Toby Haynes Posted September 12, 2006 Share Posted September 12, 2006 Time to reveal my first drop team map. I've uploaded it to my Googlepages webspace so you can get it from http://tjwhaynes.googlepages.com/dropteamresource Set among the volcanoes of Hopewell, there are precious resources to protect and exploit. The map has LARGE mountains to drive over, craters to hide in, rocks to trip up the unwary driver and trees to hide infantry and tanks. The bases are covered by AA but the craters give plenty of room for excellent hull down positions for attackers - defenders must be vigilant in protecting the crater rim. This map currently has two game modes - CTF and Objective. I might add King of the Hill as soon as I can get hold of Battle Creek to see how it is done (IcemanUSA?) This scenario was entirely created using Linux. I used Geomorph, Cinepaint, Emacs with NXML mode, MLview and GIMP to put the various resources together. I also created a number of tools to convert 16bit grayscale PNG images to RAW format for DropTeam, create lightmaps, perform better erosion of the landscape and create slopemaps to help with texture map creation. As soon as I have the code for those in some sort of installable form (at least for Linux) I'll publish them on the same page. They are command line-based and should be easy to port if anyone feels the urge Cheers, Toby Haynes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilibird Posted September 12, 2006 Share Posted September 12, 2006 I'm more than happy to show you how I created that one. Catch me on AIM (yeparrothead) or MSN (yeparrothead __ at __ gmail __ dot __ com) There is only one thing I might want to change, which I can't find the appropriate tag for, and that would be to disable deployment time all together. I think that's a serverside thing, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poesel Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 Deploymenttime is server side. Might make more sense if inside the scenario if you think about it. Toby, the wiki is right there waiting for your description of how you made those things work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Haynes Posted September 13, 2006 Author Share Posted September 13, 2006 I certainly will be adding some stuff to the wiki about groves and rock groups. Especially the mysterious and useful ColorOverride tag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytoniousRex Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 Outstanding, Toby! Just tried it out. That is a really impressive terrain and a very fun scenario to play. Will be playing a good LAN game on it tomorrow for a "real" test. It looks like you've mastered all of the essential elements; can't wait to see some more scenarios with your name on them! Is it OK with you if we include this one in the next update? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Haynes Posted September 13, 2006 Author Share Posted September 13, 2006 Clay, I'll be delighted if this was added to the next update. If anyone is interested in the techniques I used to create the texture maps, I can write it up. Which reminds me, I must tidy up my tool set and get it up on a website somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Haynes Posted September 23, 2006 Author Share Posted September 23, 2006 I've just played this online and realised that something wasn't quite right about the correspondence between the raw heightmap and the colourmap. Now it's possible that my setup is messed up because I already had the VolcanicDeposits scenario in my data directory. Or it's possible that I screwed up when I converted from PNG to JPG formats. Still, there is an easy way to check. I need someone else to take a good hard look at the VolcanicIntro.jpg loader screen and then see if the actual terrain looks like that. Loading Volcanic Deposits in standalone mode should suffice for this experiment. If all appears to be good for you folks, then I'll expunge my own files. If it's not right, then I'll fix it up and hopefully Clay will include the update in 1.1.7? Thanks, Toby Haynes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytoniousRex Posted September 24, 2006 Share Posted September 24, 2006 Since you know exactly what you're looking for, one way you can check for sure is to first make a backup of your files, then edit the version.ini in your /data directory (make it, say, 1.1.5 or anything other than 1.1.6). Then run the game and let it update. You will now have the "public" version of Volcanic Deposits and you can look to see if it's right. Don't forget that first step - backup your files! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poesel Posted September 24, 2006 Share Posted September 24, 2006 I'm sure the heightmap is wrong. I hadn't installed that scenario before. The objective has a brown texture but is on the side of a vulcan. Inside the vulcan it gets green. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Haynes Posted September 24, 2006 Author Share Posted September 24, 2006 Clay - I took the step of moving all the Volcanic* files out of the "data" directory and ran runUpdate.sh to pick up the originals. Poesel - thanks for the check. I must have put the wrong volcanic.raw file into the archive when I uploaded it. I flipped the heightmap north/south on my own copy and it looks as I intended - higher areas are rockier, with the highest peak being covered in snow. Plants grow in the meadows in the valley floor and most of the rocks are grouped on the sides of the mountains. Clay - I'll fix up the tarball on my website. Any chance of getting the correct volcanic.raw into 1.1.7? And as penance, I'll try and finish my next scenario in the next couple of days. Thanks, Toby Haynes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toby Haynes Posted September 24, 2006 Author Share Posted September 24, 2006 Okay - I've put version 1.1 of VolcanicDeposits up on my website. If someone would test it and make sure it looks right, I'd be really grateful. This time I pulled the files straight out of the data directory so I hope there are no screw ups. The 2 minute test is as follows: Standalone->pick Volcanic Deposits in CTF mode. Click Play Both bases should be in the craters of the highest volcanoes. The default base should have two roads out through cuttings to your left and right. Click Quit (or play the level) But beware - you will almost certainly have problems if you try and play this online against the files on Delta Pavonis. As Clay mentions above, you can force the updater to retrieve the DropTeam 1.1.6 files by tweaking your ini files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytoniousRex Posted September 25, 2006 Share Posted September 25, 2006 That definitely fixed it, Toby. Very nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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