Author Topic: Mapping Department Organization Thread  (Read 26989 times)

Roebbah Urtz

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #60 on: August 27, 2017, 07:18:30 PM »
@muizer what does fade in in the geography database? I understand most of it, except from that one parameter.

Jubal

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #61 on: August 27, 2017, 11:36:02 PM »
My understanding is that "fade in" doesn't do an awful lot, though I may be very wrong about that!
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Muizer

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #62 on: September 19, 2017, 09:40:55 PM »
Apologies for the long silence.

Yes fade in seems to do hardly anything.

As for more climates. I'm currently using all of them already. Expect to finish things up coming weekend. Will discuss more then.

ahowl11

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #63 on: September 20, 2017, 09:29:45 PM »
Sounds good, can't wait to see the progress!
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Jubal

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #64 on: September 20, 2017, 10:42:48 PM »
^ Ditto what ahowl said. :)

I keep being tempted to do some climate work, I'd like to have some proper jungles in a couple of my mods, but it always seems rather a pain to get started on...
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Roebbah Urtz

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #65 on: September 21, 2017, 07:18:09 PM »
@jubal you could help collecting and compressing ground textures in .dds format, it's not hard you just need to make an account on several free and freemium texture libraries and have photoshop installed (for some unknown reason ground textures glitch when you use gimp to compress them to .dds). Make sure to save ground textures in the original 1024x1024 format without compression to avoid quality loss if you have to make edits. Each climate uses 15 textures for each season, there are 2 seasons and 12 climates. One of the climates will be a tropical floodplain and you could make some simple edits to make it look like a jungle in your mods.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2017, 07:52:37 PM by Roebbah Urtz »

Roebbah Urtz

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #66 on: September 21, 2017, 08:25:52 PM »
@muizer regarding the climates and ground types: I fixed the issue of forest appearing around settlements, so I can use swamp for something else now: I call it 'nigh-impassable terrain' combined with the boreal climate it becomes snowy even in summer with some tundra, can be used for the Himalayas, Greenland, Iceland and parts of Scandinavia. Combined with deserts it becomes sand dunes. Combined with the three wetland ground types it becomes very wet swamp. I still have to decide what I will use it for when combined with the Mediterranean, semi-arid and temperate deciduous forest climates. Perhaps for very steep tiles? Or to represent very rocky terrain? Regarding both cool and hot deserts: I used hills for hilly rocky deserts, low fertility is sandy, wilderness is even more sandy and swamp is 100% sandy. Sparse forest is used for badlands (I replaced the vegetation with rock formation models with shrubs on the slopes that appear when using this ground type), dense forest stays dense forest. Medium and high fertility are somewhat fertile are more flat, with pebbles, cracked earth, small shrubs, etc. High fertility has a higher density of shrubs.

Also I'm going to make a final update for my unofficial RTRVII patch in which I undo all of my balance changes and big graphical changes and just fix bugs and enhance little things to stay as close to how RTRVII was intended. If you could add one climate, what would it be? (the swamp climate is still unused) Also regarding your semi arid highland climate: I've never seen it on a battle map so could I use that climate for a semi arid climate with snow in winter that could also be used elsewhere on the campaign map?
« Last Edit: September 22, 2017, 11:16:13 AM by Roebbah Urtz »

Muizer

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #67 on: September 22, 2017, 06:45:57 PM »
Hola Roebbah (should I call you that?)!

It would be really useful to me if you could post your "climate+groundtype = landscape type" matrix.

We need one, because I agree just assuming groundtypes will be the same/compatible across climates is probably too limiting. Use of open forest as scrubland in arid climates seems unavoidable for instance and I guess there will be other "out of character" usages. A departure will mean that any change to climate will have to be accompanied by changes to the groundtypes, but it's probably worth it.

Greets,

Mzr

Roebbah Urtz

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #68 on: September 23, 2017, 04:13:15 PM »

Roebbah Urtz

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #69 on: September 25, 2017, 02:53:36 PM »
@muizer regarding RTRVII: there's one climate slot unused. I would like to use it to represent a maritime climate with pine trees as the main vegetation. Would you like to create a bitmap of the potential vegetation map, the same size & projection as the RTRVII map so I can use it as an overlay in gimp to determine the the areas that get the new climate? Thank you very much! :) If you would recommend to use the unused climate slot in RTRVII for something else tell me and I will do so. Also regarding the semi-arid mountain climate: it does not appear on any battle map.

Muizer

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #70 on: October 08, 2017, 01:22:30 PM »
Sigh, ok that proved to be a lot more work than I thought. But, I'm getting there. I now have a version that I can test for functionality. If it works, we can look into the coding and texturing of climates and groundtypes.

For climates, I'm using the following mapping:

- sub-arctic -> boreal pine forest
- fertile grassland -> steppe
- dense forest -> humid continental
all of these interspersed with:
- alpine -> continental wetland

- open Forest -> oceanic
- mediterranean -> mediterranean
interspersed with
- swamp -> temperate wetland

- infertile grassland -> cool semi arid
- semi arid -> hot semi arid
- rocky desert -> cool desert
- sandy desert -> hot desert
interspersed with
- highland -> tropical wetland.

For groundtypes I'm mostly sticking with "what's on the tin" for
- beach,
- open forest
- dense forest
- low mountains
- high mountains

groundtypes varying quite a bit depending on climate are
- wilderness
- swamp
- hills

special mention for the 'fertilities'.
Generally these are
high fertility -> arable land
medium fertility -> mixed farming
low fertility -> grazing.

I have chosen to move cultivated lands under desert climates into the desert's arid counterpart, and repurpose the desert 'fertilities' to cover various variations in ground cover.

Finally, something I am not entirely sure about yet is the use of low mountain groundtype for (impassable) rocky desert.

So, what is next. When can you see it? Well here's the thing. The next step would be to load the thing and debug it, then test it, make adjustments and do the coding and texturing, but tbh, I'm kind of burnt out on the thing and I would like to take a break, so I'm not going to embark on that right now.  So, I'm happy to upload the map files somewhere for you, but if I do, don't expect me to process feedback any time soon.

ahowl11

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #71 on: October 09, 2017, 05:48:35 PM »
Please upload, and we can possibly take over from there, and when you want feel free to check in at TWC, we will have a map thread made there. Thanks for all of your help Muizer!
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Muizer

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #72 on: October 09, 2017, 06:25:04 PM »
Would it be possible to upload it to a separate branch in the repository somehow? If not do you have a preferred method of uploading. Not sure how secure this forum is if I post a dl link here.

ahowl11

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #73 on: October 09, 2017, 07:08:40 PM »
This forum is pretty secure.. If you have Git installed etc, just go to Projects/rtrproject and create a new folder called 'Muizers Map' and then commit/push.
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Jubal

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Re: Mapping Department Organization Thread
« Reply #74 on: October 09, 2017, 08:37:25 PM »
I can never remember where on this forum has passwords as I can see it all anyway, but I can add an extra pass-coded area if you want a more secure zone for transferring files etc.
The duke, the wanderer, the philosopher, the mariner, the warrior, the strategist, the storyteller, the wizard, the wayfarer...