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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:08 am 
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Hello again,


I was wondering, learning more and more about dragon, I came to realise that Dragon doesnt feature an option to render on a per region basis.

This would bring me into trouble where a dense forrest would be needed on one part of the map and another light forrest on another part of the map.

Is there a way to work around this ? I remember reading somewhere that bit's and pieces of the map are glued together later as one map ? Would this mean that I create each region with dragon as if it where a map, and later Worldforge them together as one ?

Other then that... to calibrate my project timeline a bit: It looks as if I'm going to have to hand edit the entire map after the initial Dragon passes ? Is this true, and if so, are there ways to make this less painfull for me ?
(as in proper preparation that I dont know about yet from the mapmaking tutorial)

Thanx for reading this, hope you'll answer :)

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:40 am 
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You can set up different types of forest, but it means a fair amount of editting in Dragon's scripts.

Let's say you only wanted two different types of forest, one dense and one light. If you want the same static items in both types of forest, skip to the next paragraph. The first step would be to make a copy of /statics/forest.txt and rename it something like "light_forest.txt". Then modify the lines in forest.txt to produce the heavy forest. The first number in each line is the frequency with which an item is placed. This is a relative frequency, which means if one line has 0002 and another has 0001, then the item referred to in the first line will be placed twice as often as the other one. In a sense, it's asking if you want lots of apple trees and only a few pear trees or equal numbers of each. By default, every item in the file has the same chance of being placed.

Now we need to make sure Dragon knows the difference between the light forest and the heavy forest. This is done in maptrans.txt. The easiest way to do this is to find the part of the file that refers to forest (default is group 01?) and free up some of the color position used by it for use with the new forest type. Forest, by default, uses color indices 10-1e (in hex), so let's use 10-17 for heavy forest and 18-1e for light forest. Heavy forest will continue to use the current group number (01), but we need a new one for light forest. I think group 30 is free in the default install, so let's use it (this is very arbitrary, feel free to pick any group number that's not in use). So we need to spilt the forest section into two groups, one with group number 01 and one with group number 30. The lines for the heavy forest will start something like: 10 01 000 followed by tile numbers. The lines for the light forest will start something like: 18 30 000 followed by some tile numbers. The first number is the color position (10-17 for heavy and 18-1e for light). The second number is the group number (01 for heavy, 30 for light). The third number is elevation. Feel free to use the same tile numbers for both types of forest. You'll also need to change the groups.txt file in the same way, but here you don't have to worry about elevation or tile numbers.

Now that Dragon knows to look for two different forest types, we need to tell it what to do with them. Chances are the transitions will be the same whether you're using heavy or light forest, so we don't have to mess with the actual transition files (thank goodness!). But we do need to tell Dragon what transition files to use for the new forest type. Open betweentrans.txt. Essentially, any line that has an 01 in it should be copied and the 01 in the copy changed to a 30. This tells Dragon to use the same tile transitions for both forest types. Now open items.txt and add a new line. Basically, you'll just copy any one of the lines you already have and make a few modifications. First, the first number should be changed to 30 (the new forest group number). The second number should be changed to indicate how "thick" you want the statics to be placed. Each square will have a certain chance to have an item placed on it, and this is where you set that percentage. It runs from 0000 to 1000, which corresponds to 0% to 100.0% (for instance, 0357 would mean that there's a 35.7% chance of an item being placed on any given square). By default, a forest is set to 13% (0130), so a lighter forest should be less than that and a heavier forest would be more. Finally, the last item on the line is the file which contains the list(s) of items to be placed and their relative frequencies. If you created a new "light_forest.txt" file, change the last item to light_forest.txt.

Unless I'm forgetting something, that should be it!

Another option (which I don't recommend) would be what you suggested, edit your entire map by hand... Blech... You'll need to do some hand editing in any case, but not for something like this.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 7:04 am 
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Thank you very much for this insightfull reply about the working of dragon.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 9:41 am 
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I could use this same process for custom spooky and/or tall trees, too. Yes?

If I've patched them into the art.mul?

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Edited to add: Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your thread. :/


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:52 pm 
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I don't mind you jumping in. From what I understood, what you say is right...

Some more questions, if noone minds:

Is it correct that the difference in colortables between mod9 and mod11 is caused by Dragon (only) being able to handle 256 terain types, including z levels ?

Is it also correct that I could throw my colortable all around, providing I alter the right scripts to reflect the changes ? (say I want -Z grass tiles, I could sacrifice certain other 'slots' and add the z of the terain I need there instead ?

Is it also correct that a program with a seperate map and altitude file would make for less work after compiling ? (tho perhaps more work to create in the first place)

Is it correct that you are going slightly insane from all the questions :lol:

Is there a practical use for beaches ? (boats, ??)

If I would want to create the 'perfect' .bmp, with the least work after compiling, which programs, or combination, would get me closest to that goal ?

Thanx again

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:23 pm 
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Spudz-
Wrong. See http://www.ryandor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1115. Adding another terrain group to be the same basic terrain is the stupid and lazy way to do it. Why? Because you've got 256 swatches to use and it isn't anywhere near enough for everything you want to do. While it is a hell of a lot more work and requires more preplanning, it is going to provide better results to use the coordinate items system.

Jeroen-
Yes, basicly you've got a good understanding of it all (and everything else Spudz said is correct, in fact everything he said is correct, it is just a different method, and that is discussed in the tutorial linked above). You can swap out whatever you want for your own colortable and maptrans. In fact if you are lazy (like Dian :P ) you don't even need to change the colortable, you can just change the maptrans, but you of course need to remember what you change where.

Many of the questions you've brough up have been discussed and I clipped a lot of the frequent ones into the tutorials forums.

As far as the altitude and other questions about Mod11, there are old discussion threads about the what and the why of it, but the short answer is as someone said, was mostly my preference. I find jumps of 5 Z to be far too ugly for my liking. Also because of the limitations of the client there really just isn't any need for using the full 256 Z levels because you can't see that far. Finally because of the limitations of Dragon there are many tradeoffs. It is not fit to make a great map from start to finish without a lot of tweaking, running multiple compiles with different maptrans (Dian can tell you a lot about that) and tweaking after in Worldforge. Altitude is something that is very easy to change in a large area with Worldforge. A lot quicker and easier than it is to change terrains.

Yes, there are programs that use 1 image for terrain and 1 for altitude and they are infinetly more flexible than Dragon but none of them are very complete or useable. There is Syds map converter, which he never finished because he is lazy (notice a trend with us people around here?) then there is UOL which isn't really all that useable in version 1 and DKnight still hasn't finished version 2 because he is very busy (although he might be lazy like the rest of us too). Then there is Punt's new program which I haven't really messed with (because I am lazy too after all) and he probably hasn't finished either (because, yes, you guessed it, he is lazy) but I'm sure it is a great program (because he paid me to say that.....errr....no, but seriously because all of punts tools are great)

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 6:58 pm 
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LOL...damnit...so that actualy means that lazy me needs to do a lot himself..

Thanx for that link, I'll be painting and re-re-re-re-compiling now for the next few months.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 19, 2006 10:38 pm 
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The first thing I removed from Dragon was all the floor tiles for indoors and replaced them with different terrain types. I prefer to draw the paths and roads in Worldforge to allow for a more consistent elevation change.

This in itself will give you around 4-6 more terrain types, more if you remove the cave tiles.

Dev

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:23 am 
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Stormcrow wrote:
While it is a hell of a lot more work and requires more preplanning, it is going to provide better results to use the coordinate items system.

Yeah, this is right in most cases. My real problem with doing it this way was that when I built a map with with two different forest types, I always embedded one inside the other. The forest got thicker as you went in, and using coordinates would have been a complete nightmare unless the inner, heavy forest were composed of rectangles. When I did it, I actually did it, I thought about the coordinates first, but then realized that I'd have to have dozens of entries in the items.txt.

I suppose I should have asked what exactly the goal was, huh? :oops:

So, you still don't have to do all the work by hand. What you do need to do is get coordinates on the map for where you want light vs. heavy forest and use the items.txt to tell Dragon to place more (or less) static items in particular rectangular regions. As I noted above, this will be a lot more work if you want a heavy forest surrounded by light forest.

Or, as Dev suggested, get rid of any landscape tiles you're not using, which opens up more space in your 256-color palette to play with.


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:38 am 
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I think I'll be using both methods probably.. for the forrest transition from light to thick, and for diff areas of the map having different forest types.

On another thought... what happens if I create a multi consisting of a large area of heavy forrest and place that everywhere I need thick forrest ? or am I missing something about multi's ?

Is there a way to extract the tile numbers out of the art files ? (or create the reference on the fly without user input ?) That way I could automate throwing the colortable around, and fixing the scripts... would make my life easyer (figure it out once, apply many times)


Regards,

Jeroen

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 7:53 am 
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I'd strongly suggest that you either use the items.txt as Stormcrow says or change the colortable like I first suggested. Mixing those ideas gets rid of the benefits from both of them and makes a huge amount of work for you...

Either idea will work. If you use the colortable, you don't have to plan as completely, but you're wasting some spaces in the colortable. If you use items.txt, you have more options for the colortable, but you have to know exactly where all of your heavy forests and light forests start and end in (x,y) coordinates and have many copies of each file. If you combine the two, you're giving up spaces in the colortable, but still have to track exactly where all of the forest types are.

The multi idea would work (if I understand what you're asking), but then it's just one more file you have to patch to your players. Besides, if you place a huge multi on top of an existing light forest to make it heavy, then you'll have all sorts of problems with overlap (placing a tree from the multi where a log already exists from the light forest).


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 8:05 am 
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K .. thank you... multi is out :)

I'm not sure I understand the other part tho... if I where to build a dense forrest into a light forrest, and account for weather regions (temperate/snow/etc.) wouldnt I get something like a custom chess board of unmaintainable txt files ?


Has anybody ever attempted to create a grid that outputs these text files, based on god-knows-what ?

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:43 pm 
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Planet_Jeroen wrote:
Has anybody ever attempted to create a grid that outputs these text files, based on god-knows-what ?


No, but it wouldn't be very hard and.....hey! punt was just looking for a new project. I bet he could pull something like that out of his ass in about 5 minutes. Syd could do it too I'm sure, but he would spend more time whining about how lazy he is than it would take him to write it. And of course there are a few other talented people lurking around here who could do something like that.

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:51 pm 
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And then there's me, learning how to program, who thinks he'll try to do it... provided I can ask stupid questions every now and then.

All it realy takes is the map x size * map y size grid with text files applied in rectangles, based on some (color) code ..right ?

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PostPosted: Thu Apr 20, 2006 5:29 pm 
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Yeah, that would work. All you're really talking about doing is parsing the items.txt file for a graphical output. While I'm not much of a programmer myself, it doesn't sound very hard.

As for the multi idea, it would seem like a good idea but multis are serverside and dynamic as opposed to the statics file which is clientside and static (hence the name?) so you are adding more traffic.

There are also some other things you can do like splicing together different maps. It is of course a lot more work but it does let you get around the 256 tile limit in Dragon.

An example off the top of my head is Dian, who did his map in sections with a different maptrans for each. It allowed him a great deal of control over the specific areas because he was using more limited terrain groups for each. As opposed to say the Mod11 (or any of the released Dragon coloratables for that matter) which try to be a catchall. I was actually working on a mod11B which was going to be a maptrans specially made for dungeons/underground areas (static caves under mountains, etc) which requires 2 compiles and then splicing the maps but does give you some more advanced capabilitys. Of course I lost interest (I was also involved with UOL development pre-1.0 release) before I ever finished it. I have been thinking of getting back to it, especially since UOL 2 doesn't seem like it is coming out in this lifetime.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:54 am 
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I wonder if the author of Dragon would release the source code if someone asked him nicely? He might be receptive, I seem to remember that at one time he posted a message saying he might be willing to share source on request.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:23 am 
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maama always said Lazy is as Lazy does...

Dragon source.. if I had the source, i would most likely stop everything I had going on atm.. I have always wished Darius would release it.. :cry: I would think theres a good chance he would, if the right person here talked to him... *looks around for the volunteer*

Anyway... yeah, before I got lazy, I created a dragon version (modified maptrans, groups, items, etc.,. for different parts of the world. For instance, one version for typical grass/forest/jungle type lands.. one for snow type lands.. one for dungeons specificly.. in the end, I would render each one, and copy that area into the main map/statics files.

That was my work around to the limitations of Dragon. It will only work if you plan ahead.. each area you do under a difference dragon version, has to be in its own rectangle area.. to allow copy/paste ability later.

My only other bitch about Dragon atm, is while working on a map recently, the issue with the way Dragon handels item placement is really crap. Big groups of overlapping trees in oe spot.. and no trees in another.. makes a guy feel like he has to hand place trees to really get a nice forest, or whatever.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:11 pm 
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Well Darus had said at one point he would release it, but not to the general public only to a serious programmer or something of the sort.
Then he started tinking around with it again for a little while, which is where Mod11 got the new core. Then he disappeared again. We had a few discussions but of course the language barrier has always made it hard for the 2 of us to work together. Matonor was in contact with him as well (and he is pretty fluent in both languages) but then Mat has pretty much disappeared from here as well. Anyone left who is part of the German community? They might be able to find out more.

At any rate, where Darus was going to broaden the horizons was an image of a higher depthplane (16 or 24 bit) but it would be truly a nightmare to try to work with that. I lost sleep just trying to figure out a workable color chart that wouldn't cause blindness and/or insanity. Not to mention the file size increases dramaticly. I really think the dual 8 bit image method is the way to go.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:13 pm 
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Dian wrote:
My only other bitch about Dragon atm, is while working on a map recently, the issue with the way Dragon handels item placement is really crap. Big groups of overlapping trees in oe spot.. and no trees in another.. makes a guy feel like he has to hand place trees to really get a nice forest, or whatever.


It isn't Dragon; it's the crappy random number generator. It is very hard to get a good random number. I know exactly what you mean, because you can see the patterns in placement and yes it can drive one nuts.

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 8:50 pm 
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Speaking on Dragon.. I had recently created a couple smaller maps, and decided to generate them as map2, and map3 with dragon. The map2 and map3 comes out perfect, but when DragonSP runs, it still somehow creates the statics0 files, under the 2, or 3 name.. wich scrambles the statics ingame.. is there another version of DragonSP that handles the different static file better?

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PostPosted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:15 pm 
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Not that I know of.
Darus had updated the dragon.exe to do map2 and 3 but had never (to the best of my knowledge) released an updated version of dragonsp to go along with it.

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PostPosted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 3:39 am 
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Stormcrow wrote:
It is very hard to get a good random number. I know exactly what you mean, because you can see the patterns in placement and yes it can drive one nuts.


Isnt the open sourced random number generator from GPG any good ? (GNU Privacy Guard) Or would that take ages to fit it in ?

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PostPosted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 7:43 am 
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Is that the one that takes a seed from a ntp server?

Without the source for Dragon we can't do a hell of a lot with it.

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PostPosted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:26 am 
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Stormcrow wrote:
Is that the one that takes a seed from a ntp server?

Without the source for Dragon we can't do a hell of a lot with it.


It seeds from dev/random on Linux. You could create a strong key first and use that as seed for dragon. Me thinks a sha1 key will be quite random.

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