Re: Building a map, start of a project, help will be needed

[Davinci]

Mostly 11, but a few of pretty much everything 1-20. Nothing bigger.
All over the file.
There are still 18 unique colours like there were before my edit.

OK, as long as none of the errors Conflict with the Road-System - You can come back to them later.

You can Also assign the Greyscale Color 11 into the MapName.csv - which will Validate them as Acceptable.

135,000 errors, lol.

Yes, The Game does a very good job of counting all of the Greyscale Errors!

But, it's good that this happened, so that you are now aware of this type of error.

Keep At It - You now know more than you did yesterday, and less than you will know tomorrow!

davinci

[52ndOx]

Thats true!

Its another tricky little hurdle. I start with an 18 colour grayscale bit map, draw a small area in one of the 18 colours, save the bitmap (tried both grayscale and indexed).
There are still 18 colours in my new image, but now 130,000 pixels that the game dosen't like.

[Davinci]

Can you Compress the bmp and load it here?

davinci

[52ndOx]

I saved it using another app (IrfanView) and avoided the errors.

Might not seem like much, but after 2 days, 54 posts, and with lots of help:

Before


After

[Davinci]

Might not seem like much, but after 2 days, 54 posts, and with lots of help:

Looks Good!

We have All been there when We first started Modding the Maps, So as long as You continue it will pay off in the end!

davinci

[Davinci]

When Placing down fences the Camera might need to be slowed down - Adjust the [ Movement Scale] from the Menu listed in the Photo.

The attachment 5_2019-07-28.png is no longer available

davinci

[Biondo]

In the pr6 Waterloo version you can hold down left Ctrl and left mouse button to make small position adjustments. You can also make small rotating adjustments. The two buttons to switch the two modes are the fourth and fifth from the left of the toolbar.

Davinci, I tried to adjust movement scale but nothing changes. What value do you use?

[52ndOx]

A status update with what I have learned so far with help from Biondo and especially Davinci.
There may well be errors in here too.

Some of this might seem obvious, but not to a beginner like me.

General notes about the PR suite.

• In the current SDK the program is installed in NSDTools rather than PR6.
• The splat file used to start Lstudio is just a simple text file with the absolute path to your level. You can make your own.
• For me Lstudio has to be run as admin.
• Although the compile function mostly works, updating the files in LibEdit seems more reliable.
• If compile is to be used a folder CompiledLevels has to be created in the root. It is a workspace.
• For me LibEdit has to be run as Admin otherwise all libraries appear as password protected.
• If you make changes to files, load them in Lstudio and check before updating in LibEdit. Remember to save in Lstudio before closing.
• The 4 RGBs can have 3 textures each. The textures are defined in Lstudio texture generation. So max 12 on the map
• The list is in form tex1, tex2, tex3, rgby, where 1,2,3 are r,g,b in rgb file y.
• Using non pure primary colours is ok, it results in levels of transparency for that texture.
• The 4 RGBs don't need to be discrete. If a coordinate has several textures they are blended.
• World navigation mouse commands don't work in Lstudio. There are undocumented keyboard shortcuts. I found them just by trying different keys.

Notes about file formats when saving.

• The software is very sensitive to formats. Not any old jpg, bmp or tga will do.
• My preferred image editor is Gimp but there are limitations about how it saves, these depend on version and installed plugins.
• Gimp's jpgs seem ok for PR's RGB files. I thought they weren't but it just my error.
• Gimp's bmp are not configurable so the map.bmp is loadable by SOW. I copy (not save) them to IrfanView and save as 8b grayscale from there.
• Gimp's tga is not good for height map, neither IrfanViews. I copy (not save) them to Paint.net and save as 24b tga from there.
• So all editing is OK in Gimp, but actually saving the results involves using other image editors.

Other notes

• The map has to be a mod. It can't go into the games base/maps. This was not obvious to me.
• The mod has to have a main folder with maps as a sub-folder.
• The terrain defs in the map.csv have actually no effect on how the ground looks (except for placing vegetation sprites etc). They only tell the game how units can move and fight. The actual textures come only from PR.

[Davinci]

In the pr6 Waterloo version you can hold down left Ctrl and left mouse button to make small position adjustments. You can also make small rotating adjustments. The two buttons to switch the two modes are the fourth and fifth from the left of the toolbar.

Davinci, I tried to adjust movement scale but nothing changes. What value do you use?

If You use 2.000000 CTRL + RMouse button - and align two fences together, and then test the values by using 0.020000

You get the same results?

I see a drastic difference in those two settings.

Answer to your Question - I use the values of 2.000000

davinci

[Biondo]

It works fine!

I had 3.00 and changed to 2.00 so probably I did'nt saw much difference but went to 0.02 and 10.00 and I can see better the difference.

Also discovered that both L-Ctrl+LMB and L-Ctrl and RMB works to move buildings

Thanks davinci