Master of Mana website dead?
- Thread starter maglock
- Start date
because the forum is still down i post here (the picture quality is rather bad, due to compression 
):
new art for farms (just the crops), with work in progress tundra texture:
what i ultimately would like to have are tile-able farm tiles, similar to ciV, i.e. if there are two or more adjacent plots with farms they will connect.
the slightly more brighter crops are irrigated farms.
final tundra texture:
@sephi, as long as the forum is down, can you tell me what xml file contains the link to the improvement buttons for worker actions?
):new art for farms (just the crops), with work in progress tundra texture:
Spoiler :
what i ultimately would like to have are tile-able farm tiles, similar to ciV, i.e. if there are two or more adjacent plots with farms they will connect.
the slightly more brighter crops are irrigated farms.
final tundra texture:
Spoiler :
@sephi, as long as the forum is down, can you tell me what xml file contains the link to the improvement buttons for worker actions?
Attachments
esvath
Apprentice of Erebus
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- Mar 27, 2008
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Reporting a bug here :
a picture speaks thousand word
I use the normal opening menu, and up until this Beta 5, I never have a problem with opening menu graphic. Never saw two black column on either sides, too. Even the Elf menu shows this black columns in Beta 5, while it was fine in previous versions.
OTOH, the loading menu is stretched nicely into my screen.
BTW : nice angel, tesb! :good job:
a picture speaks thousand word
I use the normal opening menu, and up until this Beta 5, I never have a problem with opening menu graphic. Never saw two black column on either sides, too. Even the Elf menu shows this black columns in Beta 5, while it was fine in previous versions.
OTOH, the loading menu is stretched nicely into my screen.
BTW : nice angel, tesb! :good job:
Attachments
the bars were always there on the widescreen version. i just adjusted the camera from the widescreen version to get the normal version.
the positive effect is:
-you see the whole picture without being distorted, i.e.
the negative effect is:
-you have two black bars (the bars are actually part of the *.nif)
so no bug there
edit: i also needed to do this so could much easier make the effects for menus in all their different versions.
the positive effect is:
-you see the whole picture without being distorted, i.e.
edit: this happens because the base texture is quadratic (1024*1024), while the screen has a 4:3 aspect ratio and widescreens have 16:9 or 16:10
the negative effect is:
-you have two black bars (the bars are actually part of the *.nif)
so no bug there
edit: i also needed to do this so could much easier make the effects for menus in all their different versions.
esvath
Apprentice of Erebus
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2008
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- 1,403
I'm not using wide screen monitor, nor the wide-version of the opening menu. Is there any way for me to delete the black columns? (for example, copying the 1.2's opening menu files, etc). Thanks
btw, I notice that Hemah, Mithril Golem and Arthendain still require "mundane" techs before players can build them. Is this feature or bug? I think it is better to place them in sacred knowledge tree.
btw, I notice that Hemah, Mithril Golem and Arthendain still require "mundane" techs before players can build them. Is this feature or bug? I think it is better to place them in sacred knowledge tree.
sephi i have done the improvement buttons. i switched the improvement buttons themselves back to their vanilla style (i.e. without circles indicating their main yield) and gave the worker actions the improvement buttons with the circles.
i have two questions though:
1.
in CIV4ArtDefines_Terrain nearly every terrain has a double entry, with something akin to:
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA
and
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA_BM
where the _BM version is just a copy and is not used as far as i can tell. do you know what those entries are there for? i think i have not seen them in earlier versions.
2.
i tried farming land akin to spice used in earlier Dune Wars versions, but it looks as horrible as the spice back then. i think the only really good way to get good looking connected farming land is to make separate terrains for them. graphics wise this would not be a problem, but it may affect gameplay, mostly terraforming spells.
for example, instead of the ugly farms we have now, or even the slightly better looking farms from my post above we could have real farm land like this:
But like i said this would require to switch farms from an improvement to a terrain and i am not so sure what the best gameplay changes would be to do this.
edit: the easiest way would be to keep farms as an improvement (just the little hut without the crop fields) but as long as the farm exists it changes the terrain it is on to farm land. that way the gameplay should not be changed at all. although making farmland a separate terrain type could make for much more interesting gameplay changes.
@esvath:
you have those black bars in both versions now (widescreen and normal screen) so i don't have to stretch them. there is no easy way to remove them. perhaps i can change them a bit later, but this will require quite some work. you can copy over the old menus, but then you will have the old ones and not the new/reworked ones.
are those black bars such a big deal to you?
i have two questions though:
1.
in CIV4ArtDefines_Terrain nearly every terrain has a double entry, with something akin to:
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA
and
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA_BM
where the _BM version is just a copy and is not used as far as i can tell. do you know what those entries are there for? i think i have not seen them in earlier versions.
2.
i tried farming land akin to spice used in earlier Dune Wars versions, but it looks as horrible as the spice back then. i think the only really good way to get good looking connected farming land is to make separate terrains for them. graphics wise this would not be a problem, but it may affect gameplay, mostly terraforming spells.
for example, instead of the ugly farms we have now, or even the slightly better looking farms from my post above we could have real farm land like this:
Spoiler :
But like i said this would require to switch farms from an improvement to a terrain and i am not so sure what the best gameplay changes would be to do this.
edit: the easiest way would be to keep farms as an improvement (just the little hut without the crop fields) but as long as the farm exists it changes the terrain it is on to farm land. that way the gameplay should not be changed at all. although making farmland a separate terrain type could make for much more interesting gameplay changes.
@esvath:
you have those black bars in both versions now (widescreen and normal screen) so i don't have to stretch them. there is no easy way to remove them. perhaps i can change them a bit later, but this will require quite some work. you can copy over the old menus, but then you will have the old ones and not the new/reworked ones.
are those black bars such a big deal to you?
Attachments
i also had the time to check if walls can have civilization specific art and they can
i will probably make some more fitting walls for some civilizations.
to further elaborate on the point above:
perhaps that way we could improve gameplay and graphics together.
i will probably make some more fitting walls for some civilizations.
to further elaborate on the point above:
farmland could be something that has to be carefully created, instead of just placing down some farm improvements. it could give lots of food, but you can not build any other improvements on top of it and would be the primary target for enemy terraforming spells. pillaging farm land would create burning crops, an improvement that greatly reduces the yield and must be manually removed (i could make a *.nif that would look similar ciV pillages improvements, i.e. fire and smoke)
perhaps that way we could improve gameplay and graphics together.
i also had the time to check if walls can have civilization specific art and they can
i will probably make some more fitting walls for some civilizations.
to further elaborate on the point above:
farmland could be something that has to be carefully created, instead of just placing down some farm improvements. it could give lots of food, but you can not build any other improvements on top of it and would be the primary target for enemy terraforming spells. pillaging farm land would create burning crops, an improvement that greatly reduces the yield and must be manually removed (i could make a *.nif that would look similar ciV pillages improvements, i.e. fire and smoke)
perhaps that way we could improve gameplay and graphics together.
sounds very interesting. What did you have in mind for creating farmland? A global enchantment? A spell? I have workers in mind who themselves would be able to "perform" some terraform-spell or -ritual (maybe with a tech-prerequ) that needs some turns to change the terrain.
Greez,
Tschuggi
P.S.: What do you think of that, I got it from the travel through time mod, PAE IV has sth similar (I really have to recommend that mod from Pie, it is soo great!!!)
"Tech Via Conquest-Now if you capture a city of a civ that has a tech you dont have, you get the tech
New Tech Window-When you discover a Technology it gives you more info then before
Open Borders Tech-When you have an open borders with a civ that has the tech you are researching, it gets researched faster
New Main Interface-Says era, the number of turns youve played, and also if you turn clock optino on in the options menu, it says the Civ name not leader name in the scoreboard
War Prizes-When you or an enemy destroy a ship with another ship (or normal unit), theres a 25% chance it switches sides as a war prize"
i have two questions though:
1.
in CIV4ArtDefines_Terrain nearly every terrain has a double entry, with something akin to:
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA
and
ART_DEF_TERRAIN_TUNDRA_BM
where the _BM version is just a copy and is not used as far as i can tell. do you know what those entries are there for? i think i have not seen them in earlier versions.
2.
i tried farming land akin to spice used in earlier Dune Wars versions, but it looks as horrible as the spice back then. i think the only really good way to get good looking connected farming land is to make separate terrains for them. graphics wise this would not be a problem, but it may affect gameplay, mostly terraforming spells.
for example, instead of the ugly farms we have now, or even the slightly better looking farms from my post above we could have real farm land like this:
Spoiler :
But like i said this would require to switch farms from an improvement to a terrain and i am not so sure what the best gameplay changes would be to do this.
edit: the easiest way would be to keep farms as an improvement (just the little hut without the crop fields) but as long as the farm exists it changes the terrain it is on to farm land. that way the gameplay should not be changed at all. although making farmland a separate terrain type could make for much more interesting gameplay changes.
are those black bars such a big deal to you?
1.) BM is probably Blue Marble. Some stuff that was merged into FFH long long time ago but it doesn't seem to be used anymore.
2.) I am not interested at the moment to add new terrain types. Way too much work. But if we can get multiple planes working (like Myrror in Master of Magic), then more terrain types is very likely anyway.
getting techs on conquest was fun in earlier civ games, but it doesn't fit to a game where you have to specialize in one tech direction. In general conquest seems to be quite rewarding already
1.) ok i will delete this entries then
2.) this is sad, although i can understand your reasoning. farmland being a terrain just looks sooooo much better then as an improvement. i can probably beautify the looks of the current crops from the farm improvement, but it will never ever look as good like being terrain.
i don't know. to me it is mostly a graphical issue, just compare the farm graphics you have now with the screenshot above. especially if you have a cluster of farms it really hurts to go back to farms being improvements.
@esvath, i have looked at the pictures that i used and i can probably make the angel a 4:3 menu, i.e. no black bars for non-widescreen users and smaller bars for widescreen users. the sorceress can't be changed and the devil and elf menus can even be changed to 16:10, i.e. widescreen without black bars, but this will be a lot of work.
The black bars don't really bother me at all, but if they too distracting for other people i might change the menus during the weekend.
esvath
Apprentice of Erebus
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2008
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- 1,403
@tesb : the black columns make the screen look empty imho. I'd very grateful if you can stretched the non-wide version of the opening menus
on farmland : is it possible to "connect" two or more adjacent farm improvements and make them look like your new graphic? the new graphic indeed very beautiful!
also, I have a question on adding buildings : how can I add building with in-game model? do I have to do something different since you change how the city look, or it's the same with previous versions?
EDIT : My equipments was never repaired automatically, eventhough I disable the option. How can I repair my equipments? What are the conditions to repair?
on farmland : is it possible to "connect" two or more adjacent farm improvements and make them look like your new graphic? the new graphic indeed very beautiful!
also, I have a question on adding buildings : how can I add building with in-game model? do I have to do something different since you change how the city look, or it's the same with previous versions?
EDIT : My equipments was never repaired automatically, eventhough I disable the option. How can I repair my equipments? What are the conditions to repair?
as long as it is an improvement it will never be able to connect. i could make the farm land bigger, but as soon as it is big enough and would overlap it would also blocks of rivers. it also doesn't look that good because it would still be quadratic. (i tried this approach already)
I tried it as a feature, similar to how dune wars made their spice in previous versions (before they switched to spice to a terrain) and it looks horrible, i even tried using slightly elevated icepacks with farmland texture and while it does look better then the spice version it still blocks of rivers. secondly it uses a lot of nifs. (tried this as well!)
The only way to make farm land very good looking and connecting is by making it a terrain type. funnily enough making it a terrain type would barely increase texture memory usage. (the current farms use a 256*256 texture with alpha channel and the terrain uses a 512*512 texture without alpha)
Sephi already said it: the biggest problem with farms being a terrain is not the graphical aspect of it (i already did it in the screenshot above in ~3 minutes), but the gameplay implementations:
-you cannot pillage terrain
-terraforming spells have to be changed so they affect it as well
-the ai has to be changed
and so on. there is also the downside that if it was a terrain type, it would look bad on hills, but it should not spread on hills anyways.
incidentally once it would be a terrain type, it would be very easy to make a hellterrain version. farmland would just convert to the hell version like any other terrain.
personally i would really like to make the switch, but i can't do all the work and sephi is busy with more important work, so for now i will probably just beatify the looks of the current crops.
yeah i will deal with that over the weekend. the only problem would be the sorceress menu, i either leave the bars or crop the picture differently (i.e. you will no longer see the legs). the angel menu can only be changed to a bar-less menu for 4:3 resolutions and the elf and devil can even be changed to bar-less menus for 16:10 versions (although it will require at least a day of work).
If it was a terrain it would be very easy, like i already mentioned above. but as long as it is an improvement i don't know of a way to do that. however improvements can have different looks based on civilization (or religion).
@esvath can you do me a favor please?
take the file in the attachment and unpack them into art/interface/main menu/dragon
you should be prompted to override 3 files and you should do so. then please start master of mana beta and choose you normal resolution and use the sorceress main menu (not the widescreen version, just the normal one). please post a screenshot of that menu in your normal resolution. i know that the effects need to be rescaled and placed a bit differently. i just want to know if the basic picture looks ok on 4:3 aspect ratios, i know it looks great on 16:10.
take the file in the attachment and unpack them into art/interface/main menu/dragon
you should be prompted to override 3 files and you should do so. then please start master of mana beta and choose you normal resolution and use the sorceress main menu (not the widescreen version, just the normal one). please post a screenshot of that menu in your normal resolution. i know that the effects need to be rescaled and placed a bit differently. i just want to know if the basic picture looks ok on 4:3 aspect ratios, i know it looks great on 16:10.
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