Merricksdad's Middledark Tileset

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Today's to-do list:

• Finish basic tunnels, with variety DONE


• Discard tunnel type 2, replace with secondary room type with deeply cut walls.


• Add tunnel height transitions for both 250 and 500 DONE


• Finish updating new pit slope


• Add Walkmesh to basic pits

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               

are you sure rotate texture doesnt work with animesh? i remember i got it

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

are you sure rotate texture doesnt work with animesh? i remember i got it

When I use them together, the mesh is exported from nwmax as a trimesh, and a secondary animesh block is created below. The rotatetexture entry is in the trimesh section, but there is no sign of it in the animesh block. I also have a TXI file for the texture, so that might be the cause. The TXI is just setting the blending mode, but normally TXI does a LOT more than what is written when processing the texture. I may try it with the TXI turned off to see what happens. As it is right now, the water all flows in a random cardinal direction, instead of matching up to all flow right-ish. Without the TXI, I have to think of another texture combination that would work, because what it is doing right now is passing two elevation maps over each other, and where the elevation maps are both white, the white gets brighter using "blending additive", and looks like tiny waves, much like can be done with a much more complex animated texture, but without the huge graphical overhead.

 

It shouldn't be the TXI alone, because the TXI + rotate texture works fine. So it might be that TXI + animesh cancels rotateTexture. Not sure.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               

i cant check because i dont have nwn installed but if you have my terria tileset its easy to see: animesh should be in all water and river tiles, controlled by tile animation to control the flow direction for both streams and water. if i remember correctly i got a txi to go with the water texture and the mesh was set not completely opaque but say 50% or so, to show the bottom of the sea and the rivers whose textures was also controlled by other txi's or anyway they got some shinyness added with the trimesh controller (cant remember). what i do remember is that i couldnt manage to get the seams "flow" together from tile to tile when tile animloop was turned on, but that wasn't a big issue because the semi transparent water texture blended well with the water and river bed. i remember this because I was thinking that would be an issue when dealing with full opacity textures like with lava and such.

another thing, is I had to work a lot with hierarchies under the a(nimation) node of the tiles because only with a certain hierarchy i got everything render correctly (talking about composite transparencies for mesh and textures with txi), and the way to get everything work was:

-finde the right hierarchy for the meshes

-link them 1 by 1 in sequence (i mean link one to another, than another. its important not just the hierarchy but also the sequence you use to link the meshes, cant say why, its a big mystery)

 

hope that helps, maybe its relatet to the stuff under the a node and how they are linked together. if you check terria tileset and import a couple of tiles even if animesh cant be imported in max you can see the hierarchy i used and see what i mean

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

The order mattered because it sets the draw order on export. Just because GMAX shows a bunch of nodes under another in the hierarchy, their list doesn't show the render order after export. That's what I use the nwMax Order Children for, so I can set the draw order, when I can't use a hierarchy method. Anything that lightens I stack correctly upward (down the list). Anything that has to be rendered behind something, or inside of something, I put on the base of the hierarchy, or top of the child list.

 

I'll take a look at your stuff later today, after I get back from having a wheel replaced.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

ok, so looking at your original complete tileset which was packed in PHoD's multiple Terria kit here I can see that your stream has no need for the rotateTexture command, as it is positioned in a way that it flows directly as placed anyway. You change the direction only, and the water texture is manually lined up from tile to tile. That's not what I'm after for my water.

 

So I checked your lake. While your lake could benefit from what I'm talking about, and you DID apply a rotateTexture command, it isn't working in yours either, which you can test by loading up a mass of lake tiles and turning on the same animation sequence for all tiles. You'll see that they animate in one of 4 directions, unless you place them the way you need them. We know the rotateTexture command didn't take, because if it had, then all four directional movements would either 1) be flowing in the same direction since the TVerts were not modified, and/or 2) would still be moving in the wrong directions, although the texture would have lined up with the adjacent tile. Neither is the case, either in the toolset or in-game. So I suspect that issue is that you cannot mix rotateTexture with animesh. (see tile sen69_f54_01)

 

That's fine for mid-lake tiles of open water, because that could work for me. Also, what you did for rivers is going to be fine for mine too. But what I need is to be able to fix the direction of the base texture, which also force-fixes the direction of flow defined in the animesh. Since what I am going for is two planes sliding opposite each other, with the intent that the texture flows over multiple adjacent planes, I have to be able to set that texture in one of four directions, or 2 if I know for a fact I am going to settle on exact opposite directional translations (which I'm actually not right now, one at 90 one at 45 ish). That requires at least 4 animation sequences, in which instead of changing the flow of the texture, I actually change the initial rotation of the plane mesh, so that the texture simply lines up. Technically, I think I can do that using default, plus loop 1, 2, and 3, so this could still be possible. Changing the flow of the texture ultimately would not fix the cross-tile line-up of the texture boundaries, but changing the initial orientation of the mesh plane fixes both issues at once, in-effect replicating rotateTexture using 4 animation sequences, which each rotate the mesh plane another 90 degrees.

 

Alternately, I release 4 varieties of the same variety of water tile, for every water tile I make. That might seem like a lot of model overhead, but it's just text using the same textures, so it isn't really a big deal. Still, I think using four animations may be the better way to go, rather than having to continually click erase on a tile until you get the right one. We all know how well the lotto pays out.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Have you thought about mixing your Terria tileset with your underdark tileset? That might be quite spectacular, with very little work to be done

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               

in the toolset there is the chance to rotate the " free" middle terrain tiles like w w w w and other specular tiles like straight crossers, cross crossers etc, there is also the chance to "rotate" among the available tile variations for the given tile (or am i wrong lol). cant remember how, but shound be a combination of mouse right click with ctrl or shift or alt....

 

about the texture rotation, from my perspective i say tverts are not connected with texture rotation. aka  when you rotate the tile say by 90 degrees, the texture with a trimesh "rotate texture" option applied, the texture doesnt rotate, its always aligned with an absolute direction given by the engine. but the tile and all its components so including the mesh and its tverts, do rotate. to check this in terria, and i may very well be wrong and you right and it doesnt work, no animloop should be turned on. just flat water, with the mesh opacity turned to 100% to skip transparencies. all water tiles should be seamless. if you rotate water tiles, the texture should stay the same (this can be better viewed in river crosser straight tiles, rotating the tile by 180 degrees). also, if you appy an animloop to a single water tile and then rotate it the flow direction should change while the texture orientation shouldnt.

 

i am almost sure i didnt get isssues with trimesh rotate texture, and the seams i got were only with animloop turned on, even if i cared a lot to synch all the animesh animation frames and such, it seems the engine clock doesnt synch animations, so each starts with its own timing '>

 

correct me if im wrong, i just cant check it without nwn eheh

 

about the multiple layered water, I agree its a good way to go, it does disguise the seams a lot (i did some three or four layered water in the tiles where the stream crossers blends with the water terrain AND OR in the T shaped stream tiles, dont remember, to disguise the unavoidable seams of two merging water flows) and it can even give more "life" to the water itself, looking forward to see your results '>

 

about the terria/ud mix, i didnt really ever thing about that because i made the ud tileset a few years before terria, so even if its very unique as tileset, it has a lot of flaws while with terria even if its incomplete i am very proud, i did improve my skills and created something new and different from the other wonderful tilesets i used to study for inspiration

i remember when i was cooking terria I was tempted to start a new underdark tileset, but talking with sixthrice i realized i would never get what I wanted because of the ceilings. basically to get beautiful uneven ceilings that change height in the same cave, you need to use a new terrain for each ceiling height, and imagine the amount of tiles needed when you merge ceiling and floor height variations.... literally dozens of thousands!! so the way to build them should be the placeable way, not an easy project to make, nor easy for the builder to work with...

if you manage to solve the ceiling issue i may be very tempted to reinstall  max and nwn and give it a try even if im short on time! waiting to see how you will deal with height variations for interiors without an abnormal increas of tile count '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

For height transitions, I'm only doing the basics within "rooms" all other transitions will be done through "groups", where you enter one doorway, and exit another, and bingo, you are in a different elevation domain. Other acceptable transitions are in the corridor crosser. I've just made three unique corridor height transitions for +1, which in this set is looking to be 2.5m. My already defined groups have built in transitions of 5 and 10m. I don't intend to have more than two terrain elevations in "rooms", so that should keep the tile count down, but I'll still need your spreadsheet to do the second level. The appearance of additional levels, yet unreachable from the viewpoint, will be done with placeables, or other corner groups which let you attach a much higher level to the corner of a room with a lower base elevation.

 

Sword Coast Legends has two nice ones in the first mini-boss room. Their transition is about 400-500, but they have two half-transition tile groups to get you down the first one. Your first view of that room is from about two height transitions over the exit-area floor, but across a gap filled with water, which is itself two more levels down from the exit-area floor. In the adjacent corner of the 6x6 room, a secret door lets you access another look-out ledge, with a treasure chest. I definitely want such a room '>

 

Out on the plate bridges across the Great Chasm terrain, there will only be one height transition at a time, unless that tile also butts up against the basic solid wall or open grotto terrains. Then a group can take care of two or more transitions for you.

 

For the most part, this lets me simplify height transitions in the solid rock areas, where I can simply reuse the same all-black tile for all the enclosed area, no matter what height. The only problem I am having with that so far is that I can't see what is partially level 1 and partially level 0, but it doesn't take much work to find out.

 

Here are the first three "stairs"

 

 

The one with pits is made to accept boulders from the placeables kit. I'd also litter the stairway with skulls or bones or loot.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

In case anybody didn't realize this, the MP3 soundtrack from Sword Coast Legends is located in your steam install directory, under soundtrack. Mine is located as shown below. My guess is that it also installs the entire soundtrack during try-before-you-buy play. While I don't suggest stealing them, simply because that is naughty naughty, once you buy them, there's no reason not to use them in other personal apps.

 

-> Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sword Coast Legends\Soundtrack

 

Inon Zur's music is fantastic, and has appeared in many video games in the genre.

 

Also, don't forget Shards of Eberron still makes good game music.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

This morning, I put some effort into building some automation scripts for simple cave contours. While they do the job, they create a tile which is far less accepting of variety placeables. I'm writing this morning off as a failure, except that I can use some of the scripts to create placeable boulders for a few types of caverns. Other than that, no progress today, except that I now know exactly how I want my pit crosser to be. That is 3 man-widths wide at merge points (225cm) with worked bridges being 4 man widths (or about 350cm maximum). I'm going to keep the pit crossers and in-room pits to 10m depth maximum, although the viewable distance down may be closer to 750cm with placeables in them. I'll leave them bare on release though, with a hope that at some point later I'll release a variety pack where the tile is already decorated in one of 4 themes, and with three varieties of that themed tile.

 

For now, going to finish the pit crosser, filling in two missing tiles I didn't even know I skipped, and then finish the pit terrain. After that, I can move on to new groups, or start work on the great chasm terrain and its little bridges. I've only got this weekend left to really pump a lot of energy into this. School starts on the 12th for me.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Found some good texture combinations for short water falls which might make my "pond" subset something I can do a height transition on. I'd like to do two alternatives, one with rimrock dams and basically no water movement, the other with fast churning water. Maybe a +1 variety can be rimrock, and the +2 variety can be rapids. The texture combination for the water translates 3 textures on top of each other to give quite a neat looking water appearance, much like you would see coming down from a mountain stream in spring, with no chance to see the bottom.

 

Not that I will get to this any time soon as I am still working on basic tile redefinition, but here is the list of works to do, even if I only get one tile done a night:

 

• open water falls +1 (6 tiles)


• open water falls +2 (7 tiles)


• water crosser falls +1 (1 tile)


• water crosser falls +2 (1 tile)


• rock + water falls +1 (8 tiles)


• rock + water falls +2 (8 tiles)


• rock + water crosser (21 tiles or more)


• stream crosser + rock wall crosser could be doable but I don't feel like it

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_UA DM]

               

Sword Coast Legends posted new screen shots from their upcoming DLC.

 

https://swordcoast.c...and-rage-demons

 

There are 5 screen shots of Underdark locations and a few others.

 

UA DM

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I had been reading about that, and something was said about more options for mods, or the ability to swap out texture assets with a supported tool, rather than having to hack it with the unity tools, which people have been banned for doing.

 

Those shots, all but one, are just mod overlays for existing underdark tiles. The shape and placement of the new features seems to line up pretty much with the existing tiles in a way that makes me think it isn't a new set, but an expansion to the base set. I like that idea! The only thing I see that doesn't fit that idea is the base texture for the wall and floor are replaced, so maybe it is a new set. Either way, I'm quite pleased with the pics.

 

The room with the mushroom garden might be a transitional room with up to 4 exits, like the 2nd-4th underdark "Areas".

 

Since the whole thing runs on high quality unity tileset parts, I expect they'll keep adding content for a while, until the money runs out. I'd prefer they kept adding mod controls, even if they don't allow external customization of anything. I'd keep enjoying it more.

 

I found a bug the other day. I decided to replay the main story module with my 20th level character. He's got this item that has a chance to destroy on a crit. I got to Sir Banagar and he totally exploded without triggering the plot dialog. Now I cannot progress further. Don't do that '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Here's a peek at some of the placeables I came up with last night. The rocks come in round or squat, and there are a great number of replacement textures (about 30 so far) ready to apply. The hexagonal crystals come in clusters of 2 to 6, and at heights of 2m to 6m (approximately). There are currently three textures intended for the pillars, including ruby, emerald, and weathered basalt.