New features/terrains

[The Great Apple]

There have been a number of threads (2?) about adding new feature types or terrain types, along with new graphics. Has anybody managed to succeed in doing this?

 

[Padmewan]

Don't know if this is responsive to the problems that others are facing, but we've succeeded in having the following terrains in game:

1. Wasteland
2. Basalt
3. Sand
4. Soil
5. Dryland
6. Fibersea, light
7. Fibersea, deep

Now, once we added 5.5, Grassland, I notice that in WordBuilder the terrain fails to blend, which is what I think others have reported. However, only terrains 1-3 and 6-7 are in the game as set up, because the rest are through terraforming.

We've also succeeded in creating a new Feature, "Terrain Air," which is the FX_Propellor_Bubbles combined with the Fallout NIF (or something like that). This seems to work fine, but I can't get it to scale at all. We've not removed any features to make this possible, tho we also don't have forests on the default map. Maybe I should try WB and put every feature on the map and see if the last one fubu's....

 

[dalek master]

atleast the communitys getting somewhere...
good work padmewan

 

[The Great Apple]

Don't know if this is responsive to the problems that others are facing, but we've succeeded in having the following terrains in game:

1. Wasteland
2. Basalt
3. Sand
4. Soil
5. Dryland
6. Fibersea, light
7. Fibersea, deep

Now, once we added 5.5, Grassland, I notice that in WordBuilder the terrain fails to blend, which is what I think others have reported. However, only terrains 1-3 and 6-7 are in the game as set up, because the rest are through terraforming.

Hmmm - well there are 9 terrains as default, so I'm not quite sure what could be going on there.

 

[Padmewan]

Sorry, I missed "Snow." And I'm not counting "meta terrain" of hills and peaks.

Basically, we have the default + 2. They line up this way:

Desert = Wasteland ("natural")
Grass = Basalt ("natural")
Plains = Sand ("natural")
Tundra = Soil (terraformed)
X = Terran1 (terraformed)
Y = Terran2 (terraformed)
Coast = Light Fibersea ("natural")
Ocean = Deep Fibersea ("natural")

I list whether they are natural or not because I'm not sure how that plays out with map scripting. Only 5 terrains can appear in the default map, and the other 3 are available only through terraforming or world builder. The last few times I've tried, I can get Tundra and Terran1 to appear, but not Terran2 (which ends up unblended).

It may also be relevant that in some of these artdefines, I reuse existing blends / textures. Someone suggested that there might be hardcoding around the number of blends / textures available to the graphics engine.

 

[1shmael]

The most important terrian type in history has never been present in Civ.

The marine delta.

It made Egypt the breadbasket of the ancient world.

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Floodplains is equivilent

 

[Padmewan]

Also, looking at my features list, I just realized that we nixed about 1/2 the existing features, so it's possible that we haven't bumped up against any hard-coded limits yet...

 

[matthewv]

The hard coded limit for the max number of terrain types is fairly high. From my playing around with terrains and mapscripts I have had at least 15 different terrain types in one map and still haven't reached the hardcoded limit.

 

[Belizan]

Yeah, Matt's added and modified a number of terrains.

No word on Features, yet, though.

 

[Kael]

Ive added 'New Forests' and 'Ancient Forests' features and they are working great. It was a challenge to get to show up correctly but Im glad to help if anyone has some that aren't showing up correctly.

 

[Belizan]

I've been pestering Matt to make me a "dust" feature for the moon mod for a while now, but he's been too busy 8). But perhaps with your help, Kael, the cost for him to do so will be low enough that he might set it up for me 8).

 

[Zurai]

Terrain is easy to add with just XML and Python. I havn't tried features.

 

[Kael]

I've been pestering Matt to make me a "dust" feature for the moon mod for a while now, but he's been too busy 8). But perhaps with your help, Kael, the cost for him to do so will be low enough that he might set it up for me 8).

Yeap, if he can make the nif I'd be glad to help get it added in and working.

 

[matthewv]

Thank you Keal. I will see if I can come up with something that looks reasonable tonight.

 

[Kael]

Thank you Keal. I will see if I can come up with something that looks reasonable tonight.

Np, if you have any problems pm me a copy and i'll see if I can help out.

 

[matthewv]

I just realized my trail period for 3ds max is over so I will not be able to make any new .nif files for a while. Sorry about this.

 

[Padmewan]

Turns out I had a typo in one of my ART_DEF files for features. So, no problems on this end with features at all!