South Atlantic / Desert Experiment

[+Piecemeal 450]

While attempting to stay off my boredom yesterday, I had an idea to see what it'd be like to paint the SF2 default desert terrain with the tiles from the 'Malvinas' terrain of the Falklands mod for SFP1. The result was that I'd had the most enjoyable mountain flying sessions in a long time

 

 

The reset of the terrain has also turned out to be pretty interesting; however, there's been the usual teething problems.

I made the terrain by creating a new DESERT folder containing everything unzipped from the Desert.cat (that way I knew exactly what to look for when replacing BMPs, TGAs, etc.

Some of the 'teething problems' I mentioned earlier can be best explained in these shots:

 

 

 

Are there any 'Terrain buffs' out there that can help me out? Aside from those problems, the more I fly around it the more I want to make a separate terrain from it

 

 

[Wrench 9,894]

damn, frakking board software didn't "keep" my first replay...I'll try this again.

 

---

Picture 2 w/the funny water:

Alpha channel problem in what looks like the sea-farm-city or sea-city-farm tga - I always get them 2 confused.

You'll need to replace the exsisting alpha with a 'working' one from another tile (that matches the pattern of the surrounding tiles)

 

What looks like happening, is the alpha is either solid white or solid black. Look at the stock or other Malvinas sea-to-whatever tiles in PS or GIMP or something that can handle the 32bit tga w/alpha channel. You'll see the differences.

 

Picture 3 w/funny water and non-matching ground:

Same alpha channel issue as above.

Wrong tile for that area; meaning, the ground section dosen't match the surrounding ground. That can also be fixed in you run-of-the-mill imaging/paint programs. Also you need to check the data ini (and texturelist.ini if available) to find the matching tile (ie what name is it??)

 

Picture 4 with Oceanic Trees ™:

that tiles TOD file needs to be rebuilt, to remove or move those trees back onto land. Unfortunatley, can only be done in the terrain editor.

 

If you know EXACTLY which tile that is, you can import another TOD of the same name, and hope the trees are back on Dry Land ™

 

If you want mountain flying, there's no terrain better than the America NorthWest, especially now with the 4 seasons version (if I DO say so myself!)

 

Wrench

kevin stein

 

ps: it looks like it time to take the plunge, and start learing the TE, UM!!

[+Piecemeal 450]

it looks like it time to take the plunge, and start learing the TE, UM!!

 

 

You're SO correct on that one, Wrench. I've been visiting this iste for long enough and I have to admit that I'm either too lazy or too scared to take the plunge into the next level of getting to know the 'nuts & bolts' of terrains. Personally I'd say the former

 

I think I'll take this on as a sort of 'pet project'. In the meantime, if anyone else has some suggestions, or if you'd like to see more screenshots of the 'Highlands of the terrain, let me know

[SUICIDAL 401]

Hey ULTRAMAX

Try these tiles repainted.

Are what we use to give more realism to the terrain of the Malvinas.

Also the water is repainted.

Here the South Seas are very deep bluish black.

 

MALVINAS

[Wrench 9,894]

Brother, it's time to get off your lazy butt and jump in!!!! I was just as hesitant (ok, maybe more so than most), as the TE is a REAL piece of work -read not intuitive. But, one learns by doing with this set of sims. And there's plenty of folks to reach out to for help. Hopefully

 

And yes, more screenies are good!!! You know, if it's simple repaints of the alphas, and repaint of a couple of transition tiles, I can probably squeeze them in amongst all the other couple of hundred things I'm working on. I just need locations, so I can find WHICH tile it is. You'll probably have to activate your ShowDebug=TRUE in the HUDData.ini, as to give me the map coordinates.

 

Those are some NICE looking tiles, guys! A lot closer to photos I've seen than the 2 existing Falklands/Malvinas maps.

 

Unfortunately, they're not going to do UltraMax any good without the TFD and HFD that make the terrain work and/or the texturelist ini for importation to the TE to retile the exisiting Desert terrain (and conversion of tgas to bmps for the TE to use, but that only takes a few minutes), as there are several NEW tiles the game won't/can't recognize without a TE rebuild. A lot of others will definatly need hand placement. (those island tiles for instance -which are VERY cool btw!). And then, there's city placement....

 

UM, you know Deuces did a 'Euro' (read: green) style tile set for the original SF Desert map waaay back 2005, it may still be available at his site. It too, probably needs the sea/land transitions redone to have the water effects activated, as those old tga's alpha channel is solid colored, not 'mottled' like the post-06 tiles are. (a quick look at said tile just confirmed this -- they'll need the alphas "borrowed" from the stock desert tiles)

 

There's also at least 4 or 5 desert tilesets already available that look pretty damn good, and drop in with a minimum of fuss.

 

The attached screenie illustrates what I was talking about above, about the differences in the alpha channels. You can see they're the exact same tile, Sea2Desert50B.tga, one is stock 3W Desert (on the left), the other comes from, well, Deuces Euro-repaint. That one needs a new channel (or replacement) to activate the water effects, as well as the addition of the effects lines to it's data ini.

 

This is something we ran into back in 06, when the new terrain effects were added. A lot of the older terrain mods (most likely) have not been brought up to 'modern' standards.

 

wrench

kevin stein

Edited September 14, 2009 by Wrench

[+Piecemeal 450]

And yes, more screenies are good!!! You know, if it's simple repaints of the alphas, and repaint of a couple of transition tiles, I can probably squeeze them in amongst all the other couple of hundred things I'm working on. I just need locations, so I can find WHICH tile it is.

 

 

Sorry about the delayed reply guys. Trying to get my head around the Terrain Editor at the moment - let's just say that if I had hair, there'd probably be clumps of it in my clenched fists. Very hard to get my head around, but hopefully I'll solve the eternal riddle of the Terrain Editor.

As for screenshots of the 'offending tiles' :

 

 

I've also just downloaded Alan Wilder's (Recoil) 'Bloodline' album from iTunes, which isn't helping my concentration

[Wrench 9,894]

Now, you'll probably have to repaint these tiles to get them to match the Malvinas, but these are the ones to look at:

 

City-Farm-Sea1

City-Farm-Sea2

 

City-Sea-Farm1

 

 

Sea-Desert-Farm1

Sea-Farm-Desert1

 

Sea-City-Farm1

Sea-Farm-City1

 

I think that's all of them...

 

wrench

kevin stein