Terrain Texture Enhancement 2k

[Estebanium]

Current version: V12


Overview

Replaces most terrain textures of Europe, Asia, Africa and America with new textures that were increased in size, but will fit into the general look and feel.
Standard texture resolution is 1024², I increased the resolution to 2048² and created new Displacement-Maps, giving the textures a crispier look.


Pictures of Terrain Texture Enhancement 2k v12


Download
File size: 136.1 MB


​

Installation

1. Make sure that you deleted any version of the Terrain Mod in: "My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\Mods" and "steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC"
2. Download the 7z-file of V14
3. Extract the file e.g. in your Downloads folder
4. Inside the extracted folder there is a folder called "TTE_2k"
5. Copy "TTE_2k" from your Downloads folder to: steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC
6. Navigate to: My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\
7. Delete the following folders: Cache, Logs, ModUserData
8. Run the game. Now because I created a DLC, you can enjoy the new textures in SinglePlayer, Multiplayer or via the Mods menu.
   Please note, that this "lets call it Mod", will not show up in the Mods list while being ingame.

This Mod do not require a new game, you can load it into your existing one. When texture decompression is enabled, textures look muddier. However, if this option is disabled, they will look sharper.


Performance

You can be sure that it will somehow affect performance, but this is depending on your setup. The textures were increased in size so they will need more VRAM.

My old card had 2 GB VRAM and I didn't noticed any difference in performance while playing in 2k. Antialiasing will increase VRAM usage. So feel free to try it out for yourself, this is just my opinion on that


Changelog

Spoiler :

V12

• Grassland texture redone.
• Displacement for grassland, plain and desert redone. It is a bit crispier now, but without too much noise.

V11

• Fixed the TTE_2k.Civ5Pkg that contained an entry of my testing environment and added the entry in order to load my new water texture.
• Replaced most alpha channels to have a better transition between different terrain tiles.
• Removed displacement maps of Snow tiles, because it caused visual issues
• Added altered water texture, a more blueish one
• New River texture for new water texture
• Plain and Grassland use different color space, so the difference between the two terrain types is more noticeable.
• V11 Addon: Plain and Grassland share the same color space. The transition is very nicely, but to distinguish both terrain types from each other, you have to know their terrain details.

V10

• Coverted the mod to a DLC
• Recreated Grasland and Plain textures
• Sharpened Grand Mesa
• Added textures for: Sri Pada, Mt. Sinai, Cerro de Potosi
• Added City Base, the ground texture that is below a City, to have a better blending with the new terrain
• Reworked all textures regarding DXT5 and Alpha Channel to match their vanilla files

V8.1

• Decreased specular map of Marsh by 50%
• Added Alpha-Channel to Marsh_s and saved it as DXT5 instead of DXT1

V8

• Decreased Displacement-Map for flat terrain, like Grasland, Plane, Tundra
• Scaled desert Displacement-Map up by 200%, while changing the texture. This will lower the amount of dunes per tile and avoids blending issues on hill tiles
• Changed the water color of Marsh tiles to fit the water color of vanilla texture
• Decreased Displacement-Map of mountains, to fit the new look of the landscape
• Increased contrast of all textures
• Altered the tonemap of asia tundra tiles a bit
• Increased brightness of snow tiles

Credits

• Estebanium: Primary Author
• sgtpetterzon: From Skyrim Nexus, thank you for giving me the permission to use some of your mountain textures
• Loderunner: That gave me the idea to do this
• Bethesda: Without modding Skyrim so much, I would have never learned to use graphics tools

 

[notque]

Very excited to give it a try. A long awaited improvement to the terrain textures in my view.

Edit: Beautiful, thank you so much! Is it possible to also increase the resolution on resources, or is that done? The farms, and thar marshes look really great. Now I just want more, considering how beautiful all of this is.

 

[Gazebo]

Very excited to give it a try. A long awaited improvement to the terrain textures in my view.

Edit: Beautiful, thank you so much! Is it possible to also increase the resolution on resources, or is that done? The farms, and thar marshes look really great. Now I just want more, considering how beautiful all of this is.

Personally I find the visual noise on the new textures to be a little jarring, but to each their own.

 

[Aristos]

Personally I find the visual noise on the new textures to be a little jarring, but to each their own.

I as holding my piece to not offend anyone and thinking I was alone in that impression, but now that you say it, I have to agree. Still a commendable effort (please do not force it into VP).

 

[notque]

Personally I find the visual noise on the new textures to be a little jarring, but to each their own.

Understand that everyone enjoys different things. I love it, I've been looking at the same textures for way too long in Civ. This reinvigorates the look for me quite a bit. I could comment on so many things that look visually interesting now.

I'd like to see even more done, and I really like the look and feel. It's causing me to zoom in much closer as well, and actually look at the world.

 

[Funak]

I'll try it out, but I got a feeling it's going to make me feel sick. Then again that's probably not your fault, a lot of things makes me feel sick.

Good work either way.

 

[Mad Madigan]

Frankly, I really like this texture pack, especially the richer, bolder colours it gives the landscape. However, two things I feel could be improved:

1) The displacement maps on the textures have way too much contrast, creating the very noticeable repeating textures seen across swathes of similar terrain (like large deserts or grasslands). The faux "shadowing" effect needs to be toned down 20-40%, especially on flat terrain.

2) The specular maps on the marsh terrain are showing up as bright teal (visible in the 3rd example image). The intensity of these maps needs to be reduced, and their colour shifted towards a darker green, blue, or even brown.

Other than that I think these look great!

 

[Elhoim]

Frankly, I really like this texture pack, especially the richer, bolder colours it gives the landscape. However, two things I feel could be improved:

1) The displacement maps on the textures have way too much contrast, creating the very noticeable repeating textures seen across swathes of similar terrain (like large deserts or grasslands). The faux "shadowing" effect needs to be toned down 20-40%, especially on flat terrain.

2) The specular maps on the marsh terrain are showing up as bright teal (visible in the 3rd example image). The intensity of these maps needs to be reduced, and their colour shifted towards a darker green, blue, or even brown.

Other than that I think these look great!

Yep, I agree with this assessment. The contrast is way too high and the tiling is very noticeable. The texture quality is very good.

 

[Gazebo]

Yep, I agree with this assessment. The contrast is way too high and the tiling is very noticeable. The texture quality is very good.

Yeah, this is what I meant by 'noise,' though my graphicsspeak is weak.

G

 

[Estebanium]

Thank you all for your comments! I really appreciate your feedback, that gave me a new look onto the project. Working for some time at textures made me a bit biased. So I read your commends and wrapped it in a new version, that tries to fix your concerns.

I am very looking forward how it will turn out. I left the screenshot of version 7 in my post, so you can easily find my changes to the mod.

G
Estebanium

 

[Growth]

I was playing with V7 earlier and I just stopped my game to install the new version, I like any graphical improvements to this game as I play on a 2K monitor, thanks for the effort.
Have a friendly

 

[Elhoim]

Thank you all for your comments! I really appreciate your feedback, that gave me a new look onto the project. Working for some time at textures made me a bit biased. So I read your commends and wrapped it in a new version, that tries to fix your concerns.

I am very looking forward how it will turn out. I left the screenshot of version 7 in my post, so you can easily find my changes to the mod.

G
Estebanium

Much better now! Especially the fix to the blending

 

[biship]

Fantastic! Going to try it out now...

 

[Edaka]

Astounding job! V8 looks especially great, I'm downloading it right now

I have a question. While looking at Civ 6 screenshots, I think I remember seeing lakes having a slightly different colour than coast/ocean - different textures, essentially. I'm wondering, if it's hypothetically possible to make it so in Civ 5.

 

[Amask]

Nothing happens when I follow your installation instructions.

 

[Estebanium]

Astounding job! V8 looks especially great, I'm downloading it right now
I have a question. While looking at Civ 6 screenshots, I think I remember seeing lakes having a slightly different colour than coast/ocean - different textures, essentially. I'm wondering, if it's hypothetically possible to make it so in Civ 5.

I will have a look. I am happy that you like it

Nothing happens when I follow your installation instructions.

Did you activate the mod in the Mods menu and hit next for creating a game? It will now work if you just activate the mod and hit back and just run a norman single player game..

EDIT: I guess you don't mean oases? If you mean that one tile sea-tiles should look differently, I have to say no it's not possible.

EDIT 2: Updated the logo, to reflect the latest changes..

 

[Mad Madigan]

I played a game with v8 last night and am really enjoying your texture pack. I think your changes from v7 to v8 made a HUGE difference in the overall quality, and it also seems to use up less vRAM. Nice!

I really don't have much more input to give other than that the specular maps on marshes still seem to be a bit too intense. It makes the water on the marshes SUPER shiny when compared to lakes, rivers, and oceans, so as the marsh tiles get closer to the middle of the screen the specular maps just turn completely white and you can't see the water texture anymore. So my suggestion would just be to tone the intensity of the specular reflection maps down on the marshes. You may need to experiment with the exact amount through trial and error, but ideally you want the marsh tiles to be no more reflective than the lake/ocean tiles so that you can better see the actual water in the marsh tiles.

Cheers!

 

[Puer]

Current version: V8

...
Installation

1. Download the .civ5mod mod.
2. Copy to Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS
3. Run the game to the Mods Menu and it should automatically install.

....

Where is the link for download?

Nevermind - found it from first post, hidding below the pics

 

[Edaka]

EDIT: I guess you don't mean oases? If you mean that one tile sea-tiles should look differently, I have to say no it's not possible.

I don't mean oases, no. And I'm not talking about inland seas vs open seas. I'm talking about lakes vs seas (coast and ocean) - since they count for different terrain types in the game, and thus even have different yields, I had an impression that they could use different textures as well. Are you saying this isn't possible?

Thanks for looking into it!

 

[Estebanium]

I played a game with v8 last night and am really enjoying your texture pack. I think your changes from v7 to v8 made a HUGE difference in the overall quality, and it also seems to use up less vRAM. Nice!

I really don't have much more input to give other than that the specular maps on marshes still seem to be a bit too intense.

Good to hear that you enjoy it. It is possible that I didn't optimize all textures in version 7. Most times I save textures in DXT5, but Civilization don't need an Alpha Channel for Terrain Textures.
So by using Texture Optimizer of Skyrim, it will do the conversion to the correct file format (DXT1) and will save VRAM afterwards.
Maybe I missed some textures in V7, because I noticed the decrease in size of the newest download.

Yes, specular map is a bit extreme, but difficult to control. I oriented myself by looking at those oases and I thought that I would have the same specular amount like them. I will tune it down by 50% and will have a look.

Where is the link for download?
Nevermind - found it from first post, hiding below the pics

I increased the size of the font a bit

I don't mean oases, no. And I'm not talking about inland seas vs open seas. I'm talking about lakes vs seas (coast and ocean) - since they count for different terrain types in the game, and thus even have different yields, I had an impression that they could use different textures as well. Are you saying this isn't possible?Thanks for looking into it!

Ah OK, yes they can. I accidentally implemented this texture for coastal water, because I thought that it would be the one for marshes. So there is one ground texture for coastal water and one that defines the water color in general.
So would you like to see a change in watercolor, or in ground texture? Last one is noticeable but you don't want it, trust me, because changing it in a way that will not attract too much attention is like leaving it vanilla.