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made a map - can't register
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_Zoko_
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 4:08 am    Post subject:  made a map - can't register Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

So I've got a map I would like to upload but I'm not able to register on the forum. I had gone through the registration prompts but I never received an activation email, and the site won't let me try to register again. I'm not even able to post in general as a guest so it seems I can only post here.

About the map, here is the preview and the name is Sands of Arrakis. 1000 credits to whoever can guess the *highly obscure* theme here  Laughing .


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Lin Kuei Ominae
Seth


Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Location: Germany

PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Can't help you about the registering here (but wrote a PM to Banshee, the site admin, to look at this)

Nice dune map you have there.
The lighting is maybe a tad too strong on some areas, thus resulting in the blocky tiled lighting (especially in the center), but it's already a quite well done job for the first map. The general lighting is really nice and fits well to dune.

You can change the lighting in the map by adding the code for the lightposts and then adjust their light settings.
e.g.
[INORANLAMP] ;the invisible orange light post
LightVisibility=3000 ;The radius how far the light goes
LightIntensity=0.01 ;The strength of the light (reduce this further to make it more smooth)
LightRedTint=1.0 ;the color of the light
LightGreenTint=0.7 ;
LightBlueTint=0.3 ;

You can also place the invisible tiberium/ore spreader under the tibtrees and ore mines. These not only help to spread tiberium/ore further away, they can also be used for the tib/ore lighting as they serve as lightposts too.
Then you can remove a few of the additional lightposts and just give the spreader the light settings.



The terrain and cliff work looks good too, but it could use some more smaller details.
Since trees and rivers don't fit, you should use the following sets to add more details
-0008 (Pebbles)
-0028 (Debris) (the skeletons would surely look nice here and there)
-0037 (Rocks)
for the bright sand
-0053 (Pebbles)
-0068 (Debris)
-0083 (Rocks)

Another thing this map should get applied is special construction restrictions: it should be possible to make the player able to build on the dark areas only.
Try ading the following code to the map with a text editor (e.g. Notepad++ or default windows Notepad)
Code:
[Rough]
Buildable=yes
[Clear]
Buildable=no

I'm not sure right now if the dark ground really uses Rough ground though. Would be better if Bittah takes a look at this.

P.S.: i guess i'll have to a create a sandworm now. Smile

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Last edited by Lin Kuei Ominae on Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

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OmegaBolt
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Joined: 21 Mar 2005
Location: York, England

PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Does look quite good, I like the overall colour and lighting a lot. You just need to reduce the brightness of the light posts big time. There's also a lot of the LATing that's very square looking, you should try making that more natural IMO.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Did you check the junkmail/spambox of your email? Maybe the activation mail ended up in there.

This map has a nice layout, although the small image size makes it hard to tell how well detailed it is. I can tell that the debris, rocks and pebbles that LKO recommended to place are present already however.

There's a few mistakes that you might want to correct:
  • Like OmegaBolt mentioned, some LATs have a square shape in some places and you could make it look a bit more natural by altering the LAT's shape so that there's no long lines.
  • You placed the Pavement LAT over the Gray Sand LAT. Since these two LATs can't transition to one another, you can see clear sharp lines in between these LATs, giving them a very artificial look. So it's better to avoid placing Pavement on anything other than Clear Ground (not to mention that the pavement will most likely be made brighter in a future update, after which it'll might look out of place on this map).
  • I can see many cliff errors (places where the cliff pieces don't connect seamlessly) and in number of places you also seem to have forgotten to attach a cliff-ending piece. Whenever there's a cliff error, you'll be able to see an unnatural looking sharp line, which takes away from the quality of the map.
  • All terrain objects that occupy more than a single cell need to have impassable terrain or overlay placed under them or units will always try to move right through them (only infantry will actually be able to, while vehicles will instead always start attacking such a terrain object that's in their way, instead of simply moving around it).
    Impassable terrain can be found under the Terrain/Ground menu (named "Clear (Impassable)" and "Alt Clear (Impassable)"), while "Impassable Overlay" is found under the Overlay & Special menu (Use Framework mode to tell impassable clear ground apart from regular clear ground).


Here are a few more things that are useful to know:
  • By default tiberium trees and ore mines only spread tiberium/ore as far as one cell beside itself. If you want tiberium/ore to be spreaded in a wider radius, you need to place an invisible tiberium/ore spreader over the tiberium tree/ore mine (you can find it on the sidebar under Buildings > Special). Note that the Riparius spreaders spreads green tiberium and the Vinifera spreader spreads blue tiberium. You can also make these invisible tiberium/ore spreaders emit lighting: to enable this, go to the Map Tools menu, then Tools Scripts, then select right script (for example "- Enable Ore Spreader Lighting.fscript") and click Run, Yes, Yes and OK.
  • It's possible to copy/paste terrain. To do this, simply press Ctrl+C and then click where you want to start selecting the terrain to copy. The selected tiles will get a red outline; simply click again to copy the selected tiles (you might want to avoid selecting too much at once however, because selecting a huge area can cause the program to lag a lot). And as you'd expect, you simply have to press Ctrl+V to paste what you copied earlier and then click on the cell where you want it to be pasted.
    By doing this, you can also slightly customize terrain, by pasting bits of different terrain over one another (try to avoid creating sharp lines when you do this however). One thing you can do by doing this is creating cliffs where the bottom has light sand and the tap has dark sand. Take a look at the "Tower of Power" map for an example of this.
  • You can click the bright colored 3-D cube in the menu bar to enter Framework mode (you can also press Ctrl+F on your keyboard to do this). This not only allows you to see impassable clear ground, but it also allows you to clearly see the shape of LATs so that you can easily manually edit these. Additionally you can see where tube entrance cells are and the size of animated water tiles, but these aren't present on your map.
  • The transitioning between different LATs is done by the map editor's "AutoLAT" system. AutoLAT can be disabled/enabled under Options, or by pressing Ctrl+L on your keyboard (it's necessary to disable it when you want to manually place the individual LAT tiles).
  • The LATs that need to be placed over "Alt Clear" don't automatically transition with the Alt Clear LAT itself. If you need to do this in small areas, you can manually place the transition tiles with framework mode enabled to fix the transitioning, but this'll become quite a chore if this needs to be done for a much larger area.
    It's possible to make the AutoLAT system work for LATs that are placed over "Alt Clear" instead of those that are placed over "Clear". To do this, open Des.ini in the INI folder with a text editor. If you scroll down a little you'll find the following code:
    Code:
    ;;Remove 8 the semicolons below to enable FinalSun's auto-LAT function for LATs you place on Alt Clear ground INSTEAD of the LATs you place on normal Clear ground. Restore the semicolons to re-enable Auto-LAT for LATs you place on normal Clear Ground.
    ;Ground1Tile = 69
    ;Ground1Lat = 70
    ;Ground2Tile = 73
    ;Ground2Lat = 74
    ;Ground3Tile = 81
    ;Ground3Lat = 82
    ;PvmntTile = 79
    ;ClearToPvmntLat = 80

    Remove the bottom 8 semicolons as described and then save (but don't close) the text file.
    AutoLAT will now work for LATs that are placed over "Alt Clear" once you restart the map editor. Remember to restore the semicolons after you're done.

Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
Another thing this map should get applied is special construction restrictions: it should be possible to make the player able to build on the dark areas only.
Try ading the following code to the map with a text editor (e.g. Notepad++ or default windows Notepad)
Code:
[Rough]
Buildable=yes
[Clear]
Buildable=no

I'm not sure right now if the dark ground really uses Rough ground though. Would be better if Bittah takes a look at this.

All LATs except for Pavement use Clear, actually. So if he'd really want to restrict where players can build, he'd have to use pavement for that.
So first the Gray Sand LAT would need to be replaced with Pavement and then the [Clear] part of the code above needs to be added to the map:
Code:
[Clear]
Buildable=no

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Last edited by Bittah Commander on Tue Jan 06, 2015 5:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Banshee
Supreme Banshee


Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam)
Joined: 15 Aug 2002
Location: Brazil

PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Zoko, send me an email to webmaster@ppmsite.com using the email that you've used to register in this forum and mentioning the account that you have created and couldn't validate. If they match, I'll validate it for you.

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_Zoko_
Guest




PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Oh so much feedback. Smile

The lighting in the center does look a bit smoother, less square looking ingame but I agree its too sharp, I'll take a look at turning it down.

The terrain object issue - that explains all these weird movements I've been getting. Do cliffs need a cliff-end part or is that just a cosmetic detail? I've just been adding them where I thought they looked better, didn't realize they actually impacted anything.

The building area is indeed restricted to those brown outcroppings, but I had no idea you could do it with code! I found that no-build overlay and copy pasted it all over the map, and the problem there is it keeps the ore from spreading since ore/tiberium is an overlay as well. Hm although with code is there anything that I can do to make it recognize the brown ground as rough? If not I think I can work around that but it would be a lot less tedious to use code of course.

So the pavement, that actually serves a function. When you attack and destroy a base it generally leaves a lot of unbuildable terrain (craters) and because the building space is so restricted already you want to avoid minimizing that. But craters don't happen on pavement so no matter what that space will always be available. But I originally added it just for cosmetic purposes since in dune you would build on concrete to increase your buildings' durability.

About auto LAT, I'll take a closer look when I have more time. Just to be clear, is it possible to change the auto LAT to fit in ground 1 or ground 2 instead of the regular clear ground (the red sand). It actually doesn't look bad as a transition ground but in some spots it is a little out of place and it eats up too much space. Also if the pavement could transition to the rough ground it would look a lot nicer as well.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2015 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

_Zoko_ wrote:
Do cliffs need a cliff-end part or is that just a cosmetic detail? I've just been adding them where I thought they looked better, didn't realize they actually impacted anything.

Cliff errors generally won't affect unit movement, unless a gap between the impassable tiles is created (which would then result in allowing units to move through the cliffs).
Cliff-ends are indeed purely cosmetic details, but as mentioned, it'll look very unnatural when you can see sharp lines (which generally is the case when cliff-ends aren't present).
_Zoko_ wrote:
The building area is indeed restricted to those brown outcroppings, but I had no idea you could do it with code! I found that no-build overlay and copy pasted it all over the map, and the problem there is it keeps the ore from spreading since ore/tiberium is an overlay as well. Hm although with code is there anything that I can do to make it recognize the brown ground as rough? If not I think I can work around that but it would be a lot less tedious to use code of course.

The NOBUILD overlay is the only way to do this without code, but it indeed has the side-effect that you described. To make the game recognize the "Gray Sand" terrain as rough, the terrain itself (meaning the files themselves) would need to be edited, so unfortunately there's no easy way to do this.
_Zoko_ wrote:
So the pavement, that actually serves a function. When you attack and destroy a base it generally leaves a lot of unbuildable terrain (craters) and because the building space is so restricted already you want to avoid minimizing that. But craters don't happen on pavement so no matter what that space will always be available. But I originally added it just for cosmetic purposes since in dune you would build on concrete to increase your buildings' durability.

I think the sharp borders that the pavement currently has will look odd (unnatural) to many players however.
The designated spaces where players build their bases aren't unusually small compared to other maps. Scrap debris that's spawned from destroyed units and structures also don't make terrain permanently unbuildable: you can clear scrap debris away again by either simply harvesting it or by making a unit with an explosive weapon (meaning all cannon and most missile weapons) force-fire on it.
_Zoko_ wrote:
Just to be clear, is it possible to change the auto LAT to fit in ground 1 or ground 2 instead of the regular clear ground (the red sand). It actually doesn't look bad as a transition ground but in some spots it is a little out of place and it eats up too much space. Also if the pavement could transition to the rough ground it would look a lot nicer as well.

By removing those semicolons, AutoLAT will start working for LATs that are meant to be placed on Ground 1, which is "Alt Clear" (in other words, the LATs that are placed on regular clear ground are different from the ones you'll place on Alt Clear ground).
Only the regular clear ground (red sand) and the light sand (Ground 1/Alt Clear) have transitions to other LATs such as gray sand, grass and pavement, so AutoLAT can't work when you place pavement on gray sand.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I forgot to mention, those weird movements you mentioned are most likely caused by having covered most of the map with impassable overlay.
If you don't mind players being able to build small (1x1) structures on the light sand, a solution could be to just have spaces between the NOBUILD overlays. So if "*" is clear ground and "x" is the NOBUILD overlay, you'd basically have to space it like this:
*********
*x*x*x*x*
*********
*x*x*x*x*
*********
This way 2x2 or lager sized structures still can't be placed on the impassable overlay, but path-finding of units should work normally again.

Or if you don't mind having the ground colors appear slightly different from in Dune, you can follow my suggestion from before and make pavement the only terrain to allow building placement.
If you have some patience however, I could possibly also add a clone of the Clear ground and Alt Clear ground that disallows building placement in a future update, if you like.

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Zoko
Civilian


Joined: 04 Jan 2015

PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 10:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Actually the movements get strange only around cliffs, this is probably due to the missing unpassable terrain. I did use that spacing for some areas of the map though.

And yes if you do include that in your next update I would very much appreciate it, I've got college keeping me busy now so I'm not in too much of a rush. I was thinking I might do do one or two more Dune-themed maps as well, additional terrain would make things easier for sure.

One thing that I'm having problems with is the scale of the map, it actually cuts a bit off of the bottom and right side, I've tried adjusting the values but while that stretches out the map in the editor it does not affect in-game borders.

Since my account issue has been resolved as you can see, I'll just wait on that update and post the updated version to the maps section.

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Bittah Commander
Defense Minister


Joined: 21 May 2003
Location: The Netherlands

PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 1:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Zoko wrote:
Actually the movements get strange only around cliffs, this is probably due to the missing unpassable terrain. I did use that spacing for some areas of the map though.

I can't say for sure whether covering the map in NOBUILD overlay causes path-finding issues since I haven't tried this myself, but I did encounter such issues with ships after covering a large amount of water with NOBUILDW overlay. It's possible that overlay just affects path-finding (differently) when it's placed on water however.

Zoko wrote:
And yes if you do include that in your next update I would very much appreciate it, I've got college keeping me busy now so I'm not in too much of a rush. I was thinking I might do do one or two more Dune-themed maps as well, additional terrain would make things easier for sure.

The upcoming weekend will be a bit busy for me and there's still a couple things to be done before the next update, so the next update is still at least a week away.
You can still work on your map in the meantime however; after you've update you'll only need to select the new Alt Clear ground that disallows building placement and then hold Ctrl and click on the existing Alt Clear ground to instantly replace all Alt Clear ground with it within the area where you clicked. Mind that you'll still need to place the NOBUILD overlay on other ground types (such as the rough ground) then however.

Zoko wrote:
One thing that I'm having problems with is the scale of the map, it actually cuts a bit off of the bottom and right side, I've tried adjusting the values but while that stretches out the map in the editor it does not affect in-game borders.

The blue rectangle indicates the visible map area; everything outside of it won't be visible ingame.
Make sure there's always at least 3 cells in between the red and blue lines at the bottom of the map, otherwise some cells at the bottom of the map will be cut off.

Zoko wrote:
Since my account issue has been resolved as you can see, I'll just wait on that update and post the updated version to the maps section.

I'd just move this topic to the Maps forum, but since you wouldn't be able to edit the first post then it's indeed better if you create a new topic.

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