Some questions for Tileset designers.

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               I understand. Just a bad idea, then.
NWN can not handle what I had in mind. I will have to see if NWN 2 can.
Then again, I never liked the Lego-way to build areas.
Good for bandwidth, ease of building, and speed of rendering.
Bad for art, and control, and freedom.

Thanks for all your input.


-fox
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               I am also curious why are you stuck on this 2x2 meter idea?  What advantage would that give you?  that is a HUGE number of small objects to build, and align correctly, into a group.

512x512 in meters converts to over 1679 feet in length...   That is over 5 football fields long (including both end fields of 10 yards each) per side, that is one HUGE amount of space.

As to Art, control, and freedom... NWN pretty much offers the best that is available for building with.  NWN2, is limited in total area size as well, and much more limited in outdoor areas to only 5 textures (I think, may be wrong on the max texture count)... so, grass, stone, dirt, leaves, bark, doesn't give you any room for buildings, which is why they went with placeable buildings etc.  Regardless, NWN 2 also has max size limitations for a single area.  

As _Six mentioned, you could create a single group, that is 32x32 tiles in size, and handle it in one of two ways, create the entire group, and walkmesh for same, then slice the group up into the individual tiles (there are tools already available to help with that), create your own tileset, with a single extra 10x10 grass tile to give it something to paint when initially creating the area in the toolset, and a single group entry in the set file and itp file, to allow you to paint your entire group down.

Or, as _Six mentioned, you can create the entire visible sections as one tile, and create the walkable area and just slice the walkable stuff off into 10x10 sections to assign to the tiles of the group.  The ground would still end up with 32x32 (1024 total) tiles, but only ONE of them would have visible material attached to it.  The other 1023 would only have the walkable surface restrictions on them.

Thus you would be limited to the max of 32x32 tiles, or 320x320 meters, which is still over 1000 feet to play around in... that is a HUGE area.

Likely, if you would just give folks more information, they can give you optional ideas on how to create the "feel" of the area you wish to have, without having to resort to something even larger than 1024 square meters of space requirements.

I seriously doubt that anyone wishes to "steal" an idea for an area requiring that much size from you, so you truly don't have to worry about losing the idea.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 30 juillet 2011 - 01:07 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               There is no secret to hide.

I wished to remake an old 2D game from 1998. Today we would define it an Action RPG.
It had a very addictive gameplay, and it was a merciless game.
If you succeeded in it, to any extent, nobody could claim you did not earn your stuff -- because often a tiny mistake would cost you dearly (starting with the loss of the entirety of your belongings -- which you then had to go retrieve... with your killers lurking right there, no less -- and you logged out, bye bye your stuff -> gone forever).
Probably that was its undying beauty. And no, I am not talking of Diablo games. Forget them. There was better stuff out. Just not as famous.

Well in this game you could edit your maps.
Maps were built our of a regular grid of vertices. You would raise or lower them vertices to create hills and valleys. Then you would apply the textures to form patches of grass, sand, and what not.
Square tiles would form on the grid, and could make up a matrix of up to 240x240 tiles (256x256 really, but a bug would cause the game to subtract 16 from each dimension).

The whole gameplay was ruled by tiles and the fact that a single tile could only accomodate 1 single creature. Bigger creatures would occupy several tiles, to the point that in too narrow a space such creatures would no fit and could not chase you.
Learnig to take serious advantage of narrow spaces was part of the recipe for staying alive in that game.

Now you see why I insist on wanting tiles that are 2 meters by 2 meters.
It is a "safe" space ino which I can accomodate a single NWN Medium-size creature (given the due edits within the 2DA, of course), and yet avoid to have too big a crowd on the screen.

But the current tilesets of NWN all suck. They are too big. And force me to lay down wide open spaces, so murdering any and all Strategy and Taking Advantage of narrow spaces.
What "narrow spaces"? In NWN?? Where???
All is an airport in NWN. You may land a Cessna onto the typical city street. Ridicolous.

So I am going to need a custom tileset.
And it is going to be a custom tileset for each map I wish to replicate from that game.
At least this would give me all the detail I want. But it would make map editing impossible anyway, because all such NWN tiles would be unique and meant to be used only in that specific place and to have only those specific neighbours.
In point of fact each such map would be an uneditable and huge Group of tiles.
If you wanted to change anything, go back to edit the very tileset -- Ridicolous again.

If only I could make maps bigger than 32x32 NWN tiles... I could then scale up every other object (by 5x) so that a tile of 10x10 meters effectively becomes like 2x2 meters.
Haha -- But that too is not possible.
I still would have to redesign the tilesets to eliminate those decorative objects that would appear way too tiny if everything else was scaled up.

Conclusion: NWN 1 can _not_ handle this.
If not even NWN 2 can, oh well, I can give up too.


-fox
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               What's the game's name?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__six]

               I don't know if you've seen Chandigar's maze terrain for his Gothic Exterior tileset, but it may give you some clues...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               Just took a look.  I'd forgotten that he'd turned maze intro a terrain.  Amazing work, as usual.  I'm just curious to look up a gameplay video on YouTube and simply see whatever it is that they think NWN can't handle.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               City Exterior Alleys would also likely be close to the limiting features you want, but 99% of tiles out there have a wider space because the engine uses something called "perspace" which stands for personal space, and which is related to creature size and everything by default is designed for something slightly larger than a human in size as most creatures end up being that big... so, the moveable space is larger to accommodate those larger creatures.

Some of the sewer tilesets have narrower channels of walkable space as well, but you have to be picky with how you lay out your areas.

Not sure what else could be suggested though, creating a tileset that has that sort of limitation in moveable space has not ever been a design criteria in NWN.  There are sets with some terrains/crossers that offer some limitations, but they are only a piece of a much larger space.

You COULD create a tileset that was based primarily on crosser type connections, with only the centers of the sections being available for walking, and could accomplish what you are asking for with that.  As to how it would look, that would be determined by what you wanted it to look like... interior cave type systems would be easier to visualize, but you could also accomplish it with exteriors, and if you create enough variations on each tile as in a01_01, a01_02 .. a01_21 etc... you could likely create exactly what you are looking for.  The disadvantage to this scheme is that you are building with wasted space, blocking space, more than what is walkable.

Anyway, it CAN be done, just not to such huge size as you were orignally asking for.

Forget your 2x2 meter limitation in regards to tile-size, and consider the 2 meter bit to just be the width of the walkable space, or less as you choose.    To gain a larger map, you would have to build it in sections, and create multiple areas with area transitions connecting them together.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldMansBeard]

               Would it suffice to use 2x2 placeables to represent terrain and lay them over blank tiles ? With one NWN tile accommodating 5x5 of these placeable "mini-tiles" ?

If some mini-tiles have blocking pwk's and others are walkable, you will get tactical complexity.

Perhaps the perspace and creperspace entries in appearance.2da could be standardised to multiples of 2.0 to constrain creatures to "one per square".

Pathfinding might be laggy, though.

Just a thought.

OMB
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               @ OldTimeRadio:

The game name is: Rage of Mages II: Necromancer.
But I think it is off topic if we start talking of it here.
PM me if you seek more details.


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@ Bannor Bloodfist:

Bannor Bloodfist wrote...
You COULD create a tileset that was based primarily on crosser type connections, with only the centers of [...]

Clearly you know what you talk about. But I do not.
Tilesets are not my "field" -- scripts are.
Could you explain that again, maybe aided with a simplified drawing to schematize the thing?
It sounds interesting, and may lead somewhere productive.


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@ OldMansBeard:

A matrix of 2x2 meters placeables would mean a total of 25 placeables per NWN tile of 10x10 meters. Thus, a medium area of -say- 8x8 tiles would spawn 1600 placeables.
Not counting the creatures, the items they carry and wear, and the scripts to play the whole.
Too much :-)
The game would crash or just hang while loading the Area.


-fox
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Ok, quick answer on the possible crosser solution, and it won't be real quick, sorry...

Crossers are things like roads/streams etc.  They connect slightly differently than the way normal tiles do, at least from a builders viewpoint.

Crossers have a series of letters that can loosely represent their shapes, and this is loosely.  They typically have a lower case "i" (eye) for a single end of the road.  A single tile that expects no connection to road on one 3 sides, but has a single connection to a road on the last side.  IE, the "end of the road".  Crossers also have an Upper case "I" (eye) where it connects on two sides, IE the road completely crosses the tile from one side to another.  Then you have a corner that connects top, and one side (this tile can be rotated to connect any of the two sides that way... IE, top-right, top-left, bottom-right, and bottom-left.  Typically we just refer to that type of tile as a "c" tile.  Then you have one that is a "T" (tee) shape, where it connects to any of the three sides and meets in the middle.  And finally and "X" (ex) tile that connects from all 4 sides and meets in the middle.

Now, take any of those single tiles, and you can make variations on them.  Different things, objects, walls, trees, whatever, to block passage except where you want that passage to be.  These blocking objects don't even necessarily have to physically exist, but the walkmesh of the tile can be used to allow/block access and if you choose the correct pathnode for the tile, one that actually represents the true walkable passage, then your pathfinding in game will work as well.

For rough visual clarification, here are the pics of the various pathnodes that NWN offers NWN Pathnodes

The pathnodes, are used by NWN to allow your PC or NPC's and creatures, to more easily find a path when you click farther away than a single tile.  In the images, 40 of them are usable, 2 are reserved.  If you think of your individual tiles that you might need to accomplish your goal, and can find an close approximation in the pathnodes, you should be good to go.  The Black lines are ALWAYS walkable. the white sections may or may not be walkable depending on how you build the tile.  They can be rotated by 90, 180, and 270 degrees, just as your tiles can be rotated when you paint them in the toolset.

Anyway, I am suggesting that you think of the tiles as crossers, as it will make it easier to keep in mind how you want the player to be able to proceed in a given tile.    You will still be creating tiles, and still need the variations to accomplish the goal, but it IS possible to create a tileset to do what you want.  It will just take a bit of work to get all the variations.

Typically, I cheat when creating tiles... I know I need sometime to match up to the next tile in the set, so I copy/paste whatever I can from one that I already have.  Rotate objects around, etc, to save me in creation time.  That way I typically only have to assign textures and map them properly on the first one, then the copies will all be mapped the same etc... Sometimes this saves a lot of time, sometimes it won't work, but generally, re-using bits and pieces from various other tiles that I have already created, saves hours and hours of total time in a tileset creation, most especially when creating a very large tileset.

As to the variations, say you want your road end tile to only allow someone to walk 2 meters in, then be blocked... the next variation of the same tile, you want them to walk 4 meters, and then 6 meters, then 8 and finally the full way across, always following a straight line.  the first 4 variations would all use the "i" (lower case eye) pathnode.  The final tile is actually NOT a variation, but a new tile that uses the Upper case I (eye) pathnode, and typically has a different letter combination in the name.  Typically, in Bioware sets in general, the lower case "i" (eye) tiles are all numbered as tctl0_h05_01 -> h05_04 in the case mentioned above, and the fifth tile would be named tctl0_h02_01.  

Anyway, it IS possible to create what you want, and using the variations on the different tiles, you can make it fairly easy to build with.  Might take a couple extra clicks of the mouse to get a specific tile allowing movement exactly where you want, but it can be done.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 01 août 2011 - 06:22 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               Hm.
Your last explanation was great. 100% understood.
Thank you for taking the time to write that up.

But now you are going to hate me.
I still think this can not work.
Consider the typical NWN tile of 10x10 meters.
Which I ideally split in 25 subtiles, each of 2x2 meters.

Each such subtile is either walkable or not.
So we got 2 states for each.
All possible combinations of walkable/not_walkable subtile
would thus amount to 2 to the power of 25...
That makes over 30 millions tiles -- Unthinkable.

And then I want different texture sets too, because different
"themes" could appear in the same map.

This calls for a drastic change of plans.
So drastic, in fact, that the gameplay I had in mind can not
be replicated in NWN. Because:

I should have to handle pathfinding externally, with NWNX and
an A* plugin written by me.
I should have to write an app to auto-edit the GIT files so I
can place Trigger "tiles" to click in order to direct your
character (all because the stupid game can not spawn a Trigger
at runtime. Bioware shortsighted fools! My disdain for your
lot grows daily).
Then I would need a whole host of natural-looking placeables,
and place them "static" in the Area both for decoration and
for tiles-blocking purpose.

It can be done. Anything can -- in this sense.
But the amount of work to realize all this exceeds by far the
returns.
At least a year would pass before I have put together enough
pieces to get a coherent picture.

And then there is the unknown of Triggers.
One Trigger per walkable subtile. Consider a map of 80x80
meters. That makes 1600 subtiles (of 2x2 meters) _if_ all are
walkable.
Assume that only 1/4th of them is. That makes 400 Triggers.
Triggers are no inert objects. They will fire Events and want
their own slice of attention from the CPU.
Can this game handle that many entities at once for real?

I should go through the trouble to write a GIT editor, only
to discover that the engine chokes on a few hundreds of
triggers? I am not _that_ fool :-)

Such a pity.
The use of Triggers would be perfect.
Not only it would allow for point-and-click movement.
But each Trigger would give you instant delimitation of each
subtile you hover the mouse on, so always allowing you to
know exactly where you are going and what other tiles are
neighbours.

But NWN can only play NWN.
They made it a Closed Box.
You may paint it, dent it, and throw it around.
Always a Box and always Closed remains.


-fox