The Harvest Moon Consortium

[Chandigar]

Very interesting idea with using crossers to change the mountainside profile... I think I'm too far down my current path to modify much to take advantage of it, but good idea!

BTW are those shots currently showing "flat" painted terrain? or do those already have some sort of raise/lower to it?

Also, have you thought about what you want for your height change?

[lord rosenkrantz]

The shots currently only display "flat" terrains, I am saving the raise feature for higher mountains. The issue I'll need to take care of, design-wise, is how to handle nude rock and grass areas in such rised tiles, as the top of them should contain grassy elements to go with the grass of the basic tiles (that would be placed next to them but at the rised height).

At first thought I'd place the raised height to 15m (low hills are at 5m, high hills at 10m), but maybe using another value (16m or more) could help preventing any layer pattern effects similar to the infamous cake effect.
Another option would be to replace the high_hill entry with a raised grass value, so that I'd be using the current high hills as my raised terrain. I should modify the tiles already made, but wouldn't be a big issue


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BTW, going to illustrate how I create the walkmeshes, maybe somebody could use the same approach, as I find it effective and easy.

When I first create a new tile I add a generic flat square as walkmesh. When I rename and modify an existing one, I just leave the walkmesh already included in the tile.
Either way, I work on my ground meshes (most of the times there are two of them, one rocky and one grassy).
When I am done with all the modifications (generally I move around vertices after applying an "edit poly" modifier, as it offers the option to preserve UVW mapping while changing the XYZ values), then I clone any ground meshes (usually naming them to "temp" or "dummy" for ease of use), and I proceed to select the cloned meshes and the walkmesh, hiding any other unselected object.
At this point, I move the walkmesh well away from the other meshes, then I activate the faces sub-object mode in the edit panel, then I click on the "attach" button and add the two dummy meshes to the walkmesh I am editing, choosing the "do not modify material or ID" when prompted by 3dsmax. After that, I select all faces belonging to the original walkmesh and delete them.
It leaves me with a new walkmesh that is a perfect copy of the tile terrain that i'll need to let characters walk on. After running the "weld" routine from VetTools (necessary if I attached more than one mesh to my walkmesh), I set all faces to the proper material ID (after being attached, they are all set to "dirt"). When done, I select all "obscuring" faces, that since they aren't walkable don't need to perfectly match the terrain meshes, and I apply an "optimize" modifier on them, making sure I checked the "preserve material boundaries" option. The modifier reduces (often greatly) the number of faces in the walkmesh, which is always an excellent thing.
Finally, if necessary I edit manually the optimized faces of my walkmesh to make sure the triangles are properly designed.

Might sound like a lot of work, but it isn't. Takes much longer to explain it than to do it in 3dsmax. And the great advantage is that I get walkmeshes that match perfectly and vertex by vertex the tile features. No more characters with their feet sinking in the grass or floating in the air above the ground.

[9fires]

Damn that sure is purdy.
What kind of 'civilised' tiles are you thinking of adding? rural or city based? or both?

Either way thats damned cool pal.

[lord rosenkrantz]

[QUOTE=9fires]Damn that sure is purdy.
What kind of 'civilised' tiles are you thinking of adding? rural or city based? or both?

Either way thats damned cool pal.[/QUOTE]

At the moment, I plan to add civilized features, although I am still in the design stage regarding them. So far, I am pretty sure I'll include a modular castle (that you can paint as terrain and/or crosser), and I'm sure I'll add some "high mountain" buildings and huts too. The rest of the civilized features is still to be finalized, and about that, I am open to evaluate any suggestions or requests that you could have.

Any idea you guys could have, speak it, worst thing that can happen is that I don't like it or that I have already different plans for what you request. O:)

[Guest]

Don't know how far you want to take this, but maybe a bit of collaboration? Or I'll just send you what I have and you can go from there.

I have been remaking and reskinning the mountain tileset into a barren hill tileset, might be a good addition if your interested.

Here are some screenies, one includes a tile structures from TNO Exterior;

[IMG]http://home.att.net/~ardimus/wsb/Hill05.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://home.att.net/~ardimus/wsb/Entry01.jpg[/IMG]

[lord rosenkrantz]

The main issue with adding material taken from the old mountain tileset you are using, is that fixing a poorly designed tile takes way longer and brings a worse result than making a new tile from scratch.
I have spent my fair time as CTP member trying to fix one of the tilesets released by the team. It eventually got better certainly (and I learnt a lot too), but the result can't be compared to the quality one can achieve by starting anew with the tile models.
I could take into consideration adding features from the TNO exterior tileset, but at the moment I am more oriented not to, for a bunch of reasons. Among the others, it could be an enrichment to provide new civilized features that aren't a duplication of TNO, so that we as builders will have more options to pick from and adapt to our gameworlds. Another reason is that DLA put a huge effort to make their beautiful tileset, and it's a form of respect not to re-use their material for my tileset, given the fact that now I am technically able to make my own models, so I guess why not to make them myself?

The screenies you posted show all good sides of Bloodmonkey's rocky mountains, but show also the bad sides.
At this stage anyway it's a bit early to discuss adding features from other tilesets, it's the time to plan new original features to add. But soon enough (hopefully) we'll have the chance to evaluate the option from closer. Just keep an eye on this thread, and please post any ideas on civilized features (or rural features) that you think should belong to such a tileset

[OldMansBeard]

Just an idle thought -

Suppose, rather than incorporating lots of 'street' tiles at normal scale, your mountain landscape could be used a little like a world map where clickable miniaturised villages could be placed as transitions?

We'd have to make it so your characters couldn't actually trample on them, destroying the illusion of scale. Only see them from a safe distance and use tricks of perspective.

Provide just one 3x3 group that consists of a blank walkable grassy valley surrounded by a square of non-walk tiles. So you can only see the centre from a distance. Make the terrain scale down towards the centre by a factor of 16, say. So the grass and trees are very small down there but you can't actually get there so it doesn't break the illusion.

Then, separately, provide a choice of placeables that look like miniaturised 16x16 areas from other tilesets and represent villages, monasteries, castles, whatever. Place any of those on the 'grassy valley' tile and make it useable as a transition trigger - one of those where you can click on it from a distance to use it.

See the idea? Instant world map and you only need one group of 9 special mountain tileset models and some placeables made from scaled down tilemodels from other tilesets.

[Guest]

That is truly excellent work! Very lifelike.

I have a suggestion though, from a builder?s point of view:

See if you can add some tree versions of the tiles in there so that we can make very realistic mountains with forests. It would be ultimately cool if you could have two versions of the tiles (tree and no tree) so that we could have an alpine tree line in our mountains. Nothing is more breathtaking then climbing out of a forest above the tree line and looking over a forested valley.

I could easily see that happening with this tileset. Pretty soon, NWN will challenge NWN2 for beauty.

Again, great job, and keep up the good work!

[lord rosenkrantz]

[QUOTE=OldMansBeard]
See the idea? Instant world map and you only need one group of 9 special mountain tileset models and some placeables made from scaled down tilemodels from other tilesets.[/QUOTE]

Interesting idea. Far from what I am aiming to with this tileset, but there seem to be good material there. Currently meditating on it

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[QUOTE=MokahTGS]It would be ultimately cool if you could have two versions of the tiles (tree and no tree) so that we could have an alpine tree line in our mountains.[/QUOTE]

I definitelly have plans for vegetations in this tileset, and I agree with you regarding the breathtaking'ness of a forest seen from above. I'll see what solution could work better. Surely I'll add some bushes and flowers to the basic tiles, and maybe some rare tree too. Then I'll add also a series of tiles with some serious vegetation. The kind of trees that fit best seem to be pines and firs, but if I can engineer a good combo of terrain/crossers, we could have a few extra options in user-friendly environment

[Sherincall]

~Some snowy tiles as an alternative to grass would definetely be welcome.

~A log cabin (kinda like the one available in CEP) will find a lot of uses


[QUOTE=lord rosenkrantz;33231]Another reason is that DLA put a huge effort to make their beautiful tileset, and it's a form of respect not to re-use their material for my tileset[/QUOTE]

I can definetely see the point, but something like these lines would surely be awesome

[IMG]http://img112.imageshack.us/img112/601/fantasytowerra5.th.jpg[/IMG]