Product Chat / Terrain System Workflow

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Teabone
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 03:49 Edited at: 18th Jul 2017 04:19
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Hi everyone, first off, I'm incredibly excited to see the new 16 terrain textures have been implemented to the editor. This really helps with allowing for some more creative control and diversifying the geology of a landscape on a map. I'm also very pleased to see that you can use different terrains on other maps so if you have connected levels you can really create dynamic and unique looking outdoor locations for your game.

Ive been going to town like crazy on a Game Guru project as of late. Unfortunately however I am using a map I've been building up for months now. I say unfortunately as I noticed the new terrain system of which this map really needed... disrupts a bit of the original workflow when handling my custom terrains. Things were broken at first but have since been fixed. But I am coming across another unexpected issue or hurdle. I noticed that you cannot actually just layer any texture on top of another in a well-blended manner. Everything has to be prepared in a cascaded way in advance before moving on to painting your map. Unfortunately i started painting before this feature came up and I fore-see a great deal of work trying to figure out this new workflow for an existing map I'd like to enhance with the new feature.



To better illustrate, I have a mostly grassy area of which I'd like to have stone paths and some areas of dirt and moss without those borders that are created with the outer edge borrowed from other terrains on the palette. I'm very well familiar with do environmental design in video-games and have a history in it myself. I'm definitely not asking Lee to change anything here or add any new tool to solve this problem. I'm just curious how others are creating new workflows with existing projects since this new update?

I for-see limitless possibilities here but also a lot of planning required to get the tiles ordered properly to cascade properly for blending purposes without edges. If I find a workflow that actually works flawlessly I may make a tutorial video on it. But for now I'm a bit stomped as to prepare the tile order so it all works seamlessly.

EDIT: Did just notice this new layer addition to the texture painting option which is a pretty good work around and its backwards compatible. Lee is a genius.



This still will require a lot of planning with the order of things, for the areas of which I do use the "banding" look between terrains and the areas I do not. Below is an example of where the banding feature can kind of work:



Thanks Lee for the 16 textures! Now to plan out my workflow.
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MrEaKing(YT)
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 05:28
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I use the same textures a few times to help get the flow together (ex. grass, moss, needles, moss, grass, gravel, road, gravel, grass, moss, sand, rock, sand, moss, grass, path) and whatever you make your 1st texture I believe is suppose to be your overwrite texture. so if you make that grass then use it to paint over the extra textures that appear when you don't want i believe it will overwrite them giving you a better blend. been a few weeks since I was messing with it I know the gameguru youtube channel talks about it briefly.
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Teabone
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 05:32 Edited at: 18th Jul 2017 05:33
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Just also noticed Lee has rearranged the default texture tiles in the palette to be more blended and gradual. That's a good way to start people off who might be just as confused. I think for working with an existing map there is a lot of challenges involved but its all do-able since you can simply just paint on top.

I think I'm going to use grass as my default overwrite. A good way to fix up those borders.
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GraPhiX
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 08:54
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Hi Teabone, have you tried the variation slot yet, it allows for very unique terrains that do blend quite well, and don't forget the path slot can be painted without any banding at all

I have created some textures here https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217786 with videos on how to combine textures without banding
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Teabone
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 13:43
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I discovered the one path slot Lee has made. Its helpful for making corrections. What is the variation slot?
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 13:53
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Slot 14, second from right in the bottom row is the variation slot.

https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/217824

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GraPhiX
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Posted: 18th Jul 2017 16:18
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Sorry Teabone there is more info here too https://forum.game-guru.com/thread/218117

slots are sometimes metioned has 0 -15 othertimes 1 - 16 ther is a screen shot halfway down the thread that highlights the main slots
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Teabone
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Posted: 20th Jul 2017 16:40
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i've also come across another issue where my terrains are not making any sound when walked on.
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Posted: 20th Jul 2017 17:50
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the EBE texture palate as sounds associated with them, as far as the terrain I have never had that problem, what version are you using and have you tried a verify, I use the public preview which I think is 2017.5.12 and they work fine on that version.

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Posted: 20th Jul 2017 23:34 Edited at: 20th Jul 2017 23:36
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Hi all,
I use the public preview and also have the same sound volume issue Teabone mentioned. This problem has been around since the intro of the EBE.

For me walking on terrain is extremely quiet, and any ambience sound - like wind etc - makes it completely silent.

I am sure Lee said there was somewhere to adjust the sound volume for this, but can't seam to find that comment\thread atm.

Perhaps and option in player marker properties to set sound volume would be nice to have.

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GraPhiX
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Posted: 21st Jul 2017 08:24
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did you mean this:
Quote: "There are no direct commands or settings to influence the footfall volumes, they are controlled entirely from the raw WAV data and the materials file which you can find at audiobank\materials\materialdefault.txt, which only modulates the sound frequency with the "matfreq" field. I have added a note to add the "matvolume" to these settings so you can change the relative volume of these footfall sounds but if you want a short term solution, you can edit the new control script for the player (gameplayercontrol.lua) which now handles the playing of the sound in LUA and you can adjust the sound volume with the command "SetRawSoundVolume"."
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OldFlak
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Posted: 21st Jul 2017 10:23 Edited at: 21st Jul 2017 10:36
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Hey GraPhix, that would be it.

Had a look at gameplayercontrol but way too complicated to me - have no idea where to put that bit of code

For me all footfall sounds are sort of ok, but not terrain, it is way too quiet. So the volume would have to be changed in the materialdefault file - not sure what the frequency would be for that (currently they are all set at 22050) might try doubling that - not that I have any idea how frequency values work

EDIT: Just tried changing the frequency for GenericSoft to 4100 in the materialdefault file but it makes no difference at all. I guess you could just open the actual audio file in Audacity and crank the volume up in there.

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Posted: 21st Jul 2017 10:48 Edited at: 21st Jul 2017 10:56
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I'm no coder but is it something like this


I think this is the section that needs the modified code,
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Posted: 21st Jul 2017 10:58 Edited at: 21st Jul 2017 11:23
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just tried it with this no errors but the sound stays the same volume



I have tried this too, no errors but no change:



I am not sure what iID I set before the volume level the standard format is :

SetRawSoundVolume: SetRawSoundVolume ( iID, iVolume ) -- where iID is the raw engine sound index and iVolume from 0 to 100

how do I address the raw engine sound index ?

thinking about it logically I would assume its this


but that doesn't work either maybe its where I put it in gameplayercontrol that will make the difference

like I said I am no coder lol but I do try until it breaks then I stop
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Posted: 21st Jul 2017 12:14
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I looked at this a while back, it's this code:



However, I don't think the actual sound index that is being played is being reported by PlayFootfallSound, it is actually the sequence number of the footfall sounds, so there is no index to use with SetRawSoundVolume (and as it happens SetRawSoundVolume won't accept a value greater than 100 so won't let volume go up just down anyway).

So dare I suggest (until Lee tells me otherwise) that the footfall sound volume on terrain can't be increased via code like this - now I've done it - likely an avalanche of "yes you can" about to follow

I think the only way is to change the amplitude in the wav files themselves until Lee makes the change he has noted for materialdefault.txt - this does work, it's these files for default terrain if you want to try - not ideal as trial and error to get the volume you want:

0grassA1.wav
0grassA2.wav
0grassA3.wav
0grassA4.wav

in audiobank\materials.

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