2Fimg534%2F3479%2Fquestionym.jpg&hash=2fd80841a1a0630bce30d17c7d0ba856640324bb)
1) Do the textures change to fast?
2) Do they match each other?
3) Does this look like the hottest and driest area? (I could use desert, but I want to make these textures that you would not mind seeing at sea-level.)
Thanks
Good research and job here ;)
I come back a little bit on mountain areas. I am interested by this area due to lot of works about pines, skilifts and moutain items.
I post again a picture where you spoke about glacier:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnsa20.casimages.com%2Fimg%2F2010%2F09%2F19%2F100919081410748736.jpg&hash=bbce63127d8bcdcfd8334a966af6616a72ec11c3) (http://www.casimages.com)
The common area for a glacier is in the red areas however a glacier is not snow (it's important a glacier drains rocks etc so it's much darker than snow without speaking winter/summer differences).
Lot of modders who made terrain mod forgot "morraine" and we speak a lot with Orange about this for the PTM. The result was a transition between eternal snow and "green land". It's the green area I made on paint. It's impossible to forget it because it's all the rocks drained byt the glacier. Moreover the transition is good (with or without glacier) it's what we call screes. Often there are small lakes in these areas.
PTM from Orange:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnsa20.casimages.com%2Fimg%2F2010%2F09%2F19%2F100919081824850138.jpg&hash=78623fdc22327411fd1ab37775be55c89034ca00) (http://www.casimages.com)
For me the 2 types of screes in the PTM are very goodand well worked. However I don't like the texture of "full rocks" after the screes.The rock textures before it is so good for morraine I think.
I stay to mountains with another mod from Orange which is interesting too. I don't know if he released this one. It's how look like peaks
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnsa20.casimages.com%2Fimg%2F2010%2F09%2F19%2F100919082348501013.jpg&hash=fceec777ec2b362c5c239d866a10ccb4a7e6ea10) (http://www.casimages.com)
This one is awesome even if there is a problem because it replaces all rocks textures in the map (so in plains is not appropriate &mmm).
For me it's important now to make mayor mod flora items in relationship with the terrain mod (for glacier, same rock textures etc)
Which concerns plains I am not so good to help you but I think it's interesting to consider flora items for developing areas and textures. Indeed under forests, textures are not the same than in the plains or whatever.
I don't well understand but the mod is seasonal and you are working about how to switch from winter to summer with good textures ?
For my taste, even if there is plains textures small rock texture could fit good but all these are only ideas ;)
At first I have to say, I'm not able to contribute anything like knowledge about modding terrain mods, tree controllers or knowledge how a terrain mod should look like.
But I have to say, I'm amazed that after 7 years still such discoveries are possible and we are still having a great community who spends hours of free time to make this game better and more realistic. :)
I really hope, your future researches and results on this will be successfull :thumbsup:
Thanks for the replies. It is important for me that everybody at least has the chance to give opinions.
@ Girafe: I have put the high altitudes on hold for right now. There are so few textures to choose from that making a realistic mountain top is relatively easy compared to the 300+ other texture spots. The more textures there are the better. Are those screes "rocks" game wise, or do they have there own instance number? Can you point me to a download link? I will have your ski lift in mind as I finalize the snow.
Your ski-lifts happen to change textures at the same time I have winter to exist. Excellent! I did not see a seasonable tree lot after I installed. Here are two quick pictures of the concept:
Winter:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg408.imageshack.us%2Fimg408%2F8512%2Fwinterg.jpg&hash=621c3c726fdfe9923cd4ff86527af127dc1254dd)
Summer:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg826.imageshack.us%2Fimg826%2F9537%2Fsummerzs.jpg&hash=fb1480088ba359855ba2d5eb7446bf56f4330dd6)
Of course the terrain is still being worked on. Do you have plans to make those trees into a seasonable lot? Same timing would be perfect, and I will certainly make this mod to fit them.
I do a little flora testing every now and again. Flora is a big concern that will need to be dealt with. Most of our custom trees look very strange as textures change. I was happy that the "standard" seasonable lots change rather reasonably with my set-up right now. I also use the "pasture flora" in various places. There is a property that stretches textures (the reason why new textures should be made 1024x1024) and I have found that when there are so many different textures there does not need to be as much stretching. Without stretching, all types of flora look much better.
I took the flowers out of the picture I showed before. It looks much more "dry", plus I can use them in other places, while the dry grass doesn't really blend with much else (and therefore gets a corner slot).
Hi Lowkee.
What a great job you are doing! Can't wait to see the final product. In regards to your first post asking for feedback, I think that the textures need to be more 'scrubby' - browner? In Australia, we have dry areas near to the coast, and mostly it is patchy scrubs. Reading you last post, I can see you've started to change it to a 'drier', scrubbier look anyway.
In my cities, I like to have wide swathes of textures, such as in your screenshot in your last post. But also do not mind having patches of similar textures...
Hope this helps?
Quote from: Girafe on September 19, 2010, 11:30:10 AM
I stay to mountains with another mod from Orange which is interesting too. I don't know if he released this one. It's how look like peaks
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnsa20.casimages.com%2Fimg%2F2010%2F09%2F19%2F100919082348501013.jpg&hash=fceec777ec2b362c5c239d866a10ccb4a7e6ea10) (http://www.casimages.com)
This mountain texture would look really cool with moss instead of snow. Unfortunately I couldn't find any way to use two different rock textures for grassy and high snowy areas. So at this moment I don't have snow.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on September 19, 2010, 10:13:47 AM
Last post I was a little overwhelmed with the scope of this process. Yesterday I managed to get past that and focus myself at one texture at a time (now sometimes 2 or 3). Basically I open SC4, copy the screen into paint, switch a couple textures, and repeat.
I am making some good progress with an ETA at about a month, but I want some feedback. I have three questions for you all about this picture:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg534.imageshack.us%2Fimg534%2F3479%2Fquestionym.jpg&hash=2fd80841a1a0630bce30d17c7d0ba856640324bb)
1) Do the textures change to fast?
2) Do they match each other?
3) Does this look like the hottest and driest area? (I could use desert, but I want to make these textures that you would not mind seeing at sea-level.)
Thanks
I've never experienced so fast texture change in flat terrain, but it looks good. What settings could allow this?
I think flowers had dark green base texture, so its not the possible hottest look. Am I think right, that driest has no meaning in this mod?
Quote from: kodlovag on September 20, 2010, 09:09:49 AM
I've never experienced so fast texture change in flat terrain, but it looks good. What settings could allow this?
I think flowers had dark green base texture, so its not the possible hottest look. Am I think right, that driest has no meaning in this mod?
I guess I should include grid lines with the picture because the land in there is not flat. If I remember correctly the flowers are a gentle slope, the greener grass is a steeper slope, and the dry grass is flat. There is about 8 textures on that shot. I am working on making the crazy moisture variation be all year round. I think that with the proper textures that it would be a neat "flat land" terrain mod. Anyway, the mod looks different now.
Dry has meaning more-or-less. There is basically a grid of moisture columns and temperature rows. The driest column is mostly dry grass that leads to rock textures and then snow. Now, snow is dry (frozen), but in SC4 the winter is wet. Therefore snow must be "wet" too. Right now I have a huge difference in moisture for north/south side of hills, so snow will also have to be "dry" to make the mod appear realistic. I guess there is two kinds of realistic to think of, one is strict wet/dry/cold/hot and the other is thinking "well, barren rocks don't turn into jungle", I have pulled strings in both cases to make the mod "look good"
Quote from: kodlovag on September 20, 2010, 08:48:49 AM
This mountain texture would look really cool with moss instead of snow. Unfortunately I couldn't find any way to use two different rock textures for grassy and high snowy areas. So at this moment I don't have snow.
The cp terrain mods have left us in somewhat of a situation. We have No3&4, which are the standard textures, and the "rock" mods. Terrain mods work by referencing the Instance of a texture. The CP mods all require rock textures because the references to them are in there. Every different rock texture set has the same Instance numbers. Thats how it works, but it also means that we can't use two rock sets at once. Even this project doesn't match the scope of the cp mods (as he MADE the textures), and he did such a good job that there aren't many new Instances out there. I think it would be the ultimate compliment if years form now we were still using the same Instance sets (although I would hope we could have all 255 made).
It is possible to have your own mod, but you wouldn't be able to upload it. You would either match Instance of the texture you want to the one you don't, delete the one you don't, and name that file to load last. A better way would be to give the texture you want a new Instance and insert it into the Texture Map Table.
I am looking for more textures all of the time.
@shultzcity: What mod do you use now? For this first mod flat land will be the same texture, but yeah, not really Australia. If you want to post some links to pictures that give me a good idea of different Australian landscapes then I will be thinking about that for a later mod.
This first one doesn't really have a place on Earth, but I am just trying to get the most out of the textures and weather.
I give you more information about what I have done and plan to do. All is written on this .xls sheet
All skilifts are seasonal: winter season begins the 1st December and finishes the 1st April.
Usually ski resorts developped no under 100-1200m height. So it's for this reason I made the degressive diagramm with the different altitudes and the period where snow should appears or disappears.
Moreover I consider than a height of more than 5000m is not interesting (doesn't exist in Europe and nothing at this altitude).
All periods for each height are good for me but after I assume it's not realistic in the game and I think it's hard to do however it's what we can find in Western Europe in the alps and at this point is realistic in the reality.
Then, I consider 4 "stages" of textures (1000-1800m ; 2000-2600 ; 2800 - 3600 : 3800 +). These stages are with example of textures and flora we can find.
If you will be successful with any terrain mod, as I said previously it's important to develop mayor mod items with the textures (for adding 3D aspects).
I wait for Dedgren who is modding my pines to be sure it's possible and it's correct in the game. My pines are modded as the skilifts so (1st December to 1st April), it would be correct because no pines after 1800m.
As soon as the first mods will be release I will develop more seasonal stuffs (mostly oriented to mountains)
Only an interval of 15 days at the start but it's ok. For the end of winter no problem often pines are not covered of snow so during 1st April to 1st May they will be not covered.
What I put it's only ideas and I don't care about difficulties and possibilities of terrain modding but I hope it could be help you.
If you need more or test some stuff, no problem ;)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnsa20.casimages.com%2Fimg%2F2010%2F09%2F20%2F100920075441620316.jpg&hash=c4b85cb63d125d76c7dcf197b2e5f1c4a5b9f456) (http://www.casimages.com)
I made my own terrain mod, and also made a simple support program to display the 32x16 size texture map graphically. It helps editing the text in the terrain ini file. I also made an image 'database' to easily search for the textures. If I remember well, CP texture set uses only the 90-FF region, and a few 8x ID for snowy textures. The game uses the 31-39 region and few others for beach, rock and map edge. I think there is a lot of free texture ID, at least 100 in a mostly continuous group, but there are free IDs in the CP range too.
Unfortunately the Pyrenean Mod has incompatible texture IDs with CP terrain files. So for my mod I modified the PTM texture IDs to be able to use them together with CP textures. Well, that means I will never be able to upload it.
My mod is basically an edited Columbus terrain mod, with using the PTM textures in its dry side. High altitudes are modified to be rocky, and no snow in it, because I selected a grassy rock texture as rock mod, and it would look funny in a snowy environment. Unfortunately it is not possible to use different rock mod for high altitudes. I could not make high cliff texture to work, or maybe it is used totally differently in game as I would like to use.
I agree, it is very hard to force the game to display the driest and hottest textures. Actually I failed with the driest. Maybe its only visible at summer on the north side of steep hills.
I will follow this topic, maybe I can help you somehow.
I just have to say... wow. Just by looking at SC4, you'd never think all this stuff was going on in the background.
I'm gonna keep tabs on this.
@Girafe: Thanks for the chart. I was able to download the PTM and after a quick look it appears that some textures would match c.p. and don't have the same instance. It would be a matter of naming one or the other to load last.
@Kodlovag: I have been trying to make a support program like the one you made. I am not very tech savvy so I think the best that I can do is make a Visual Basic script that excel will read, get excel to display the picture from a folder structure, and then have the folder structure include a variable as the file name. I would then put the file name in a different cell and the correct picture would hopefully appear. Its the VB part that I halted at, but I may look into it. I am getting a good sense of what instances match each other anyway.
I was able to get the driest temp when I made the MoistureVariationFactor = 3. I toned it down a little to make the seasons more fluid (and also not have snow next to desert). I have tinkered with other variables too, but that one seems to make the moisture differences more extreme (while others dictate how much moisture there is).
The biggest help that I can think of is, as this progresses, telling me what looks good/bad/match/doesn't match etc. I will be working on realism as this gets more fine tuned. Right now I feel like if I can fill 10 id's per day then that is pretty good.
Which brings me to today's post... I was a little hesitant to get into Reader as I woke up, so I learned how to import pngs into SC4. Future terrain textures should be 1024x1024 and I wanted to get an idea of how to make them. I stretched some cp textures out and did some photo shopping (at which I am brand new to) and it works pretty good. They looked pixel-ated at close zooms, but from all zooms the line between textures was completely unnoticeable. With HD textures we can stretch them out more.
I got distracted with my new terrain...
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg829.imageshack.us%2Fimg829%2F7213%2Fyesd.jpg&hash=336c379290cadc2a617db5b47bf133b0ba668ea1)
Then I got very distracted...don't hit me:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg201.imageshack.us%2Fimg201%2F8581%2Fyesnx.jpg&hash=02b7557402d713cfe20d59e3426439629eda732e)
and what distraction!! :thumbsup: &apls
I just saw the top portion of your fist pic and was already thinking Starry Night (http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/508/Starry-Night.html)
is there anything that can't be done with this game?! $%Grinno$% ;D
this picture is a jewel and Van gogh a genius ::)
I forgot to mention about the cliffs. The cliff texture appears on any slope that is more than a certain value. We can set this value in the Terrain Exemplar with the property: MaxYforCliff. For my pictures I have set this value to 0 (no cliffs). I believe that a value of 1 would be all cliffs.
The texture I posted makes me think of city planning though. We could set the terrain as a road map of a real city.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on September 21, 2010, 12:32:40 PM
@Kodlovag: I have been trying to make a support program like the one you made. I am not very tech savvy so I think the best that I can do is make a Visual Basic script that excel will read, get excel to display the picture from a folder structure, and then have the folder structure include a variable as the file name. I would then put the file name in a different cell and the correct picture would hopefully appear. Its the VB part that I halted at, but I may look into it. I am getting a good sense of what instances match each other anyway.
I wrote my program in MATLAB. I'm using it almost everyday, easiest way to make a simple support program. At least for me. My only problem that I cannot read fsh files directly, I must convert them to png first, but there are many good fsh converter here at sc4d. What would be the big jump is to read the dat files directly.
And the second image is definitely a masterpiece.
It's been a couple days since I checked in. I have noticed there has been a significant drop in the rate of posts on SC4D because school has started. It is the same for me.
I got a few more moisture levels in today, but they are pretty rough as I just try to fill them in. Sometimes things look good up close but bad from far away, and visa-versa.
@Girafe: Today I made a quick mod based on the excel table you showed. There are some things you should take note of as you proceed.
1)Flat land doesn't change textures mid-month. Moisture changes every week, but on flat land it is not enough to change textures.
2) Moisture changes equally through the year. Jan. is wettest, and July is driest. Other months have a "sister" month in which moisture is equal (Feb/Dec, March/Nov, April/Oct, May/Sept, and June/August). Therefore we can't have seasons that last from December to April (if we want 3D to match textures perfectly). However, I did have snow match your ski lifts before, so I imagine that has to do with sloped land.
3) With the moisture settings that I have (that maximize texture change) the snow levels and durations in your chart make for about 80% of the tiles to be snow. For instance, the scree texture got about 6 of the possible 512 texture slots. 6 is about the amount of times to repeat a texture on the Table, but that left snow filling about 400 of them (hence the quick mod).
I will certainly be trying to tweak the variables to solve these problems, but I think the 2nd one is here to stay. There is a time-for-complete-moisture-simulation variable, and it would be neat to have dry/wet years, but my testing has shown that the changing the variable does nothing.
I have been able to make some good progress the past few days. Some things that I didn't think mattered at the start were kicking me near the end.
When exporting the images from Reader it is important to export from zoom 4. I also did a much better job at sorting the images. Excel works pretty good for this, as I just imported the images. This way I could drag them to where they matched each other, and then fill in a cell to label them.
The second major thing was that I got serious about the weather pattern. I was having problems because I was making flat land annoying textures. When I figured out which moisture level corresponded to each texture change I realized my variables were set way too dry. There are 16 moisture levels and I think I got them pretty well balanced. The months represent what moisture exists on flat land:
June/ May/ Apr/ March/ Feb/
July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
I also was having trouble with realism. At first I thought the warmest/driest should be desert like, but I found this to look strange as it makes desert right next to the sea. Which I guess does happen, but not where I am, and dunes can be done in a beach mod anyway.
I was happy enough with what I did to post it: This is one of Dobdriver's maps and can be found on the LEX (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2326).
Winter:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg219.imageshack.us%2Fimg219%2F4585%2Fwinterux.jpg&hash=972bae8ec5662f955c7a02e70980e9b4e555d529)
Spring/Fall:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg340.imageshack.us%2Fimg340%2F9351%2Fspingfall.jpg&hash=47ba7eaf6382b56606b1eaabfc421ef8c97bd6c3)
Summer:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg140.imageshack.us%2Fimg140%2F3020%2Fsummerg.jpg&hash=7e80259a649b2803da489103d9115059129175b7)
The max altitude on this map is about 1500, and my MaxTerrainHeight is set to 3000. So, we are missing some textures. I can say that there is perma-snow at the altitudes that Girafe suggested, and as that is about 1/4 of the texture map, we aren't missing too much to talk about. Mapping the top 1/4 will be relatively easy, as I would image we want snow on level ground and rocky details on the slopes. I figure dry/wet doesn't matter too much up there, so the biggest interest is looking good and being balanced/fun
There are quiet a few things that need sorting:
1) I think winter is best, but you can see in the top that the textures don't line up between cities. This is because the wind is coming from a different direction, and I do not understand it.
2) I think I made the "wet because of the water" zone go a little too far. Right now green textures are the bottom 4 rows and I think I will try the bottom 2 or perhaps just the lowest.
3) The high/dry areas defiantly need to be reworked. I don't like being able to see the temp. lines, especially when they are that color. So as I drop the green area I will also be smoothing out that section. I think I ran out of textures and had to start using textures I already had in other places.
4) One strange issue is a CTD. With the plugins I have I can no longer demolish Maxis Pines along the edge of the map. That's right, oaks are okay, and so are pines anywhere else. I thought I found a "Death Tree", but then I didn't crash with an empty plugin's folder.
At least now I am happy with the mod as a whole and don't feel I have to start all over again. Tree Controllers work pretty good and sometimes JRJ seasonable lots look excellent. Sometimes it is just terrible :)
Thanks for viewing everyone. Feel free to post any comments or links to maps that you really want this mod to look good in.
...All quiet on the Western Front
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg42.imageshack.us%2Fimg42%2F4520%2Fmyspacegens98999783161.gif&hash=b6aeeba1984eae810ca4018ba47be5c56d6bc1fb)
Larger (640x480 3.7mb) (http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5503/mmedium.gif)
(It looks like November got messed up)
Getting close here. Here are thumbnails to Jan-July: (August-Dec just cycle back to Jan)
I don't like loading imageshack, so a direct link is below.
January: February: March: April:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg242.imageshack.us%2Fimg242%2F982%2F01jan.th.jpg&hash=509e838d463142d70b36d23fec64e756badb92d7) (http://img242.imageshack.us/i/01jan.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg641.imageshack.us%2Fimg641%2F9830%2F02feb.th.jpg&hash=5e2ccd756c0b325289f9fc9691ba1e05161defc1) (http://img641.imageshack.us/i/02feb.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg135.imageshack.us%2Fimg135%2F3962%2F03marchb.th.jpg&hash=02569b7574c494e13dfea9b2c914c1e28607d13d) (http://img135.imageshack.us/i/03marchb.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg138.imageshack.us%2Fimg138%2F949%2F04april.th.jpg&hash=d660407706c7610e88929772768845540dc8b45c) (http://img138.imageshack.us/i/04april.jpg/)
January (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/982/01jan.jpg) February (http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/9830/02feb.jpg) March (http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3962/03marchb.jpg) April (http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/949/04april.jpg)
May: June: July: With Trees:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg814.imageshack.us%2Fimg814%2F710%2F05may.th.jpg&hash=c186b401e74505dd4b2c7ef8dbf136f16c85b5f5) (http://img814.imageshack.us/i/05may.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg2.imageshack.us%2Fimg2%2F5430%2F06june.th.jpg&hash=45e4d67fa9dccec4f9cca0e6b28989e3b3465bdd) (http://img2.imageshack.us/i/06june.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg409.imageshack.us%2Fimg409%2F2397%2F07july.th.jpg&hash=f89b1643953d7f54425c851249730c854bfcb060) (http://img409.imageshack.us/i/07july.jpg/) (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg225.imageshack.us%2Fimg225%2F9942%2F09trees.th.jpg&hash=21383d04472c580355d549540bea162dff5eb9c7) (http://img225.imageshack.us/i/09trees.jpg/)
May (http://img814.imageshack.us/img814/710/05may.jpg) June (http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/5430/06june.jpg) July (http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/2397/07july.jpg) With Trees (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/9942/09trees.jpg)
This is the map map as before, but making it smaller and having one region for each month certainly speeds up the testing process. I learned a few things about optimizing a terrain mod over the week. By using the "terrainquery" cheat one can get close to the max altitude of the map. Therefor I set the MaxAltitude in the Terrain Exemplar to near that. I then changed the TempRangeFactor to something that I thought gave a good spread of textures.
The same is possible with a tree controller. There is permanent snow at about 800m for this map, and so I set that to the max altitude in the Flora Brush exemplar (and it's still a little high). The gif is there to show that seasonable tree can look good, and the "with trees" picture is there to show that a pre-existing tree controller can work quite well. There is a downside though. The trees planted best in March/November. It does not appear that the moisture simulation starts until Mayor Mode is activates, so there's that.
Fall/Winter need to be looked at. It appears that the green-river-buffer-range was forgotten about. I wanted winter do defiantly look cold, but I am still learning my way around those textures. There are not very many, and less that would be suitable for level terrain. I know for sure the textures I used don't match each other close up anyway.
July/June Jan/Feb are pretty similar. This is because they are next to each other in moisture, while all of the other months have a 1 or 2 column space. It is tough to get a smooth transition and still want every month to look different.
The Snow level is actually more quirky than I thought. At first I had "belts" of rocky snow going through, but it seemed a little silly, so I just left large areas as just snow. Perhaps I will terraform later and figure out exactly how the region should behave.
Yep, just a few more out of place textures. Then I get to figure out why in the world the wind is blowing in the opposite direction in the different cities. I did notice that the cp mods have this attribute as well (same reason that trees don't always line up with a tree controller), but it is far less noticeable. I think it is a rendering thing.
well your post might not be finished... but I like what I see!
I wish I could help.. but what you are attempting is way over my head!... but I do hope to reap your rewards! ;) &apls
If there's something in game I can do... or if you need a 'guinea pig'... just let me know... it's about all the help I can offer right now... other than encouragement! :thumbsup:
Thanks.
Actually there is something you could do. I have attached the Weather Exemplar that I am using for the mod. If you could test to see if this slows down your game then that would be great. I am computing less variables, and I think the game should run faster, alas, I have no big cities.
If you are familiar with Ilive's Reader:
I have the "monthsweeks for complete moisture simulation" set to 52. Try changing that to 1 (which is default) and see if the rate of game changes.
If you really want to get deep you can make a Moisture Data View mod (Instructions in the "Advanced" link in my sig), and see if changing that stat to something like 10,000 actually makes any difference at all.
I am not too sure about the uploading permissions this mod falls under. I am using the cp textures, and therefor they are a dependency. The problem is that cp hasn't been online recently. Can anyone speak on his behalf?
I haven't really focused on the packaging part of this mod. I think I could get away with only uploading the INI and Weather exemplar for the entire mod. I am looking for opinions about the highest altitude that people play with. On the other hand, in order to make a terrain look perfect you really have to know how to work with the exemplars.
I know of two mods that need to be terrain specific: Ennedi's Jagged edges mod and Cogeo's Erosion mod. Are there any more? I would basically make those mods myself and include them in the package for simplicity.
Also note that if you use that weather mod you will see a huge difference to the way your terrain looks during the year :).
I started rendering a new map to play with all of the things I have learned. This left side of the city being different is a real killer. I believe everyone has seen this problem (the trees the controller plants are different on the left side and the tiles don't match up anymore).
I don't know what causes this and if anyone has been able to solve that then that is a giant hurdle this mod has to get over.
Add the HD starry night textures to the list of terrain exemplar mods.
I am a little baffled by the Starry Night terrain. I'm assuming you didn't make that as a regular terrain mod, I;E using diffrent textures for different elevations. Anyways my question is, would it be possible to get an HD picture of some terrain and import that a custom SC4 terrain. I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense because terrain mods are in no way my area of expertise. I'm just curious as to how you did that.
- Matt
QuoteAdd the HD starry night textures to the list of terrain exemplar mods
Well that is confusing. I meant to say the The HD StarBackground Mod found on the LEX (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2389).
There are about 30 patches that come with it just to make it it work with the various types of terrain mods (different textures/heights/cliffs). One thing that may be useful is to include the default maxis Terrain Exemplar, and give it a Parent Cohort of the same thing. This way any mod would only have to be the one/two lines in the Exemplar that it changes, and then point to the parent cohort.
Erosion mods are a little different in that they work within the INI. Not too hard to put out two (erosion/no erosion) files though.
To answer your question though: Totally possible. Do you want to know how? Basically the only requirements for a texture is that is has been converted to PNG (which can be done in MSpaint), and that is a square with binary dimensions (1,2,4,8,16...128,256,512,1024...). Once you have that you convert in into a FSH, apply it to the texture map, and it appears in-game. There are a few more steps, but you could have any picture be your terrain.
For the Starry Night picture I showed I found it online as 1024x1024, and put it into the INI as every moisture and temperature level. As a side project I wondered the same thing as you, and I found a birds-eye view of some Earth terrain that was very large. I then used a photo-shopping program to break it into 12 1024x1024s and then loaded each city with it's own section. As I terraformed mountains where the picture showed there were mountains it looked rather convincing. The problem is that the size of the image changes as you zoom, so that building a city so that it looks good on the terrain would take a lot of zoom changes, and would probably only look good from the furthest zoom. I found a large water image online, and that did look pretty cool. The only problem there is that the textures need to be spread out, so when the water looked good the terrain looked terrible.
OIC, that is too bad if only making a terrain mod could be that easy :D But I do suppose this means that we can make 3D replicas of our favourite paintings and pictures using SC4 $%Grinno$%
- Matt
I was thinking my "Show us your pictures... Of Yourself" post would be a picture of me playing SC4 with a picture of me as the terrain ::)
Making some progress on the edge issue. On a flat map the edge seems to be random for every city render (same city can have different edges provided you don't save). Maps with hills start with a moisture level, and then after the first week of mayor mode "jump" to a moisture setting that is the same every render.
So right now I am just changing the INI so that, at least for this map, the borders are un-noticeable. Fortunatly the same effect can be given to a tree controller, and we may be able to bypass this issue entirely. I am having to take out some snow from the lower/wet areas and add to some high/dry areas. I noticed that my July is seamless, so that at least gives me hope.
...I talk a lot in this thread.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on October 18, 2010, 03:26:04 PM
Thanks.
Actually there is something you could do. I have attached the Weather Exemplar that I am using for the mod. If you could test to see if this slows down your game then that would be great. I am computing less variables, and I think the game should run faster, alas, I have no big cities.
I sometimes play with Wren Weburg's Maxisland region (http://www.sc4ever.com/media/maxisland.cfm) It comes with a region pop of 1.3 million and some hilly terrain. I'll pop in your mod and see if I notice a difference.
QuoteIf you are familiar with Ilive's Reader:
I downloaded and installed Ilive's Reader just after I got back into the game... opened it once.. and closed it real quick! :o ... and frankly, not ready to open it again. ()sad() Sorry I can't help on that level... hopefully there are others that would be more adventurous than I.
goes off to play...
EDIT after a few hours of game play she returns...
No bad news!!! Nothing stuck out at me as far as 'speed of game play'. I am playing with CPT No6 ItaliaTerrain Controller. It was cool to see the season sequence..especially when the snow showed up on the mountain tops! Up until installing your weather exemplar, I never noticed seasons before... well unless I had seasonal trees... but to notice the ground texture changing as the year passed was pretty cool! :thumbsup:
My only comment is how brown things get starting in mid July through August...the idea is right, but the colour (IMHO) is wrong... in nature summer fading to autumn is more 'light brown', tan.... bleached.. (but not too white!)
I don't know much... but I really like this!
Let me know if you need more feedback...
Cheers
@Gringamuyloca: I forgot about Wren's MaxisLand, I will certainly be using this. Thanks for the feedback. Good to know it didn't crash you. I will be considering your opinion about the colors, in fact, I may have a solution. Also, keep in mind that this will not be the Italia Terrain Mod. I also think it's okay to double post when you have something as valid to say as your edit. That way it gets marked as a new reply to me, but the surprise is nice too :)
So, I posted my problem in BrainBusters and RippleJet provided this link (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2157.msg232620#msg232620) to Ennedi's post about the same thing. The conclusion is that we can't really make it go away.
So the left side is going to wetter, but the INI can be edited to make it seamless (almost). Snow was the hardest as it is so contrasting to the other textures, and that is all I focused on, but it came out pretty good: Jan-July
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg109.imageshack.us%2Fimg109%2F1369%2Fmyspacegens7065593985.gif&hash=5f4a70db43fa9111e24cbdfc6febb4d8befab86d)
It's 2mb. Is that too big?
I basically matched the left side to the right of the cities in Jan. This changed the left side in Feb, so I had to match the right side there, and that changed the left side of March.... At the same time I was trying to push the snowline up so that in July it would be about the altitude Giraff suggested to make a permafrost zone. The downside is that in order to make this work we loose all of the low level snow.
Because I added a lot of snow textures I lost much of the grass textures. I will have to go through them all again to make them match borders anyway, but I bet I wont use all of the textures with the INI space I now have. If I don't I may raise the snow level to get more variance in land. I also think it gets too dry too fast and will work on that.
Now I just go through and fix the border issues and insert detail textures. One of these textures will probably be in January. I think it is a little to plain, but this I can fix by adding textures on the moist side, so that they don't conflict with the color scheme of Feb.
Thanks All.
Lowkee33-
I, too, did a lot of exploring of the various terrain mods and how to make one of my own. I chronicled my learning process in my MD "Abajo Del Mar", which is currently languishing in the "Archives" section of the MD's, due to my not having had time to work on it for quite a while.
Like you, I found that the grid of textures the game actually uses is quite small compared to the available and filled 255 slots in the Tropical table. I found that really only the center 4-5 columns of the table display in game. You could test this out (like I did) by creating a new FSH file that is a single color, say bright blue, and then installing that file in every column EXCEPT for the center 4-5, then loading your game. I did this and there was no bright blue anywhere in my game map, despite rather extreme variations in terrain. So in many ways, I think one could create a blank FSH file and plug that into the terrain mod, perhaps it would save game loading time and/or drag on the computer, I don't know.
Lora
some excellent work is occuring here.
@Mightygoose: Thanks :)
@Idvger (Ldvger?): This mod takes advantage of the Weather Exemplar to get all 255 slots visible. It is sometimes hard to get the Warmest/Driest texture because that happens on a slope, and by the time the terrain is sloped enough the next level of altitude has been reached. The default level flat land often has two textures (July has the driest and second driest) visible, and therefore there is a lot less repetition on flat land.
As far as making blank textures I think it could work on the non-weather mods. I would say to make a new texture that is 1 pixel large and fill that in any slot that doesn't get seen. You have to be careful for two reasons. 1) Weather does exist by default, and so you should test in late Jan and late July. 2) Slope has it's own variables, and so a very steep slope could get textures that you wouldn't see otherwise. It would be best to have a backup INI for cases when you see your 1x1 you know what texture to replace. I will have some time tomorrow, and perhaps post an INI that shows what textures can actually be seen with default weather.
If the proper textures were replaced with the 1 pixel texture you could to remove them from your texture pack and get a smaller size plugin folder. Not too sure how much space you could get though, and the proportions to the rest of your plugin folder (1 mb less doesn't really matter with 1 gig).
I don't really notice a difference in load/save times now. I think I notice it when I do large changes to the INI so that different textures are loaded than when saved. I will have to install SC4 on my old laptop and do some testing. It would be neat to get a function of load/save time based upon plugin size.
Sometimes I switch back to a cp terrain mod to compare, and sometimes I wonder why I am doing this :) His terrains perform well with the custom weather, but I don't think he meant for weather to happen. I also think that he knew that many textures wouldn't be seen, and there are large areas of just barren rock in places that we never see.
More @Idvger:
I got to look at your MD today and there is a lot of good work there. Mine fell to the same fate as I learned about terrain mods.
I was able to make a 1 pixel large, black, texture with Fishman, and place it in the INI. Through testing I conclude that the first three columns (driest) are never seen with default weather. The reason you saw so little textures on your map was the lack of hills. I have attached this texture, and feel free to use it. I will leave it to you all to fill the INI yourselves and find out if it makes a difference in game perfomance. I have given it an instance of 0xD0.
Disclaimers:
1)This might not work. It did for me...
2) You may actually see it in your game after filling in the first three columns of the INI. In that case, say "Darn Lowkee33" and perhaps fill only the first two columns.
3) While playing around with some solar flare fractal textures (that competed with Starry Night) I found one of the instances I used was a layer of cliff that appears on the edge of a map. I wish I remember what instance that was, but be warned that ID 0xD0 may replace some unknown ID that SC4 uses or a custom texture. Best bet would be to replace "D0" with a texture ID that you don't use (a desert texture in CPNo_3&4 while using Meadowshire or the like).
I have also attached the Moisture Data View that I use. It replaces the land value data view. A very helpful tool in knowing what Moisture level a target texture falls under. Combine that with the cheat "Terrainquery" and a texture slot can be pinpointed in-game.
In your MD you also use the ExtraTerrainTools2 (http://httphttp://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=21531) to make lakes.
Opening this up in Reader there are two exemplars. One for the Lake tool, and one for the Rain tool. There is actually a 3rd exemplar in SimCity_1.dat called Spring (?), and the LText says something like "to make rivers". These tools interest me very much, because I feel like if there is a way to make real rivers happen it would be in here. I will have to try to make the spring tool work.
The lake tool has two Operation IDs: 0x08 and 0x09. Seeing that the Valley (or something like that) tool has an Operation ID of 0x08 we can assume that 0x08 is what lowers the terrain. In fact, if the DefaultStrenght1 in the Lake exemplar is set to 0,0,0,0,0 (5 zooms) you will get a tool that only makes lakes, and more importantly, will never raise the sea-level with over use. The Strength #2 can be increased, and your lakes will appear faster.
So why does the Rain tool flood? I don't know. Operation ID 0x04 is a mystery to me. I can say that along with the noticeable effects of the tool it also increases the moisture level, and perhaps a certain amount of moisture makes water. There are some hints to things like thing in the terrain INI, but I have not been able to make them work. Another part of this is that these lakes do not save. We can see them in the Region View, so perhaps it is more correct to say that they do not Load. I think this is because the moisture simulation is run at load time, and the effects of the Tools are lost.
Suffice to say it will be some time before I start planting trees, and even longer before I start lotting again.
Things are looking very good people :). I am doing a few tests on other regions, and I will be making the rock/snow blend more realistic, but I am about done. A week late than predicted, but oh well. I am currently working on the Installer/Readme/Packaging, and I want to raise a technical issue:
The CP Terrain Controllers have four functional pieces:
1) The Terrain Properties Exemplar:
-Among other things, this exemplar defines the Max Terrain Height, Cliff appearance function, and beach controls. CP has released various terrain heights for the same INI (texture map). In this way there are higher/lower snow mods.
2) The Flora Brush Exemplar:
-This exemplar defines the Radius and Strength of the god-mode flora tool. CP has made the radius larger and appear different sizes at different zooms.
3) The Flora Tuning Parameters Exemplar:
-The main thing this does is define the height at which the 16 layers of trees are distributed. The reason this is in a terrain mod is because if the Max Terrain height has been changed this variable needs to be changed to look correct. There are also variables that define the behavior of random tree planting, and burnt trees.
4) The Terrain INI
-The meat of the terrain mod. This is where the texture IDs are placed to define what we see in-game. There are also many different things discussed in the INI, but erosion control is the only functional and modded one (that I know of)
When Ennedi made his Jagged Edge mod he had to change the Terrain Properties Exemplar. The fact that each CP (and every other Terrain Mod) uses this exemplar means that he had to make 10+ Jagged Edge mods. Such is the same for anyone who wants to modify one of the four parts to a cp terrain mod.
I would like that to be changed with this mod, but I don't know how. I tried to make the Terrain Properties Exemplar part of a Cohort tree, but my limited knowledge left me with something that didn't retain the properties (I made the TPE point to a cohort of itself. I then changed the exemplar to have a max height of 100 so that any "level terrain" would destroy the landscape. I then made a new TPE with only the "Texture Tiling Factor" in it and set it to .01 so the terrain would look totally bad. In game I lost the max height/destroy terrain property). While I tried to figure it out I just got to a CTD.
The thing is, mods like Ennedi's or Dobdriver's Sky background only change one variable in the TPE. Erosion mods change 2 (3?) variables in the INI. By using Reader it is very possible to see what has been changed and change it oneself.
In that light I feel like it would be okay for me to stay with the status qua (although I don't like how cp terrain mods plant one maxis tree every two years). However, would anyone like those 4 parts to install as 4 individual files?
I am afraid that I have not met the wants of you all. There have been hopes for multiple levels of snow and snow intensity, no snow at all, French Alps, and the Australian Outback. I feel this mod may be somewhat like the Alps, but I really am only familiar with my surroundings.
I hope that when/if this mod ever gets to you that you will share your opinions about what I could change so that as time goes by I can do more mods. I have learned a lot about the variables controlling terrain, and I will be including optimization of them in my Advanced Terrain Mod tutorial. Once I get this finalized and try for the LEX I will be working on making new seasonable lots so I can actually play this game :)
Thanks everybody for the comments, and feel free to comment more as I don't plan on stopping making terrain mods.
thanks for your job, I will tell you more when I will try it. As you know I am very interested by this mod for future snow themes development. :)
@Girafe: Thanks. Do you play with your max height set to >5000? I think I am going to set it for 3000 for the upload, but I will also include a link to a tutorial about how to optimize a mod for specific regions (height, beaches, cliffs).
don't know exactly about the height (3000 is a little bit low and 5000 a little bit too high, 4000 could be perfect ()stsfd()), did all this work runs with cp textures as dependancies or could we use other Terrain mod like Orange's.
I think at first I will try the version you will upload and after tell you what you could upgrate for the case of mountains :)
Right now they are all CP textures. I will make a mod using Oranges as time goes by.
5000m is too high. 4000m is about maximum height that can be seen from all zooms. At about 4600m the textures don't render anymore (for me).
I have the max height set to 4000m. Most maps don't go past 2000m and I want lowlanders to enjoy the snow :). Fortunately, their is a variable for just that.. Temperature Range factor. This variable determines the speed of the temperature change with altitude (or the speed at which the 32 layers are picked). I am going to have this set to .6 so that snow appears year round at 1300m, and appears at 1000m during winter.
@Girafe:This setting means that you are going to be seeing the top layer (0) from about 2000-4000m. In order to make the layers appears for equal times you would need to set the temperature range factor from .6 to 1.0.
Best of both worlds?
Hi Lowkee, I've been playing around trying to get a good terrain mod for my city. No luck so far, but your tutorial's have really helped. :)
But I have a question. Would it be possible hard to say, stop the terrain mod on one season, and keep it at that all year? For what I am doing it would look nice in about July, then I would lower it so that those dryer, brownish/orangery textures would show up closer to sea level, and then I would remove the snow.
(if it is released of corse)
I may apply this another terrain mod and what I really am asking is, how challenging (for a pretty much 2nd time i-live reader user) would this be?
,marsh
hi
I think I have not all understood but I will check this setting according to the map I played when do you will release this mod :)
Thanks anyway for your research, and of course you need to fit this mod with Orange's textures ;D
@Marsh: Are you confused by the tutorial? Feel free to post any questions there.
Making constant moisture: You need to change three variables in the Weather Exemplar: "Yearly Ambient Moisture", "Yearly Moisture Variation", and "Yearly Moisture Variation Factor". If the second two are set to "0" then moisture, and thus textures, will stay the same through the year. Then you would change the first variable to be the amount of moisture that you want. This number makes sense to be between 3 and -3. You can find the level you want by opening and re-opening SC4 until you have the textures you want. There are also variables such as wind and hill moisture, and you could make those zero also, but it may not look as interesting.
Removing snow: If all you want to do is make no snow then you can change the Temperature Range Factor in the Terrain Exemplar to a high number. This variable basically defines how fast the 32 layers of terrain appear. A value of "20" will show the sea-level textures until a high altitude. By stretching out the layers you loose "resolution" of the layers. It may not make a difference though, as there are about 7 textures that fit in with July anyway. Say you had an all black image and you stretched it in Photoshop. That image would still be all black.
Lowering Layers: Probably the hardest/most time consuming thing. You would have to change the INI for that. It could be as simple as copy/pasting the higher levels to the lower levels, or copy/pasting to notepad and using the "replace all" function to switch the textures you want with the ones you don't. It could be as complicated as completely re-vamping the entire Tropical Texture Map. For something like this I recommend trying to replicate the "changing existing terrain mods" section in the basic tutorial. One thing that I found helped is to put an out of place texture in the INI to pinpoint exactly where it shows up in-game.
All of these ways require a lot of opening SC4 and seeing what happens.
The next mod I make will have no snow. I want make a mod that is desert-like and has a rainy season too. This would be possible, but the rain would have to come in either Jan or July. Every other month has a sister month where the moisture level is the same (thus the same textures will appear).
Your pictures in the picture comp are interesting. If I was you I might think about having a lush beach, and then play around with the beach variables in the Terrain Exemplar. This way you could make oasis' and river deltas. I think you can find a grassy beach mod in the Landscape Designer's Studio section of SC4D.
So, where can download this mod at?
Nowhere yet. Working on some packaging issues at the moment. I would like to include a "no erosion" mod with it, so I think that will install to the "LEX downloads" folder. I think the main install will have three files: 1)The INI and Terrain Exemplar 2) The Weather Exemplar and 3) The Flora Tuning Exemplar. The flora tuning comes with it because it connects a tree controller to the terrain, and a specific altitude is needed. These would install to: Plugins\zzTerrain\Lowkee33
I made kind of a blunder with including rock textures (a CP_No5). They can only be found by installing a CP mod. I think I am going to ask permission to upload the one that I used with my mod.
I still have quite my original images for PyreneanTerrainMod. If you need additional textures it will thus be possible to me to realize them.
Thanks Orange!
I will eventually use your textures to Mod with.
I was looking through 3RR tonight and had an idea concerning seasonal thing. Right now the 3d items change at about the same time. Considering that for flora to change perfectly in this release I need to make 7 sets of timings, the next snowy mod may be a little different. I am thinking about having snow on all levels for a few months, jump to greener for the other months we will see.
For now I am working with Girafe and his wonderful trees to make them as seasonal-mayor-mode-flora. I imagine they are getting close to a release date. A link is here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=8378.msg352924#msg352924) for you all to see.
Lowkee33....
It's not lack of interest... just a lack of time.. been on the road and unable to play... but still interested and following along...
Thanks for continuing to share your SC4 (ad)ventures!
G'Day Lowkee33,
You have done a ton of work on this subject and it is very interesting, while I still have not completely read every post I will eventually. My own hacking of others mods has been a bit cruder usually to drag the snow higher.
In answer to a question you posed in my map thread about heights, most maps I make probably fall into the 1000-2000m range and a lot in the 2000-4000m range. I have made several at 5000+ but in this range after around 5500m texture tearing both in the region view and city views becomes prevalent.
At least I would like you to make snow down to sea level, because 1000metres are relatively high for first snow appearence, i think. But your overall work is good. :thumbsup:
@Gringamuyloca: No worries. The Mod is pretty much done, and so nothing post worthy is happening from my side either. Thanks for the help. I am looking to get this on the LEX, but it's my first upload and I am slow on the readme side of things.
@DobDriver: I noticed the tearing at about 4600, but maybe that was because I just made a very narrow/steep mountain. The way things are now a player will see unique terrain lines up to 2000 meters. The max terrain height is 4000, so that any map that goes above that wont be ruined on trarraforming. Increasing the Temp Range Factor make the mod more interesting at higher altitudes will be up to the user.
I just went for what I thought would work best for the average map.
@Flatron: Working on it. In this mod every month has a new color scheme. This scheme is based off of moisture. The problem is that SC4 maps are more moist of the left side than the right. This makes the tiles not match up, and if you read some previous posts you will see that when snow is involved it looks terrible.
So snow has to be gradually "pushed" up by having textures that are not really the same, but look similar from the region view. That can only be done at the rate I used (which is pretty slow, about 1/3 of the texture map is committed to the transitions).
I am thinking about trying a snow/no snow mod with out much seasonalitly. This way I can bring the snow line to see level. it will be easier to time with certain props/flora :). I don't think every month will be seamless between tiles, but perhaps I can make four.
Oh what the heck, I can't leave you with no pictures:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.makeagif.com%2Fmedia%2F11-05-2010%2FbRLjGn.gif&hash=ec1c303671466de1c88e73a04a98835761a25b6b) (http://www.makeagif.com/bRLjGn)
Full Size - 1024x734 (http://www.makeagif.com/i/bRLjGn)
This is using Girafe's trees as timed props, Degren's CP flora as seasonal MM-flora, and some good ol evergreens.
OK, now I can understand your position. But as you said last I think it should be enough to have four seasons.
The picture is very impressive.
Amazing work and GIF well appreciate.
I think we need to check together some points about flora items in order to be similar :thumbsup:
Can you include an additional small mod for the mini-map? This also affects the maps on dataviews. Installing a Terrain Mod doesn't update the mini-maps (they still use the Maxis colours).
It would also be good to mod that awful light blue colour of water bodies at city boundaries.
I think both would be nice additions.
Mini-Map:
I once saw the exemplar that includes the mini-map color ramp, but I don't know where that is anymore. The only problem (once I understand hex colors :)) is that the mini-map doesn't change with the textures. If you could point me to the exemplar then I could find the best compromise of colors.
Water Color:
Does DobDriver's star background (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2389) accomplish what you are asking? I could make one of his "patches" for it, or figure out what he did to make the water go away.
This is why I am working on a list of mods that include changes to the terrain exemplar. Perhaps I could package a separate download that includes all of the optional type mods. Perhaps I should let the creators of those mods re-package their work to include my terrain exemplar though. I really don't know. I think my terrain mod should do as little as possible though. Perhaps the installer could have a bunch of options as to what other mods to install as well?
Mini-Map Exemplar: 0x6534284A, 0x690F693F, 0x8A356F2C
or from iLive's Navigator, select Data View & Graph -> Data View -> Mini Map, right-click and select Synchronize.
As you can see, it's a simple elevation-to-colour mapping (or else, colour as a function of elevation).
Thanks for that help. ;D (On the previous page.) I simply changed the Temperature Range Factor to a high number on Orange's Pyrenees terrain mod, and now the sea-level textures are everywhere. It looks wonderful in my desert-region. ;D When yours comes out I will try and modify that for my own use. (I may have questions. :P) Thanks!
,marsh
@Cogeo: Still no luck with the water. It isn't any FSH between 0x00000000 and 0x000FFFFF. After that my computer can't handle making so many files. Nor is it any of the water IDs. I deleted a ton of stuff from the Maxis dats (including all of 3-5), and any time the game doesn't crash it loads with the bright blue water edge. There is a FSH that looks like a gradient (like the shading on the edge), but changing it so far does nothing.
@Admin: Can I get this moved to the BSC section? Perhaps with my own child board? I have a few other projects, but they aren't related to terrain. Thanks.
I've just read through the four pages of this. Very impressive piece of work &apls &apls &apls
This is one of those major game improvements, like the NAM & CAM, that should be packaged up and sold back to Maxis/EA so they can release SC.next!
Thanks Mr. Deadwood :). Right after I linked you to the terrain tutorial I color coded some properties. I noticed you were there at the same time, so you may not have seen the change. I think it is an improvement.
I have moved on to making some of my own textures. At first I covered the basic mods, beach, water and cliff. Grass was much harder to get a grasp of. There is an old picture somewhere on the Simtropolis that has all of the Maxis Textures in a nice arrangement. I noticed that the bottom of each texture matches the top of the texture below it. One thing that is also known is that we always view the terrain textures from the same angle. These two facts gave me new perspective on how to make every texture at once. The premise is to make one huge texture and break it up into small pieces.
I started with a 256x4096 texture that I will break up into 16 256x256 textures. Fortunately, the program I use (Texture Creator) can do this for me: Texture Test 1 (http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/1078/01texture.jpg)
The Zoom 0 (1) results are pretty promising.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg148.imageshack.us%2Fimg148%2F8895%2F01zoom0.jpg&hash=0defedca3ccc3d6dffcb1f87afa0d0a587207d13)
Full Size (http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8895/01zoom0.jpg)
Zoom 4 (5+6) are not so good.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg153.imageshack.us%2Fimg153%2F6369%2F01zoom4.jpg&hash=910d19c650f55bf75b756e0fcf3d1d2aa68831f5)
Full Size (http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/6369/01zoom4.jpg)
When the textures are next to each other they look great, but on their own the gradient is too sharp.
For my next test I put a single texture over the entire image. Still 256x4096 here:Texture Test 2 (http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/9775/02texture.jpg)
Zoom 0 took a big hit
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg248.imageshack.us%2Fimg248%2F4163%2F02zoom0.jpg&hash=b5c00f4ab85e768df2beaac6525da968b131cda1)
Full Size (http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4163/02zoom0.jpg)
Zoom 4 is looking good (all things considered). The texture is so small it is hard to see the tiling, but it is there (perhaps lost in the JPEG):
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg109.imageshack.us%2Fimg109%2F5258%2F02zoom4.jpg&hash=90cd459ad70c00d454cada1c14340f3f34c16215)
Full Size (http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5258/02zoom4.jpg)
The conclusion here is that although a single texture may blur the line, it has dramatic effects on the terrain as a whole, and still doesn't solve the problem.
So far I had been ignoring moisture levels, but I decided to make a 2816x4096 texture. This would give me 16 elevation rows and 11 moisture rows. The results were not as promising. A moisture level can exist on both sides of a texture, not like elevation which only happens to one side (Although I guess that is not true is it...).
So I went back to a 256x4096 texture. This time, after breaking each texture into pieces I made it seamless to itself. I also added a brush which does make it look a little like grass, but I lost all of the other texture. The original: Texture Test 3 (http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/8696/03texture.jpg)
Zoom 0 still looks good.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg838.imageshack.us%2Fimg838%2F4513%2F03zoom0.jpg&hash=aaff24f1f89c35d83bc7ed4f255acf20e811f6b3)
Full Size (http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/4513/03zoom0.jpg)
Zoom 4 is okay. Although seamless, perhaps I should avoid vertical lines and drop the contrast.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg341.imageshack.us%2Fimg341%2F1774%2F03zoom4.jpg&hash=c2da66b9b9fec51e9486ada284afb811d0040c18)
Full Size (http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1774/03zoom4.jpg)
This last picture also shows two textures blending into each other. For these tests, the Spread Curve for all zooms is 0,1,1,1,2,0 compared to Maxis at 0,1,32,1,64,0. This means they use much less area blending into each other.
I am also putting off making the different zooms for each texture. For now it seems the zoom 0 needs less tiling abilities, but I will have to do a flat land test.
I am currently working on a texture that is 1792x8192, which will make 7 moisture columns and 32 elevation rows. The image itself is 17 MB, so it now takes a while to do anything to it. The time sort of takes it out of the testing parameters, so I may want to trim it down. I am mostly figuring out the color scheme, alpha maps, texture patterns that I want, so when I get serious (512x512 or 1024x1024 textures) I can throw the thing on auto-pilot and go to sleep.
You have great ideas, however it takes a lot of trial and error to achieve a good result. Continue. &apls
()lurker()
too complex for the tiny giraffe :P
Weighing in at 90mb are 168 512x512 textures. %BUd%
Now to make them look good...
Some progress today.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg705.imageshack.us%2Fimg705%2F5500%2Fvewk.jpg&hash=8e3a5ac1f4fdb06aa7a166716124ae4b06446cd1)
:o
wow! That's some progress! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Love where you are taking this Lowkee33. &apls
Looks really great, though in my opinion the rock texture could be better. :thumbsup:
That's interesting you would say that Ciuu96. That is a 1024x1024 texure (Link (http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/8889/cliffc.jpg). Any suggestions? The different zooms are something I will have to work on. For these pictures I am using the same texture for all zooms, so the details that make the rock look good (to me) in the closest zoom suffer some problems in the others (especially when the texture is viewed from the side).
The rock texture is very important to get right. At some point I am may subtly add it to all of the other textures, so that it blends well with all of the other textures. For myself this is something I will defiantly do, for those who like to pick and choose textures I may not.
I actually like that rock texture. One thing you could do is make it appear to have more depth. It looks rather flat. But the color is nice.
,marsh
This is some amazing work you've been doing Lowkee
I dont know anything about terrain/weather/tree/etc mods so yeah, but you say most of the current mods change one little bit at a time? So would it not be better to have a program which wraps the controls, like the NAM editor utility?
I suggest this because I seem to remember that you can only have one controller at a time, or else something bad happens? So why not wrap the controller's changeable state in a program which has rules and stuff so end-users can configure to their hearts content without breaking stuff immeasurably? And if this program had some sort of modular structure, things like the jagged edges mod, and others that have to supply one file for each different controller (etc?) would just have to supply one file, which would get imported and configured to run perfectly. It could also have support to detect importing 'clashes', aka if you tried importing something that overwrote the jagged-edges, it would alert you.
Just a suggestion, especially with all the extra understanding you people are bringing to the lesser known controllers/exemplars/etc. :). I myself couldn't do such a tool, but maybe contacting Stefan79 who created the DAMN wizard, or the guys behind SC4Tools (http://sc4tools.co.uk) if you dont know how to program sufficiently.
Thank you for dedicating your time to researching and developing such high quality modifications :)
Joe
~Check out that Moderator tag. ;D All of your post are belong to us~
Thanks for the comments. Although the textures I am making are very seamless with each other, the quality of them is less than the ones already out there. No real update in that department.
I think a program would have to display a preview of what the mod would be doing. If you already know what you want to change, Reader does a good job. Most of the time goes into opening SC4 and checking what has been changed. As far as Terrain Mod Add-Ons, there are not many of them. The best solution I can think of is including them as options in the installer. DobDriver also gives good support for his mod, and will be updating as needed.
QuoteIt could also have support to detect importing 'clashes', aka if you tried importing something that overwrote the jagged-edges, it would alert you.
This is a good idea, but it doesn't have to be limited to terrain. A program that looked for identical TGIs would be rather helpful.
Yeah but an installer is kind of infeasible in stopping you from installing multiple terrain mods (which I expect is a cause of many a 'noob' problem) and (I dont know much about the installer process but) I guess it's none trivial to do conflict checking or any of the other features I mentioned in the installer. And yes, a graphical preview would be good.
Yep, broarder scope conflict checking (than just controllers and or cleanitol/datpacker) would be cool. I might try something after all....no promises though :D
Joe
You might want to talk to Cogeo about a program like that. I imagine it would take a program a fair amount of time to sort out all of the TGIs in some people's plugins.
This terrain mod installs to plugins\zzz_terrain mod. It is Ennedi's opinion, and I agree, that all terrain related mods should go in this folder (with no subfolders. Once I get some feedback from scrutineers I have some work to do). People who don't know too much about the contents of their plugin folder should be able to both find my mod, and have it load last.
My programing skills are zero (except on a TI-83 calculator, my best creation being a game of MasterMind) so the best I can do is make things as simple as I can.
ahh yes, so all 4 parts go in `plugins\zzz_terrain_mod` along with any other changesets? and so if some one has another terrain-like mod in any other folder, it doesnt affect anything?
Yeah Cogeo might be able to whip something up in a few minutes :D *goes and finds him*
Sorry for taking over your thread >.>
Joe
QuoteSorry for taking over your thread >.>
No worries. (As long as my threads are getting hits :P)
Quoteand so if some one has another terrain-like mod in any other folder, it doesnt affect anything?
Correct.
If you download Girafe's seasonal trees you will see that they install a terrain related mod to this folder as well. In effect, making seasonal flora changes the way a god-mode brush works, as the file that makes seasonal possible also defines the Max height a tree gets planted. Cycledog and Heblem's mods are over written, but a patch for this should be on the LEX soon.
Even though the file would be a "tree related" file, the fact that snow lines appear at different altitudes for different terrain mods means that the max height needs to be defined in the terrain mod :-\.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg143.imageshack.us%2Fimg143%2F1681%2F72855247.jpg&hash=98542a77835aaa418470d43f6571358cc7f583ac)
Looks like there is going to be more traffic here, better make an update :)
I will say that the terrain mod I am working on changes during the sim year. So once again, I confront snow. The way I see it, there are 4 ways to make snow work.
1)Do what I did with Cycledog's textures. I have to say, although this was a relatively realistic snow "migration", timing models for it is hard.
2)Have a "snow" terrain mod, and a "non-snow" terrain mod. The SimPeg snow mod is rather well done, as the mod encompasses all things (base/overlay textures, trees). I think this is a pretty good solution, but making it compatible with everything besides items on the PLEX would be impossible.
3)Edit the Weather exemplar to have a very-very moist Jan, and then get very dry as fast as possible. January's moisture columns would be all snow in the INI, and then non-snow everywhere else. I tested this with the snow textures I have now and the weather pattern I have now. It looks like an okay solution, but I can make the transition faster. The other problem is that for some months the edge of city tiles will not match up. (don't mind the shadow on the borders. Next time I will use an otherwise empty plugin folder).
Jan:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg143.imageshack.us%2Fimg143%2F2724%2Fjany.jpg&hash=644d8db373f20b0856bd1ee75c01efbfe3a71e8d)
April:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg687.imageshack.us%2Fimg687%2F3394%2Faprilbh.jpg&hash=73df0d5cc4cb972e7b89f4c1c0492ffd30544e0a)
(Too much snow in April. The Terrain properties I have make the INI end at about half way up this region)
4) Seasonal snow as Mayor Mode Flora. This also has pretty good results. It solves the seasonal shadow issue, but this snow model I made defiantly uses up the god-mode flora brush:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg560.imageshack.us%2Fimg560%2F5754%2Fnosnow.jpg&hash=2fabc48736c00ebb47c4852ac43f168620b2d6a2)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg121.imageshack.us%2Fimg121%2F2126%2Fsnowaz.jpg&hash=3043866a1a7d24bf4c628a1426090ca783faa735)
Your banner was what dragged me here ::) Looks great though! Keep up the great work.
Jayster
The grass has too much contrast, and the snow needs work. Don't get me wrong, you have to be talented to make terrain mods, so really I can't say this and that about your works. But what I can say is nice work! :)
Thanks for the comments. I rethought the whole snow thing, and reconfigured my INI/Weather/Large Texture (now 5120x8190). I learned a few things in GIMP, and am pretty confident in going from Texture maker to something that looks great in-game.
@Evillions8: Thanks for the critique. These textures are in pretty much the first stage of editing, so yeah. The snow in the region shot was using the same textures as the high altitudes. At this point, a final product will have 15 textures just for Dec/January/Feb. The snow in the close up is not a texture at all but a model, and also my first draft there.
I don't think contrast is the right word, although I can't really define it either. Perhaps you mean saturation?
I hope to have an actual update soon. I ran a cloud generator today and it said that it would take 40 hours to complete. I might have to set up a laptop to make textures over the weekend. In the meantime I will think of other ways to make a detailed grass texture on such a large image.
Hi all,
In hopes to get more feedback in the terrain mod I made with Cycledog's textures, I am offering it to all of you. If you are interested in that mod, send me a PM and I will get you sorted out.
My approach to this terrain mod starts in the weather exemplar. It has been changed significantly from the one I used for Cycledog's textures. My hope was that I could make January very wet, and then quickly get dry. My goal is for January to use the last 3 columns of the INI, and by April it doesn't use them anymore. The point is to use those last three columns as snow textures. I thought I had it figured out, but apparently I did not. I will have to edit it some more, but I can move on to working on the textures.
I also rethought the INI in general. If the last three columns are snow, then the first 13 columns are non-snow. I changed the shape of my very large texture so that it is 5120x8192 pixels large. It is 65MB, so there I can't upload it, however, I can provide a screen shot:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg402.imageshack.us%2Fimg402%2F2194%2Fmassivet.jpg&hash=242d1ae55c8a37c01a9687b29b92056b870f3254)
This image is broken into 160 512x512 textures. The hope is to edit each one of these textures individually, but not loose the coherence that using one huge image at first provides. Of course, after splitting the image up, the 512x512 is not tillable. This is where Texture Maker really gets to work. Each image can be batch processed and make seamless at a relatively low loss of detail. After being made seamless, some more work is done on each texture. A grass texture from the large image can be edited into this:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg340.imageshack.us%2Fimg340%2F3716%2Fgrassz.jpg&hash=db4a0d406f02bc17ac900cc8e5eaad270e8210c8)
Texture Maker can also do things such as this... Which make the outlook for base textures pretty good:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg197.imageshack.us%2Fimg197%2F5619%2Fbasetextures.jpg&hash=f885795f7828281894821e5df7d19e6b59c46184)
Let's move on to in-game:
First, a region shot in May. Like I said, the weather exemplar is a little messed up, so I don't want to display a GIF for all months:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg687.imageshack.us%2Fimg687%2F6987%2Fregioni.jpg&hash=19eb43c0f6f675a254ae33df9c21ac6f335283e9)
The mismatch between borders is pretty small, but I may work on that. Also, the colors are off from what I want. I wanted snow to have some color, but now that it does, I can't really changed the saturation of my large image (it is also getting pretty slow to work on, it is 5 layers and about 250mb large).
I mostly worked on the grass textures, but got exited as I tried to make flowers. Texture Maker can do batch processing based off of a script, and I guess I shouldn't have chosen the flower color to be random:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg222.imageshack.us%2Fimg222%2F6296%2Fflowersg.jpg&hash=10aabce9f2a6536631fa89dedb813e19c7f5052b)
The grass in this September is the best. Flora works very well, in particular Chris Adam's:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg525.imageshack.us%2Fimg525%2F3954%2Ffallb.jpg&hash=f70f7c6701bd7b86d6c6f23b28bf6800f5f17348)
A display of my seasonal snow. It is 4 meters about the ground, so non-seasonal items are covered up. At one point it matched the snow texture, but I constantly change textures around:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg153.imageshack.us%2Fimg153%2F7789%2Fwintertv.jpg&hash=cdde8259785111d140efb091bbabc67cd357dbf0)
Of course, my batting is so limited... Had to take out Girafe's trees as I didn't plant the seasonal ones.&mmm
Summer is slightly browner, and thankfully I did not put flowers there:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg88.imageshack.us%2Fimg88%2F211%2Fsummerx.jpg&hash=c74e95c18c57e26b53f5d767593a34fd996e0ac9)
A general view of grass to snow. Haven't really worked on this...
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg137.imageshack.us%2Fimg137%2F4219%2Fmountainsy.jpg&hash=d36c449f95127073929b114980b87410ebe5cd0d)
Nothing like black flowers :P
I also made one grass texture that I made into zooms:
Zoom 4+5
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg263.imageshack.us%2Fimg263%2F9859%2F37885324.jpg&hash=97993edd0cb4345e9f274d1c0009f499e60bfc12)
Zoom 3
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg130.imageshack.us%2Fimg130%2F7821%2F70361011.jpg&hash=90b52cd6b7d9d1dedc7c4311a37b5b68c5b1f690)
Zoom 2
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg843.imageshack.us%2Fimg843%2F7040%2F27976345.jpg&hash=13cb871b496544d268308d1d7d87676bef9d4bc2)
Zoom 1
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg577.imageshack.us%2Fimg577%2F7353%2F49467649.jpg&hash=936be43d1ca6a63daf57b0b14c4948d270b118ad)
Zoom 0
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg823.imageshack.us%2Fimg823%2F383%2F29824494.jpg&hash=b396d2704b33bdf78963f52bfdf6cb3808e7f431)
I may have labeled the zooms wrong... This grass is experimental: Is the color variation enjoyed? Another experiment was a straight Perlin Amp, Bump: In-game:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg703.imageshack.us%2Fimg703%2F3854%2Ftestyn.jpg&hash=aa3210db136dc000936981c3999e5152f329b69a)
Pretty much everything about that can be changed.
The main issue with me having to redo the weather exemplar is that it will change what textures display on flat land. I feel that the flat land textures have to be totally repeatable. There is more flexibility with slopes because moisture is so variant on them, so a texture hardly has to repeat itself very much. Slopes can also be given more depth, because there wont be much development on them
Opinions are very welcome. I haven't touched snow or the brownish area yet, these will change dramatically. The main thing is the grass. I think what I have is pretty good, but perhaps too homogeneous. Still just doing general things, next to try to make those flowers smaller...
Sorry to double post so quick...
The problem with learning a new program is that you constantly have to rethink your approach. I have started using some serious scripts in Texture Maker (although maybe they make bad textures :) ), and so I was going to aproach non-flat terrain. This meant that I had to get the weather exemplar sorted once and for all.
Maybe I lost my touch, but it seems like the the thing that makes April a little too wet is the thing that would make January a little too dry. Basically all of my snow textures use the 0xF# range. The textures that touch it are the 0xE# range. By increasing the spread and the texture blend strength of the E range (and then increasing the strength of the <E respectively) I have removed all snow from April.
The big question is this: Can you handle a March and November that look something like this?
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg641.imageshack.us%2Fimg641%2F7127%2Finquire.jpg&hash=d55c78781d65b3c52093d8a209734efac609cc29)
I can. If the consensus is that this is not pleasing, then I will forgo the entire moisture simulation thing and just do one season, with perhaps a snow mod to pick like the mod on the PLEX. Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Let me see if I understand. The snow in the above picture depicts where moisture is. The light brown dirt is where the moisture is not.
Consequenty, snow in the low lying areas will then be last to dissapear at the first of spring and higher elevations will loose its snow cover first?
QuoteLet me see if I understand. The snow in the above picture depicts where moisture is. The light brown dirt is where the moisture is not.
Correct.
QuoteConsequenty, snow in the low lying areas will then be last to dissapear at the first of spring and higher elevations will loose its snow cover first?
Not quite. Elevation has no effect as far as this picture is concerned. For this mod, I wanted snow to appear for all elevations in January, and then quickly go away. This means that February looks a little strange and March pretty ugly. The upside is that those who use timed winter props/flora don't have to quit the game and change terrain mods to have winter make sense.
I tried to make lower elevations get a dusting of snow in January when I worked with Cycledog's textures. I posted a problem Here (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11701.msg348230#msg348230), with This Picture (http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/4585/winterux.jpg) as an example. There is more moisture on the left side of a city, so there is no way to get the borders to match. This happens with all terrain mods/tree controllers, but with snow, it is very apparent. I think I did a pretty good job of hiding it in that mod, but since every elevation had snow for a different amount of time, it made timing props very tedious.
Well, I've got the BatchPNGtoFSH tool running with a patented set of textures I like to call "lazy zooms". Going from zoom 4 to zoom 0 seems pretty straight forward. I stretch the zoom 4 to a 1024x1024, homogenize it, and then collapse it back to 512x512. Lazy zooms are me just placing the zoom 4 on the zoom 0 at various opacities. For basic zoom templates I might just stretch them out less at first. Anyway... 100 textures to go...
I have this notion of a tree line. I figure woody terrain is dark brown/green, and then moves into lighter brown/green for above the tree line. My first attempt has clearly failed.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg43.imageshack.us%2Fimg43%2F4568%2Ftreelinev.jpg&hash=a1b9b99309c31de56b9e5308a04447de61e080a9)
I am realizing I don't know much about terrain :P. Is there ever grassy plateaus above the tree lines? I will certainly have to add a more rocky feel, but that is besides the point. There is space for about 7 textures before it goes from snow to woods, so there is plenty of room for changing the textures. At this point, I am a little passed starting all over.
I would not say it was a complete failure.
Generally there is more space in between the tree line and the scree-spope line though. The terrain where you envision trees gives me the impression of the floor of a conifer forest. Not much sun gets there and it's cold. So there is mostly dirt and decaying pine needles.
(I live in Colorado and have hiked many mountains. So I get to see close-up how the terrain is as well as a large variation of it, from semi-desert, to pine forests, to the treeline, and have seen it alot. :P)
,marsh
Thanks Marsh. I keep advancing towards completion, the only problem is that I am modding this game as much as I can, so it's pretty spread out.
Still not sure about the moisture simulation. I not have it turned off at the moisture a city renders at, so all tree controllers will work the same as before. One problem is that many moisture slots are not used, as moisture is basically slope, and at a certain point all textures become cliffs. I have been thinking of making cliffs not exist, and putting them right into the terrain mod, but not sure if that works well. I also wonder about increasing the moisture effect on hills, in order to get more moisture slots.
Anyway, the Maxis Default settings have two textures existing on flat land, so that can be interesting. Today I had some fun, making the one that appears less be a marshy area. Again, sometimes I am like the CIA, just figuring out what is possible and then destroying it...
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg13.imageshack.us%2Fimg13%2F3521%2F34037007.jpg&hash=48e6a8608ad8e097393cf668de1591f1809e25fe)
The water doesn't look as good when it is on a slope :P
The grass texture I like. I feel most grass will have that "hairy" pattern to it. Snow also looks pretty good with hair, although or that I give it no direction.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg132.imageshack.us%2Fimg132%2F9300%2F97431235.jpg&hash=ff7948b86c61d1da1f30ff54a116a9ef0d01d081)
Really loving reading about your experiments Lowkee! Keep it up :) I for one really enjoy reading your posts :thumbsup:
It's starting to come along great. I love those marshes. :P
The snow is nice too. Although it looks more as if it has been "used". Like walked across or partially melted. I would make a flatter snow texture as well? For other areas. Maybe as it goes from winter to spring it uses that texture.
Just giving some input. :)
,marsh
You know Marsh, I kind of liked it when you had -1 karma :D.
Thanks for the input about the snow. Right now I am not making this seasonal, the texture quality is more important. I have the INI so that every texture on the top row is different, and so that the 8th column has 32 different textures. The 8th column is flat land when the moisture simulation is turned off (by changing the MoistureVariation and MoistureVariationFactor to "0"). That snow texture was set up as being in the 1st row 8th column, but it could easily be dropped down a column. Will work on an un-touched snow that is not just white.
I figured out the TextureSpreadCurves in the Terrain Texture Exemplars. They are a series of ordered pairs, the first digit being the distance from the center of the texture, and the second digit being the strength of the texture.
Maxis has these properties set to "0,1,32,1,64,0". This is hardly a "curve". The exemplars in the CycleDogg mods are better, as they spread less as one zooms in. However, they still only use three non-curved pairs.
Attatched is a file that sets all of CP's textures to have spread curves from:
0, 1, 8, .8, 16, .6, 24, .4, 32, .2, 40, 0 for the zoom 0, to
0, 1, 4, .9, 8, .7, 12, .5, 16, .3, 20, 0 for the zoom 4
Before:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg13.imageshack.us%2Fimg13%2F4581%2Fcpbefore.jpg&hash=1376f8a0a8caab5d1f0899f44d7ce02cb87051e1)
After:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg694.imageshack.us%2Fimg694%2F3961%2Fcpafter.jpg&hash=088d73757df7b73250cd552e00efe3a32e119c7e)
The change is most apparent in Zoom 4, and rather subtle in zoom 0.
Lowkee, I really love those marshes! I am currently working on a swampy area in my region and whn is saw that just now it was perfect. At first I was hoping it was some sort of flora that I haven't found yet :P Keep up the great work!!!
- Matt
Lowkee Edit: Post 100! and my first moderator abuse
Oh wow. Awesome exemplars. &apls
Something I noticed on the marshes. At different zooms they change locations. Which I'm guessing just has to deal with the way the game handles textures. &mmm
,marsh
Quote from: marsh on April 07, 2011, 07:17:41 PM
Something I noticed on the marshes. At different zooms they change locations. Which I'm guessing just has to deal with the way the game handles textures.
Quite true. Textures always start from the top-left corner of the map. Textures also always face up (water is the easiest to notice this as you rotate). If you add 3D aspects to the game heavily dependent on the zoom 4 textures, be prepared for them to not line up as you zoom out or rotate the map.
Did some experiments. In the Terrain Properties Exemplar there is a property called TerrainTextTilingFactor. It's definition is "100 meters of terrain corresponds to this fraction of texture in farthest zoom". This value is .2 by default. A problem right off the bat is that tiles are not divisible by 100 meters (they are 1024, 2048, 4096 meters for small, medium and large). A round value, like .2, is not going to match up.
I made one texture with easily noticeable edges, and threw that into the game. This is a picture of the bottom-right corner of a large map, where the problem would be most noticeable. (Jeeze, just thought of color-blindness... very sorry)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg851.imageshack.us%2Fimg851%2F9279%2F01corner.jpg&hash=4657cc6a234522495e1534b5077baf3048279290)
In zoom 0 (1 on the keyboard), the texture repeats a little more than eight times. So, 4096/8=512. 100/512= 0,1953125. Lets throw this number into the TerrainTexTilingFactor.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg683.imageshack.us%2Fimg683%2F4241%2F02corner.jpg&hash=3fdbff3a05ffedd3bd4d7e4c851d1c3b3807da03)
The grid is hard to see, so I plopped a very fancy power plant. Interesting enough, 128x128 pixels of the terrain texture is one grid square, making it the same size as a base/overlay texture.
Now that textures actually line up to something, it will be much easier to figure out how SimCity displays them. I went to zoom 3, picked a texture, and surrounded it with my power plant (didn't want power zots).
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg576.imageshack.us%2Fimg576%2F8718%2F03center.jpg&hash=b8a6b0b39c6cbfc74cd2893677c8f6bb772d8e53)
I then zoomed out and repeated the pattern
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg716.imageshack.us%2Fimg716%2F8885%2F04center.jpg&hash=e6ddbdfd8e20b237a98e75a3336e77a85e20e95b)
And here lies the problem. The pattern of plops is dependent upon the top-left corner of the map, since that is where all textures begin. For example, if I were to have made my original plopping one texture to the right, my pattern of consecutive plops would have been in the green square in the final picture.
In order to keep the marsh appearing the same shape in the same place, the lesser zoom textures would have to be the zoom 4 texture scaled down and tiled. I will give it a shot, but not optimistic about how good that would look. The yet unsolveable issue is still the fact that the textures rotate with the view angle, meaning that the only shape that would work would have to be able to mirror itself (like a circle or square, but not a triangle).
Thought I would check in with some terrain shots. I felt I had to update my cliff/water/beach textures, and this slowed things down a little. The main issue is the fact that beaches have three textures, upper, lower and deep sea. A problem is that cliffs can't be too far away from the beach in terms of color/brightness. For now, I have made the deep sea texture the cliff texture, and made the lower beach the color of the upper beach, but a little darker and with some of the cliff texture.
A general overview of the mod. This map has a low max height, and I have altered the terrain properties so that all textures are visible. I generally alter such things for every region I enter, but for any release, these textures will be much more spread out in terms of altitude lines.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg651.imageshack.us%2Fimg651%2F1682%2Fzoom0.th.jpg&hash=58070852111d5b324d9d90c2d789b3376988110b) (http://img651.imageshack.us/i/zoom0.jpg/)
Full Size without having to load ImageShack (http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/1682/zoom0.jpg)
Part of the cliff texture issue is that it should also blend with the rest of the textures. The good side is that cliffs only appear on slopes, and that moisture (in a non-seasonal mod) is basically slope. Therefore, there are textures that appear on flat land, and textures that blend flat land with cliffs. Of course, there should be many cliff mods, and one doesn't want to have to download a new terrain for each one. It turns into a matter of file size, so a cliff should blend in as fast as possible. I made a new estimate on the INI, and it uses 144 textures that I guess will be about 86mb. Similarly I will make many cliff mods with packs similar to the c.p. rock packs, and this way many cliffs can be used seamlessly. I will be trying to drop the textures needed for the rock packs, but right now I'm looking at 14mb each.
I may also reconsider this. This image shows something that would be far less than 86mb, but still good cliffness (though this particular example wont work because it would mean you would only want to use this cliff texture).
I still have to figure out how sharp I can make the texture switch and still be happy. C.P.'s technique is very nice, but I have a lot more options with the program that I use.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg171.imageshack.us%2Fimg171%2F6109%2Fcliffshot.th.jpg&hash=4653b8a34aa26905423dff80f9157f9ae87f71e7) (http://img171.imageshack.us/i/cliffshot.jpg/)
Full Size (http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6109/cliffshot.jpg)
Finally, a look with some flora/lots. I did a city test the other day, and I have to say, I am quite pleased with the color of the lower terrain as it compares to various $$ and $$$ base textures.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg219.imageshack.us%2Fimg219%2F8875%2Fovervieww.th.jpg&hash=dc070ad3cee47fb1ba6438e03a1c520ae82b9b55) (http://img219.imageshack.us/i/overvieww.jpg/)
Full Size (http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/8875/overvieww.jpg)
I really like the colors and everything. It's looking real beautiful. The only thing I would say is to make the rock textures less, blurry, I guess you can say.
Thanks Marsh. I agree about the cliffs, and have corrected this. The sun shines on my monitor, so sometimes I think I am doing well and I am not :). I ran the option "detailize" and am happy with those results. btw, saw your picture in the competition, may have voted for it but for your TilingFactor set to .2. :P
Back to the Terrain Tiling Factor. A value of .025 (or .0244140625 to match the grid) will display one complete texture in zoom 0. The proper size of this texture (to not blur or loose pixels) is 2048x2048. Had some fun with this picking textures from the web. Hard to find a grass texture that is meant for such things though.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg859.imageshack.us%2Fimg859%2F8850%2Fhd2.jpg&hash=636478d8ff9d827917bec0e9824fa050f1554d9a)
A closer zoom, just to look ::). You can see by the water, just because they are seamless doesn't mean they are good for SC4.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg851.imageshack.us%2Fimg851%2F5274%2Fhd1y.jpg&hash=99436f3684663c077a92fee33bb7c89834f3da03)
We dont do png because of file size right? Here is a link to a png (http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/962/hd3q.png).
These 4 textures weight 40mb, so thats the cost. Pretty though.
Water is really good.
I am less convinced by the grass texture, too teal for me. Moreover I am asking if there is not a problem of scale. Indeed one tile is 16m x 16m and the grass textures seems to be really big for this zoom.
But I think this project is going on the right way and I trust you ;)
QuoteWater is really good.
I am less convinced by the grass texture, too teal for me. Moreover I am asking if there is not a problem of scale. Indeed one tile is 16m x 16m and the grass textures seems to be really big for this zoom.
Agreed. The beach is off too. Getting the Tiling Factor figured out is what spurred these pictures. Typing "water texture" into google gets some good results, as well as cliffs. Grass and Beach are harder, because they all either have shells or blades of grass that will never be seen from so far away.
What do you think of the colors of the grass texture though? Adding blue to the grass I did not think of. It's even gray in places, though I think that is rocks.
I think 2048x2048 is too big for right now. 512 textures are 500kb each. 1024 textures are 2.5Mb. My thoughts are this: 175 512x512 textures would make for a very seamless terrain with many texture "nooks" (flowers and what not). 1024x1024 textures are almost big enough that you can't see the repetition in zoom 5 and this is pretty alluring. I have an idea for "mini mods" which would be less than 10Mb each. Still thinking.
Right now I play with 1024x1024 Cliffs, but I have a 1024x1024 grass texture. The blades or grass are a little big, but I think acceptable. As one zooms out, the blades turn to clumps, and eventually it is mostly a green texture with random noise on the hue and saturation. A good trial I would say, but overall, too green. The cliff is a WIP, and I am currently dealing with those black areas. The detail of the grass in zoom 4 is lost in Jpeg
Zoom 4 | Zoom 3 | Zoom 2 | Zoom 1 | Zoom 0 |
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg543.imageshack.us%2Fimg543%2F9279%2F77596174.th.jpg&hash=3cc3c480246453458f67c9d917c4c3179614ab9d) (http://img543.imageshack.us/i/77596174.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg695.imageshack.us%2Fimg695%2F9987%2F88433404h.th.jpg&hash=15dbb1683904bae0df91b8c0e48fe0630ae0a577) (http://img695.imageshack.us/i/88433404h.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg69.imageshack.us%2Fimg69%2F4300%2F17205677.th.jpg&hash=8e60b2a9efaec634a5b762810d9cade97b77a340) (http://img69.imageshack.us/i/17205677.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg228.imageshack.us%2Fimg228%2F9793%2F86236725.th.jpg&hash=f3b175cf6c354ef26256dcc6d79ee2487a7326d1) (http://img228.imageshack.us/i/86236725.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg818.imageshack.us%2Fimg818%2F5372%2F49525551.th.jpg&hash=0df1aa29a8aba3bd85fd6df51760d2acad76e731) (http://img818.imageshack.us/i/49525551.jpg/) |
Full Size (http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/9279/77596174.jpg) | Full Size (http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/9987/88433404h.jpg) | Full Size (http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/4300/17205677.jpg) | Full Size (http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9793/86236725.jpg) | Full Size (http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/5372/49525551.jpg) |
Argh, Tables... They don't make it through the quick modify?
This'd be good. I use CP's Olympic terrain, but it might be too green in the long run.
Great progress on the grass texturing &apls &apls I could see how it might be too green for some but I wouldn't think for all. I'd love to use that texture even as-is. I agree a bit with Girafe on the scale of the grass but as I mentioned it already looks great and I'm sure you will discover the best way to implement your textures.
The water and cliffs are looking extremely promising as well. :o
Thanks for the comments :)
Just letting you know I am still working on this. I keep learning new things about Texture Maker, the most recent is the RGB mapping of an image. This helps because I learn the extreme saturation/brightness of a texture, and can make sure that I never make pure black/white (just like sound recording I guess).
Perhaps the texture wasn't too green, but I would say too dark. Did some brightness changes, and it turned out the dark was also causing blending problems. Opens up some disk space, so I got working on more textures.
Hospital picture for scale: | Some Maxis Base Textures: | DEA Dirt Tracks with MTP overlays: | Basic Farms: |
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg706.imageshack.us%2Fimg706%2F9310%2Fhospitalk.th.jpg&hash=07cc4f7df5d98e70adb4653fd4a90659e399b6a3) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/706/hospitalk.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg171.imageshack.us%2Fimg171%2F4421%2Fmaxistrext.th.jpg&hash=96fd28d189be90ca7a8a47ee50d578f75aca8353) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/171/maxistrext.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg854.imageshack.us%2Fimg854%2F6018%2Fclosev.th.jpg&hash=04f05860ddf66183d9ea298acbc0f81ecad30c4c) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/closev.jpg/) | (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg820.imageshack.us%2Fimg820%2F3763%2Ffarmso.th.jpg&hash=97f9b766ed7a18dba616c241a7e03fbe170ba854) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/820/farmso.jpg/) |
Full Size (http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9310/hospitalk.jpg) | Full Size (http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4421/maxistrext.jpg) | Full Size (http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/6018/closev.jpg) | Full Size (http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3763/farmso.jpg) |
Lowkee33
are you working towards becoming the newest CP terrain expert ??? as your on the track of reinventing, reinterpreting, retexturing and recreating such things... keep it up the efforts and you maybe become legendary as his work... just popping to say Hi! and see whats new... also took the new textures to check 'em out...
Jack
Excellent work on the green textures. &apls &apls
I didn't have tile to check all the files bu I will do next week end.
Your cliff are always a problem but i am sure you will work again on them :thumbsup:
Quote from: Girafe on June 15, 2011, 01:23:07 PM
Your cliff are always a problem but i am sure you will work again on them
:D
Those are the Maxis Cliffs, and yes, they look like garbage spread out like that (they aren't seamless, nor where they created/imported in a lossless manner).
My cliffs aren't the greatest either. Still working on it, and I think I have a new texture making strategy too.
@Jack: Nice to see you here :)
Love those most recent textures. They are similar to the maxis textures in some sense. (Which isn't a bad thing) :)
,marsh
I found some other hidden properties that deal with fog effects in the Ingred.ini file. I also found the other things you did.
Quote from: Tracker on July 06, 2011, 07:21:31 PM
I found some other hidden properties that deal with fog effects in the Ingred.ini file. I also found the other things you did.
What are these "other things"? :)
Got another grass texture. I made the blades smaller, and kept saturation/brightness nearer to standard base textures. Zoom 4 (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2288/textureso.png), and Zoom 6 (http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8418/25529927x.png) on the keyboard (3 and 4 in reader).
Also, I am opting out of JPEG, instead only providing links to PNGs. I havent been told not to do this yet. :)
Take care.
All I can say is after looking at those two shots, I like what I see.
Thanks J-Dub.
I've gotten to a point where I think most of the basics of the grass textures are done. Right now there are 14 different grasses, 6 for level terrain, and 8 various slopped ones. I will probably be making zooms, though each one adds 500kb, and I am not too sure it matters. The closest zoom will have more details, and perhaps even added things (what, I do not know). It's basically the difference between something that is 24mb and something that is 8mb.
Scree is way behind, I don't really have a good shot of it. Snow on slopes is going to have to blend well with cliffs, and I am not very good at making those textures yet. In the final mod, scree/rough textures will take up a little less than half of the terrain (unless people say otherwise).
A region shot (http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/6527/regionp.png) - The blue square is the city in the next shot.
City - Zoom 0 (1 on the keyboard) (http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/8840/cityv.png) - Again, we zoom on the blue square.
Zoom 4 (5 on the keyboard) (http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/7062/areau.png). Note: these are the sloped textures, not the ones I assume people will be building on, and thus trying to blend lots in with.
How are we doing? Does it look too blurry, or perhaps just random colors?
Some of you may have read my post about varied regions. Basically, I am trying to figure out snow lines. Some people want no snow, and that is pretty straight forward. I put snow at about 4000m, and this is just way higher than I think anybody actually plays at.
Beautiful work Lowkee. I would make textures for each zoom, depending on how you want the terrain. It looks fine at further zooms, but it makes the terrain look much more lush and bushy. Which may not be good for more dry(er) regions. A possible way would just be to give a couple of the textures zooms. Although on the other hand, it does give the terrain depth. Making it look as if the grass is taller.
...okay I'm not sure about this issue. I was trying to give advice then I changed my mind. :D
Anyways amazing textures. I absolutely love the hue of them and this will probably be my terrain mod for my current region. :thumbsup: Are you basing them off of any particular region or just making it to your liking?
,marsh
Thanks Marsh. I don't think I would be going too far off base to say that the images you have seen are the lushest textures I am going to make. I have no specific area of the world in mind, though the where I live has a big effect on what I think terrain is (New England: temperate, rocky, and eroded). I also live in the city, so most cliffs I see are those carved out by the highway makers. :)
I think I have found a good way to make Zoom 0. The processing takes about 30 minutes per texture, so I only did one today. I feel safe saying that I wont make a zoom 1. Zoom 4 is a detailed zoom 3, so zoom 2 just needs to be a good transition. Maybe I will do a zoom 1, but it's just different green noise at that point...
The final argument in favor of zooms: Base Textures. These do have zooms, and so detailed terrain does not blend well with them.
Made my first attempt today at my own base textures. I think the results are pretty good:
In-Game (http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/2953/basetexture.png).
As far as me mass producing Base/Overlays, this is out in the future. I may first make overlays that are transitions to he textures we already use. I am not saying this in a competitive way, but I feel like if I were to make new textures, they would have to be better than what we already have. This is a steep task. Then I might decide I need to re-lot some things. At that point, I might as well re-desc... ?=mad)=
Oh well, take care.
QuoteI may first make overlays that are transitions to he textures we already use. I am not saying this in a competitive way, but I feel like if I were to make new textures, they would have to be better than what we already have.
Heh, yea it seems like that for everything these days. :-[ Although I think the base textures look great. :)
For me I'm used-to seeing things different. I live in a high-plains desert. Everywhere theres just patches of tall prairie grass. So New England is a rainforest compared to where i live. :D
Thanks Marsh.
Things have been slow lately as I try to figure out how to make rocky textures. Think I got it with this one (cliff texture on top).
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg12.imageshack.us%2Fimg12%2F3438%2Frockyr.jpg&hash=a2b7f403a15970d5b477ca26346d4f0678d1eebd)
Take care all.
Edit: Now that rocks are in stage 2, I can get stage 1 of snow going. A little teaser before I call it a night:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg594.imageshack.us%2Fimg594%2F4146%2Fsnowyc.jpg&hash=14077cd41029bbfb33fdd11825ae4358b5f04e54)
I'm really loving your work, it's getting better and better. :thumbsup:
Those textures are looking great Carl! &apls Very nice start on the rock textures.
While I'm posting I thought I'd ask if there is any quick way to tweak the Pyrranean Terrain Mod for a greener, lusher look. I read through the posts in your signature but still don't understand how I might go about this. I hope you don't mind me asking about that in this thread ;)
Thanks Rayden. I've got some really dirty snow brewing right now :). I learn more and more about Texture Maker all of the time (it's how I made my new avatar).
@Noahclem: Thanks. I don't mind at all, though the other thread might be a better place. Where exactly are you getting stuck? I am afraid that if I just explained it again right now I would explain it in the same way as in the tutorial.
Snow textures is good and the rock's one is better than the icecream $%Grinno$%
Love the textures ! Great job ;)
I saw that you had managed to tweak some terrain mods to make them look different in different seasons, what is your technique for doing that?
I don't need a lot of variety, just that any very green grass goes brown the colder half of the year.
I have tried changing the TemperatureRangeFactor up and down in the CPT terrain mods with no positive or negative change at all.
One thing I wonder is if there is a way to use the textures that a terrain mod uses for higher altitudes in the winter, "lowering" the textures when temperature changes.
How did you do it? I'd be super super grateful if I could make the terrain change by time of year, because i like to use seasonal trees, but there is no point in doing that when the wintery trees without leaves stand on sharp green grass. Really the only thing I need to change are the grassy green textures to be more brown or moss-green like grassy areas tend to be in the winter, snow is not necessary and actually not wanted since the trees i use don't get snow on them in winter, they just drop all leaves.
Hi Komsip,
Unfortunately, the temperature simulation doesn't work. The only thing to say about temperature is that it gets colder as altitude increases. What does change is moisture, and this is what I used to make the mod.
Terrain textures are controlled in the terrain INI. There is a table 32 rows and 16 columns big. The first row is the coldest area, and the first column is the driest area (the bottom right "slot" is the warmest and wettest).
So, textures don't change in an up/down sort of way, they change in a left/right fashion.
The mod that I made is in a purgatory of sorts. There hasn't been as much interest in it as I might have thought. However, if you want I can send you the download link so you can try it out for yourself.
I'd be very happy if you could send it, even if could just have a look at your INI section I'd be happy :)
I'm also very curious how you set up the Terrain Properties and Weather Tuning Parameters exemplars.
I have been able to do some things with the weather properties and the terrain settings recently, but it is very hard to predict what will come out of it. It would be really nice if you could show me what you did when you managed to control the seasons as well as you showed you did some posts back.
Hi Komsip, I sent you the mod.
The offer is open to anyone else who wants to try the seasonal mod out. Just let me know if it all works correctly and such. I thought I posted this offer on the front page, but it look like not.
I heavily rely on this mod that I posted on page three: Direct Link (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11701.0;attach=7879). This will change your Power Data View so that it shows Moisture instead, so you can really see what effects you are causing. The moisture simulation is loaded while loading the city, so you can see results without having to "play" the game.
After that, I mostly played with YearlyAmbientMoisture, YearlyAmbientMoistureVariation, and YearlyAmbientMoistureVariationFactor. The latest I know is found in the "Terrain Exemplars Explained" link in my signature.
The most difficult part of the mod was getting snow to look right in the region shot. There was a lot of fudging that I did.
When I started making my own textures I tried to do something a little better (Girafe's pines do have snow, so snow on the ground makes sense. Decidous trees don't really collect snow anyway). However, there is just too much sacrifice to get a mod to go from all snow to no snow. At the moment I am doing a completlty stagnant mod. The way the weather exemplar interacts with a tree controller makes it important to be careful, but I'm thinking I might just go default Maxis weather for my textures.
I'd be interested in trying out what you have so far. Though I'm by no means a modder at all. I don't even have iLives Reader, so do you have your mod far along enough that I can use it without that?
For all intents and purposes, the seasonal mod with CP's textures is done. All you need to do is install it, and tell me what you think. I packaged it last year, when I wasn't too sure about HTML, so the readme could use an update. I'll send you the link :thumbsup:
I keep coming back to this thread to read on the progress and stuff, and it's been a while. I really do love this idea, but a couple posts back I saw you said that this mod is stagnating, that there's not enough interest. I don't mean to breathe down your neck or whatever, but this would be very neat to finish, I actually believe that is should have much more interest.
Very good work though, and congrats on everything you've found out.
Thanks carelo91. There are two mods in these pages. The first is making a seasonal terrain mod using CPs textures, and the second is me making my own textures. The seasonal CP mod is done. I want it to be on the LEX, and for this it needs to go through the wringer a couple times. However, there hasn't been much demand for it, so no one is really testing it. Therefore, it is slow to be publicly released. Perhaps I should sticky something to make this more clear.
Progress on my textures is also slow. I've been busy, but progress is being made. This is something I do for fun, so general opinion has no influence on it ::) (other than critique, which has been helpful all the way)
Winter break is here, it's about time for an update. :)
Blending snow with cliffs has been a real challenge. Cliffs will try to blend with any texture, so it is hard (impossible?) to blend a dark cliff with snow. Looking at other terrain mods, I think the blending that I have is comparable. This means that all of the textures are ready for finishing touches!
The next steps are getting all of the texture exemplars working together, finalizing the beach/water textures, and re-instancing everything to conflict with other terrain mods as little as possible. This last step doesn't really matter, but perhaps those with messy plugin folders would appreciate.
some pictures: (note the hospitals ;) )
Here is a picture of where water meets land. There is still much to do here, particularly setting the transparency for water.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg838.imageshack.us%2Fimg838%2F9438%2Fwaterfront.jpg&hash=c3759352892b65ff7401297c0bf45785caaa3320)
A larger image, focusing on the cliffs
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg404.imageshack.us%2Fimg404%2F1517%2Fcliffyh.jpg&hash=4d90772c14aa4c2cf4c4b635600775c7ba23301e)
Moving up to the snow areas. Again cliffs are tough to blend with. I will be making a snowy cliff for the snow fans out there, but for now I am just getting together something to be happy with.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg696.imageshack.us%2Fimg696%2F6204%2Fmountainsl.jpg&hash=e3c22390efce9d86c115f38f355decf808545af3)
A much larger image that shows this whole scene (http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/3482/mountains.png)
Finally, a region shot.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg854.imageshack.us%2Fimg854%2F32%2Fregion.jpg&hash=cdd6010072cb310071ebc898ec8a9e00db0e5ca3)
Btw, this region is Pishkun Shores by CycleDog. It can be found in CP map pack #1. We can compare my terrain to what I am guessing is Missouri Breaks.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg32.imageshack.us%2Fimg32%2F7964%2Fpishkunshoresingame.jpg&hash=f9d6d2129a5221af64a4150d20fd420e73cc5009)
Have happy holidays!
By the way, I would be willing to test these. I currently use the Olympic terrain mod and Brigantine water and am tiring of the bright green look. Let me know if you want that. My most recent region is a river with no mountains and a lot of valley space.
Hi Tracker, Once I get this installer made I'll send something over.
This started out as a quick question, but if I'm asking, I might as well ask right :)
This mod is going to have a few options:
1) No Snow / Snow (no snow is default)
2) Normal / High Snow line (normal is default)
3) Regular / Ennedi's Jagged Edge Cliffs (Regular by default)
4) Regular / Coastal (Regular by default, coastal will make the water more transparent)
5) Erosion / No Erosion (Erosion by default, any opinions about this?)
Five radio buttons, I don't think too much :). Are there any suggestions for more? Every option is inclusive, so I'm making an installer with 32 possible file configurations ::). If anybody wants an NSIS script for something like this, I can attach it.
The readme will of course explain better, with pictures too.
Question about #2: What snow lines to you want? I'm thinking default will be 750m and high is 2500m. Way off? High is supposed to be more realistic, while default puts snow on most Sim City type maps.
It isn't really effecting a snow line either, because you can choose it either without snow. Here, the purpose would be to have more variance on any map.
Carl, I missed seeing until today your December 22, 2011, post here.QuoteBlending snow with cliffs has been a real challenge.
Looking at the pics, I might be inclined to agree with you, except that you didn't finish the sentence. It would have been far more correct to say, "Blending snow with cliffs has been a real challenge, but I've been able to overcome that." Those snow cover patterns are almost RL. Snow doesn't stick to close to vertical rock there and shouldn't in the game, either.
Your amazing work here as elsewhere (I know that there is another snow surprise from you for me to catch up with elsewhere) is always K-point worthy- and so it once again is.
David
Holy-moly. People like Yan and Badsim have spent their time painstakingly creating utterly stunning visuals that boggle the mind into believing they are real photographs, and then there's David and the NAM team breaking the grid with their fractional angles, but HECK, you just blew me out of the water with a BLANK MAP!!!
Thanks for the compliments :)
JoeST, if you were as bad as I am at making cities, you would make terrain too :P
After a little testing, I think I am going to drop the altitude for when High Altitude snow appears. Rather than 2500m, it will be 1500m. A big drop, but there are only a few maps that go above this height. I figure anyone playing in high mountains can adjust the height as desired.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on January 17, 2012, 02:09:47 PM
JoeST, if you were as bad as I am at making cities, you would make terrain too :P
Hahah, yeah I've resigned myself to making support software :P lol
Quote from: JoeST on January 18, 2012, 04:16:03 AM
Quote from: Lowkee33 on January 17, 2012, 02:09:47 PM
JoeST, if you were as bad as I am at making cities, you would make terrain too :P
Hahah, yeah I've resigned myself to making support software :P lol
And I started lotting and modding (a bit)! :D
Really impressive job blending the snow Carl! &apls
Your textures continue to look outstanding--I think the terrain mod is really coming together. Out of curiosity, what are you thinking for the water transparency settings?
...And if you're as bad (and slow) at lotting and modding as I am it's best to spend most of your time building cities and leaving the technical work to the pros :D
Quote from: noahclem on January 18, 2012, 06:42:41 AM
...And if you're as bad (and slow) at lotting and modding as I am it's best to spend most of your time building cities and leaving the technical work to the pros :D
yay for the circular argument :D
Quote from: noahclem on January 18, 2012, 06:42:41 AM
Your textures continue to look outstanding--I think the terrain mod is really coming together. Out of curiosity, what are you thinking for the water transparency settings?
Right now there are two options, low and high ::)
Water depth for max alpha -Low = 8
-High = 35
I just noticed that
Water Min Alpha is higher for the high transparency option. I will check on that.
Water depth color gradient didn't seem to do anything? Perhaps I need other settings, as I didn't try higher than 1
What do you think?
Quote from: JoeST on January 18, 2012, 07:48:41 AM
Quote from: noahclem on January 18, 2012, 06:42:41 AM
...And if you're as bad (and slow) at lotting and modding as I am it's best to spend most of your time building cities and leaving the technical work to the pros :D
yay for the circular argument :D
Yay indeed :D
Quote from: Lowkee33 on January 18, 2012, 09:52:34 AM
Right now there are two options, low and high ::)
Water depth for max alpha
-Low = 8
-High = 35
I just noticed that Water Min Alpha is higher for the high transparency option. I will check on that.
Water depth color gradient didn't seem to do anything? Perhaps I need other settings, as I didn't try higher than 1
What do you think?
I actually keep my
Water depth for max alpha set to "9" almost all the time. I haven't extensively tested all the different water properties but the experimenting I've done makes it seem like the other properties aren't as important as that one. For me the 9m seems about perfect, changes within a few meters of it don't make a very noticeable difference, and unless I discovered settings I liked more I'd only change it if I was making a tropical area.
I suppose it could be helpful for me to note that the water mod I use these settings with primarily is drunk_apple's dark blue, though it's also been effective with Brigantine and a couple others. However, right now I'm using Rivit's icy water with a transparency of 3m (attempting, unsuccessfully to make it look like ice).
I am quite curious to hear more of your thoughts on these settings as I'd love to get the most out of my water.
One issue I have is that the older textures aren't going to look good anymore (because they are smaller they will be stretched out). Ennedi has some 1024x1024 cliff mods on the LEX, but from what I know, there are no water/beach mods anywhere. In order for the mod to not look like crap, I am also going to have a little "starter set". As time goes by, hopefully the community will help make as many water/cliff/beach options are there are for 256x256 textures.
Anyway, it does seem that the MaxDepth has the largest effect. MinAlpha is interesting too though, if this is high, you can clearly see where your water starts. The downside is that it can look glitchy.
Something you might want to play with are the underwater textures, 0x13 and 0x14. 13 is the deep sea texture, and 14 is right below sea level. There is a property Min Water Depth For Deep Sea Bed Texture, I think you can guess what it means. I will have to play with water settings as well, but perhaps a value of half the MaxDepth is sufficient. For my mod, the deep sea texture's main purpose is to blend cliffs in with the beach. It's not the strongest part of the mod, but like I say, let's at least get a primer on, choose colors later.
Concerning water, I checked out DobDriver's mods on the STEX. Something very interesting he had was the textures that make the edge of the water a better color. There are two of them, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what they do. So far, the color of the edge appears to be the difference of color between the two. One has an effect on the surface of the water, though I am not sure exactly what. Making the edge of the the tile match the water has changed the color of the water as well.
I happened to find another texture that deals with water, and this one is the one that makes the sun appear to shine on water. Well, that effect has always annoyed me, so the first thing I did is make it go away. I've attached it as a little mod here. Any thoughts about this one? I'm making a water mod for my terrain, should I include it? (obligatory plugin load order speech here).
%BUd% You killed it, you killed it!! &dance
Too much? Perhaps so but it annoyed me as well for a long, long time.
As for including it, imo you should keep the terrain mod as simple as can be, otherwise installation might get unnecesarily complicated. Maybe you could point future users to all these nifty mods in the read-me.
This Japanese creator made several interesting changes on the subject ..
(https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Zwu4YB8l7vU/TyhNifBzYDI/AAAAAAAABPc/1Q4v4lq1u24/s600/FukajunWaterMod%2520b.jpg)
link - http://www.fukajun.net/simcity4/modules/d3downloads/index.php?page=singlefile&cid=3&lid=18 (http://www.fukajun.net/simcity4/modules/d3downloads/index.php?page=singlefile&cid=3&lid=18)
@NCGAIO: There is no doubt many interesting things to do with the water texture. A snow mod perhaps?
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg33.imageshack.us%2Fimg33%2F949%2Fwaterju.jpg&hash=24f506b879f0f2fb42c43aab6295d8ddfebe01f5)
The attempt now is to make the edges of the city match. I never thought making a good water mod would be so complex though
@Noahclem: Looks like I got something for you, about the Alpha to Gradient:
Here it is with a value of .01:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg840.imageshack.us%2Fimg840%2F4067%2F10tothenegatve100.jpg&hash=20bf0e83fedfb3442f3f4baaaf2ab0eea609135b)
And here is a value of 100:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg198.imageshack.us%2Fimg198%2F8061%2F100qwn.jpg&hash=4c38b484144c1b8e5bd4827292164139f00fe23c)
Maybe tough to see in the images, different depths get different pixels in the gradient. So that means that property actually matters... The gradient itself too, 0x69EFB6F8. :angrymore: :D
The other side texture is 0xC9EFB727, they are in SimCity_2.dat with the terrain Group ID. This one appears to be a gradient from the surface of the water down (I think unaffected by depth).
And you were interested in the Ice too. For that, not only is the water the ice texture, but the sea-bed and beach textures are as well, 0x13, 0x14, 0x39.
Of course, that is a lazy man's snow mod...
Quote from: Lowkee33 on January 19, 2012, 10:36:57 AM
... but from what I know, there are no water/beach mods anywhere.
Sorry friend had just read above and thought to help ..
I went back to the start of the topic and see who has everything under control. Mods snow? There is no doubt the best are on the PLEX ... Direct PEG MODS
http://www.simpeg.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ad4ece3a98379305d1ee92fd4997ca5e&action=downloads;cat=8 (http://www.simpeg.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ad4ece3a98379305d1ee92fd4997ca5e&action=downloads;cat=8)
The textures I am making are 1024x1024 pixels large. SC4 can only display 8 pixels per meter, so this mod spreads them out over a greater area. This spreading is done with the property TerrainTexTilingFactor in the Terrain Exemplar (THIS LINK (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11701.msg373958#msg373958) shows a little work I did to figure out how terrain is displayed). The property effects every terrain texture, so a 256x256 pixel texture is going to look very blurred (each pixel of the texture will take up 8 in-game). PEG's snow mod might not be too hindered, my blind guess is that the snow is just a white FSH. Ennedi was making some terrific snow textures before he left, THIS IMAGE (http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/1316/zsnow3genz2.jpg) from THIS POST (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7960.msg317595#msg317595) shows that we can do way better. It's a shame you are left with just me :). Water is my least favorite texture to make, followed shortly by snow.
A snowy terrain mod that also has grass is like an F-35, good at everything, perfect at nothing. I imagine as time goes by I will make a snowy cliff and an icy water. A dedicated snow mod shouldn't be too hard to make from there.
For those unhappy with the snow I've made, my first thought is that there is probably enough snow slots in the INI to override the textures themselves. Otherwise, making a new INI wouldn't be too hard.
I had to stop my mod for a minute, load SC4 for a second marathon for RL. Hope to pick it back up tomorrow, I think there is just one more thing to figure out (the same thing that got my looking at changing the water in the first place). ;)
You may notice my CML, thought I would make this post display my tinkering process. :)
Texture 0x69EFB6F8 is a 1x128 pixel image. It effects the water on the edge of the tile, as well as the surface of water. On the edge, it is the color of where water meets the cliff edge (the ocean floor). This effect is controlled in the Terrain Properties Exemplar with the property
WaterDepthToColorGradientFactor. The Reader description is "Number of pixels in the gradient corresponding to water depth". If the value of the property was "1", at a water depth of 128m the color at the ocean floor would be the bottom pixel in the image. If it were ".5", at 128m we would see pixel 64. Simple enough I think.
As for the way it effects the surface of the water, this took some tinkering. Here are my notes:
Quote
Experiments with 0xC9EFB727 and 0x69efb6f8:
Vanilla:
Water as: 0x7f7f7f = 0x525563 in-game.
Can these textures be alphas: No, appear black. Grey water is 0x393c39 in-game.
0xC9EFB727: set to 0xFFFFFF (white): No effect on water surface, ignore for now.
0x69efb6f8:
Top half white makes water very close to 7f7f7f.
Bottom half white has no effect... Testing changing terrain exemplar properties... No effect.
Pixels 32-64 white, no effect... black for no effect confirmation... Confirmed.
Pixels 16-32, no effect.
Pixel 1 white, the rest black... Brighter water... Making black for confirmation... 0x393c39 !!!
Hue ajustement... Water texture to 0xFFFFFF, pixel 1 to 0xFF0000, red water!
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg40.imageshack.us%2Fimg40%2F6929%2Fwaterdn.jpg&hash=8013607acea4799cc37326e47ffa354a0130eb92)
This means that all a water texture has to be is a bump map, the hue/brightness can be controlled with this texture (that one top pixel). This implies that if I make a good 1024x1024 bump map, then I can make 100's of different water mods with just variations of that 1x128 texture. The bandwidth gods smile.
As for 0xC9EFB727: The only purpose of this, for now, would be to act as a gradient from the water surface to the water floor. It is also 1x128. It seems very complicated for something that only acts as a gradient, so perhaps there is more to it. Here is an image of it tiled: Note, those sharp changes in the gradient are
not jpeg compression.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg9.imageshack.us%2Fimg9%2F1049%2Ftopdefault.jpg&hash=4dcb4712e9e7a04a0306f757864b13df571cafc1)
Lowkee, when you post pictures that you need to show fine details in color differences, you are aloud to post the pictures as png, especially if it shows the difference better. Just be sure you keep it to a minimum please.
I don't say much in here but I am following your work very closely.
Keep up the great work, please.
Robin &apls
Congratulations again on the CML Carl &apls If this is the amount of work, knowledge, and contribution required to receive one there may not be many more coming soon.
Nice tinkering here, speaking of which. I'll be curious to see what comes of these discoveries. Some snowy cliffs could be quite useful and Ennedi's snow work is quite beautiful. As far as existing, released snow mods go, I share your suspicion that Peg's is a simple white FSH. QuantumEagle's Antarctic Terrain Mod (http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/26650-antarctic-terrain-mod/) on the STEX is something else altogether though and I've been able to capture some nice scenes with it.
Keep up the great work!
Wow! The quality of these textures and your ability to integrate them into to the game is astounding. Just when i thought that i've seen it all, i come across this. Congrats on the amazing work and thanks for showing how much further this game can be pushed, nudged and exploited...... in a good way :P
Bud
Thanks for the compliments. Nice to see you here Robin, feel free to call me Carl. Welcome to the terrain works Bud, it's nice to see someone who I've never met come back. :)
Good to know I can post a PNG if I need to. I am at the low end of the bandwidth spectrum, and I try to keep the images under 100kb. But I think I'm going to break that rule this time (and my resolution rule). We're close to the end of this page anyway. A good way to start a page. :D
So, this water texture has no color. By adjusting that one pixel you can get a pretty wide range of hues/saturation/brightness (brightness being the smallest range).
I think that about does it:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg23.imageshack.us%2Fimg23%2F9901%2Fsimcity4.jpg&hash=bf3e558ff274d58c56f972c521a988718d107dcd)
Introducing the Appalachian Terrain Mod!
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg14.imageshack.us%2Fimg14%2F7153%2Fregion3.jpg&hash=8f2b07189deb55d89cefdf738c48155300862bce)
The Controller:
Windows - Link (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2753)
Max - Link (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2754)
Dependency:
LK Terrain Textures 01 - Link (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2751)
Highly Recommended Beach/Cliff/Water Mod:
LK_StarterSet - Link (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2752)
You must be logged into the LEX to see the download button.
Feel free to ask me any questions to help.
Let me know if everything works before I get sick :D
Holymoly, that looks AMAZING!
Look great. Thank you very much for sharing your amazing work! :thumbsup:
Finally here, amazing jon &apls &apls &apls
still discovering the baby and trying to get snow on my mountains ^^
Amazing work! I'm trying out all the different possibilities. &apls
You cannot imagine my surprise when I log onto the LEX to grab a dependency and I see this!
AMAZING work lowkee! I'm so happy this is out! &dance
,marsh
Thanks everybody. I can't believe it either Marsh, what has it been, a year and a half?
There may be an issue with the water on a Mac. If anybody has a Mac can they please give this a run?
Fantastic work Carl! I just tested it in the game and it is amazing.
The only thing that puzzles me is the "LK_WeatherTuning_Stagnant.dat" file.
You mention in the readme it is optional. But I can't see a difference throughout the year when I remove it..... ( Not sure what I'd be looking for either :P)
-Alex
Like John Lennon said...
...instant karma's gonna get you...
Yeah, a year and a half long instant. Great work, Carl!
David
Thanks for the KP David. :)
Quote from: xannepan on February 04, 2012, 10:21:51 PM
The only thing that puzzles me is the "LK_WeatherTuning_Stagnant.dat" file.
You mention in the readme it is optional. But I can't see a difference throughout the year when I remove it..... ( Not sure what I'd be looking for either :P)
Admittedly, the mod does very little. You will notice it the most if you go to a relatively sloped area in January, then cheetah to July and change zooms. You should notice a difference in the terrain. This mod will make the terrain change less during the year.
Tree controllers also use moisture and I didn't want to break CycleDogg's, so the moisture level for the mod is the same as the default January. Maybe a better way to test the mod would be to god mode trees in July (post mayor-mode), remove the mod, and god mode trees again. You should plant different trees.
Having this mod in should make the tiles in region view match up better no matter what month you save them in.
I used this mod the whole time I made the terrain. My original intent was to not even include it with the release. However, when I took it out, things weren't working quite perfectly anymore. I thought just to be safe I should keep it in.
Just to let you know, Carl, that I'm enjoying a lot your terrain mod.
I must have to say, my game runs smoother than with the previous one I had, and in fact, the textures you used match what I was looking for desperately.
So thank you, thank you, and again thank you for this extremely great mod. :)
Thanks Art :). Feel free to post pictures here (that goes for anyone else to).
Hi Carl,
This sounds beautiful.
Too bad I have no time to play the game. Just lotting and modding.... But maybe next year?
@Lowkee
I would really try your fantastic terrain mod in the game but...the game loads correctly to the region shot..then when i load a city tile,just before opening the tile,the game crashes...can you help me?
I had the meadowshire terrain mod installed...I removed the meadowshire terrain texture but didn't remove cp's tree controller...
help me please because i really want to enjoy your amazing work
Frank, next year? That's a lot of lotting.
@Gugu3. You either still have another terrain mod in your plugin folder or you didn't install mine correctly. Search for the word "terrain" in your plugin folder, and remove the files that aren't part of this set. Look at the files you have installed an compare them to the image in the Readme.
Thank you!I will check all the files as soon as I can :P
Quote from: Lowkee33 on February 08, 2012, 09:07:07 AM
Frank, next year? That's a lot of lotting.
Maybe he's making lots and lots of parking lot lots :p
Quote from: Lowkee33 on February 07, 2012, 03:22:04 PM
Thanks Art :). Feel free to post pictures here (that goes for anyone else to).
Alrighty :thumbsup:
(https://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pxr03cEnb-QUVBBESzDGIV96Q8eEF_QR7lE0sbMqsL-2H6yu5sWd50-c4ztyovH88Kl9d97S9zUnXv_50JEsBqQ/sc4d2.jpg?psid=1)
(https://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pxr03cEnb-QUHyBbyA876xNQDnFcLw-AGsqy1rEHyz9pIda7hoLVmZMxXEFnEk4TQeNF46BoZ13we1eykAOF5Og/sc4d1.jpg?psid=1)
The detail in the terrain textures is simply outstanding. Back with meadowshire I would just about have to cover every square millimeter of ground with MMP's to achieve the depth of texture I wanted. Lowkee's terrain blends with MMPs so well that now I don't have to use several layers of miscellaneous junk to blend in my Large MMPs to the terrain. In fact, now there's all kinds of blank space that still looks great. ;D
howley gorgeousness :o
I love that second picture epicblunder. Simply stunning.
This looks great. I love the seasonal idea. Unfortunately, I can't use it for my current region because it is a desert (CPT Monument Valley - CPT Painted Desert), but I will probably use it for my next region - somewhere in Appalachia, where I grew up.
Speaking of deserts, a while back you said...
Quote from: Lowkee33 on November 01, 2010, 07:04:13 AM
The next mod I make will have no snow. I want make a mod that is desert-like and has a rainy season too. This would be possible, but the rain would have to come in either Jan or July. Every other month has a sister month where the moisture level is the same (thus the same textures will appear).
I live in the Sonoran Desert (SW US), and here we have two rainy seasons. Winter rains in Feb. and the summer monsoon season in Aug./Sep. I realize that doesn't match up with the month pairs you discovered, but maybe a rainy March/Nov would be a good compromise. Visually, the desert really blooms/greens in March and to a lesser extent in Sep/Oct.
Just a little input from a desert rat. Whatever you come up with next, I'm sure it will be awesome. THX for all the effort improving the game :thumbsup:
Nice flora work Epicblunder. Using less flora also will make changing zooms faster.
@ZenMonster: A quote from over a year ago :). I will consider the two rainy seasons, though there is no way I know of to make spring have more flowers.
The terrain texture factory is on hold for now, I want to do other things with my SC4 time. I feel I should make a base texture set for this terrain. I'm into Maxis Replacements right now, so that is where my base texturing work has gone. I'm a college student as well, so I bit the bullet and got 3dsMax. I found two scripts, Rock Generator (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/rock-generator) and ATree3D (http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/avizstudio-tools-atree3d). The scripts are like Tabasco sauce for a beginner Batter; doesn't matter who cooked, it will still taste good. We'll see where that goes, I've replaced a bunch of the smaller Maxis shrubs (3 more to go) with HD models. Right now the textures are off, I'm just doing the bat work.
Quote from: JoeST on February 08, 2012, 10:10:45 AM
Quote from: Lowkee33 on February 08, 2012, 09:07:07 AM
Frank, next year? That's a lot of lotting.
Maybe he's making lots and lots of parking lot lots :p
Hmmm, welll.... not exactly, but I am indeed in the making of lots and lots of growable farm lots, reward lots and miscellaneous rural lots. And I lost some lotted lots, so these lousy lost lots need to be relost/lotted (sorry).
Quote from: FrankU on February 09, 2012, 07:43:45 AMAnd I lost some lotted lots, so these lousy lost lots need to be relost/lotted (sorry).
Re-lost? :D. Sorry to hear you lost a bunch of work though.
A call to MAC users: Please post an image of your water so that I can ensure it is working correctly, thanks.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on February 09, 2012, 12:59:28 PM
Quote from: FrankU on February 09, 2012, 07:43:45 AMAnd I lost some lotted lots, so these lousy lost lots need to be relost/lotted (sorry).
Re-lost? :D. Sorry to hear you lost a bunch of work though.
A call to MAC users: Please post an image of your water so that I can ensure it is working correctly, thanks.
Nothing was really lost. No worries.
Work still in progress!
&apls Perfect job ... No wonder they gave you a very prominent position it deserves.
Starting a development is very simple .. the hardest is to keep the interest and complete the work to deliver the download to users.
Congratulations ..
For some reason it keeps giving me a ctd, even with this being the only plugin. I have the terrain pack+snow, the textures_01, and the starter set. Am I forgetting something?
How does your Appalachian terrain file end? You say you have a No erosion snow file as well?
..I'm having a ctd problem like waterstar. I've tried the obvious...I removed conflicting plugins, re-installed the mod files with differing options and cleaned my plugin folder.
My resolution is set to 800/600 in windowed mode, through the "software" option. could that be a conflict?
Quote from: Lowkee33 on February 17, 2012, 07:20:11 PM
How does your Appalachian terrain file end? You say you have a No erosion snow file as well?
Just the snow file
Hmm, try installing the mod without any options. (i.e. replace "LK_AppalachianTerrain_Snow.dat" with "LK_AppalachianTerrain.dat"). Does this still crash?
Edit: from what I see, LK_AppalachianTerrain_Snow.dat shouldn't make your game crash.
Quote from: avrelivs on February 17, 2012, 07:47:17 PM
My resolution is set to 800/600 in windowed mode, through the "software" option. could that be a conflict?
A quick test yielded the same result for me; when using software rendering, the game will CTD.
Thanks Vortex
t, I didn't see this post:
Quote from: avrelivs on February 17, 2012, 07:47:17 PM
..I'm having a ctd problem like waterstar. I've tried the obvious...I removed conflicting plugins, re-installed the mod files with differing options and cleaned my plugin folder.
My resolution is set to 800/600 in windowed mode, through the "software" option. could that be a conflict?
Software makes my game crash too. I am afraid there is nothing I can do about that &mmm. I will add that clause to the lex description.
The same occurs with any texture greater than the standard in all aspects of the game ... I find it very difficult for someone to run Simcity seriously in rendering software today but anyway I really think that the warning in the download is a good provides.
The same problem had shokthrpy in stex ... with respect to his brigantine 2.0 mod .. as already posted on the site.
How do I work the moister to get the diffrent textures then, it's all the same texture to me and doesn't change with the seasons. I'm I missing something there?
Quote from: Waterstar on February 18, 2012, 08:57:57 PM
How do I work the moister to get the diffrent textures then, it's all the same texture to me and doesn't change with the seasons. I'm I missing something there?
This mod isn't seasonal. It is actually less seasonal than the Maxis terrain. If you want it to be seasonal you want to open LK_WeatherTuning_Stagnant.dat and play with the properties "mfYearlyAmbientMoistureVariation" and "mfYearlyAmbientMoistureVariationFactor". They are set to .2 and 1 by default. The attachment to This Post (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11701.msg349473#msg349473) has settings I found balanced.
Software mode will crash if the terrain textures (same goes for ANY texture) are greater than 256x256.
Basically, this mod is only intended for use by hardware-mode users. It's a game limitation and unfortunately people who use this in software mode will have problems.
[edit] Actually, I have a question: what tree mod would go well with this? I'm currently using the Missouri Breaks tree controller and well... it doesn't really fit.
None of the CycleDog tree controllers fit very well, it is unfortunate. Italia River is pretty good, but not really the right type of trees. The general saturation of the older models is high compared to Girafe's trees, the levels I tried to match. The Maxis tree controller is the best match I would say.
It is an issue I am thinking about. I had Girafe's trees as a controller in a beta state, but since then he has made more trees. They aren't really tuned for a tree controller either, many faces. I might start making my own models, I'm doing experiments to see how big I can get HD models to sit on one FSH. To do this, I make the model, and then rotate it and the LODs 22.5 degrees. This makes for bigger models, but also means that I can reduce the amount of faces in the S3D.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg845.imageshack.us%2Fimg845%2F66%2Fmodelimage.jpg&hash=8f84e607a86473bf9c6e65c261fc68739f817b82)
And then there is seasonal or not. Seasonal trees are cool, but it forces one to plant them at a specific time. I'm interested in making the tree controller plant trees that appear to grow instead.
Nice work Carl, I love your terrain. I've installed it this weekend and to honour that, I've made this little map (7x9 big cities). It fits just perfect. :thumbsup:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropbox.com%2Fu%2F58036502%2FNewValley.jpg&hash=e98d1ce9c91fe0512c0f0bc9e842ac4d1c23e589)
For a bigger picture click the link (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/58036502/NewValley.png)
Hi Carl,
I am currently trying out your terrain mod and I love it. There is only one small thing: I would like to have more snow on the mountain peaks, so that the terrain does not shine through. Is there an easy way for me to achieve this?
There are two easy ways to achieve that, either you play with the terrain height max value and set it to the same max height of your map, or you can play with the string TemperatureRangeFactor, or something like that. Sorry I can't remember now (I'm at work) the exact names of those strings, that are located on the main file of the terrain mod. If you have troubles on finding them let me know and later when I get back home I can let you know the correct names.
Thanks Rayden.
Temperature Range Factor would be my choice (That is the difference between the "normal" and "high" versions of the mod). The higher the TempRangeFactor, the higher the snow line will be.
Quote from: Lowkee33 on March 22, 2012, 09:57:29 AM
Thanks Rayden.
Temperature Range Factor would be my choice (That is the difference between the "normal" and "high" versions of the mod). The higher the TempRangeFactor, the higher the snow line will be.
I also play with that one most of the times, but I prefer the TerrainMaxHeight because if set properly will maintain visible all the terrain texture layers. If your mod is set to 3000 mts for instance and the terrain max height it's only 1800, you probably loose all the textures above that height, including the snow ones that are the last ones on the list (highest ones). So, I usually play either with one or the other or both at the same time. ;)
Of course in some terrains there is some textures that usually don't apply, but it gives a nice variety on terrain levels having all those textures available.
Many thanks to both of you. It is indeed easy to modify these two values. Now I need to play around with them to get a feel for the effects. I think I will find a good result eventually.
Beautiful mod Lowkee33! And thanks for your help over at Simtrop.
Hello, :)
First of all, sorry in advance for my poor english.
Now, the point: I need help with the Appalachian terrain mod. :|
For some reason, the game crashes to desktop during the load of any city tile of the region.
I tried to load the game only with an empty plugins folder, with only the terrain mod and relative texture file installed, but it keeps to crash.
In my zz_terrain folder (the one in plugins folder) i have exactly the same files suggested in the "readme", nothing else, so i'm gonna suppose it's a texture problem with my video card\resolution\settings. Any suggestion about?
Thanks in advance for the help.
Bye. :)
Quote from: Carny on January 29, 2013, 05:22:20 PM
For some reason, the game crashes to desktop during the load of any city tile of the region.
You need to have your graphics in hardware mode to use the Appalachian Terrain Mod since it uses HD textures.
I'm trying to use the Mac version of the mod Lowkee33 created but whenever I start a city in Mayor mode the game freezes. I've made sure that the graphics are rendering from the hardware and tried removing all other plugins. I also have the dependencies and followed the "installation" instructions... :/
Hello Lowkee and congrats for this awesome mod !
I've seen that you want picture with water from MAC version with your mod in action. So let me show you the picture I've taken :
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.hostingpics.net%2Fpics%2F473174Bord.png&hash=73e65ea232f6b5db6081b8571da5a9cc6dd5452d) (http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=473174Bord.png)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.hostingpics.net%2Fpics%2F783642Zoom4.png&hash=a29870ca393bbb8c3e3038070241eea8b4601ed9) (http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=783642Zoom4.png)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg11.hostingpics.net%2Fpics%2F145015Zoom6.png&hash=78a0ea30aa829bb2caaf8768ede58b20a8241f6b) (http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=145015Zoom6.png)
Let me know if you want better pictures.
See you soon !