couple questions

[dkff49]

I do appreciate all the help guys but ghostdancer I don't seem to be able to find the waterc.bmp and if the elevation bitmap fits directly over it without adjustment then things will still be offset up and right of the center since my elevation bitmaps all seem to be off this direction.

The way I figured this out was to export the elevation and then make it my CBM after closing the TE back down, reopen the TE, and in the CBM right click and click on show bases. my bases all seem to be off from where they are supposed to be on the CBM but are right on the terrain.

I'll try to come up with a pic of what I am talking about as soon as I get some time, hopefully tonight.

[mrmidi]

Just sent you a PM dkff49


 
midi

[Easyscor]

You are correct in that the CBM is scaled in-game, and the east and north pixels are clipped out of your CBM. The number of pixels clipped out depends on the size of the terrain. iirc, something similar, but less drastic occurs to the south and west. It has to do with mapping half a terrain cell around the borders to the bitmap.

Adding to the confusion for some, the in-game icons represent the tower, not the base. They don't scale well, are not for showing the borders of the base, and they change size and even position relative to the CBM terrain as you zoom.

[ghostdancer]

Your right Midi I was thinking the ground type map that you use to set vegetation.

dff49 how are you creating land? Are you doing it in the TE? The other method of creating it is to create a waterc.bmp file that maps the land based on what you drew in that graphic file.

[dkff49]

I have been creating the land in the TE. Is there another method?

[mrmidi]

He's still in the beginning stages of working with the TE GD.

We haven't quite gotten to working with the ground type bit map and the water depth bit map yet.

That's in one of my up coming tutorials after I finish the "Working with Elevations in the TE" tutorial part 1.

OOPs I let the cat out of the bag on the name of the next tutorial 

 
midi

[ghostdancer]

Okay, I see now MrMidi. I thought he was doing it via the waterc.bmp method.

dkff49 yes there is another method MrMidi will explain but basically there are two ways of doing things. You can either do it in the TE or you can use several graphical files that you pull into the program that set your water, land, elevation, and ground type. To go that route you really need a good graphics program such as photoshop or gimp because it requires a lot of graphical work.

[RamPytho]

Now you tell me there's an easier way. I spent 5 hours last night, hand erasing water and painting ground types.  

[mrmidi]

Yes it's an easier way to do all that externally with photo shop but, it's also very easy to mess the whole thing up if your not familiar with
the TE, and is files first.

It is possible to make the entire terrain using just an elevation bit map file and create your ground type, water depth file and the CBM,
before you even startup the TE. However it requires a lot of editing of each file first, then resizing them and so on.

We'll get to all these in future tutorials. My intent with starting my tutorials the way I did was to get people familiar with
the core building process before they start doing custom and nifty things, and getting past the initial intimidation of the TE.

 
midi

[RamPytho]

I've got the Elevation bitmap sorta figure out. Have a pretty sweet looking mountain range in the making. In playing with the elevation bitmap, I sure learned that even thou my eyes can't see a difference in the shade, the program sure does.

And a big thank you to you sir. Without your tutorials, I would have never gotten as far as I have with the TE, can't wait for the next part.

[ghostdancer]

MrMidi is 110% right in that if you are not used to working in a graphics program you should first learn to create things in the TE. Graphics program can be very tricky.

As RamPytho found out the elevation bmp maps heights to colors. Basically you have 256 shades of black and white. Absolute black is sea level. Absolute white is the highest point in your elevation map. In between these you have 254 varying shades going from absolute white to absolute black.

On top of this depending on what you set your max elevation at each jump in color represents a different shift in feet.

Say you max elevation is 20,000 feet. Divide that by 255 and you will see that each color shift is 78.431 ft. So sea level (black or rgb 0,0,0) is 0 ft while the next rgb color of 1,1,1, is 78.431 and 2,2,2 is 156.862 and so on up to absolute white (rgb 255,255,255) which would be 20,000 ft.

Now if you have a different max elevation set. Say 11,000 ft then you divide that by 255 and see that every of the color shift changes is actually 43.137 ft.

This is good to know and advance stuff but I can not stress how right MrMidi is to say that this can get very, very tricky. Setting gndtype (terrain tiles via a graphic) can even be trickier since different colors tell what terrain to use or what terrain to blend with another terrain.

So follow what MrMidi is doing for now and he will work up to the advance stuff but believe me the advance stuff can get very very frustrating at times. Like when you have worked on a gndtype file for a long bit and then realized you color was just off by 1 value and that is why things weren't working out.