Graphical Quibbles...

[Lord Tirian]

I'm playing a Planetfall game now and noticed a little issue - when GeoModder animated Mount Planet, there was some weird scale modifier or something that made the model stretched out and less well blended into the surroundings. Apart from making me unhappy because it doesn't look like was intended to look, that stretching also obscures the plot behind the volcano, which is annoying - so I fixed the nif (no worries, the smoke column is still there, if you work it).

Of course, you might actually prefer it like it is now, so I attached a screenshot for comparison.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Maniac]

It just occurred to me: What would happen to the Planet map's uranium flats? Perhaps Thorium could get a new graphic and the uranium flats become an actual landmark again? Could become a four-tile landmark where each plot gives +1 energy, -1 nutrients or something like that.

Sure why not. I'd make the Uranium Flats a feature then. Not sure if that makes any difference when creating graphics.

so I fixed the nif (no worries, the smoke column is still there, if you work it).

Thanks! I didn't like that stretch either, but I thought it was intended by you.

 

[GeoModder]

I caused this stretching?
As far as I remember, I simply attached the smoke column to the volcano, that's all. Never touched the volcano itself.
In any case, the fixed version is way better.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I caused this stretching?
As far as I remember, I simply attached the smoke column to the volcano, that's all. Never touched the volcano itself.
In any case, the fixed version is way better.

Not intentionally, of course. The nif you copied the model into to get the smoke has some strange properties: the first "scene root"-node in the nif (node 5 in nifskope) has the strange property to stretch everything out vertically. I have absolutely no idea why, but even if I delete everything below that node and then copy & paste another model in, it's distorted.

It's some totally obscure thing that's happening there... and I only caught it, because I made the Mount Planet myself and spent hours to get the look right (note that it still "stretches" as intended to adhere to the terrain, just that strange extra stretching is gone). Thankfully, that made it easy to fix, I only had to clean up the structure of the nif a bit to get rid of that weird node, then it looked as before.

EDIT: I just checked - it *is* definitely the nif, the same happened to the condenser, see the attached pic. Weird. I also attached a cleaned up version of the condenser, in case you want to "unstretch" it again.

Cheers, LT.

 

[GeoModder]

Mmm... since I imported both Mt. Planet and the Condenser in a copy of the smoke nif, that sounds reasonable.
The weird thing is that the Mt. Planet smoke nif is unaltered IIRC. The Condenser one I spread out to have this cloud effect.

It's a good thing I never uploaded the "stretched" version to the database then.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Unrelated to the issue above, I experimented with some things in the last couple of days: Deliverator's chemical trooper inspired me to play around with the flamethrower effects once more - I've made new effects for the Helion (something I dubbed "fusioncaster") and the Hyperian (that's some sort of Empath-powered plasma?), see the screenshot. What do you think? I haven't made the adjustments to the animations yet (the screenshots are just made with renamed versions of the effects to override the current ones).

I also tried to do a quick recolour of the uranium resource... to something white-blue. Real thorium is a silvery white metal, so I thought it might be nice to have something along these lines (especially since that would make the green uranium model useful for the uranium flats).

Finally, I tried to strip the greenhouses of the concrete bases, do you think they look better that way (they're missing the door, but since the removal of the base frees up texture space - so if you want the model, I can make the door part of the texture, that way, I can chafe off some polys from the model without really hurting the look).

All of them are semi-finished, they need some adjustments to work properly, but that's just finishing up... I'm just too lazy right now to do that if the models/effects are not going to be used. If you want them, I'll finish them (or can still change stuff, tweak etc. - you know the drill).

EDIT: Perhaps we don't need to stick to the flame effects for the line; the Hyperian, I think, could also work really nice with some energy effect like Deliverator's drake here.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pickly]

The new Hellion picture looks awesome (At least in a still picture, the animation is of course the only way to know for sure.)

The hyperian also looks pretty nice as well. In terms of what the flame is, the backstory description in the game so far simply has the hyperians being capable of using more fuel than previous units, so empath type effects wouldn't come into it. (Unless the description ends up changed.)

Your uranium picture looks a lot like Fall from Heaven mana. (This may be because mana and uranium are based off the same graphic, plus the color being about the same.) This doesn't say anything about how good the appearance is in particular, to me it probably won't matter much either way, though having thorium and uranium flats appear different will of course be useful.

The greenhouses do look slightly better without concrete to me, even without doors, though I'm not sure how much a difference this will make when playing the game.

 

[GeoModder]

I'd say finish it up when you have the time, LT.

 

[Maniac]

Unrelated to the issue above, I experimented with some things in the last couple of days

They look great!

The greenhouse indeed looks better without the platform. Does it still work on ridges now though? I'd prefer having the door in the texture.

EDIT: Perhaps we don't need to stick to the flame effects for the line; the Hyperian, I think, could also work really nice with some energy effect like Deliverator's drake here.

I think that effect looks too focused.

 

[GeoModder]

Finally came around to adding a space fountain effect to an arcology graphic...

Does this look good enough? Did you have another effect in mind, Maniac? It's the warplane effect from the FinalFrontiers mod.

 

[GeoModder]

Not a Python file - I'm talking about doing it dynamically via the Python console. To get the console, you need to set the cheat code in the INI file to chipotle, start a game, press Ctrl-Z and then pressing the @ key (on UK keyboards at least) will open up the Python window. Then using the Graphics.setWaterHeight command will let you move the water level up and down in game which is useful for figuring out how the thing works. I guess this Python could be called on game started if this solution can be made to work.

Activating the cheat code in the planetfall config (chipotle), starting a game, pressing ctrl-z and pressing the key combo for @ doesn't do anything for me.

 

[Deliverator]

Activating the cheat code in the planetfall config (chipotle), starting a game, pressing ctrl-z and pressing the key combo for @ doesn't do anything for me.

It's actually the "~" symbol you need to type - it just happens that on my keyboard that is the "@". See this thread.

 

[GeoModder]

No joy either.
When ingame, cntrl-z reveals the map to me. cntrl-~ gives any given unit which happens to be selected xp-points and can be promoted. shft-~ gives + on my keyboard.

 

[Maniac]

Myself to get the python console I need to switch to Dvorak keyboard layout (I guess Qwert should work too) and press ².

 

[GeoModder]

Thanks, just found it out by switching to the American keyboard.

Now to get this console code entered...

 

[GeoModder]

Report on this setwaterheight method:
Cities will show up fine if the waterlevel is low enough, but at the standard 59 height only the really large buildings will show something above waterlevel. Setting the height lower makes the coastal textures show blue above waterlevel. tidal waves are gone. Seafungus is gone, resources are partly submerged or not visible...
Also, coastal/sea facilities in a base simply don't show up anymore. Land units show up wading through the water, submarine units are not at all visible when idle (the pinpoint button).
Weirdly enough, the "classical" smac graphics (foil, unity transport) show parts under the water surface.
All in all, this method sounds like too much work in adjusting alot of nifs to accommodate this change.

The screenshot below is set at a waterheight of 30 to give you an idea.

 

[Maniac]

If I understand correcrlt, decreasing waterheight increases sea level, causing units to be submerged more in the water? And for some reason increasing sea level makes citysets visible more rather than make them submerged more?

 

[GeoModder]

No.

What I did was setting iwaterheight to 0 in the CIV4TerrainSettings file. Standard setting is 59. You can easily do that yourself to check it out.
The result is upon starting a game that the water is not visible anymore. It is level is at 0 and all land/seebottom shows. Seabases are completely visible and show the same cityset graphics as landbases, their underground texture is visible and stuff like that. features like seafungus and icepacks are invisible.

Ingame in the python console I can "hack" the waterheight to any number I choose with the "graphics.setwaterheight [insert number]" command. the waterlevel shows up again, but any part of a graphic below this level becomes invisible again in the case of citysets and facility graphics. Units it seems depend on their domain.
Also, facilities which use the bNoWaterTest:1 attribute in civ4citylsystem seems to become invisible. At least when iwaterheight in CIV4TerrainSettings is set to 0.

Mmm... just saw an attribute I hadn't tested before on waterbased facilities in citylsystem, namely bForceWaterHeight:1.
I'll try to do some testing with that when I have time.

 

[Maniac]

If citysets show up on water at waterheight 0, does that mean the reason why citysets don't show up on water is because they are completely underwater? What would happen if a cityset was created with a higher z-axis, supposedly floating in the air?

 

[Deliverator]

Standard setting is 59. You can easily do that yourself to check it out.

I'm pretty sure the standard height is 49 not 59. From vanilla CIV4TerrainSettings.xml:

			<iWaterHeight>49</iWaterHeight>