Repainted SEA WOV Tilesets

[Pappa Goat]

I've been working a lot on repainting the VietnamSEA tile-sets I have been using. I have Brian32's excellent tile sets drawn from satellite imagery and have been working on them to compensate for the things that effect such imagery, time of day, atmospherics, weather , time of year etc...

 

I use photoshop a lot for my photography and currently live in S. E. Asia, having said that there's always room for improvement. These screen shots are from Mk.6 of my repaint.

 

Here are some of the changes I have made:

 

- Restored tiles to compensate for atmospherics that dull down the tones and contrast as well as give everything a blue hue.

- Altered colour balances and channels to make the terrain better reflect that which I see around me.

- Altered the colours of individual vegetation in the superb GreenHell2 mod to better reflect their true appearance and give a lot more vegetation variation in game. This has a huge impact on the look of things, just look at the jungle.

- Altered the colour of rivers from green, to the more common tea brown one sees in this part of the world. The water is that colour due to that red dirt.

 

I think the jungle is superb, having said that I'm still not completely pleased with the rural agrigultural areas, they seem far too dark, but this is also due to the areas in the tiles. The countryside around here is often like that, but then you get these huge areas of elephant grass or stretches of rice paddies which are this bright lime green, which aren't really reflected in any of the tile.

 

I will post more screenshots as I come up with them, I hope you like...

 

[Silverbolt]

lookin' great man, keep it up!

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

Those screenshots look outstanding. Any idea when you might be posting your re-done tiles?

 

Eric L. Howes

[Pappa Goat]

In the near future. I'm working when I get time on re-hauling the whole thing. I've looking at shots I've taken from across S.E Asia and think I'm going to painstakingly edit each tile individually, are by area as in jungle, arid rural, lush rural... or even field by field.

 

In the meantime if people wanted I could upload what I've done so far?

 

Here's a preview of what I've been doing recently, trying to tackle the rural tiles, whilst keeping the jungle as it is. It's only a tester I cooked up today, and it's not spot on by far, but its a step forwards. You can see the difference between the new and old rural tiles I've edited if you look in the background along the river (while testing I only edit the .bmp files).

 

I'm suspecting that ultimately, I'm going to have to do each tile seperately, altering the trees and the grassy differently... sigh

Edited November 17, 2009 by Pappa Goat

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

If you wanted to upload a "preview" version, I'd be willing to take a look.

 

Could I persuade you to include the revamped air base tiles from the SF2V Expansion Pack in your project?

 

Thanks,

 

Eric Howes

[Pappa Goat]

Do they work in WOV? I'd be more than willing to take a look, where they at?

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

Yes, they work in WoV. You can download them here:

 

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/sf2v/New_AB_Tiles.rar

 

Eric L. Howes

[Guest Eject]

Excuse me Pap and other sr. modders of especially Terrains modders, as I stated some weeks ago somewhere re Darwin and Timor; I did not and still do not see ant cocconut (is it the correct spelling?) trees along the mostly remperate regions in Vietnam, Darwin, and Timor coastline. I have never been to Florida nor to Palm Beach in CA, so I have no idea if there re cocconut tress.

 

Timor beaches will look much more natural for having such trees along the coastline.

 

Kindy Google Earth them to check them out. Looking forward to DL-ing said enhanched tilesets in near future. Thank you all. BTW, I resently found parts of VietnamSEA (tileset?), immediately added to my Terrain in WOE, and it work soooo well I do not have to install my WOV anyway. And yes; the rural areas look very great. I like the greenies.....

 

Finally, I did a little tweak on its Sea that looks abnormal when viewed from afar (I posted about this few days ago, namely, lots of jagged squares and simmering) by copying some sea tga from Timor Terrain whose SEA looks really perfect, and pasted it/them in VietnamSEA. Still, this 'method' has not worked pretty well in my Taiwan Sea. Pardon my mispellings:salute:

[Pappa Goat]

Modding placement of vegetation is something I have thought about, but is above my modding abilities atm.... I just paint!

 

eburger- I should be able to upload tiles this weekend. Trying a new idea, if it doesn't pan out ok I'll just throw up what's shown above, with the tiles you linked to as well.

 

Heard you're re-doing the ground war... I've been tweaking the infantry squads a lot, got them to fire by meshing data.ini lines from the Falklands mod, and reduced their 'detection range' down to 500 meters/feet/yards (whatever the game uses). they detect the enemy at 500 and close in to about 300 or 200, pushing the limits of danger close for a lot of CAS from then, makes it a bit more realistic than having units shooting each other up from a mile apart (1500 units as before) through jungle or across fields. there's one or two issues, but if you're interested let me know, if you've developed something better, even better!

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

All of our ground units fire just fine, but if you want to throw in what you've developed with the tiles that you upload, I'd be happy to take a look.

 

Eric Howes

[Pappa Goat]

OK, here's the latest, Mk.9... it's a step forwards and I like it a lot, focused on enhancing colours that are already there, more than altering like the last preview shot (with the F5).

 

I think I'm going to go ahead and upload this once I've finished the TGA files. I even prefer the jungles new shade... although I think I prefer how the ground of the jungle was darker than all of the trees on the old one, it sort of allowed the trees to stand out as the tops of the canopy, so I might go back and change that... and play with one or two other things.

 

[+Crusader]

great... one can even smell the Water Buffalos ....

 

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

Again, outstanding. Very much looking forward to trying these new tiles out.

 

Eric L. Howes

[Pappa Goat]

...slow upload speed pending, trying to put it up now.

[Pappa Goat]

Et voila...

 

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=10270

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

Just downloaded and installed your repainted tiles. They look as good as the screenshots and fundamentally transform the appearance of the terrain. Two issues:

 

1) The trees give me terrible flickering and a whitish tinge to the treetops (see attached screenshot). Reverting to the original trees solves that problem, but the older trees' color doesn't blend as well with the new tiles.

 

2) It would be nice to have versions of the original, larger trees from GH2 for these new tiles. Some of us actually prefer the larger trees over the re-scaled, smaller trees.

 

Best,

 

Eric L. Howes

[Pappa Goat]

Hmm, could you take a screen shot with a clear sky at mid-day and post it in a higher resolution so I can get a better look? Is it not because of your weather conditions? When it's cloudy or misty the trees will sometimes show up through the mist darker or lighter than the terrain they're on, no matter the colour?

[Pappa Goat]

Ok...

I see what you mean about the flickering. But when I put the old trees back there is just as much, it's just less obvious as the trees are all a dull monotone. I'm playing around with a lower contrast version of the trees I did to see if it makes a difference, to keep the colours. Did you use the original Green Hell's or the alternates I gave? I can work a bit more on the alternate trees I guess to bring them all roughly to a colour that will blend with the terrain. Not seeing a whitish tinge to the treetops, unless the trees are up in the clouds, but that happens anyway. hmmmm

 

Looks like the first update is already on the drawing boards!

 

Here's a Q, in your mod of the ground war are there more wartime ground structure's and activity? e.g. firebases, (sampans), Huey's flying about in support of ground troops (particularly when on CAS) etc... The other thing I noticed is that in the current ground war mods, ground unit engagements always consist of at least several company sized elements each, which was a rare occurrence, other than the large rare battles, patrols in contact were usually a platoon at most, or individual squads or teams.

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

It's not weather-related. The flickering appears under all weather conditions. I've also tried changing various settings in the terrain's DATA.INI. esp. those under the AlphaObjectTextureMaterial section. Changing the settings I'm using now only makes things worse:

 

DepthBufferCheck=TRUE

DepthBufferWrite=TRUE

RenderedInOrder=TRUE

AlphaTestEnabled=TRUE

CullMode=NO_CULL

LightEnabled=TRUE

SpecularEnabled=FALSE

EmissiveEnabled=FALSE

FogEnabled=TRUE

AmbientColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000

DiffuseColor=1.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000

ZBufferOffset=2.000000

BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA

NumTextureStages=2

TextureStage[01].TextureName=

TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE

TextureStage[01].FilterEnabled=TRUE

TextureStage[01].StageColorOp=TEXTURE_MODULATE_DIFFUSE

TextureStage[01].StageAlphaOp=TEXTURE

 

I've attached some additional screenshots taken mid-day under clear skies. You'll notice that the closer you get to the trees, the less white-tinged they become and the less flickering they exhibit.

 

I should also mention that I'm testing on WoV 2006 on WinXP SP3, DX 9.0C (latest), with an Nvidia 6600.

 

Eric Howes

[Pappa Goat]

No I mean about the whiteness and the weather, not the flickering. Again, I see as much flickering with the original trees as I do mine, so I dunno.

 

Ah.... as for the whiteness... are you're running the ground objects on a very low quality? I'll be honest I don't know much a bout the IT side of things. Let me play with something n put it back up here for you to try. If you could send me some more screens that would be great, sometimes, how things on my computer appear completely differently on someone eases, as far as the colours, it's a bitch.

[Pappa Goat]

Ok I tried highlighting the areas around the trees in the .tga and deleting it to ensure there was nothing there, this gave me the effect you have above. The only way it didn't was when I 'cut inside the line' of the trees. I get the impression that the coloured areas around the trees in the .tga coresponds to that portion of the tree and is used for blending the leading edge, when it is removed, the leading edge is white? Could it be the way your data.ini handles it then?

 

Here is mu DATA.INI file, give it a try and see if you still have the prob. Perhaps I should stop being cheap and upload the whole VietnamSEA folder.

 

.....I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this issue?

VIETNAMSEA_data.txt

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

Tried your DATA.INI -- that definitely resolves the white-ish tinge on the tree borders. Further testing revealed that it was the AlphaObjectTextureMaterial section. Flickering was still there, but once I combined your AlphaObjectTextureMaterial section and your modded SolidObjectTextureMaterial section with the rest of my standard WoV DATA.INI (which is customized for use with Fubar's shader effects), the flickering died down to a very minimal level. In low light conditions (e.g., Dusk, Night, or overcast and adverse weather conditions) the flickering completely disappears.

 

So, I consider this particular problem to be resolved. I'd like to include your re-painted tiles (with your permission) in the forthcoming WoV Expansion Pack, which is pretty much ready for Beta (save for a ReadMe). Ideally, it would include TGAs for both the original larger trees as well as the re-scaled smaller trees to give users choices. Any chance we could get versions of the original larger trees for your re-painted tiles?

 

Thanks,

 

Eric L. Howes

[Pappa Goat]

I'd be more than glad for you to use it in the forthcoming mod, and can have a go at the larger trees too.

 

Found this in the Green Hell readme:

 

IF you don't like the little shimmering effect produced by distant trees, open your AE_data.ini, scroll down to:

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]...and change the line

 

TextureStage[01].MipMap=FALSE to TextureStage[01].MipMap=TRUE

 

This basically will enable mipmapping on alpha objects' (=trees) textures*

(You need to switch to BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA for mipmapping to work correctly)

IF YOU ENCOUNTER STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF RENDERED TREES (like flickering) mostly on integrated accelerators:

Open VietnamSEA_data.ini, scroll down to:

 

[AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]

and change the line:

BlendOp=BLEND_DST_ALPHA to BlendOp=BLEND_SRC_ALPHA

it will change the rendering method, possibly eliminating the anomalies, but less visually attractive (another alpha-channel bug)

 

 

I already had BLEND_SRC_ALPHA from information I meshed in from the rescaled trees. And yes, when I changed mip-mapping I then got trees that looked like yours originally, with the whitish outline, although they only flickered on the horizon... which I guess means I had a lot more flickering than you did before!

 

Could you put up your [AlphaObjectTextureMaterial]? Perhaps the performance of this is partly system dependent too?

 

Does anyone have Fubar's shader, i can't find it here?

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

The AlphaObjectTextureMaterial section I was using before is in one of my posts on the first page of this thread. The one I'm using now is identical to yours.

 

Here's a link to Fubar's shader effect:

 

http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=6996

 

Thanks for agreeing to take a crack at the larger trees.

 

Eric Howes

[+eburger68]

Pappa Goat:

 

You asked:

 

Here's a Q, in your mod of the ground war are there more wartime ground structure's and activity? e.g. firebases, (sampans), Huey's flying about in support of ground troops (particularly when on CAS) etc... The other thing I noticed is that in the current ground war mods, ground unit engagements always consist of at least several company sized elements each, which was a rare occurrence, other than the large rare battles, patrols in contact were usually a platoon at most, or individual squads or teams.

 

The beta for the WOV Air & Ground Expansion Pack has been posted -- see the File Announcements section. It does include a great number of additions to the VietnamSEA terrain, which is now split into two terrains: North and South Vietnam. There are new target areas in both North and South Vietnam, but the ones populated with structures tend to be in North Vietnam. The South Vietnam terrain does add firebase target areas (unpopulated, though), as well as VC and NVA camps along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The terrain Movement.INIs have been overhauled to provide more varied and differently located Armed Recon missions.

 

We have added squads as well as individual soldiers as ground objects. Single Missions can see CAS missions in support of both squad level and company level engagements; the two South Vietnam campaigns that we've added use only company level engagements. There are sampan ground objects, but no helos -- too difficult to implement with what's currently available for re-distribution.

 

Best,

 

Eric Howes