Water settings.....

[benson]

Been working my way steadily through the editor for the last couple of weeks and generally enjoying myself. It's got to be one of the best editors I've seen with any game. One thing keeps eluding me though and that's how to use the water settings in F2.I can mess around with the maps and sort of get a river with working boats but reading through the help section Nike posted here in the mods section I found a piece he put in about setting water levels etc. so I was hoping to at last be able to do things properly but no go. I still cannot get the water level to be anything but '0'. Could anyone here run through briefly how it's done? The Tutorials at Youtube are of low vision quality and combined with no soundtrack I just can't follow them.:(

[Nike-it]

Been working my way steadily through the editor for the last couple of weeks and generally enjoying myself. It's got to be one of the best editors I've seen with any game. One thing keeps eluding me though and that's how to use the water settings in F2.I can mess around with the maps and sort of get a river with working boats but reading through the help section Nike posted here in the mods section I found a piece he put in about setting water levels etc. so I was hoping to at last be able to do things properly but no go. I still cannot get the water level to be anything but '0'. Could anyone here run through briefly how it's done? The Tutorials at Youtube are of low vision quality and combined with no soundtrack I just can't follow them.:(

The guide for GEM will be updated in the nearest time. And about video tutorials, try to switch HQ mode, they become much more useable.

[Zeke Wolff]

Place your water entities on the map where your lake/sea and/or river are going to be. Then use the height tool to make the ground under the water entities lower.

Then go to heights and set water altitude as anything below zero, like perhaps -10. You will now see all your water entities being lowered to -10. Continue to lower them by using the water altitude settings until it looks ok.

I have added a screenshot of a map that I am working on (very very WIP) and I´ve encircled the part of the menu where you set the water altitude. I hope this will explain how to set the water altitude. By doing this, all soldiers and vehicles that enters the water, will have splash around them when moving and if the water gets too deep for them, soldiers will swim and vehicles will sink and be lost forever.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2182/waterjsr.th.jpg (http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=waterjsr.jpg)

~Zeke.

[benson]

Nike-it.Thanks for your response.Good news about the Editor. Zeke Wolff thanks for your tutorial.I'm off to try it now.

[benson]

Zeke Wolff.Thanks again. I'm ok now.

[Zeke Wolff]

Happy to hear that you got it to work. Now go make some nice maps for us to enjoy!

~Zeke.

[Prowlinger]

Zeke... do you have the image you were going to post? I am confused still...

When I go to Heights and set the Water Altitude to -10 ... it will not keep any # lower than zero.

>Edit -> Ok I got it working... placed a large river and scaled it up .... you must go into TERRAINS and set Ground/Shallow Water or any other terrain down also... so you will see the water splash effects... Heheh swamp is funny... My soldier vanished to the Piranha!

Ok... so a few things... my water altitude won't set below zero... and also how can you place just a large mass water object on the map or is there one? Am doing a jungle/swamp and it is going to take ALOT of water objects... was thinking could get by with just a super large one but scaling it seems to change the water texture detail (makes it worse)...

:)

Ok so it seems ALL the swamp terrains will just suck up your infantry... and Swamp terrain will suck up your vehicles too... hmmm Wanted to add in mud and puddles to slow down troops and vehicles... any ideas?

[Zeke Wolff]

Zeke... do you have the image you were going to post? I am confused still...

Picture is attached to my reply to Benson´s original question, two or three postings above yours... :rolleyes:

When I go to Heights and set the Water Altitude to -10 ... it will not keep any # lower than zero.

>Edit -> Ok I got it working... placed a large river and scaled it up .... you must go into TERRAINS and set Ground/Shallow Water or any other terrain down also... so you will see the water splash effects... Heheh swamp is funny... My soldier vanished to the Piranha!

Do not use scaling on water stamps. Use several smaller water stampings placed next to each other to create a larger piece of water. And when the map is fully done, then go to TERRAINS and use the option "TEXTURE FILL". This will automatically create your different terrain effect. When this has been done, use the other TERRAIN OPTIONS to create dirt road effects, river effects etc etc.

Ok... so a few things... my water altitude won't set below zero... and also how can you place just a large mass water object on the map or is there one? Am doing a jungle/swamp and it is going to take ALOT of water objects... was thinking could get by with just a super large one but scaling it seems to change the water texture detail (makes it worse)...

Strange... In the screenshot I added of my desert map in my reply to Benson´s question, so have I set the water altitude to -85 with no problem at all... You do lower the ground where you want the water to be, right? Always make the ground where rivers, seas and lakes are placed lower than the surrounding areas.

Ok so it seems ALL the swamp terrains will just suck up your infantry... and Swamp terrain will suck up your vehicles too... hmmm Wanted to add in mud and puddles to slow down troops and vehicles... any ideas?

Yes, there is an easy and quick solution to this... Go to TERRAIN PP, pick Swamp and in the menu TERRAIN FX pick Mud for any areas which should be muddy and Puddles for areas with a puddle in it etc.

~Zeke.

[benson]

Prowlinger. I found that regarding the water settings mine kept reverting to zero until I set them and then hit the 'Enter' key on my keyboard.

[Zeke Wolff]

Prowlinger. I found that regarding the water settings mine kept reverting to zero until I set them and then hit the 'Enter' key on my keyboard.

Yep, this is correct. You must always hit the "Enter" key whenever you manually changes any of the height and water values in the editor... sorry for missing to point this one out...

~Zeke.

[Prowlinger]

Zeke... can you get any SWAMP terrains to work correctly?

All of them swallow up infantry... but not vehicles. I am thinking they did complete these terrains and may redefine them for the Japanese swamps etc coming soon.???

[Zeke Wolff]

You should use the TERRAIN PP "Ground" and then pick "Mud" from the TERRAIN FX menu... (just scroll down and you will see the words "Mud" and "Puddle". Using the TERRAIN PP "Swamp" always drowns your guys...

~Zeke.

[Prowlinger]

Super! This makes more sense...

A few more questions...

1. Can you ramp a height from point A to point B with the heights brush?

2. Is there a command to "smooth an area" instead of settings the brush to the lowest settings it will go and brushing down height 1 time?

3. Can you explain what the 4 borderlines exactly do?

So far...

YELLOW = Player units max distance... (Seems AI can go beyond that?) Fog also starts here and goes to the edge of the green border.

GREEN = Max distance you can see period... Fog ends here.

LIGHT BLUE = ???

MAGENTA = ???

4. When placing textures ... I seem to be having a hard time finding certain textures that blend with one another (when they don't perfectly blend they make hard edge lines)
Is this just an error in the editor or do you have to find the perfect textures overall? (Having a tough time finding blending textures for a jungle / wet sand mix) Even when I
import all the textures from say... FRONTLINE11... half of them show hard edges when placed... I would think all textures would perfectly blend regardless?

Please correct me if my descriptions are wrong above... :) Thanks!

[Zeke Wolff]

1. Can you ramp a height from point A to point B with the heights brush?

Yes you can... but I wont tell... ;)

Nah, just kidding. Place the brush on top of the hill (or wherever you want the "ramp"). Then hold LSHIFT and then move the mouse whilst holding down the RMB. This will create a quite good slooping ramp. It will take a few (ok, many in some cases) moves with the mouse to get it nice though.

2. Is there a command to "smooth an area" instead of settings the brush to the lowest settings it will go and brushing down height 1 time?

As far as I know... nope. I always smooths my maps with the LSHIFT-LMB and LSHIFT-RMB. You can enlarge the brush with the "+" and decrease it with "-". With a very large brush you will smoth a 500x500 sized map in no time.

3. Can you explain what the 4 borderlines exactly do?

I´m not 100% sure on this myself but ok, here is what I know about them.

YELLOW = Player units max distance... (Seems AI can go beyond that?) Fog also starts here and goes to the edge of the green border.

GREEN = Max distance you can see period... Fog ends here.



Your guess is as good as mine.


LIGHT BLUE = ???

Really don´t know what this one do.

MAGENTA = ???

This tells where the map ends. You can´t move outside this border line if you have the "Clip Camera Position" clicked.

I usually places the magenta line where I want my map to end (in 99% of the cases it is located at the true edge of the visible map). The yellow/green lines is placed so that the green line is about the width of a Tiger I ( :D ) from the magenta line.

The light blue (cyan?) is located in between the yellow and green lines, but closer to the yellow one.

This seems to work quite good with both MP and SP maps that I´ve made earlier (for FoW and DCG. I haven´t made any MP map for MoW yet).

4. When placing textures ... I seem to be having a hard time finding certain textures that blend with one another (when they don't perfectly blend they make hard edge lines)...
Is this just an error in the editor or do you have to find the perfect textures overall?

No, it isnt an error in the editor, it is just you who hasn´t fully understood how the textures work.

This is quite difficult to explain but there is a tutorial which explains this. Last time I saw it, it was still located at the DMS site. Here is a link to the actual tutorial. http://www.digitalmindsoft.eu/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=454

~Zeke.