Help me get a Landmark graphic level with ground?

Pazyryk · Mar 21, 2014

I've attached a "blight" graphic made by S3rgeus that I've been using. It's easy for me to modify color and reflectivity with Gimp to get exactly what I want. But the problem is, the graphic floats above the ground. It's about waist high on most units so they look like they are walking through it. TerrainContour doesn't change that.

I'd like to get it flat on the ground, contoured for hills. Can anyone help me with that?

Horem · Apr 3, 2014

Hello! Took a look, could not understand what was wrong with it to fix it. I re textured all the marsh vanilla files and linked(hopefully) them to a marsh gr2. ATM I can not test to see if it works as intended. Files are below if ya want to give it a try. If ya could post a screenshot too please

, terraindef.csv and all textures/models need to be VFS=True.

S3rgeus · Apr 3, 2014

Horem said:
Hello! Took a look, could not understand what was wrong with it to fix it. I re textured all the marsh vanilla files and linked(hopefully) them to a marsh gr2. ATM I can not test to see if it works as intended. Files are below if ya want to give it a try. If ya could post a screenshot too please , terraindef.csv and all textures/models need to be VFS=True.

I haven't tried your version Horem, but it sounds like yours will have the same issue as mine. It's also a retexture of the marsh gr2.

Pazyryk · Apr 3, 2014

I'll try it out tonight and let you all know. Thanks for taking a look, Horem!

Horem · Apr 3, 2014

S3rgeus said:
I haven't tried your version Horem, but it sounds like yours will have the same issue as mine. It's also a retexture of the marsh gr2.

Yes, it is, but I am hoping mine wont suffer that same issue by editing the terraindef.csv(its just a database table) and adding new entries.

Edit:-

Got no Civ 5 on this computer so I cant test.

Pazyryk · Apr 16, 2014

@Horem,

OK, I finally tried this in game. No luck though. Your graphic is invisible. I put back S3rgeus' and it worked again (but still floating unfortunately).

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

Pazyryk said:
@Horem,

OK, I finally tried this in game. No luck though. Your graphic is invisible. I put back S3rgeus' and it worked again (but still floating unfortunately).

There is no HeightTextureMap in the gr2 from S3rgeus's blight. Think that may be causing the issue? Im going attempt a reskin of the Oil resource(Using S3rgeus's textures)and see where that leads(I know it wont cover the whole tile like a feature reskin, but maybe we can play with that). So annoying we don't have access to the terrain defines

Pazyryk · Apr 17, 2014

Yes, seems like it would have to have HeightTextureMap if other landmark graphics do. Without it I suppose you get a waste-height floating graphic. (Perhaps useful as a "fog" of some sort.)

The specific coverage and texture doesn't really matter, since I can mod dds images myself. What I really want is something that will "form" to the ground where there are hills or mountains. I've seen marsh and (maybe) oil do that when they were placed on those plots.

In theory, I thought this would be supper easy. Just rename files in Nexus for marsh or oil or whatever, then mod textures. But I've never succeeded in saving any functional gr2 file no matter how simple my change. If you could even just provide me a "duplicated marsh" with all the texture files renamed in gr2, that might be enough to get me going.

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

So, initial results. Does what ya want

, there is some issues with it been Square(Since I used all the space), should not be to hard to sort that though, what ya think?

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

Test 2:-

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

Test 3:-

Pazyryk · Apr 17, 2014

Getting better and better!

The last one still has an edge effect near the hex border. You need a little splotchy black going a little further out into neighboring plots. But I'm pretty happy with it as it is.

(I'll want to experiment around with it on my own anyway. I want to see if it's possible to get an almost fully blackened plot that looks something like FFH hell terrain. Not sure if that is possible.)

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

I want to see if it's possible to get an almost fully blackened plot that looks something like FFH hell terrain

In short, yes its possible, I did it by accident while doing this

(If you open the diff dds in paint.net, go to adjustments then threshold, move the bar all way right and you will have an image that looks like the sref, its how I made the sref. Save and look in game

)
The 3rd test seems to be the maximum tile coverage you can get without the edge effect and overlap from test 1. Included files so ya can mess a bit yourself.

Edit:

The files used was the Oil resource. Was only gr2 I could find that only had a flat model and nothing else.

S3rgeus · Apr 17, 2014

Amazing work, Horem! I'm going to steal your edited version to replace my floaty one, as long as that's fine with you! It was the height map that solved it?

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

Im pretty sure the height map has something to do with yea. (Guess tbh as I'm still a self taught novice at all this). All my work is free for use

Horem · Apr 17, 2014

No not the height map <----- Gives it the terrain grain effect. On a side note, the model used(from Oil) appears under water. Been playing with it for sea resource possibilities, as you can see from screen shot, my attempt at sea grass, it looks "rocky" that I think comes from the height map.

GeoModder · Apr 18, 2014

It kinda looks like a seaweed infestation.

Pazyryk · Apr 19, 2014

More fun with blight...

The "hard hex" shape is not a good idea. This is with Scale=1.1, which fills the gaps between hexes but still leaves you with big gaps at the shoreline (the blue is just my working color to make flaws look even worse):

Spoiler :

Rough edges are important. So I went back to S3rgeus' original image. After playing around a lot, I found (counter-intuatively) that a rectangular shape fills out the plot gaps better (compare south shoreline). This is with Scale=1.35.

Spoiler :

This is desaturated to get what I want. I bumped scale up to 1.45, which pushes it into the sea a little, but that doesn't look too bad:

Spoiler :

Final files are in the attached zip below. @S3rgeus, you can get back your exact original yellow by opening blight_working_blue.xcf and sliding Hue all the way over. Then export to make both diff and sref files as Horem described above.

Horem · Apr 19, 2014

Niffty! You can place the blight in costal waters too, so it "completes" the coast (the green just above the city) it will form to the sea bed (no effect in ocean tiles).
Playing around with the height map's can also change how it looks, all height maps end in _h. Had no luck creating a new height map yet though, game doesn't seem to like them, and just makes the square transparent

bouncymischa · Apr 19, 2014

Ooooh, that looks awesome!

Hey Pazyryk, do you have any pictures of the original "floating" blight effect? I've been dabbling with a civ that, for various reasons, I was considering making a "miasma" improvement or effect for, and the floating blight might actually work for that...

Help me get a Landmark graphic level with ground?

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