Reworking Hell

[Tschuggi]

Probably not. Hell terrain will probably see a change in the distant future anyways, so it will no longer be necessary to have hell versions of every terrain.

i changed the shallows terrain:

Spoiler :

it looks less hellish, but on the other hand it looks more in accord with the other hell terrains and it is easier on the eye.

i will put the fire/lava effects not into the terrain, but into features and improvements.

this fish in your example should change into a corrupted resource, something nasty like a piranha or a kraken or the simpson atomic fish with three eyes
Honestly, why don't change water resources when adjacent to hellish terrain?

 

[tesb]

not possible afaik, at least not with the current hell spread code.

 

[tesb]

Will there still be places that actually burn and are covered with flames, impassable terrain except for those with fire resistance or demonic race? OTOH these terrains always hurt my eyes a lot and were not were friendly to my RAM either, but it kind of looked terryfying - but there was always too much of it.

i will most likely chance the flame improvement and make it much less imposing.

What do you have in mind for the improvements? Resources? Roads? Rivers (xml hardcoded, so maybe no rivers at all? Would look kind of strange when there is an idyllic bluish river floating through hell...)? Did you already speak with Sephi about the burnt forests and lumber? Will there be new resources? Couldn't you use Tarquelne's haunted lands, too? Maybe for the broken lands?

i will mostly make doodads, to spice up the terrain. they can get a purpose later on, if sephi wants it. hell roads might be possible because railroads are currently not used as far as i know. rivers are impossible to change just for hell terrain.

Haunted lands??

i want to slightly tweak the haunted lands anyways, perhaps i make a hell version, who knows.

 

[Sephi]

i will mostly make doodads, to spice up the terrain. they can get a purpose later on, if sephi wants it. hell roads might be possible because railroads are currently not used as far as i know. rivers are impossible to change just for hell terrain.

you can add as many route types to the game, as you want. for example the mazatl trails are a new route type

 

[esvath]

The "old" shallow, the one with very red lava, I think it would be great to see one patch of it in between the burning sand tiles (as a lava pool, or something). You can also add a steam geyser or bubling pool with brownish water as feature and/or terrain tile in hell terrain.

Also, there was Obsidian Plain (or Obsidian something) as the corrupted version of Flood Plains. Somehow this terrain got axed during one stage of FfH. I think it's better to bring them back, so Flood Plains don't revert into Desert when sanctified.

 

[tesb]

Also, there was Obsidian Plain (or Obsidian something)

this is still in the worlbuilder and looks horrible. afaik floodplains have the same issue as rivers: there can be only one! the obsidian plains where just a one-tile feature.

 

[Valkrionn]

That actually isn't true. You can have more floodplains; Both Orbis and RifE have Crystal Plains, which is a snow-terrain counterpart.

 

[tesb]

oh that is nice thanks

 

[esvath]

And... let's add Crystal Plains too! I haven't see Orbis/Rife's Crystal Plains, but I think it would be a great addition to snow/tundra tiles

 

[tesb]

i created something hilarious

i made the peaks for hell terrain as a tileable feature (like trees) but did not change the tiling, so they used tree tiling. i placed some peaks to see how they look and was really surprised to see them move in the wind like trees. looks truly frightening if you see it in action. i just have a screenshot though:

Spoiler :

 

[Valkrionn]

If you turn off bAnimated in the artdef it won't move.

That actually looks pretty awesome, btw... very interesting way to break up hell terrain.

 

[tesb]

If you turn off bAnimated in the artdef it won't move.

already set to 0, still moves. it is the tiling that has to be set from
TILE_ART_TYPE_TREES
to
TILE_ART_TYPE_HALF_TILING

although, if done so it looks terrible
i guess i will not have tileable peaks then and make them single peaks, like dune wars did.

 

[Valkrionn]

Huh. I guess you learn new things everyday.

Honestly, I'd probably just let them be mobile. Kinda fits with the hell thing.


....Or maybe use them for HL....

 

[tesb]

here are the non-moving peaks with
TILE_ART_TYPE_HALF_TILING:

Spoiler :

they don't look as good, but still better then single-non-tile-able peaks. i have no clue why they suddenly change in brightness and why they look that bad at the ground.

 

[Valkrionn]

Hmm... Looks to me like we arent' seeing the full model there. I mean, the base of the mountain is actually part of the model for it, yes? Since we aren't seeing it... Maybe half-tiling drops the zlevel? Could test by moving the model higher in nifskope.


Edit: Still, those don't look nearly as bad as single-tile mountains would. This is one idea I would be surprised if we DON"T borrow, unless you mind of course.

 

[tesb]

. I mean, the base of the mountain is actually part of the model for it, yes? Since we aren't seeing it... Maybe half-tiling drops the zlevel? Could test by moving the model higher in nifskope.

yes. in many nifs you can give the node NiStringExtraData that make the object behave in a certain way, for example ContourGeometryUseZ will always set the object to ground level, i.e. it does not matter if it stands on a hill or on flat terrain the base will always touch the ground or
ContourGeometry will make the object wrap over the ground (good for pavements for example) but half tiling seems to ignore those nodes while tree tiling takes them it into account.

i raised the mountains in the *nif a bit and it works, but you can only place those mountains on flat terrain. for the hell spread code it need to check if there is a peak, set it to flat land and then place the hell peak feature on top of it.

This is one idea I would be surprised if we DON"T borrow, unless you mind of course.

i don't mind.

 

[Valkrionn]

Glad to hear it works.

Any chance you could pm me the files for it? No use reinventing the wheel, here. Seems a great idea, IMO.

 

[tesb]

here are the fixed peaks (still don't look as good as with tree tiling, but at least they don't move):

Spoiler :

 

[tesb]

@Valkrionn
keep in mind that with TILE_ART_TYPE_HALF_TILING the models use the detail map while TILE_ART_TYPE_TREES ignores detail maps (and any other non-base textures).

 

[tesb]

welcome to hell, stranger

Spoiler :

i would have placed burned trees too, to spice up the looks, but the mountains currently are the burned trees (just a placeholder, because i wanted to quickly try out hings without much coding)