Auto tiling confusion on my part

[T_Rex]

Hello all,

Ok, I'm looking at trying to get a theater I'm working on to autotile. I have a texture.zip and a .bin that I think will be satisfactory. And, I think I have 3 different progs that will help me: Dem2L2, LODFix, and TerrainView (naturally). I think all of these have autotiling parts to them, no? Terrainview I know well (or at least well enough). But with Dem2L2 and LodFix, how do they know where to look for tiles?

TIA,
T

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
Dem2L2, LODFix, and TerrainView (naturally). I think all of these have autotiling parts to them, no?

Well TerrainView autotiles features like roads, rivers and citys. LODFixer is the true autotiler and DEM2LF dont autotile, well it places tiles according to elevation but thats not what I call autotiling since the most basic perl script does that.

quote:But with Dem2L2 and LodFix, how do they know where to look for tiles?

Well I suppose you already know which software does what basic function, if now please check out our terrain tutorials first.

LODFixer opens the L2 file (theater.l2) and then it autotiles with options of what covertypes you want to autotile. Then you just save the autotiled L2 (to other filename preferred, so you dont kill your original L2).

You gotta be cautious with autotiling, if you modify the the scripts much and add lot of tiles, you will exceed fartiles and then you got a problem. Or you can bybass whole fartiles issue by using eFalcon 1.10 with the 4byte fartile fix.

Check out our tutorials and then shoot some more questions and we will dig into deeper swamp of autotiling.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[T_Rex]

Thanks, Snake. That kinda confirmed something I was thinking. It's funny how now that I'm starting to want to tile my own theater, I'm realizing how little I really knew about tiling!

As far as LODFixer, as long as I have the .zip and .bin in the same subdir as LODFixer, does it know which ones to use? I didn't see anything like in Terrainview, where you tell it where to look for that information. I guess that's the basic question I have. Sorry if its been covered. I checked the tutorials again (and the description in the download section) but couldn't figure it out.

I'll play with it for awhile. Thanks,
T

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
As far as LODFixer, as long as I have the .zip and .bin in the same subdir as LODFixer, does it know which ones to use?

LODFixer only uses theater.L2 file. It only writes tile offsets there, which will be written by you into the Terrain-L2TileScript.dat file.

quote:Sorry if its been covered. I checked the tutorials again (and the description in the download section) but couldn't figure it out.

I dont think its been covered, just keep on asking alot of guestions. I'm so dumb guy that tutorial making is extremely difficult, but when someone is asking me some specific guestions, them its easy to give specific answers.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[T_Rex]

Geez, Snake, I hope you haven't bitten off more than you can chew by offering me help! Tell you what, though, once I get this figgered out (assuming I do

Now, my next question is more about the order of things, then. I download everything. I run Dem2L2. Transform the coords I want. Load the .e00 files. Save to L2. This creates the L2 and .tdfs.

Now what? Terrainview autotiling, then clean it up with LodFixer? Or LodFixer first, then hand fix anything funky? O rmy choice?

I guess the other thing is the file offsets. Does the L2 independently incorporate the tile offsets? For some reason I thought that was a product of Terrainview.

Thanks again and always,
T

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
Terrainview autotiling, then clean it up with LodFixer?

LODFixer wont clean up anything, it just messes things up basically

quote:then hand fix anything funky?

- run DEM2LF to generate L2 and TDF's
- In TerrainView load L2 & TDF's. run Auto-stuff -> Compute Feature Tiles.
- run LODFixer auto tiling, all covertypes (scripting).
- begin the overwhelming hard work to fix roads/rivers/citys.

Thats about it. The autotiling helps a lot, but its still a bitch to manually fix the roads and rivers. You gotta understand that it really depends on the terrain type and tdf "cluttering" of how much work you need to do. It might be that you'll fix everything in few days, but it also might take you a months to fix a full terrain map. It so much depends on the mess the TDF's are gonna make.

For example in Operation Desert Storm there is area in Saudi Arabia which in real life is *pure* desert. there is nothing. nothing. no roads. no rivers. no cities. that was one hellowa easy segments I have ever done

quote:Does the L2 independently incorporate the tile offsets?

Nevermind the offsets, its just tech-talk. I meant the offsets because you dont need texture.zip, texture.bin with LODFixer. You just need theater.L2 and theater.O2 files, nothing more.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[T_Rex]

Gotcha! I think I was expecting too much.

Thanks,
T

[T_Rex]

Dangit - new question. I have a situation where DCW thinks an area is 1 countries, when it is really 2. Any way to draw in Terrainview/TacEdit the border? Or, this may be a situation where this theater is good for TEs but can't support a real campaign.

Thanks,
T

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
DCW thinks an area is 1 countries, when it is really 2. Any way to draw in Terrainview/TacEdit the border?

The COAST features are the country borders. My memory dont serve me so well to remember which e00 file it was.. sorry

quote:theater is good for TEs but can't support a real campaign.

Falcon 4 dont model any borders in the terrain files. COAST TDF files are only for TerrainView.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[T_Rex]

I was thinking at lunch that I'm sure the Balkan guys had this same problem, in that I bet several of those countries didn't "exist" in the DCW world. I'll check with them when I get to that point. I need to stop putting it off and get down to tiling.

T

PS Uhhh...I just remembered I may have committed a faux pas. The tile set I want to use is the old ME theater set. Can I please us it? Please please please please?

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by T_Rex:
The tile set I want to use is the old ME theater set. Can I please us it? Please please please please?

Dont ask me, I didnt do it. Those are T-Bone's tiles.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[87th_striker]

T_Rex, why not tell us what area you are doing ??

[T_Rex]

Cause if it sucks the no one will ever know!

Besides, T-Bone figgered it out when I first described it to him. If you wanna play some scavenger hunt type thing all you need is one clue, really, and that is my post in the Nevada section on whether someone has been able to have two of the same planes on different teams in the campaign. Plus, because I'm using the old ME tile set, you know its in a desert/arid area. Throw in a little knowledge of global hot spots the last few years....

Elementary, my dear Watson.

T

[Snake Man]

I have no idea... hmm India/Pakistan thing?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[T_Rex]

Without being too coy, think just south of the ODS theater. There was a "low intensity" (if you count a couple hundred thousand troops facing each other "low intesity") by two countries whose combined air forces are outnumbered by a few US National Guard squadrons.

I'll post a couple interesting links later today.

T

[T_Rex]

Ok, enough suspense! I know you all were on the edges of your seats, right?

T

[ccc]

ya, i should know its EE war.
I recommend a Red Sea theater, like those days in DID F22ADF

[87th_striker]

The mercenarys even swapped side during the war.....

[ccc]

so.. Mercs are playing over E-E border? fire some unlocked aam, make some firework, back to base, and get their $$$? i heard they shoot some AAMs, the hit rate/or kill rate is low...just a show? poor E-E people..

[87th_striker]

Well CCC, I guess the merc's delivered, but recieved no hard cash from Etiophian government. The former east bloc weapons factories saw the nations war as an opportunity to test several of their new weapons systems. Kamov, Sukhoi, Mig, etc. etc. I remeber reading in AFM information about the first BVR fight between SU's and Mig's. Ended up with close encounter kills by Archers. So I do think those merc's delivered something...