Merricksdad's Black Hills Tileset (First Look)

[Legacy_Frith5]

               

Cool! My wife and I took the boat tour yesterday. Impressive landscapes, both in shape/size and color. wow.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

When you are connecting 2 computers directly, there are a pair of wires inside the connector that have to be crossed (or use a special cable with those wires crossed already). I don't know which wires need crossed, but you could Google it as easily as I could. I learned that the hard way long ago when I got the wrong kind of cable (the special kind for direct computer-to-computer) to connect my computer to my router and it didn't work.

I believe that was made old-style a few years ago. Newer network cards automatically detect which kind of cable you are using and automatically reverse the stream.

 

This morning, I seem to be able to detect and read the source computer via direct connection, but I still cannot pull files across without it stopping. I suspect something may be wrong with the network port on the source. It is housed near the usb port, and my kid knocked it off the table last year with a stick in it, and the entire region has been faulty ever since. You have to love an OS that is basically unchanged in that department since 1996. POS. I want microsoft to come up with a lengthy 2 page wizard so I can select all the options I want on my network, check those boxes, hit play and share the very long code with other computers. None of this waiting or having issues connecting to previous versions of the OS.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Cool! My wife and I took the boat tour yesterday. Impressive landscapes, both in shape/size and color. wow

If you travel west on 408 and H58 from Muskallonge Lake, you can find some really neat unmarked roads which lead up to the shoreline. Various streams full of what looks like trout, and roads filled with limestone mud covered with 4-5 kinds of butterflies, as well as rock outcrops of various colors can be found. It was a fun accident.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

And, now that I am pretty much finished, it suddenly starts working without complaint. Go figure.

 

Edit: I was wrong, it isn't working. My computer simply went and put itself back on the wifi even though I told it not to. Still doesn't work at all.

 

Edit again: totally wrong. If I turn on wifi, it switches directly back to attempting to use wifi, which is a slower transfer rate. If I turn off wifi while it is transferring, it forgets it can go through the direct connection, which is at least 10x faster. If I pause it, turn off wifi, wait a minute, then unpause the transfer, it takes up the x10 speed and continues. Silly method of connection detection. I'd write it so it picked the fastest route from point a to point b, detecting if there were multiple routes to the same location.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

32 inch screen just arrived...and is way too big for my computer desk setup, which is just the corner of the dining room table. I'm not sure I thought this through very well. Also, no HDMI cable yet.....why don't they pack one with the TV if that is what it was advertised for. Can't even test how nice it will be to modify models and textures over a 3 foot region in front of my head. But this will eventually be sweet '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Having a very hard time with this larger monitor as my building screen. If I split my monitor, gmax does not register the middle mouse click (rotation around view point) without first defaulting the X coordinate on screen to that of the far right of the primary screen. I may have to try going without two screens and just make the larger screen my default.

 

Playing NWN with two screens has an issue when I open any transparent menu. Like if I bring up the debug panel, all the walkmesh grass goes white within 2 seconds. If I close it, it goes back to drawing correctly within 2 seconds. Very strange.

 

Still tweaking the brightness contrast and sharpness. It was looking like an old 8 bit system when I first turned it on. Not good for editing models.

 

Edit: Finally got it all set up as a primary display. This is a bunch of work for something that should be really simple. I feel old...

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

ok, I am having so much fun with this 32 inch monitor for gmax. This is awesome. I'm pumping out tiles like mad now. I already have done the new basic granite areas, and have almost completed some of the shist monoliths laying on their sides. Not sure how to complete that terrain type yet, but I will be posting pics of what I have so far.

 

Also, looking at google maps with this is spectacular. It is almost like being in a flight simulator helicoptor or something.

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Done:

• Tall Granite


• Raise


• Raise + smooth crosser


• Moved Shist to variants of Raise tiles


• Modified Schist texture to be less cartoony and somewhat shorter

Next: Granite Raise and Granite Raise + Smooth

 

No walkmeshes are available yet. Doing them last

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rjshae]

               

For a second I thought that was an Escher... '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

For a second I thought that was an Escher... '>

Yeah, without shadows, it is hard to tell sometimes. I was hesitant to post it because I had the same issue when I first looked at it here.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

As much as the above texture looked niced in GMAX, it didn't come close to looking good in-game. So I redid the texture, increasing the file size from 512 to 1024. Then I resized the texture on the object to tile x2. This gives a much better texture quality without the graininess. Of course after that there was too much noise to go with the other textures I am using, so I made a new texture based on many images I took while in SD this year. What I ended up with is much more like you can see on google maps/earth.

 

 

But then it was too soft looking, so I extruded a bunch of faces on the meshes, making them look more like the rocks in SD up near the spires area. Still needs a bit of noise added to make them not look like pudding blobs, but you can see where I'm going with it now. Here is a shot taken at 7AM in-game so you can see most of what is going on, both color and physical texture wise.

 

The next process will be to add that noise on the extruded faces, and then select those same faces in localized groups to apply the texture to each cracked section. Right now I'm just using a 1k block UVW map, which sometimes makes ugly texture seams as it rotates 90 degrees suddenly at a face which is more upward facing.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Kid had a belated birthday gathering today at the park, which lasted 4 sugar-filled and caffeine overdosed hours. After I got back, I decided to make this:

 

 

And after that, I wondered what I might make with it if I smoothed it down and spiked it up for some mountain peaks in the background, and this is what I got:

 

Which strangely enough is a good first step in making a picture I found last night.:

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

This morning's version is the final for granite lands "mountain" terrain type. In the picture on the previous post, the top image will be an alternate for the spires area. They flow together quite well, in both texture and shape. The previous one has a gradual slope to the top, while this one has a sharp slope. You could consider one the smooth crosser type, and I may fully flesh out that option.

 

The new one has some edge issues I need to clean up, but other than that, just decals and placeable-like objects need to be added.

 

This will also be the shape of the granite boulders you can add as actual placeables. It should allow you to customize the regions for both mountain and spires, and also cover up any blemishes you find don't fit your wants.

 

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Errrrm, is it just the angle the screeny was taken at or is the ground really eating the PC's feet?

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

The walkmesh on every tile is temporary, and the rises in the landscape are not walkmesh mapped yet. It makes it easy to quick test by setting them all to the same walkmesh. Still working on a good grass texture, and this is definitely not it.