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Oh, yes, PV, I was just kiddin' with you, I wasn't really picturing you going psycho on a punching bag . For those situations I like a good walk or run myself.

I went ahead and downloaded the gimp; I decided that I might as well go with something I'll use eventually rather than spend time with something simpler that will ultimately be abandoned.

I see along with the gimp there is something called GTK, the gimp tool-kit. From what I gather, it's something that once went with the program but is now something separate, and it looks like the gimp can be used without it. I'll pass on GTK for now(if I'm wrong I'll find out soon enough )

Yes, the GTK is (was?) a separate download of resources which went into the Program Files\Common Files\ folder, and was required for gimp to run. I haven't updated since '06, being a classic late-adopter of the "if-it-ain't-broke" variety, so I'm only at v2.2, while I know the versions went through many advances through '07-08. I've actually downloaded v2.6.3, but have not yet been motivated to install it, but I may before I start my next project, as I may be missing out on new goodies, and I'm currently taking a major break for the first time in quite a long while.

Don't miss the help file, which is a separate download (and we can hope it's much improved over the one I have), and I see I also have downloaded a new DDS plug-in, so presumably when I visited the site around christmas to fetch this stuff, I must have thought I'd need an add on for DDS support, though I may have been just being cautious.

Thanks, I've got the help file.

The DDS plug-in came in a zip file "gimp-dds-win32-2.07" from a site called "Nifelheim?"

Enjoy your break!

I haven't installed gimp yet but I have gotten a DDS viewer just to look around....

Viewing all the intricate "puzzle-pieces" of BOB2 is fascinating! Everyone should look through these files to see and appreciate the details of the "ingredients" that make the BOB2 recipe.

Based on searches of the forum, I have a few questions(and statements to test my understanding):

I have read Stickman's post about the dithers. If I understand correctly, these are a succession of textures that appear on the landscape as the observer draws closer to the ground. These are in formats called x8 and PCX. Stickman's website has a skinning tool(which I have downloaded) to convert x8 files to PCX. Is this still the correct method, or has it been made obsolete?

Looking through the landscape tiles, I recognize the image used for the 3d mapped forests. On all other "agricultural" tiles, the clumps of forest and roads are simply images and will not correspond to any part of the 3d map structure?

When used by the game, all the tiles are rotated in various directions and cut to fit their assigned map sections. This is the same every time(in other words, the tile will be cut in the same place and pointed in the same direction each time the map loads)?

Is it permitted for me to experiment with an entire existing tile, just to see if I can create one? I assume that it might be since you encouraged me to repaint some parts of it, but I wanted to be polite and ask.(I know not to touch the special "village" tiles you pointed out to me.)

One thing I can't seem to find, although it is probably right under my nose: Are the 2d treelines part of the Map Building process or the Object Placement process?

Those are all the questions I have for now(aren't you glad! ) Thank you for your patience and advice. Tweaking or experimenting with these intricate parts is extremely interesting to me. The thought of putting my own mark, however small, on my favorite flight sim is an exciting one!

scoobared,



Since Ben mad new objects and textures for most airfield objects, and Bader repainted, BIN hacked, or whatever,the other airfield buildings textures,
The old Skinners_Pack_V1 is mostly now obsolete and no longer needed.
Any other unconverted X8 textures that remain in BoBII v2,09 are not used, or should not be messed with, I think.

All of the DITHER_x files in the Landmaps folder, were converted from X8 to PCX long ago. A user with a Paint Proggy can easily fiddle with the DITHERS.
Although editing the DITHER files is some what tricky. The DITHERS do greatly influence (with minor changes) the look of terrain
at distances. For example, if one DITHER file is not the same gamma as the others, you will notice that is badly odd.
Making a DITHER file with sharp, contrasting pixels looks much different than with blurred pixels.
I was going to say that editing the DITHER files is a "black art", but is actually preety straight forward, once you see the patterns of how they behave.



Ah! The unreal woods, as I call them. I consider all forests/woods that were not well researched Rowan 3D Raised forests as imposters!

See this rant of mine I wrote earlier today:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13399



PV probably can answer this with better authority than I can.
Here is my understanding and personal witness, as how the different Landmap2 textures get laid out.
1. The particular img00xx textures can, and are laid upon the map, in 4 different rotational possiblities, as what you see from Landmap2/ img00xx textures.
2. The particular img00xx textures can, and are laid upon the map, in 4 different rotational possiblities, as what you see from Landmap2/ img00xx textures,
and also mirrored! The gives 8 possible rotational + mirrored in game looks.

I have seen, and well know! img0023 (what I call the City Suburban) texture is mirrored ~ 80% of the time.
This after placing over 1,000 city objects from Southampton to Portsmouth.
The other textures I have not witnessed as well.

Each time the map loads, the same layout is loaded. Nothing is changed, re-rotated, or re-mirrored. It is always drawn
as the mapper made it, every time for a game load.



It is permitted. Also, encouraged for anyone to improve the textures.
The special "village" texture is img0022. We request that this one not be modified now.
Ben made this one special, so as to easily add his new village objects upon it. No files are "sacred" currently, except img0022,
It's open season on all other textures, right now, and you can shoot freely!
I was thinking about wiping out all the "fake" woods that I see lately on the "fields" tiles,
especially since trees AutoGen on the "real" forests now without a lame FPS.

Uhhmm? maybe if your itching to do some improvements, maybe you can cut done some of the "false" woods and forests
whereas the trees will not AutoGen upon.
If you don't do it, I will.



The TreeLines are part of the mtt2 Map Building Process. I do not know how to make them. PV and borton do.



Ach! Be careful! Modding is like heroin, once you get into it, it is hopelessly addictive!
Once you make something good, you'll have to make something else better!
I used to be a simple player. For years now, I have found more satisfaction not in playing the game,
but in making it better for other players.
When I make love with a woman, I have always made the lady come first. Not an idle boast, I can say with some pride.

Aloha!

_________________
"Toto! I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!" Dorothy, OZ
"sniff.. sniff.. Snort! ARF! GGRRRR! ARF! (Tod der stinkenden republikanischen Partei, diesem ignoranten religiösen Monstrum.)" Toto

I'm with you 100% on this. I want the only woods showing in any area I've modded to be the ones I put there. I can tolerate the notion of two ir three painted trees in a clump, but no more than that.


I took some time to explore this while rewriting the tutorial, and this is what I discovered: textures are made with north at top, and sun should be from the south. The actual recipe for the texture display is the base display in game is in fact the texture file mirrored. The mirroring doesn't affect sun coming from the south. The first two variations on orientation are rotations of the mirrored image, one clock, and one anti clock, so shadows become as morning and evening. the final fourth variation is the original unmirrored image. That's why you see mirrored images about 80% of the time - if the four landuse types are used with equal frequency, three of them - 75% - are mirrored.

And, yes, the texture usage is fixed, not random. Each texture shows the same chunk on the same section of terrain, until we edit it.

In fact, most of the textures currently in use are based on a mod set offered by a user.

Thank you Stickman and PV for your answers!

I am glad to hear both your opinions on the "Unreal Woods"---those are my feelings about them too. Expanding the patchwork fields and reducing or painting out the "Unreal Woods" was something I was thinking about. Some of the agricultural tiles appear to be photographed at a slight angle; "flattening" them out to a true perpindicular view while keeping the same layout within the tile could be done by using the space occupied by the "Unreal Forests."(I hope I just made sense )

random thoughts:

In Germany even nowadays there are farms on the edges of villages (so the farmers would farrm the fields nearby) and at least in "isolated areas" (say 30 min by car from cities ) you also have a few farms situated outside of any village, just standing by themselves. I expect the same for the UK in 1940.

PV, I think a one time update to GIMP and one time install oif the plugin would be worthwhile for you, It really is nice to directly open a DDS in GIMP, either from GIMP if GIMP is already open, or via "open with" from Windows Explorer.

Re extensions:
If the same texture file exists with differing extensions, only one is used. From memory (too busy to look up complete list) the priority is:
FX (ignore these for now )
DDS
PCX
X8

If you would see any "single" X8, it would still be in use. No idea whether one exists.


Re "fake" "forests":
it is true these will not be autogenned. I think a good experiment would be to use the template system to place trees on them. Do it for a small area and see how it looks and how much work it is.

Re fixing slanted fotographs used in the tiles - makes sense.

scoobared,



With AutoGen now working fairly well with now big FPS hit, I think this would be good. I would certainly try your edited files.

Osram,



Well... they way they are now, it would be a lot of work, even with your fantastic Multi-Object Template method,
which I dearly thank you for. (where's the kowtow smilie, master?)
There are just too many Unreal Woods. If we could minimize them to small groves here and there,
and keep the painted hedgerows, which I like, then some masochist like myself may attempt such a population.
While we are talking about painted Unreal Trees, one texture has 16 tree orchard on it, though many of the trees painted there
look like dead trees, no leaves. A few more apple orchards would be nice, here and there.

_________________
"Toto! I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!" Dorothy, OZ
"sniff.. sniff.. Snort! ARF! GGRRRR! ARF! (Tod der stinkenden republikanischen Partei, diesem ignoranten religiösen Monstrum.)" Toto

First just let me say this: The GIMP is much more straight-forward than 300 online tutorials would lead you to believe !

Now a quick question: When saving the tile-work in DDS, there are several different offers for compression: BC DXT1, DXT2, etc., etc, at least nine or more choices. Which one does BOB2 enjoy digesting the best? I did get an edited tile into the game with "BCsomething DXT5," but might as well be safe instead of sorry.

edit: One more, then off to more tile experiments: I see that many here use ImageShack for their screenshots, so I guess they're fairly good for such things? In other words, no 5000 spam e-mails in my inbox?

scoobared,

If the DDS file you are fiddling with has no (underlying) masked texture,
then save as DXT1.

If the DDS file you are fiddling with does have an (underlying) masked texture,
then save as DXT5.

Select No MIP MAPS, as BOBII does not use them, yet.

-----

For editing the Landmap2 terrain textures, (which have no masked transparency) save as DXT1, no Mip Maps.



Whilst the rest of this world seems to have gone to hell in a guilloutine's head basket, lately,
((EDIT: nix my USA political rant about the last 8 years))
I am still comforted that ImageShack accepts and posts my overly large, in most cases,
pictures.
I love ImageShack. Feel kinda guilty that I use their space for free. But.. I am just a poor boy.
I've never had any spam CRAP from them.

I also use PhotoBucket. They limit resolutions to 1024, though. Love them, too!

_________________
"Toto! I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!" Dorothy, OZ
"sniff.. sniff.. Snort! ARF! GGRRRR! ARF! (Tod der stinkenden republikanischen Partei, diesem ignoranten religiösen Monstrum.)" Toto

I'd be a little careful in taking Rowan's allocation of forests as gospel or indeed the RAF period map. Kent and Surrey are considerably more wooded than the allocations they made. Trees don't just grow in the neat clumps, marked on a map. Surrey, for example, is the most wooded county in England. They are absolutely everywhere.

Take a look at a typical area such as Balcombe or Haywards Heath in googlemaps/earth and compare against the RAF map and it's clear that there are many more trees than in the maps.


A problem we do have, though, is that northern Suss ex (say) actually looks rather different from southern Suss ex and we do not have different textures. So you will always get one of them wrong. It's not an easy one to get right, really..

_________________
"Ah yes, Michael (Parkinson)," Bader replied, "But these particular Fockers were Messerschmitts..."

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Well, looks like the Anti-Unreal Woods Coalition is deep-sixed.

I guess I'll stick with trying to paint over the 2d farmhouses on the agricultural tiles.

Yes, the maps show specific, usually named woods but where I live they show what is called "Woodham Walter Common", a large wooded area and completely miss a significant wood which I overlook. We certainly cannot populate woods purely by the areas shown on the OS maps. I don't think this is an easy one as I don't like seeing fake woods either.

Well I'm not saying that you cannot reduce the woodland somewhat in places, in some areas we could use more, others less. It's all a bit of a balancing act. Look at moderm satellite photos of the relevant areas.

_________________
"Ah yes, Michael (Parkinson)," Bader replied, "But these particular Fockers were Messerschmitts..."

Intel Core I7 920 @3.57GHz
GA-EX58-UD3R Mobo
8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600MHz)
ATI HD4870 1024M
Win 7 Home
Saitek X52 Pro