New entrys on SF2 NA

[+Stary 2,427]

Kevin, that's why keeping OLD (release date) installs somewhere is the key! You can install, for example SF2Europe 2009 release and extract the files from cat archives using 3rd party extractor, as I did yesterday

[+SkateZilla 49]

i have an old extracted files folder from before TW locked the LODs,

 

as for the Iceland.cat, there's prolly alot of LODs for each section of the map, or one big one, plus the LODs for the objects.

[+Brain32 265]

i have an old extracted files folder from before TW locked the LODs,

 

as for the Iceland.cat, there's prolly alot of LODs for each section of the map, or one big one, plus the LODs for the objects.

 

I understand locking the LOD's(somewhat atleast) but what's the point with locking other stuff?

We don't really need the lods anyway...

[+Stary 2,427]

i have an old extracted files folder from before TW locked the LODs,

 

as for the Iceland.cat, there's prolly alot of LODs for each section of the map, or one big one, plus the LODs for the objects.

 

SZ, from as I start to understand the format, Iceland is made of 266 LODs listed in IcelandNA_Data.ini, I'm trying to duplicate the effect in a test map I work on:

 

 

as you can see, bigger islands are split into smaller sub-parts to allow the exporter do it's work, meshes above ~5000 polys crashes Max

 

 

then you can put them onto map via terrain's _data.ini

 

[Mesh001]

Filename=isle1.LOD

Position=261100.172,271084.313

 

[Mesh002]

Filename=isle2.LOD

Position=252828.125,279347.0

 

[Mesh003]

Filename=isle3.LOD

Position=259179.703,288790.063

 

[Mesh004]

Filename=isle4.LOD

Position=239328.656,290607.469

 

[Mesh005]

Filename=isle5.LOD

Position=233773.359,284218.406

 

[Mesh006]

Filename=isle6a.LOD

Position=206838.703,277648.031

 

[Mesh007]

Filename=isle6b.LOD

Position=210830.828,265988.063

 

etc

 

water is globally made as planar mesh, in my map's case 500x500 kilometers, added via this line in _data.ini:

 

[DefaultMesh]

Filename=test_water.LOD <- the name of the water mesh

 

texturing is done automatically via shaders I guess, making own blablabla_Detail_Map.bmp has no impact in my case, even when kept as Iceland_Detail_map.bmp

 

 

edit; further info:

 

the animated sea close to the camera is automatically created as a locked (?) distance from the camera

 

previously I tried making whole map as [DefaultMesh] object, but to my suprise the mesh (sea plus those individual parts linked to it) started to repeat all over the terrain like a enormous 3D tile, kind of like in Novalogic's voxel terrains if you remember those

 

making the individual parts as well, individual LODs and listing them in terrain's _Data.ini makes them having collisionmesh by themselfes, not allways working for me now, but you don't have to create COL files (which would be pointless repetation of the same meshes in the end)

 

IMPORTANT:

 

as per IcelandNA_data.ini, the global water mesh must have w_ prefix in Max for the mesh, like "w_test_water", and landmasses have to be named with l_ prefic, like "l_isle5", how you name the exported LOD isn't that important it seems -that prefix decides which shader (sea/land etc) use with the part (or node as we would call it)

Edited March 18, 2012 by Stary

[+SkateZilla 49]

to keep us from modifying the game to the point where it doesnt run on laptops, and the users go whining to TK.

 

which is the reason why other things in the engine get locked, 3rd party mods push the limits, and people whine to TK that it causes issues on their system, so he locks it in a patch to keep it from being changed.

 

AFAICT, the terrain shaders have a W_ (water) and a L_ (Land), so... Terrains was never my "area" and seeing how most of it is locked away and no docs to support creation, I'll leave it alone and continue with what Im good at.

[+Stary 2,427]

yeah, sorry, I put the w_ and l_ parts in the edited post, haven't seen yours

[+Stary 2,427]

here's test mesh I put together, please note that if the mesh doesn't show on a radar screen there is 100% chance it's not collidable... strange, isn't it?

 

(ok, given the way radar operates... not)

 

[+SkateZilla 49]

im sure theres a way to use our own Texture maps.... i'd ask TK.

[+Stary 2,427]

I use modified ones as you can see, but there's ugly thing related to the way the are blending together

[Icarus999 70]

to keep us from modifying the game to the point where it doesnt run on laptops, and the users go whining to TK.

 

which is the reason why other things in the engine get locked, 3rd party mods push the limits, and people whine to TK that it causes issues on their system, so he locks it in a patch to keep it from being changed.

 

AFAICT, the terrain shaders have a W_ (water) and a L_ (Land), so... Terrains was never my "area" and seeing how most of it is locked away and no docs to support creation, I'll leave it alone and continue with what Im good at.

 

This is why I have been lobbying for a DLC set of modders tools that unlock all of this hard codded nonsense. The idea is that if you use the tools to unlock the game and then proceed to mod the game to the point that your frame rates drop to single digits... or you hose your install - you are responsible for that and ...you get to do a complete re install if that's what it takes to fix what you have messed up.

Edited March 18, 2012 by Icarus999

[Icarus999 70]

I use modified ones as you can see, but there's ugly thing related to the way the are blending together

 

WOW we have trees !! Not sure because the screen shot is from a distance but am I seeing seams showing in the areas with tree coverage? Are those trees 3d models or just TGA images?

[+JonathanRL 974]

new cat extractor from TW prevents even older terrain Cat files from extracting fully!

 

Could this not be the not-so-rare occurrence known as a Bug?

[+Julhelm 266]

What if you don't use l_ prefix? Can you assign a custom material then?

[Fubar512 1,350]

here's test mesh I put together, please note that if the mesh doesn't show on a radar screen there is 100% chance it's not collidable... strange, isn't it?

 

LOL, Stary.... By the looks of them, one would expect either King Kong, or Dinosaurs, to be the sole inhabitants of those islands.

[+Stary 2,427]

yes, then the mesh is displayed the way you mapped it in Max -I plan some Il2 style layered forests in my test island (which will be available with Max source files for modders)

if you do use l_ prefix then the textures are shader based, with rocky one on vertical surfaces, kinda like the old Terrain Editor aurotexturing worked

 

there at least two other types of surface (grass and black lava rock) in NA map I wasn't yet able to put onto my map

 

@Icarus, no no trees for now, just modified Iceland_Dirt1.jpg texture, BUT the tree page back is mesh created in Max, automatically placed by engine, the entry for trees is in IcelandNA_data.ini:

 

[TreeMesh]

Filename=iceland_trees.LOD

Shader=iceland_Trees.fx

MeshSize=1000.0 // was 4000.0

MeshCount=500 //was 2

MaxVisibleHeight=10000.0

 

LOL, Stary.... By the looks of them, one would expect either King Kong, or Dinosaurs, to be the sole inhabitants of those islands.

Fubar, these are parts taken from Baltika's Philippines islands heightmap...

[Icarus999 70]

yes, then the mesh is displayed the way you mapped it in Max -I plan some Il2 style layered forests in my test island (which will be available with Max source files for modders)

if you do use l_ prefix then the textures are shader based, with rocky one on vertical surfaces, kinda like the old Terrain Editor aurotexturing worked

 

there at least two other types of surface (grass and black lava rock) in NA map I wasn't yet able to put onto my map

 

@Icarus, no no trees for now, just modified Iceland_Dirt1.jpg texture, BUT the tree page back is mesh created in Max, automatically placed by engine, the entry for trees is in IcelandNA_data.ini:

 

[TreeMesh]

Filename=iceland_trees.LOD

Shader=iceland_Trees.fx

MeshSize=1000.0 // was 4000.0

MeshCount=500 //was 2

MaxVisibleHeight=10000.0

 

 

Fubar, these are parts taken from Baltika's Philippines islands heightmap...

 

In building new terrains from scratch wouldn't it make much more sense to build the trees directly into the model rather than place them via ini as TK did here?

[+Stary 2,427]

In building new terrains from scratch wouldn't it make much more sense to build the trees directly into the model rather than place them via ini as TK did here?

nope, you'd kill any computer this way, autogen is the way to go

[+PureBlue 71]

yes, then the mesh is displayed the way you mapped it in Max -I plan some Il2 style layered forests in my test island (which will be available with Max source files for modders)

if you do use l_ prefix then the textures are shader based, with rocky one on vertical surfaces, kinda like the old Terrain Editor aurotexturing worked

 

I used autotexturing at the beginning of the terrain design but after that many manual texturing was done to create the custom scenery...

Even in TE autotexturing there could be many texture types, transitions etc.

 

So as far as you discovered (with almost little to no clues yet from TK), are we stuck with limited amount of texture, with shader based autotexturing?

And another question, without using the mesh name prefixes, would it be possible to use custom textures in Max? ones that are static so to say, without interferance from the shader code.

For example, for roads or coastlines and stuff?

Edited March 18, 2012 by PureBlue

[+Stary 2,427]

I guess yes, but so far in my limited progress on the terrain format, the meshes without prefixes haave no collision calculations

 

as for limited shader autotexturing... I'm pretty sure we don't know the full list of shaders, please remember our guesses are based entirely on unlocked ini references, mainly IcelandNA_data.ini, I bet there are some other shaders and variables already implemented but not used by the Iceland data file

[+Julhelm 266]

Could just use 2048 or 4096 satmap-derived textures and map each part individually. Then we can also have custom bump and spec per tile.

[+Stary 2,427]

I'm not sure how the engine would handle such meshes, the ones without any prefix defined

 

edit:

 

the engine doesn't see them as ground I think, for example objects placed on them would "sink" to zero level I guess, here's l_ prefix mesh with objects ontop, works:

 

 

can't say exactly, I did soo many versions today searching for something that actually works

Edited March 18, 2012 by Stary

[+Monty CZ 209]

It looks that with that auto texturing feature we can say goodbye to european fields, bigger towns etc.

Or not?

Monty CZ

[+Stary 2,427]

I'm not 100% sure now Monty, but there is such possibility. But I repeat -I;m sure there are other methods we don't know yet, hidden in the locked away parts of IcelandNA.CAT

[+Julhelm 266]

You know, this kinda stuff is way out of touch in 2012. All that looks like is a heightfield with a shader that blends between 3 textures based on Z height and reads the Z normals to put a rock texture on cliffsides. Hardly rocket science when there exists entire tutorials with source files included on how this is done.

[+ojcar 157]

Kill me if you want, I have not NA yet (not patched my games since Beta Oct 2011), because I like much more 50's and 60's jets, but the more I see about the new terrain engine and other changes, the more I like the old times.

This game is about mods! If I wanted another LOMAC, I'd play LOMAC! We have traded our freedom of modding by fancy avionics and "better" terrain (if you call better to fly over an empty small terrain at half framerates). Thank God TK has forgotten FE2 to this patching fever!