Graphical Quibbles...

[Maniac]

Thanks for the explanation, WarKirby!

it crashes faster - whenever Civ4 would crash, whereas nifskope can still show models that would kill the Civ4 engine. Good to test them whether something got screwy.

Since you mention it, Scene Viewer actually crashes for me when I try to open the Hyperian. Haven't tested the model in-game yet though.

 

[WarKirby]

I never have, and most likely now never will, test things in the scene/nifviewer, but as you can tell from the provided screenshot, I have tested the hyperian ingame and am certain it works. Generally, I test in nifskope until satisfied, then test ingame. If it works as desired, it's done.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Since you mention it, Scene Viewer actually crashes for me when I try to open the Hyperian. Haven't tested the model in-game yet though.

Hmmm... WarKirby, is it a unit with shaders? Maniac's PC doesn't support shaders, maybe that's crashing it?

Cheers, LT.

 

[WarKirby]

every unit I make, ever, has the basic TCiv4Skinning shader at least, because I use skininstances and bone weightings on everything. I sometimes add gloss maps, although not in this case.

Without shaders, anything with a skinInstance is either distorted or causes a CTD on display. Having a pc which doesn't support shaders is a pretty serious issue which I'd suggest you resolve asap. Kind of falls under the Reasonable Runtime Environment rule.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Without shaders, anything with a skinInstance is either distorted or causes a CTD on display.

True. But I quickly wrenched the skinpartition and shaders out of the unit... and done the teamcolour as base/decal setup (i.e. the way it's done for non-shader units in Civ4). The attached version shows animation in nifskope and doesn't crash nifviewer and isn't distorted or anything - I assume it should work for Maniac. If not, post - it's late enough, I'm off to bed, so excuse the lack of an in-game test for now!

(I found out a while ago that it's actually the SkinPartition export of blender that causes the distortions/crashs, not the SkinInstance in itself)

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Thanks!

 

[Maniac]

WarKirby, I've run into a problem which I expect you probably can figure out the cause of.

I dislike the current InVitro unit graphic. It seems less futuristic than unit graphics of the same tech level. Plus that graphic look like a bunch of mindless marching nazis, which is not the mental picture I have of InVitros. So I tried to change it to a model by SeZereth, which you can find in the Art/Units/InVitro folder added in the latest patch g. SeZereth says the unit uses the Navy SEAl animations.

Planetfall already includes a similar model though for the Cyborg; as far as I can tell the only difference is the texture. Unfortunately the file name has been kept the same for the original SeZereth texture, and the Cyborg texture. As a consequence I can't just throw the InVitro nif in the Navy SEAL folder like I did for the Cyborg.

So I put the InVitro nif in its own folder, and included all the Navy SEAL animations in that folder as well. I renamed the kfm file to match the nif.

However when I start the game and I look at the unit in the Datalinks, I get a python exception. I've gotten that one before when there was some problem with the animations.

When I put the InVitro nif in the Navy SEAL folder, there is no problem. But then of course the texture is wrong.

So I don't understand. What element am I missing? Why doesn't it work?

 

[WarKirby]

So I tried to change it to a model by SeZereth, which you can find in the Art/Units/InVitro folder added in the latest patch g. SeZereth says the unit uses the Navy SEAl animations.

You included broken art in a patch ? I hope it's not active.

Planetfall already includes a similar model though for the Cyborg; as far as I can tell the only difference is the texture. Unfortunately the file name has been kept the same for the original SeZereth texture, and the Cyborg texture. As a consequence I can't just throw the InVitro nif in the Navy SEAL folder like I did for the Cyborg.

I don;t understand. Why are texture names an issue ? And why would you want to put anything in the navy seal folder ? You can remotely reference the kfm. The majority f FFH units using firaxis animations do so.

So I put the InVitro nif in its own folder, and included all the Navy SEAL animations in that folder as well. I renamed the kfm file to match the nif.

Not just the kfm, but the individual kfs need to be renamed, too. However if you do that, they will break because the kfm stores the original kf names. Therefore those references need to be changed by decoding it with Konverter, editing the resulting xml, and then re-encoding it to a kfm again.

That's not actually as much work as it sounds, but it is still mildly bothersome. as far as you've described, I don't see any need to do so, anyway. Why not just leave it called navyseal.nif and use the navyseal animations as they are ?

However when I start the game and I look at the unit in the Datalinks, I get a python exception. I've gotten that one before when there was some problem with the animations.

When I put the InVitro nif in the Navy SEAL folder, there is no problem. But then of course the texture is wrong.

So I don't understand. What element am I missing? Why doesn't it work?

This is the result of not renaming the kfs too, yes.


If the problem is a wrong texture, then you shouldn't be messing with animations at all. Just rename the texture and change the reference to it in the nif, with nifscope. Do you know how to do that ?

 

[Maniac]

I don;t understand. Why are texture names an issue ? And why would you want to put anything in the navy seal folder ? You can remotely reference the kfm. The majority f FFH units using firaxis animations do so.

The majority of vanilla FfH's unit suffer from the following problem (from the first post in the FfH bug thread):

5. While playing if your units look okay when moving but turn back to normal civ4 units when standing still its because you have "Freeze Animations" turned on in your game options.

I don't have a clue why our experiences are different, and actually why your Hyperian isn't having the same problem I noticed with all other units. If I would link to an animation in a different folder, for example the Cyborg to the SEAL anims while the Cyborg nif is in a different folder, then the Cyborg would suddenly look like the Navy SEAL if you'd turn frozen animations on.

Just a random guess: Might the reason the Hyperian is not having this problem be that flamethrower.nif is a mere skeleton, instead of a full unit?


Also, if kf's need to be renamed too, I'm completely confused now why my solution for the frozen animation problem worked.

If the problem is a wrong texture, then you shouldn't be messing with animations at all. Just rename the texture and change the reference to it in the nif, with nifscope. Do you know how to do that ?

Nope. :-s

 

[WarKirby]

The frozen animations option is a pretty silly thing IMO, for a start. It's not animation related at all. Rather, the units just have several nifs, and it switches between them.

The problem you describe is because FFH didn't remove the frozen animation nifs from those animation folders. And civ looks in the kfm folder for said animations.

Actually supporting this feature is a fair bit of boring extra work for an artist, and not really for much gain. Civ isn;t a game where framerate or reaction times are important, so disabling animations for performance reasons isn't worthwhile.


To put it simply, the frozen animations bug is not caused by having the animations in a seperate folder. It's caused by having frozen animation nifs in the folder where the kfm is. If those nifs were moved to a unit's own folder and it had the kfm there, you'd see the exact same bug. To prevent it, just delete the frozen navyseal nifs. I believe frozen animations only works if the nifs are present, otherwise animations show as normal

The reason the hyperian is not having any problems, is because

1. The kfm is named flamethrower.kfm
2. The folder contains a flamethrower.nif, which has a skeleton matching the animations
3. The animations are all named Flamethrower_<actionhere>

The flamethrower.nif being a mere skeleton, is purely, and only, for resource saving reasons. It takes less harddrive space that way. If it were a full unit with mesh data, it would still work just fine. And waste a few hundred extra kb of space unecessarily. By satisfying all three of the above conditions, all dependancies between the animation set, and the unit using it, are severed. Which means the animation set will work anywhere. You could even copy all the files from the flamethrower folder, into the hyperian's folder. And it would still work perfectly. Although that's the kind of inflexibility and disorganisation that I'm trying to avoid here. By having the animations centralised, it means there's only one place to change if tweaks are needed.

 

[WarKirby]

For the invitro:

1. Rename the texture.
2. Look at the attached image
3. Doubleclick on the texture name, at the highlighted place
4. type in the new name of your texture. Case sensitive and including file extension.
5. Save nif

 

[Pfeffersack]

I also noticed a strange graphic issue when browsing the civilopedia. Are the bright white tracks of the former intended?

 

[WarKirby]

That must be a problem on your end. I'm playing with the latest version now and not seeing that.

try restarting your PC, clear cache, change graphic settings..

 

[Maniac]

To put it simply, the frozen animations bug is not caused by having the animations in a seperate folder. It's caused by having frozen animation nifs in the folder where the kfm is. If those nifs were moved to a unit's own folder and it had the kfm there, you'd see the exact same bug. To prevent it, just delete the frozen navyseal nifs. I believe frozen animations only works if the nifs are present, otherwise animations show as normal

Ah now it all makes sense.

Actually supporting this feature is a fair bit of boring extra work for an artist, and not really for much gain. Civ isn;t a game where framerate or reaction times are important, so disabling animations for performance reasons isn't worthwhile.

I don't feel the need to spend artists' energy to support frozen unit animations either. But I like to make sure units still look as intended with frozen animations turned on. Otherwise people might see the wrong graphics and not even realize they're the wrong ones. Pfeffersack was one such person before I reorganized the unit art folder in v10.

I also noticed a strange graphic issue when browsing the civilopedia. Are the bright white tracks of the former intended?

The former has always looked like that to me in the Datalinks. Must be some issue exclusive to crappy computers.

 

[Maniac]

For the invitro:

1. Rename the texture.
2. Look at the attached image
3. Doubleclick on the texture name, at the highlighted place
4. type in the new name of your texture. Case sensitive and including file extension.
5. Save nif

Thanks!

 

[Lord Tirian]

Thanks!

Look who's learning to use nifskope!

Cheers, LT.

 

[Lord Tirian]

After WarKirby expressed some displeasure at the jungle graphics, I started fiddling with it. In the end, it became a complete overhaul of the terrain graphics.

It's a work in progress and not finished yet, but I wanted to get some initial impressions first. I wanted to give the graphics a consistent "feel", a bit of a darker and red-tinted theme to make it look a bit more hostile and to match the colours of the loading screen a bit better. I also changed the grid overlay to make it a bit more "sci-fi"-like than drawn lines. Also check out the colours the mini-map got due to the changes, I like that a lot!

I also replaced the fungicide with a reskinned version of the silk graphics, but I intend to change it a bit more to make it look less like the vanilla graphic and to match the trees with the jungle trees (the sacs are distinct enough to stand out, I think).

The coast/shelf also needs to get a bit brighter, I think, but I wanted to get some feedback for now - whether I should abandon it, just use parts of it or go ahead in the same or a different direction.

The graphics are from a lot of places, sources are Planetfall's original terrain graphics, the Civ4 files, BlueMarble, SMAC files and asioasioasio's WWII-mod (mainly for the water texture).

Cheers, LT.

 

[WarKirby]

In that third picture, I see light colored parts in one of the arid areas. Is that rockiness? If so, I liked it better before, the more brown-ish color.

Jungle aside though, I never thought there was anything wrong with the terrain graphics. Although it might be nice to see slightly different fungus graphics. Right now it looks a bit flowery, and not so vine-y and tendril-y like it did in SMAC

Also, did you use the fungicide graphic for monsoon jungle? I really feel that's perfect. (and name it monsoon jungle too, the interface can handle it just fine )

 

[Maniac]

I have mixed feelings.

I like the gridlines.

Rainy terrain seems better/less 'cartoonish' than the current texture.

Jungle looks good.

Can't really tell if you made many changes to moist and arid besides darkening them.

You changed the hill texture. It blends in better with the terrain. However if it blends in TOO much, it becomes too hard to notice and loses its function as a signifier for highlands. Eg a few people have commented in the past they find it hard to make the distinction between lowlands/highlands/ridges. That problem would increase. So I'd need to play around with it some myself.

The fungus seems to clash with the terrain IMO, especially on sea.

My first impression was that the terrain looks very dark. Like many other people I found SMAC's terrain way too dark. To illustrate the brightness that I like: SMAC had a Gamma Correction option. Standard value is 1. I set that to 1.5. Not sure what that means.

I'd like to have the dss files though, so that I could compare the current and your changed files more closely.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Bear in mind that this is still a work in progress, the polar textures are rather unfinished for now (rocky and flat look to similar, that's also a reason why I didn't show them, also the artdefine for flat polar isn't used, the terrain still points to the vanilla ice terrain).

In that third picture, I see light colored parts in one of the arid areas. Is that rockiness? If so, I liked it better before, the more brown-ish color.

Personally, I'd like that more brownish as well, but it was hard to tell it apart from regular arid, but that's a bit that could need a bit of fiddling.

Also, did you use the fungicide graphic for monsoon jungle? I really feel that's perfect. (and name it monsoon jungle too, the interface can handle it just fine )

Well, the old fungicide colour was made to stand out, I think it would be way too intense for bigger areas.

I like the gridlines.

Thanks, that's the bit I'm really happy about!

Rainy terrain seems better/less 'cartoonish' than the current texture.

Cool, as said above, that was one part that triggered the overhaul (plus the jungle and the water).

Can't really tell if you made many changes to moist and arid besides darkening them.

I darkened them and blended them with some plain/rock textures from BlueMarble to give them a bit more structure and to make it more different from rocky rainy terrain (the moist rocky terrain sometimes looked very similar).

You changed the hill texture. It blends in better with the terrain. However if it blends in TOO much, it becomes too hard to notice and loses its function as a signifier for highlands. Eg a few people have commented in the past they find it hard to make the distinction between lowlands/highlands/ridges. That problem would increase. So I'd need to play around with it some myself.

Right now, I think it may be too dark, blending in with the arid tiles too much, but I do think that the reddish tint is a bit of an improvement.

The fungus seems to clash with the terrain IMO, especially on sea.

Might tie into the "flowery" look that WarKirby talked about. The darker look seems to increase that effect. EDIT: Of course, it might also be an option to make sea fungus more bluish, like in SMAC, it uses a different model anyway, so changing the texture is a possibility. Though I don't know whether this would really help.

My first impression was that the terrain looks very dark. Like many other people I found SMAC's terrain way too dark. To illustrate the brightness that I like: SMAC had a Gamma Correction option. Standard value is 1. I set that to 1.5. Not sure what that means.

Yeah, I was going for the old SMAC standard look, brightness-wise. Plus, nowadays I'm on an LCD screen, these are brighter than the old monitors... including the ones, I played SMAC on, this may look even darker on non-LCDs. On the other hand, I thought I might get away with it, as FfH also has pretty dark terrain compared to the standard terrain!

I'd like to have the dss files though, so that I could compare the current and your changed files more closely.

You can find the current here for now (file too big...). Of course, I can tweak stuff as well after you've looked through it.

Cheers, LT.