Alternate TFD Terrain Tilemap editor/viewer

[+gerwin]

4 hours ago, Menrva said:

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!

Looking forward to that!

I am considering adding a 50% option to this function. Where there is only a 50% chance that a vehicle will get a successor. As I want to keep some M35 Trucks together with newer models.

PS. In an ideal world this upgrade at a certain year thing would have been supported by the Types.ini. That would have been the proper way. But it does not work, so this is AFAIK the easiest way to do such a thing.

Edited June 28, 2018 by gerwin

[+gerwin]

Just uploaded a new version, but it is still called v1.03.

- 50% chance option for the target successor batch script.

- Targets.ini outputfile linebreaks now compatible with Windows' Notepad.

- New main menu appears when hitting the ESC key. This one links to the other four menus.

- Supports the SF2NA iceland "RotateToRunwayHeading" option for airfield targetareas.

- Now shows a generic airfield runway graphic in case the runway does not match a known type.

 

[+Stratos]

Gerwin, is possible to calculate somehow the starting point of an airplane? I'm thinking in starting the mission on the platform or on a hardened Bunker.

[+gerwin]

Sorry, I do not have the knowledge now to add much to what has been said like here.

I imagine that, once you manage to get the player aircraft starting point inside a hardened shelter, you will get AI wingmen acting crazy instead of taking off.

[+Menrva]

44 minutes ago, gerwin said:

I imagine that, once you manage to get the player aircraft starting point inside a hardened shelter, you will get AI wingmen acting crazy instead of taking off.

Exactly. The only way to avoid such issues is to make the player aircraft the only one of a flight/squadron. ODS for SF1 had some custom missions where the player is assigned to a squadron with 0 AI aircraft, like in Instant Action.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Menrva

[+gerwin]

TFDtool v1.04 is available since last week already.

- Texture limit increased from 512 to 1024.

- The keyboard input bug is gone.  :)

Edited July 29, 2018 by gerwin

[krfrge]

Gerwin,

Thanks for the continuous improvements of this fantastic tool!

Kindest regards

Krfrge

[+Wrench]

I've just discovered a critical flaw in the TFD tool --

for some reason, it allows the listing of 2 of the same tiles, as seen in the section of a terrain's data ini that I've recently become involved with:

[Texture001]
Filename=germanyG1.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.278506,0.333543,0.212785
SolidObjectTexture=
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture002]
Filename=germanyG2.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.383262,0.411538,0.271571
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture003]
Filename=germanyG3.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.349551,0.371391,0.249450
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture004]
Filename=germanyG4.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.342528,0.379447,0.248368
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture005]
Filename=germanyG5.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.333659,0.371619,0.239068
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture006]
Filename=germanyG6.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.306750,0.346621,0.225518
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture007]
Filename=germanyG7.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.330480,0.368029,0.241800
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture008]
Filename=germanyG8.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.308265,0.350036,0.227286
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture009]
Filename=germanyG6.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.322583,0.383528,0.256534
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

[Texture010]
Filename=germanyG5.JPG
HasWater=0
Color=0.332754,0.389887,0.258235
SolidObjectTexture=TEROBJECT_HOUSES1.bmp
AlphaObjectTexture=TER_EUROTREES3.tga

 

This makes it impossible to import BACK in the TE, which only allows ONE entry for each tile. To do so, even after building a new texturelist ini, would completely destroy the TFD, as nothing would be in the 'right' order anymore, giving a totally scrambled tile set on the terrain. This would force the builder to have to completely retile the terrain from the HFD up.

If there's a way to fix this, great. If not, the amatures are going to HAVE to learn how to use TE for terrain generation and creation.

[+gerwin]

Thanks for the detailed report. To be honest, I am not surprised at all that TFDtool just works with this, I am surprised the TW Terrain editor does not. (Makes me wonder if the game works with it?). TFDtool does not make any texture list, it just reads from it. What do you consider a proper way of handling this? What comes to mind is when loading a texture, TFDtool can check if the same filename was already loaded before, then give a warning message?

[+Wrench]

I was just going over the data ini again, trying to assemble a new texture list, and the damn thing has over a dozen instances of repeated tiles ( I gave up counter after 12). On this terrain, no one knows if a texturelist ini even exists. All work seems to have been done ONLY in the TFD tool. As it uses GermanyCE named tiles, it SHOULD use the TextureListWoE.ini. In theory, the first 128 tiles SHOULD match the GermanyCE list, but doesn't; they're scattered everywhere, and totally random in order. All new tiles SHOULD be added from the last 'stock' one (129 and up). That's how it's always been done before, on any (well, most that I've seen and worked on) new builds.

When you're in the TE, and either building a new TL.ini, or adding a tile to an existing one, and that tile already exists (and I've found this out by "losing my place' and trying to put the same one in again it give you a message " (see image below for example).

Right now, I don't know how I'm going to save this terrain ... maybe start with a clean TL.ini, in a stand alone TE (that's how I do it for the most part), auto tile, hope for the best, then pass it to the team and force them to learn!! (do we have an evil grin emoji?).  I just don't have the time to (re)build the full terrain from the HF up!

[+gerwin]

Allright. Just to be clear: TFDtool does not make _Data.ini files, and the _Data.ini file  you are having trouble with was just hand crafted by somebody in its current troublesome state.

It is doable to make a filter in TFDtool to check for duplicate texture entries, then merge them in the .TFD to only point to the first one of that texture entry, then display a list of texture entries which are no longer used, to allow them to be manually emptied in the _data.ini (Filename=*empty*).

Obviously the above leaves gaps in the texture sequence, but these textures are not used on the map. The Game and TFDtool work properly regardless. Not sure about the TE. (For example: Stock Desert terrain has quite a few unused texture entries, which I changed to Filename=*empty* so it does not waste time to load textures which are not used anyways)

Edit: Is this worth it? I find that with terrains it is important to work on good heightmap data and a properly generated tilemap. When the start is poor, countless hours in TE or TFDtool cannot make it a good terrain, and it would be better to start over.

Edited August 5, 2018 by gerwin

[+Menrva]

35 minutes ago, gerwin said:

Allright. Just to be clear: TFDtool does not make _Data.ini files, and the _Data.ini file  you are having trouble with was just hand crafted by somebody in its current troublesome state.

It is doable to make a filter in TFDtool to check for duplicate texture entries, then merge them in the .TFD to only point to the first one of that texture entry, then display a list of texture entries which are no longer used, to allow them to be manually emptied in the _data.ini (Filename=*empty*).

Edit: Is this worth it? I find that with terrains it is important to work on good heightmap data and a properly generated tilemap. When the start is poor, countless hours in TE or TFDtool cannot make it a good terrain, and it would be better to start over.

This filter could be useful indeed! If you have spare time to work on it, I strongly support this. AFAIK, the Angola terrain we have here at CombatACE has too many duplicate entries. Another interesting filter (but I guess it's much difficult to implement) would be to re-order all the valid entries at the beginning of the _data.ini, and to move the void ones at the end. But then again, there's the TFD, a beast to tame. The Angola terrain is a good test-case for the filters IMHO.

The game has no problems to use duplicate entries. It's just the TE that causes issues with them. 

As you already said, it should be noted that TFDtool cannot fix terrains with a poor start in the TE. Sometimes it's better to start from scratch. But the mentioned filters could make things easier.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Menrva

[+Wrench]

Quote

As you already said, it should be noted that TFDtool cannot fix terrains with a poor start in the TE. Sometimes it's better to start from scratch

I couldn't have said it better -- I have had to do this several times.

Yes, if you can add a filter that could be helpful to those that follow us in terraforming!

thanks!

[+gerwin]

My pleasure,

I added it to TFDtool while it was still fresh in my mind. You can download v1.05 for these things:

- Duplicate check and warning when loading the map textures.

- Duplicate textures merge filter.

- I found that the unresponsive keyboard bug can still happen, but only in dialogs. I removed clear_keybuf to see if that fixes things.

[+gterl]

Hi - first of all thank you very much for the continuous improvements on the tool...great stuff. Sadly I'm still hitting the 512 max tiles wall with the newest version

[+Menrva]

2 hours ago, gterl said:

Sadly I'm still hitting the 512 max tiles wall with the newest version

AFAIK it's a game engine limit, nothing to do with TFDtool. TFDtool introduces that limit because TW's old game engine can't render more than 512 different tiles in-game. So there's no point in allowing more than 512 tiles in TFDtool. I might be wrong though. Gerwin's got the answer.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Menrva

[+gterl]

should have written...'hitting the max 512 tiles limit WITHIN TFDtool..'

[+gerwin]

gterl; I quickly made a test terrain with 599 texture entries and indeed it was still capped at 511/512 in two procedures. These two procedures have now been updated with the new limit global variable, which is set to 1024. Please redownload TFDtool and try again.

[+gterl]

Works like a charm 527 tiles and still going strong...(both within the tool and the game). I'll give you a call once the 1024 tiles are used up..LOL

thx very much

rgds

gterl

[+Menrva]

So the game can display more than 512 tiles? My bad, I wrongly assumed it couldn't.

[+gterl]

yes you're wrong

[+Stratos]

While working on TFDTool a doubt assaulted me, as I need it for a flattening.

Is possible to alter the heightmap 1 step at a time in place of 10 steps at a time? This way I can do all the squares the same value, now is almost impossible as each square starts at a different value.

[+JSF_Aggie]

Pop up the help menu. There is a key stroke that gives you 1 unit at a time.

[+gerwin]

Yeah, Should be something there for custom height increments. At least in the latest version. Note that your screenshot shows an older TFDtool version.

Edit:

Key: T = Toggle increase/decrease amount between 10 and 'autodetect'.

Combined with changing this entry in TFDtool.ini from 10 to 1: heightmap_increase=1

Edited April 27, 2019 by gerwin

[+Stratos]

Got it working! Thanks a lot!