High Elven City Tileset

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               

I forget where I read it, but I do remember it.

 

Raise only working on one type of terrain is also why on those caves and crypts where stuff can be raised, its on the black void as opposed to the tiles themselves

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

That's very interesting.  I tried making the very simple change of going from

 

Border=HighForest

Default=HighForest

Floor=HighForest

 

to

 

Border=HighForest

Default=Platform

Floor=Platform

 

This didn't work.  I don't know if it ever had a chance to work, but it was the first thing that came to mind.  I will keep trying (this time via tileset rule changes).  All ideas continue to be welcome.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cervantes35]

               

If I remember correctly CTP Babylon worked to a point but I believe you had to maually cycle thru the tiles on raise terrain to get the one you needed and both these raises where from the 0m. Your raises occur from the trees which are at -5m or lower I believe and the platform which raises from the 0m.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

I don't remember having to do that in Babylon, but it could be I'm just rusty.  The main thing for me is that it's possible in, for instance, Bioware City Exterior, to paint as many features as you want on raised cobble, but it's not working for my elven city platforms.  I've tried a variety of rule juggling and nothing has changed this as yet.

 

The 0 of my platform floor is at 2.2.  The high forest terrain doesn't have any walkable area except for when walkway crossers cover it, at which point it's 2.2 again.  Sure, it has some geometry below 0, but none of it's walkable.  My understanding, possibly false, was that stuff below 0 was more of a shadow issue than anything else.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Some of the rules you have might not be what you really wanted. For example rule 27 says that if you place a building at normal ground height next to a raised building the raised building is changed to a raised platform.

Rule 28 says that if you place a raised building next to a platform that isn't raised the platform is raised which is okay if you don't have tiles with raised buildings next to normal height platforms and want to have both on the same level, if however you have tiles of that kind you should remove this rule.

Also placing a raised building next to a forest will change the forest into a raised platform. Is that what you want?

 

Checking if the rules are causing problems is easy. Just make a backup of the set file and then remove all the rules. They make placing tiles faster, but a tileset can work without them. If you don't have any problems without the rules, there is something wrong with the rules, if you still have the same problem, you have a few wrong tile entries in your set.

 

Your edge.2da is missing a few entries for raised tiles. If it is possible to have raised platform terrain for example you'll need an entry that says: 8   platform   ****   platform    1    thf02_z02_01.

Add those lines with height 1 for all the tiles that can appear at a raised height.

 

You can have walkable terrain below 0. There is no problem with that. Only shadows below 0 will not work properly.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

Thanks, Zwerkules, for all that useful advice!  I was trying to go through the rules one by one, but by the time I'd get halfway through I'd forget what the earlier ones were.  >.<  Anyway, I will try the tileset without them, though I *thought* that tilesets with raise/lower needed rules.

 

The edge tiles haven't been updated in a while, I admit.

 

EDIT: I tried removing all the rules.  Didn't seem to make any difference.

 

By the way, my "anomaly" of a feature placed in the corner turns out to have not been one at all.  What I thought was raised terrain there was actually level 0.  All groups/features placed on raised terrain have this buggy effect.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

After looking at some of the tile entries in your set I found another problem. You have raised forest terrain which stays at the same height as the normal height forest terrain. You also have forests under your platform terrain. If one of your platforms gets raised, the forest below it will also get raised while the forest on tiles next to it will stay the same.

Maybe this is what Cervantes meant when he talked about two different raised terrains. You have the platform terrain and below it is the forest terrain, but in the set entries you can only have one terrain type.

 

When each corner of a tile has the height 1, a tile with all corners at height 0 will be taken and be raised by the ammount specified in your set file. If a feature on a platform is raised, the forest you placed below it will be raised with it.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

If the platform is raised completely (i.e. a fully raised, completely "1", no "0" corners), then there's no problem - the forest below it is raised automatically, just as one would expect.  This is just a regular all-0 tile, raised.  The tile isn't duplicated - it's the same tile, raised.  (Right?)

 

I have a large range of "border" tiles with various corner combinations.  To the best of my knowledge, unless I missed something that's going to make me want to hit myself over the head, the heights of forest and platform never clash in any of these combinations.  For example, I have tiles where only a single corner, the top left, is raised.  I then have a bunch of variations of that tile, depending on which corner is platform or forest.  But the raise isn't independent for each terrain.

 

I really hope I'm not missing something fundamental here...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_cervantes35]

               

Excellent Zwerk is helping you out he is much, much better at tilesets then I'll ever be, his advice will make much more sense then the babble I spit out.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

I tried to have a look at it in the toolset, but I just get an error that 2.5 is not a valid floating point.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

I wouldn't put yourself down just because I can't understand, Cervantes.   '>

 

 

I tried to have a look at it in the toolset, but I just get an error that 2.5 is not a valid floating point.

 

That's strange; it works fine in my toolset.  :-/  Maybe I could send an itty bitty demo module...

 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this would be an example of a border tile:

 

[TILE126]

Model=thf02_r04_11

WalkMesh=msb01

TopLeft=Platform

TopLeftHeight=1

TopRight=HighForest

TopRightHeight=0

BottomLeft=HighForest

BottomLeftHeight=0

BottomRight=HighForest

BottomRightHeight=0

Top=

Right=

Bottom=

Left=

MainLight1=0

MainLight2=0

SourceLight1=0

SourceLight2=0

AnimLoop1=0

AnimLoop2=0

AnimLoop3=0

Doors=0

Sounds=0

PathNode=H

Orientation=270

VisibilityNode=A

VisibilityOrientation=0

ImageMap2D=mi_thf02_r04_11

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

The tiles just looked as if the forest was at the same height because the height difference is so low. You have the tiles needed, so there is no problem with raised tiles. You do have a few wrong set entries though. R04_23 and r01_24 where not the tiles that should have appeared when I tested a raised platform next to a normal height platform when I tested it in the toolset.

 

To be able to use your tileset I have to change the 2.5 in your set to 2,5 for working with it in the toolset and later have to change it back to 2.5.

Seems there is a bug in the toolset when it reads height transition values that are not an integer. This also only seems to be a problem with other versions than the English one. I use English tlk files, but the game is still a German version. Why the toolset can read the 0.8 of the diffuse values just fine, but has problems with a 2.5 as a height transition is strange.

 

 

Something else I noticed is that the transparent textures you use at the edges of the platforms are among the first things on a tile that get rendered. You may want to link them to the aurora base again so they are rendered last and change their transparency hint to 1.

 

Edit: I tried all the groups and features on raised platforms and they worked fine. I couldn't reproduce the problem you have shown in your screenshot.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

Oh, I see.  I didn't understand that it was a language difference.   '>

 

Anyway, I did notice a few incorrect tiles when I was making a little demo mod that I hadn't noticed before.  The ones you mentioned were among them.  [Edit: fixed 'em; 'twas a set entry problem.]

 

Here is the tiny demo, for the record: https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Estelindis]

               

One more unusual thing: when I do a single raise of the plain high forest terrain (no platform anywhere in the area), it works as normal, yielding a little group of four thf02_r04_01 tiles (the single raised corner tile).  However, when I go to raise *this* again, a double raise, I get this, in spite of having painted no platform terrain at all in the whole area: 

 

 

Maybe this is a clue as to where things are going wrong with painting features on raised terrain.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               

One more unusual thing: when I do a single raise of the plain high forest terrain (no platform anywhere in the area), it works as normal, yielding a little group of four thf02_r04_01 tiles (the single raised corner tile).  However, when I go to raise *this* again, a double raise, I get this, in spite of having painted no platform terrain at all in the whole area: 

 

 

Maybe this is a clue as to where things are going wrong with painting features on raised terrain.

I'm not sure but, I just downloaded the hak from your link and looking at the .SET file... shouldn't your "HighForest" be treated like the walls of an interior tileset and the platform be your "Default Terrain"? It seems to me that this might just be the issue as the HighForest is currently treated as "Default Terrain". Just my suspicions.