Alternate TFD Terrain Tilemap editor/viewer

[Eole]

Open the file with notepad save it as simple text file format (ANSI option)

[Wrench]

the pink/other colored tiles are Missing from the terrain folder; that's what's always been the case with my experience. Zoom in, and do a "info" as to the tile name, and see if it is actually residing in the terrain folder.

[Stratos]

The ANSI thing did the trick. It loads now properly. Thanks guys!

[PFunk]

Where can I find the most recent version of the TFD Tool? The one I have gives me virus warnings on Norton.

Never mind. I apparently have it already.

[+quack74]

Has there been any discussion about a .TOD editor being introduced into this TFD editor? Hate to throw this in here if it has already been addressed. But there are a lot of threads to read through.

[+gerwin]

I don't remember ever considering doing a .TOD editor. Just that I wanted to read the location of the TOD's shapes. Managed to get some clues from the TOD file format myself, but that was made obsolete by Mue's effort, which I used as a reference:

http://combatace.com/topic/84706-tod-file-format/

Sorry but I am not into 3D object related programming myself.

[+Menrva]

gerwin, I discovered a bug in TFDtool, actually nothing big. Since my custom terrains use 250m heightmaps, (instead of TW's stock value of 500m resolution), I noticed that the Embossed Texture Bitmap (the one obtained by pressing F8) only portrays a small portion of the terrain, while the Texture and Height bitmaps are exported correctly. Also, 250m heightmaps cause your tool to crash while exporting planning maps (F10), but it's wrong to call it a bug I think, since your tool wasn't meant to support 250m resolution heightmaps anyway.

Many thanks for providing the community with such a powerful tool!

Edited November 4, 2017 by Menrva

[+gerwin]

This is supposed to work, and tested to work with one example. But it may very well be in need of improvement.

Manual: "...supports a few different tilemap to heightmap ratios: 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 (=stock) and 1:8. The ratio is automatically detected. Note that TFDtool has not been tested with all combinations."

If targets are shown in the wrong place of because of a tile scale other then 2000m, then the "Tile_Scale=2000" parameter can be added to tfdtool.cfg, and set to the matching value.

Is it possible to send me your terrain project? that is the fastest way to troubleshoot this.

 

[+Menrva]

2 hours ago, gerwin said:

This is supposed to work, and tested to work with one example. But it may very well be in need of improvement.

Manual: "...supports a few different tilemap to heightmap ratios: 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 (=stock) and 1:8. The ratio is automatically detected. Note that TFDtool has not been tested with all combinations."

If targets are shown in the wrong place of because of a tile scale other then 2000m, then the "Tile_Scale=2000" parameter can be added to tfdtool.cfg, and set to the matching value.

Is it possible to send me your terrain project? that is the fastest way to troubleshoot this.

 

I have no problem with targets, I just noticed that the Embossed Texture Bitmap exported by pressing F8 is a portion/corner of the whole terrain, and this happens because I suspect its ratio calculation might be fixed (other exported bitmaps work as intended even with 250m heightmaps). My terrains are already available for download here at CombatACE (SF2 Full Terrains section) and feature such heightmaps. If you need only a few files, I'll send what's needed.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Menrva

[+gerwin]

OK thanks for explaining. I can now see the bug with the emboss 4x function. It is indeed not smart enough to handle more exotic tilemap/heightmap ratios. I will try to improve the procedure in the coming week.

[+gerwin]

TFDtool v0.99 was uploaded a minute ago. The errors you described are fixed now. Actually that was the only half the work. I had to improve the downscaling, since the planning map of the  Bering Strait map had a bad moire pattern. There is a weighed downscaling of all planning maps now. See image. 

PS: Any future change of TFDtool will flip the version to 1.00. Which seems like it means something, but it is just a coincidence.

[krfrge]

Gerwin,

Thanks so very much for this upgrade. It is greatly appreciated.

Krfrge

[+Menrva]

Thank you so much, wonderful update!  I don't want to bother you any further, but I discovered something that may be useful for the next 1.00 version; in the TFDtool.ini file I have seen the following lines/parameters:

[Export]
Planning_map_Grid=0
Planning_map_Labels=0
Planning_map_Icons=0

IIRC, they were meant to enable or disable certain details from the planning maps, depending on the set value, 0 or 1. In recent versions, setting them to 1 or 0 has no effect, planning maps are always generated with all elements. Was it always like this? I swear it seemed to me that it worked like I explained, in some old TFDtool versions.

Well, that is all! Thank you again for the speedy bug fixes!

Edited November 6, 2017 by Menrva

[+gerwin]

You catched another bug there, thanks for pointing that out. I wont bore you with what caused it, but it is fixed in the new v1.00 of TFDtool. I made the planning map generation a little faster, and updated the manual a little.

[+Menrva]

Thanks! Actually you can tell me the details if you like, since I am an amateur programmer myself, I am always eager to learn new things!

Speaking of planning maps, me and krfrge have been working on templates to create stock-looking planning maps, and it's turning so good that we might release a package with both a tutorial and the templates. The only thing that we miss and need are the airport icons of stock SF2 planning maps. I was wondering if those simple blue an red circles could be replaced with such icons (I already extracted them and saved in .PNG format), and maybe even rotated according to the Target[001].Heading=XXX value (as long as that Target001 is a Runway). I also noticed that such airports icons are simply fixed in size for all three planning maps, so there is no need to resize them in the software. The only complex thing would be the rotation, I think. With such an automated placement of airport icons, we would be able to create planning maps in the same TW style in no time. If you're interested, just give us an heads up!

Edited November 7, 2017 by Menrva

[+gerwin]

Yes, that is a nice idea. Please send me these airfield icons and I will try to get that working. The only difficulty is that I do have a bitmap rotation procedure  in TFDtool, as to rotate the stock airport map overlays, but it gives a rather pixelated result. Instead of making some tricky weighed rotation, I want to  paste these icons on a higher resolution internal planningmap (4096x4096) and then downscale that one weighed. That is actually how it works since this week already, so it should be a straightforward task.

[+Menrva]

gerwin, check your PM. Thanks for the help.

[+gerwin]

TFDtool v1.01 is now available.

Based on the constructive comments from Menrva and Krfrge it got these improvements:

-  New planning map airfield icons (and a slightly different icon inside the TFDtool view). Also changed color settings, so targets which are not 'ENEMY' will show in blue instead of red.

-  More planning map options. Comes with a dialog inside TFDtool (the settings there are not saved back to the ini.).

- Hopefully fixed a bug where the keyboard input would no longer be read, and only the mouse would work.

- Mouse scrollwheel zoom in / zoom out can now access all magnification levels, like keyboard zoom.

[Gatling20]

Many thanks Gerwin, I really like the new format of the planning maps.

[+Sundowner]

Hmmm, I must be doing something wrong because I dont have the planing map options dialog.

[Gatling20]

That planning map dialog box comes up automatically when I hit F10, the command to create the maps.

You can then check or uncheck all the options you can see on Gerwin's screenshot above.

Clicking on "Create" then creates all three planning maps, with the options you have selected.

[Wrench]

 

outstanding update!! 

now, you're going to make me go back and redo ALL the planning maps on my terrains!! 

[10107]

Thanks. 

Did you ever consider replacing TKs fail terrain tool?  It  is a constant crash now trying to get DTED into something that game can use.

[+gerwin]

On 8-3-2018 at 12:21 AM, 10107 said:

Did you ever consider replacing TKs fail terrain tool?  It  is a constant crash now trying to get DTED into something that game can use.

No such ambitions really. TK's auto-tiling function and the TOD object generator are way too much work. The user interface part of the programming library that I use, also crashes on modern systems. That is one reason for the minimal  user interface in TFDtool. But I will just keep on adding to TFDtool whatever seems fun at the time.

 

Version 1.03 is up now. Changes are:

- Target Successor procedure, to automate the process of groundobject changeovers after a certain date: Like USJeep becomes USJeep2 (Humvee) in 1983. See also the topic linked below. This means that TFDtool got the functionality to write a complete targets.ini file. It was tested to recreate all stock targets ini files with complete accuracy, From SFP1 Desert up to SF2NA Iceland. It does not overwrite the original targets-file. It is advised to keep backups and check the results yourself.

- Shows ground targets with a successor, with the changeover year. As pointed out by the red arrow in the screenshot.

- A new F2 options dialog, with buttons for functions that were formerly only accesable by hotkeys. (I started to lose track of all these functions and buttons.)

- Tweaked target file reading so it does not crap out on all the trees in SF2NA iceland. 

- Improved the tile info dialog with a bigger preview picture and TOD statistics. Moved the texture reload function to this dialog.

- Clip-paste of tiles with the N-key: the keys [ and ] can now be used to adjust the size of the painting area.  (Requested by Menrva)

Edited June 28, 2018 by gerwin

[+Menrva]

That Target Successor thing is something that we'll be greatly useful for terrains with a large time frame! I have a WIP terrain ready for it!