Need help on modyfying outdoor scenes

[Manitas]

Have some of you modding veterans figured out how to change outdoor battlegrounds?

I tried using 'terrain' button in edit mode. Looks like it produces a 20 byte hex string. I figured out what each digit means, but I got no idea how to apply any changes to existing terrain.

I haven't found the above pattern in any of the game files, but I think data for ruggedness, hill height etc. has to be stored somewhere?

 

[Janus]

Well, I've added outdoor battlegrounds and have scenes set up for them.

I haven't bothered trying to decipher the terrain code though, I've just played with the terrain generator until I came up with a decent base for what I was wanting and used the code it gives.

In the module_scenes.py file, you can of course include the terrain code for your new scene to use.

The ruggedness, hill height, and all those other values are apparently stored in the terrain code, but I have no idea which characters represent the value of each.

 

[Manitas]

Yeah, but rather than making new scenes, I'm planning to modify all the existing ones.

I can tell what terrain code means. But I cant seem to find from where the engine gets informations about terrain parameters for each outdoor node.

 

[Janus]

Ah, I think I see what you're saying. All I know is it determines random battle terrain based on the nearby world-map terrain codes (for plains, mountains, water, etc.). Which you already know, I'm sure.

More than that, sorry, but I have no idea. All we really have it seems are guesses; Armagan would be the only one who really knows how it works.

Good luck, and maybe someone else will know a bit more of how it works and post here.

 

[Thorgrim]

I think (though I haven't tested) that each tile of the map has a seed generated for it depending on its steepness, tile type, and other tiles close to it, or something like that as Janus said. As far as I know there is no way to change how these are generated. What would be awesome is if Armagan allowed some way to override the battle scene for certain tiles. That way you could do something like show a castle in the background when fighting near it, or have mountains on the horizon when near the mountains etc. But for now I think the only way you can use your own custom outdoor scenes is by linking to it from an encounter etc.

 

[Manitas]

Well, I've done some research. I hink that terrain hilliness does not depend on map node steepness that much, but rather on mountains proximity, not sure though.

Here's what I was planning to:
At first I assumed that terrain parameters for every node were stored somewhere, so what I was planning to do was to write a progie to convert all the rugedness and hiliness parameters to some less drastic values.

But since it seems they are that hardcoded, i think the only solution is to convert all the mountains in the worldmap to lakes or something.

Eh, I wish we could at least mod the formula upon which the parameters are computed.

 

[Thorgrim]

Well, I'm quite sure its mainly to do with hilly-ness of the map, since after converting the plains of Rohan to be flatter the battle maps are much smoother again. But who knows, the mountains may have a big effect too.

 

[Manitas]

Ok, done some further research, so here's the info I got:

I got rid of all the mountain tiles from the map (converted all 1's to 8's)

Conclusions:

- presence of 'mountain' tiles nearby is the main factor that scene terrain hiliness depends upon.
- I have not experienced any noticeable relation between worldmap height differences and scene terrain hilliness.
- the generator 'rugedness' factor is probably the most responsible for weird terrain.

 

[jik]

is it possible to force specific battlemaps on encounters, and therefore remove the random generation? one thought.

Also, with relations to trees, it it possible (if the above is not) to add some other objects to the random placement of trees? Like rubble, signs, ect.

(this is for the AoA mod)

 

[Roach]

AFAIK you can link party templates to menus, then link the menus to scenes, inputting the hex code into the scene. Means every time you faced that particular group you'd fight on the same battlefield though. Might work well for quest parties.

And you can muck about all you want with the generated scene with the in-game editor, put in trees and buildings and carts and suchlike.

On a related note, does anyone know which .txt file the in-game ed saves all the info in the scene to?

 

[Janus]

On a related note, does anyone know which .txt file the in-game ed saves all the info in the scene to?

The scene information is stored in the SCO files, in the SceneObj folder. The SceneObj file changed is based on which scene you are in. Random world map battles use the scn_generated_scene.sco file.

 

[Roach]

Cheers Janus, that'll save me losing my castles in the sky next time there's an unfortunate Roach - Triggers interface and I have to reinstall