Aces High Default Tile sets.

[bustr]

While I've been experimenting with this the best change to the Eu terrset00 to get brown rock and gray rock, it was the mountain.bmp and cliff.bmp in the top two 1016 and the pacrock1.bmp in the 508. I might give up a tree and clutter tile to nest a pacrock1 lower down to remove more of the bad transition line by having only one pacrock1 in the top row of the 508 palette.

Testing that palette with oflinter at the tank shooting ranges I had an idea. If Hitech will allow this terrset remix for the MA, I want to do a terrain that uses the rockgrass.bmp as the base tile that I first paint the whole world with. It has all the sparseness of trees and long open views for tank shooting I'm once again hearing as random VOX complaints in the MA. Seems the less talented tankers are being chewed up by the growing numbers of tank monsters who have gotten used to the trees and clutter. They want to see farther in more open venues without thinking how someone like Dr7 will sit 2 miles away and vulch the spawn. While the vbase and field defenders will see them coming from 2 miles away. Still, micro hills and gully's can alleviate some of that like I did with riftval. The rockgrass 508 looks really good applied over micro hills and gully's.

[hitech]

where are you placing the bmps for the tile? Check the stdshape folder, if the source bmps are getting built into that folder and added to the terrain, they should NOT be. This may be where a bunch of your size is comming from.

HiTech

[CptTrips]

where are you placing the bmps for the tile? Check the stdshape folder, if the source bmps are getting built into that folder and added to the terrain, they should NOT be. This may be where a bunch of your size is comming from.

HiTech

Interesting.  I figured it was like the fmod.  You either needed to replace the hole thing or nothing.

So would you only put in the atlas txt files the one image you are replacing? 

I guess the issue ie we have no example to work from.  The only example we had was the winter terrain GhostDancer sent which was obviously changing everything. 

It would be awesome if we could override only one or two tiles out of the terrset!

Bustr figure it out and document the process!  I'll give ya a dollar!

[Ciaphas]

Interesting.  I figured it was like the fmod.  You either needed to replace the hole thing or nothing.

So would you only put in the atlas txt files the one image you are replacing? 

I guess the issue ie we have no example to work from.  The only example we had was the winter terrain GhostDancer sent which was obviously changing everything. 

It would be awesome if we could override only one or two tiles out of the terrset!

Bustr figure it out and document the process!  I'll give ya a dollar!

that would be nice!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bustr]

I'm already changing out 508 and moving them around to improve the merge borders. I've repeated grass1 on three of the 508 palette rows to improve  transitions. I'm trying to use existing tiles to achieve a real world look while the primary tile for around spawns and feilds was created sparse on trees by Waffle. When I get what I want, then I'll test removing all the bmp files that are not listed in the atlas files.

I think this 508 tile will do the job while I won't have to spend weeks blending. I just micro hill\gully the terrain for 4 miles around the town and field along with this tile. You can see how I've shifted the pine forest tile to get rid of that dark green transition boarder along with replacing some tiles with the grass. If I keep my mountains below 10k as a summer map, don't have to worry about snow, and the brown rock sits above all the transitions. I'm finding tank players are not enthusiastic about the village tile or farmland tile since it creates too many places to get ambushed while they feel claustrophobic trying to drive through those areas. Even though they wanted things like that all through AH2. What most want in practice, is some form of the AH2 crater to see the enemy from miles away and not have to expose themselves to ambushes. Closest AH3 map with that is buzzsaw the spawn in above the field at A2.

[bustr]

Just created a new terrain myterr and followed the folder structure getting my custom arrangement of 508 and 1016 tiles.


ah3terr
-------myterr
                  stdshape
                  terrset00
                             spdtree
                                      swa
                             texsrc
                    texsrc

I opened myterr to the default Eu summer terrset00, then closed it. Then I created the folder structure and copied into terrset00 only the following:

atlas0.txt
atlas1.txt
catlas0.txt
catlas1.txt
objdet.txt
terrdet.txt

Then I opened atlas0 and atlas1 and copied into terrset00\texsrc all of the bmp files related to the listings in these two text files.


ATLAS0

atlas,
512,ImageSize
4,ChannelCnt
4,rows
4,cols
texsrc\sand.bmp
texsrc\dunes.bmp
texsrc\dryscrub.bmp
texsrc\drygrass.bmp
texsrc\erosiongrass.bmp
texsrc\grass1.bmp
texsrc\decidforest.bmp
texsrc\grassfeild0.bmp
texsrc\grassfeilds.bmp
texsrc\grass1.bmp
texsrc\roughgrass.bmp
texsrc\grass1.bmp
texsrc\rockgrass.bmp
texsrc\grass1.bmp
texsrc\pineforest.bmp
texsrc\pacrock1.bmp


ATLAS1

atlas,
1024,ImageSize
4,ChannelCnt
2,rows
2,cols
texsrc\farm1.bmp
texsrc\village.bmp
texsrc\mountain.bmp
texsrc\cliff.bmp


The next time I opened myterr, I had my custom palette And the terrain editor generated all the additional files and folders needed.

[Ciaphas]

Can someone explain the relationship between the large textures and the small textures?

[Easyscor]

Except for the obvious difference in size, they are the same. Both cover a 2 mile x 2 mile portion of the terrain. The 1016's with their associated supporting bitmaps allow reasonably sized "roads" or "paths through the woods" and much more detail then the 508s.
Hope that helps.

[CptTrips]

Just created a new terrain myterr and followed the folder structure getting my custom arrangement of 508 and 1016 tiles.

Right.  But that is the process that give you the +80 meg increase right?

Hitech seems to be implying there is a way of doing it that would that would only increase it by the size of your modified bitmap.  I was never able to find a way to make that work.  I could only do it with the full terrset replacement like GhostDancer showed me with his Winter terrain and Easyscor described.

If there was a way to only swap out a single bitmap of the terrset ( 4meg instead of 80meg), that would be a huge win.

Easyscor, has anyone ever done that?





 

[bustr]

Here is something I threw together this morning on myterr to test res file size with a custom palette. The file myterr.res is 77,307kb, my other test terrains this size using the default terrsets are about 250kb.

The tallest peak is 3,000ft, mountains are sloppy in reality so using the Raise\Lower tool following preset ridge lines is moments of time. Then the Smooth Catmul to simulate millions of years of weathering and Raise\Lower to pull up rock formations you want prominent. You quickly define a watershed and maybe some touch up with the bulldozer and smoothing tool. By the end of riftval I discovered this was the fastest way to throw in features that didn't require the extensive 3D structure and planning like those grand canyons in the back of each country on riftval.

I may have to give up one more tree\clutter tile so I can place in another grass1 to create a cleaner transition. This rock formation, painting\tweeking and laying down the objects was about an hour and you can see the land square is 1 sector on purpose since I wanted to see how long it takes me to doodle one sector. Another thing riftval taught me was to plan every square mile of topography related to objects so it becomes simple doodling following a blueprint.

[bustr]

I'm going through all this becasue I like the random ruggedness of the topo map below. I just don't want to do snow capped ginormouse mountains and granite craggs like this place is in real life. But, I need the gray and brown rock tiles with tiles from the Euro Summer tileset. I just want the land mass outlines so I can blueprint a 2048x2048 and make all the bases fit into three roughly even regions. Nothing will be taller than 7,000ft if that, so I don't have to worry about snow. 5,000ft will probably work fine.





The more I zoom in I get a structural lesson in mountain reagion water sheds and how I've not been random enough building my mountains. The only way I'll get this random is by doodling in following ridge line guides I draw on the map.bmp and not trying to be neat and tidy. More like a case of beer and a long weekend. I'll have to do a global paint in rock and work down hill from there.

[Easyscor]

If there was a way to only swap out a single bitmap of the terrset ( 4meg instead of 80meg), that would be a huge win.

Easyscor, has anyone ever done that?
 

Short answer: No.

From the beginning, and it's still true as far as I know, it's an all or nothing system. For the MA, I recommend following the documented rules.

Custom winter terrsets in the AvA and SEA are adding 70 to 80 MB to the .res size. Compare that to the .res sizes for the default terrsets included by the game, 160 MB to 350 MB.

It might not be obvious, but if the terrset in question is that great, then creating and submitting a completely original terrset for inclusion in the game might be another way to keep your terrain sizes down for the MA. Terrset05 anyone?

[bustr]

Better question, if I'm mixing around Hitech's tiles and not adding anything new, for 80mb added to the end result for the MA, will he allow that kind of customization packaged in an MA terrain in rotation? I'm not sure it makes for a terrset05 since I'm reusing grass1 in each 508 row to eliminate a lot of horrible merge lines all over the terrain. Not sure future terrain builders would understand why so many grass tiles.

I still need to look at if one more grass1 tile swapped in for a tree tile is necessary to get the transitions I want or, a resorting of tiles. The part of the world I'm looking at has limited environment zones and any farming is covered by the farm2, grassfeild0 and grassfeilds tiles. You can see in the screen captures having three stone tiles makes more realistic visuals when painting rock topography. The volcanic and granite formations in northern Norway are dark rock and gray rock. The brown rock makes good visual contrast inside the game.

[CptTrips]

Short answer: No.

From the beginning, and it's still true as far as I know, it's an all or nothing system. For the MA, I recommend following the documented rules.

Custom winter terrsets in the AvA and SEA are adding 70 to 80 MB to the .res size. Compare that to the .res sizes for the default terrsets included by the game, 160 MB to 350 MB.

It might not be obvious, but if the terrset in question is that great, then creating and submitting a completely original terrset for inclusion in the game might be another way to keep your terrain sizes down for the MA. Terrset05 anyone?

That's what I thought.  I tried different ways to do it but didn't succeed.  It's just that Hitech's comment seemed like it suggested it might be possible:

where are you placing the bmps for the tile? Check the stdshape folder, if the source bmps are getting built into that folder and added to the terrain, they should NOT be. This may be where a bunch of your size is comming from.

HiTech

That may have just been miscommunication.

I just wanted Bustr to realize that before he put too much work into it just to have Hitech respond: "80 meg!!!!  Are you MAD?!?!?"   

On the other hand, if there was a way to do it, that would be very useful to know and to document.

[Shuffler]

Use scissors.....