[?Outdated?] [WB] Global Map Visualiser

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Swyter said:
PoisonCourtesan said:
Since it was brought up, does anyone know if the vertex count on map icons are included in the 65000 map limit? That's because my icons are around 6000 verticles each...

Don't worry about that. No. But you should bring down the polycount using something decent like Atangeo Balancer Lite or Blender's Decimate modifier, which work wonders.
Hmm if it gets to framerate issues I will. Thanks for the info, can safely resume work now.
 
The vextex limitation is for a single mesh on Unity only.

I think that i will make multiple mesh.
One for water, one for walkable mesh and one for unwalkable mesh.

My real objectives is to make an online map visualiser with data taken from a server.
I'm not actulay sure if I want to make an online co-op engine or a CRPG/Strategus like engine.
 
xenoargh said:
You'd have to double-check with cmp, but IIRC there are some strict limits on vertex counts for all meshes on the engine; I think that 65535 is the limit per single mesh but IDK whether that applies to the map mesh or not (and I don't know whether each Terrain section is treated as its own mesh or is chunked in some way for more efficient BSP if the sections do not have any shared vertexes, but maybe, as some pretty huge world meshes have been built).
Correct, the limit is 65535 vertices per mesh.
The game map uses several of them, up to 8x8 (depending on map size) per terrain type. Map icons are completely separate meshes.
 
I've found a way to display the diffrents kinds of terrains.

It is terribly bad looking but it actually work.

I'm working on modifiying and saving the triangle data.

Added : wireframe view!

Image 4
 
PoisonCourtesan said:
Cartographer used to crash on me. Haven't tried it in a while. Does it allow terrain editing without using 3d programs?

The only difference between editing in the map tool and a dedicated 3D suite is the number and quality of tools you get.

Blender has many tools, including dynamic topology sculpting. Everything is relatively painless and you can iterate quickly between the two.

Also, what you learn in Blender is valid for normal 3D models too. So you get to know a program for free.


PS: Also, that ninja edit. :smile:
 
The little problem with Blender and other 3D programs is that it's a pain to regular triangle topology.
And it seems that the global map path finder needs regular topology to work fine. I think that the pathfinder is a Dijkstra algorithm implementation.

It's simple and quite efficient pathfinder algorithm.

My objective is to have fun with unity and make something useful for peoples that don't want to learn 3D to make maps.
You don't need to know blender to make scenes. Why would you need it to make the world map?
 
It's currently not ready as an editor.
It just work as a viewer and not enough to render the Waesteros map of ACOK correctly. (witch is crappy like hell!)

I'm working on the rendering part. Once done, i'll work on importing .OBJ for map and map objects and exporting map.txt and parties.txt.
 
HyperCharge said:
will we can Move the Map Icons over from anywhere ?

If we can,Its Very very Brilliant.

Thanks, my grandma hasn't complimented me much lately. This will do.

--

Now seriously, I know that reinventing the wheel is fun, even more if parsing the
Code:
map.txt
structure is relatively easy as a 3D programming project and very rewarding at first.

But let's be practical and try to diversify a bit our toolsets instead of going after the very same thing.
Imagine we have eight variants of OpenBRF in various states of completeness. What are we trying to achieve?

I made my tool out of necessity because the alternatives were completely impractical for moving settlements and avoiding quirks of other incompatible imp/exporters, and so far works fine for even the more complex scenarios. I started it to quickly re-pos the Star Wars Conquest planets, and I've ended up fixing up the impassable fords in The Last Days with it. People has been giving feedback and I've been enhancing it along all these few years.

It's more than open source, the binary runs the source code, it can be easily adapted to your own needs as it's completely programmed in Lua, one of the languages with the simpler and most accessible syntax.

It's pretty unrewarding that after so much time actively supporting I get to explain stuff like this.
 
Swyter, you are saying that 3D modeling software is better than any ad-hoc software for designing maps.

Why every games has it's own mapping software? Just because level designing is NOT 3D modeling.

My objectives is to make a map designer. If someone want an new global map, he will start my soft, can take a look at Calradia and start it's own map from a flat triangulated map.
I want to help reducing the polycount of maps by using the same optimization solutions that you can see in the Calradia map.
I want the user to be sure that the triangulation of the map won't mess with the pathfinder.

Currently, I've take a look on 3 maps, Calradia, Waesteros ACOK and Waestoros AWOIAF. Calradia is ok but AWOIAF maps have little crappy problems of optimization. And ACOK map is a mess.

Here is a little example of triangulation mess you can find in the ACOK Map that is really boring.

 
The problems ive found is the map wasnt big enough (enough vertices in places) for the detail i wanted to put in. If importing into wings and back into thorgrims i find any extra vertices ive added triangulate not as expected. This causes problems with optimisations. Granted my map is still not finished but with such inconsistensies it would be hard to optimise efficiently. Now whether thats due to a lack of experience on my behalf or the software im using im not sure. Checking other maps seems to point more towards the software used.

If your program can overcome these issues then it will be very useable. A way to add/remove vertices/triangles on the fly would be very helpfull. This would help overcome pathfinding issues by adding/removing the mesh correctly where needed.

Edit*

After reading some replies, im going to see if i get on any better in blender.
 
Currently, i'm reworking the loading part.

You would be able to create project folders for maps and load projects.
I'm wondering if I will make a binarised version of the map file because it take a long time to load the map.txt file.
It's probably because I must parse every bits of information.

I'm still working on it.

Next milestone : moving/orienting map stuff.
 
neostralie said:
Swyter, you are saying that 3D modeling software is better than any ad-hoc software for designing maps.

Why every games has it's own mapping software? Just because level designing is NOT 3D modeling.

My objectives is to make a map designer. If someone want an new global map, he will start my soft, can take a look at Calradia and start it's own map from a flat triangulated map.
I want to help reducing the polycount of maps by using the same optimization solutions that you can see in the Calradia map.
I want the user to be sure that the triangulation of the map won't mess with the pathfinder.

Currently, I've take a look on 3 maps, Calradia, Waesteros ACOK and Waestoros AWOIAF. Calradia is ok but AWOIAF maps have little crappy problems of optimization. And ACOK map is a mess.

Here is a little example of triangulation mess you can find in the ACOK Map that is really boring.

You don't seem to understand. I see the need for a map designer, in the sense of a way of adding items, props and other stuff to the game. But the map itself is a standard 3D mesh, it isn't a compound of instances or any kind of "brush" primitive, or BSP.

That's why Cartographer was made to place and rotate the only game-dependent entities; parties/settlements. Leaving the hard work of shaping the map to your favorite competent 3D editing tool.

--

The problems you talked about were about a badly made map, you can make bad maps with any tool, using a dedicated tool doesn't make it intrinsically better. And for the triangular/hexagonal base optimized for navigation, there are many ways of generating this kind of pattern as a boilerplate for future maps.

Code:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_tiling


Take a look, done in a minute in Blender without previous experience. Created a plane, tessellated it a few times using the Subdivide operator, then Triangulate (Ctrl-T). Enter Edit mode, select bottom line of edges of the first row of triangles, move it to the right to turn the first row into equilateral triangles by using Translate, if you want to move them all automatically don't lose time and up next enable Proportional editing in the contextual Operator panel at the bottom-left of your Blender window. In its options mark something like Orientation: Local, Proportional editing falloff: Linear, and move them. Now you have your triangular tiling pattern, use the Array modifier to tile it first horizontally, then duplicate it to do the same vertically. In the Modifiers panel set the number of tiles and apply a Relative offset of 1. Also, tick Merge.


Result:
Nxrfr5s.png


Boom, nice customizable base map, ready for sculpting or whatever you want. Import the original Native map to compare and fit the scale, previewing with parties on top by bringing it back in Cartographer.

There are some scripts that do the same but programmatically. But as you can see, this is really quick and flexible if you know what you are doing. If you don't the map will look bad no matter whatever cool pro EZ auto-wizard thingie you make.
 
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