Ryandor.com

So, I made a buttload of caves on the surface of my map, mainly because I hate linking. Some caves are plain normal caves, some have a mixture of terrain types in them, either way, in-game they all work fine now.

Here's the problem though..

I finally finished the Photoshopping segment of map making (after a year or so, har) now I'm to the point of using worldforge to pop the tops on the mountains those caves are in.. I tested a dozen or so, it's all working good..

Then i get to one cave that had a bit of dirt/swamp in it, got the top on, go in and check it out, it looks fine.. Until i get to the part where the bit of swampy terrain is.. For some reason all that's there now is a big black hole where the different terrain is supposed to be, though for some reason it still put a Swampy Cypress tree in the middle of the blackness.. Which for some reason is viewable on overview THROUGH the mountain top.

So my question is this.. Is putting tops on caves with other terrain types besides plain flat cave floor going to mess them all up, or was this some sort of odd and random buggery thing?

I think the problem has to be something else. I don't know of any way that putting the tops on the caves could effect the interior of the cave. One is terrain and the other is a static.

Are you running your map through a bmp to mul program like Dragon, UO Landscaper, or Map Gen 2? The random statics of those programs could be dropping the cypress tree and might also be the cause of the other problem.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

If the dirt/swamp that vanished was "terrain", painting mountains on top of them would have replaced them, as the map-files (terrain) can only hold one layer of terrain in each and every square of the map.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

I run the .bmp through Dragon/DragonSP then using Worldforge I put the tops on the mountains, as the old Cave Entrance Tutorial that used to be around here showed.. So I'm not painting the mountain tops on in photoshop, I'm putting them on in Worldforge.. Which has worked for all the plain caves up til now.

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about..



P.S. I should add, this cave looked fine (including the swampy bit) when i logged in to check everything out pre-worldforging.. So the big black hole wasn't there until I put the top on the mountain with Worldforge.

Found the problem, but I have NO idea what's causing it, so hopefully someone here does..

For some reason NO swamp tiles show in Worldforge.. anywhere. Either inside caves or outside in legitimate swamps. For some reason Worldforge just shows black empty tiles where all swamps are supposed to be.

I'm using WorldForge 6.1 if anyone has any idea what might be causing it to screw up this badly.

No idea. Do they show up in the list of tiles?

You might try using punt's Worldmaker. It is similar to Worldforge and in a lot of ways, much better. It has more of a 3D view and the ability to place statics.

http://worldmaker.ryandor.com

Or you could try this version of Worldforge, it has been customized to work with the POL emulator but the map editing functions are the same. It has also been updated and so may not have the problems you are experiencing.

http://www.welt-pergon.de/downloads/WorldForgePol.zip

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Dunno if it helps, but I just checked, and in Worldforge 6.1 under select mode, there is no 'random swamp' or any kinda swamp option.. P'raps they forgot to include swamp tiles, dunno..

It's the WF 6.1 downloaded from this site, if it helps.

If you don't see the tiles in WF's tiles list they are almost definately not supported. I'm not sure why something so obvious as swamp tiles would be left out tho.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

I'm pretty certain swamp tiles show up in the "POL" version of WorldForge. And it has additional improvements, so if you want to use any of the older WorldForge versions instead of punt's newer tools, go with that one. Don't be deterred by the "POL edition" stuff.

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-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

Right, the POL stuff doesn't have anything to do with editing the terrain. That part works exactly like the old WF only improved.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Thanky for the swift replies guys, I'll check'er out.

A few small problems with the POL version..

1) Aside from Staidx0.mul and Statics0.mul, it also asks for Items.wsc and I have absolutely no idea what that is, nor is such a file anywhere to be found in my UO Directory. (Then again I just noticed it let's me access MapEdit anyway, so I'm assuming I don't need the Items.wsc file to just draw mountain tops over caves? or do I?)

2) WFPatch.exe, when i double click it, simple brings up an Error box that says 'Usage: wfpatch.exe wfdfile [UOClientPath UOCDPath]' No idea what that even means.

BUT on a positive note, this one DOES show Swamps just fine, huzzah.

All versions of WF use Items.wsc. Its just a text file that hold IDs and positions of statics, it is an old format started way back with the UOX emulator. If you haven't needed it up to this point, you still don't.

The patch things sounds like either there is somewhere you don't have a path set, or you don't have UO installed (not sure how it is getting its path data). But you shouldn't need to use that either, that just generates patch files with your changes.

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Guh..

Just tested the pol version, swamps ingame and everything else work fine, but STILL.. anything that is NOT plain cave floors dissapear inside caves when i put the tops on the mountains. Dirt, Snow, Water, Swamp, etc.. if it's in a cave under a mountain top it dissapears and just leaves black nothingness in it's place..

Is there no way to make walk-inable caves that have something in them besides plain cave floors? cause i'd really hate to have to go into my .bmp, cut out all the caves with varied terrain types in them, and paste them into the dungeon section somewhere and link them up afterwards.. Cause i find teleporting into caves to be kinda lame.

That and it just makes no sense why putting mountain tops over caves would remove all terrain types BUT cave floors.

Stop thinking about what kind of terrain your adding to your map, and start thinking about the way the client handles terrain. Only ONE layer of terrain can be in any given tile, no matter if it's snow, grass, mountain or water. If you want anything "underneath" mountains, you need to add it as static items instead of terrain. If you still want to use terrain for the insides of the caves, you need to - as you mentioned yourself - move them to the dungeons area and use teleporters at the cave entrances.

Map#.mul holds one layer of terrain only

Statics#.mul and staidx#.mul holds multiple layers of items/objects.

_________________
-= Ho Eyo He Hum =-

Exactly as Xuri has said. If you want caves that people can walk into and still be on the main map like OSI, you have to use static tiles for the interior of the cave. NOT terrain tiles!

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

Just jumping in here, for my own clarification.

So, if he wanted swamp in a cave in the main map, he'd need to lay those tiles down by hand and fudge the edges. Yes? Sort of like what we had to do when decortating our rooftops with "gardens" made from static tiles in EA's UO, once those tiles were available.

-Goldrush
*******

Exactly. He wouldn't even need to "fudge" the edges because there is edging in the static files. The swamp tiles and edging start at ID 12809 (0x3209).

_________________
-= HellRazor =-
Shattered Sosaria is coming!
http://www.shatteredsosaria.com

That's right, they are there. I forgot that. It's been a very long time since I've worked on a map.

Thanks.

-Goldrush
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