tommyboy's Map Making Misadventures and Conundrums

[Conduit]

Hey, Tommyboy, did you ever try Goggle's suggestion of "stacking" multiple building pieces in the same nif?  Because I really think that that could work.  And I can confirm that the destruction nifs will work with multiple pieces in FFvTTR.  I know, because I did this for one level of the Matrix Mod Revolutions (I added doors to the buildings in the Zion dock map), and both the normal and destruction versions worked perfectly.  Simply make the different pieces part of the same fragment group, and they'll all collapse together.

Anyway, I'll take a look at those nifs you uploaded and see if I can do anything with them.  I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to you, since internet access is pretty spotty for me right now.

[GogglesPizanno]

I did in fact try the stacking idea...and it fails. But I think I have a pretty good grasp (well almost fairly certain) of some of the problems and what is happening.

From what I can see, this is an issue with the game engine.
I tried several ideas with tommyboy's buildings and they all failed in pretty much the same way each time.
So then I tried replicating the issues with my own "in progress" building nifs, that are constructed on a floor by floor basis (each floor being ~1 1/2 times the height of a standard character).

I started with a nif file that was the size of a standard in game building - Worked fine
Doubled the height - still worked
Quadrupled the height - Had the same problems as tommyboy's

So at that point I started removing a single floor at a time until the nif started behaving correctly again.
Because Im scaling things in nifskope, and its values are relative to the original size of the model, I don't have actual game units, but a rough estimate looks to be about 80 feet (9 floors x 9 ft per floor assuming the average game character is 6ft). Anything higher than that, it starts to go wonky.

This still didn't explain the issue with being able to stack it (or the destruction pieces sometimes working)... playing around with that, I tried taking my working 9 floor building duplicating it and stacking it on itself. Like Tommyboy said, that works.... BUT when you get a level that high up you start getting weird behavior when you click for a character to move. It looks like that with the camera at that height  it starts to screw up the vector math for computing locations of mouse clicks... which makes sense because the camera is so high up you completely lose level detail and scale so the vectors that the game is using from the camera to to the ground (or building roofs) start messing up and becomes kind of a crap shoot as to what the game is registering you hitting.

So in summary, from my tests (which are anything but scientific) I theorize the following two hypotheses.

1. It appears that there IS a limit on height that an individual building can be before it starts acting bizarrely. This is based on the height of the nif file, so my original stacking idea with nifskope will still produce the same problems if the total height of the whole nif exceeds this arbitrary limit.

2. Even with stacking in FFEdit (which overcomes the building height issue) there seems to be a limit to how high the level can be before the game engine starts losing the ability to interact properly with it.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Bugger.  :angry:

*storms down to MacNavish's Inn, where SouperIan is likely to be found nursing a lime Rickey*

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning

[tommyboy]

GyaaH!11oneoneone1!
Well, thanks for the confirmations, and new info, Goggles.
Looks like exciting dizzyingly high rooftop battles are probably not on the menu, unless the separate roof idea is used, or stacking, and even then, there are the issues Goggles mentions, as well as those pertaining to _destruction synchronization.
For the latter I did think maybe if the separate roof were alpha'd to be invisible it'd look nicer, but then you might just be treading on an invisible roof. Then I thought, give the invisible roof very low hitpoints and a tiny _destruction version. That should mean you can stand on the undamaged version (on the invisi-roof), then hopefully when the main building is damaged, the invisi-roof is either destroyed outright, or leaves a tiny _destruction version, meaning the damaged buildings can only be partially stood on, if at all. Or maybe an ffx plugin can destroy the invisi-roof if the building takes damage.

I can live with the limitation, personally. The high buildings are a tiny percentage of the whole map, and really just add nice scenery. It's a shame if they cannot be fully functional, but I'm not sure I can be arsed to make lots of stackable versions of bits of each one, with the attendant damaged versions, just for the sake of a few seconds of fighting atop them, given knockback will get you off them pdq.

[GogglesPizanno]

Honestly after seeing them in game, I think they work well in the distance as a sense of scale, but are actually a little too high to be much fun during a fight (especially when only a few of your team may be on top of them). Once you are in a fight I think anything more than twice the current building size works well for making the level seem bigger in scale and giving variety, but not making it obtrusive to try and play. I think for rooftop battles, maybe a bigger version of the original FF rooftop map with several buildings is a better way to go.

I personally would like to see your energy spent on making more variety of stuff rather than pulling your hair out trying to add a few more feet to a building.

But thats just my preference.

[Epimethee]

Probably just a silly idea which cannot work, but could the ground be lower than the default? So, with a ground at -80', we'd have 160' buildings.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I believe that is the layout for the skyscraper rooftop map, Epi.  Would the cameras be unable to travel below the X- and Y-axes?  If so, that would pose a problem to gameplay if tommyboy were to set up his map in a similar fashion.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning

[tommyboy]

Probably just a silly idea which cannot work, but could the ground be lower than the default? So, with a ground at -80', we'd have 160' buildings.

It can be done, indeed in the river bits, that's just what I do to simulate swimming (drop the 'ground' beneath the 'water'). However, the camera cannot go beneath '0' as far as I know, so sadly this fine piece of lateral thinking comes to nought, as the game quickly becomes unplayable at the distances you'd need to drop the ground.
It might work though, as far as the recalcitrant roofs are concerned...
*shakes fist at sky*

[Epimethee]

Camera max/min height limits can be set in Python, either in localini.py or mission.py ; in fact, mine is already set to a negative minimum value:
ff.CAM_MIN_ZOOM = -325
ff.CAM_MAX_ZOOM = 3000

Not sure if it really sets the camera to really go under ground level, though

Edit: Darn, Tommy confirmed it doesn't work.

[tommyboy]

Camera max/min height limits can be set in Python, either in localini.py or mission.py ; in fact, mine is already set to a negative minimum value:
ff.CAM_MIN_ZOOM = -325
ff.CAM_MAX_ZOOM = 3000

Hmmm....too late to try this tonight, but tomorrow belongs to me...

[GogglesPizanno]

Nope. Camera is pretty much locked at 0 as far as I know... going to negative with the zoom value  I believe just affects how far back it moves parallel to the ground once it levels out at the 0 plane.

And even if it did work, I think you would still run into the same weird behavior regardless as to whether the distance was 0->160 or -80->80. The distance between camera view port and the ground is the same amount of game units which would still cause the same computational problems. At least logically speaking...

[tommyboy]

Nope. Camera is pretty much locked at 0 as far as I know... going to negative with the zoom value  I believe just affects how far back it moves parallel to the ground once it levels out at the 0 plane.

And even if it did work, I think you would still run into the same weird behavior regardless as to whether the distance was 0->160 or -80->80. The distance between camera view port and the ground is the same amount of game units which would still cause the same computational problems. At least logically speaking...

Oooookaaaaayyyy......sort of a good news/bad news/more bad news scenario on the 'drop the ground' idea.
I took the mp_01_city_small and dropped it about half the height of the flatiron in Max, then exported the terrain, then painstakingly adjusted the level.txt so most buildings and objects were at the new 'ground_level' which I arbitrarily selected at -454.
The good news first: It works! The Flatiron building is stand-upon-able, straight out of the box! Huzzah! Witness the awesome spectacle etc etc etc:


Now all the bad news: for one thing, doing this to the Megacity would be something of a nightmare, meaning I'd pretty much have to start over from scratch (ie either manually or somehow automatically adjust the height of every single one of the 26000 or so objects by -454, or build a -454 version of the mp_city_small, use Stumpy's code to generate a new level.txt then manually re-insert all the custom and non standard buildings to avoid the 'same block repeated over and over' syndrome).
And that's not all. Let's ignore the fact that the camera wont zoom down to the new -454 ground level for a moment, and concentrate on the fact that the characters will not drop down to the new -454 ground level! See?

Now, this I must have done something wrong to achieve, because I know on the megamap you could drop below '0' if you went in the 'water', even down to the very deep bottom of the skysphere. So I don't know how I got this weird 'everyone stands on an invisible ground '0'' effect. I'll play a little more to see if I can fix that, and then give some thought to the 'start over' options.

[tommyboy]

OK, I was referencing the wrong terrain.nif in the level.txt  :doh:, but even with the right one, its still problematic getting the characters to stand on the terrain, rather than above or below it (and probably very obvious or simple as to why, but I'm just not seeing it).
Given that the camera wont go below zero, and the work involved in dropping everything, I think that the idea may have to go to one side.
Which is a shame, as it fixed the tall-buildings-roof-problem, but if it adds more problems than it cures (and it does seem to), then it's not for me.

[Epimethee]

Well, that's bad news; sorry for having sent you on such a wild-goose chase. The change of z-position could be done in batch through a script, but for the rest, I've zero clue. For the camera, the only other variable I can see as being vaguely relevant is CAM_BASE_HEIGHT = 300.0

[tommyboy]

Well, that's bad news; sorry for having sent you on such a wild-goose chase. The change of z-position could be done in batch through a script, but for the rest, I've zero clue. For the camera, the only other variable I can see as being vaguely relevant is CAM_BASE_HEIGHT = 300.0

No, it was a good idea, which worked as far as the initial problem was concerned.
I'll play with the Cam_base_height to see if it can be used.
If the problems are surmountable without my having to go back too far, I may still use the 'drop down' method.

[style]

I know this is probably not a good time to mention this with all the frustrating hard work going on. But I was just skimming through my Skoping topic section and seen that Mistik had a Shield Helecarrior in the works. Wouldn't it be nice to in corporate this in the map some how? When everything is said and done?

[tommyboy]

I know this is probably not a good time to mention this with all the frustrating hard work going on. But I was just skimming through my Skoping topic section and seen that Mistik had a Shield Helecarrior in the works. Wouldn't it be nice to in corporate this in the map some how? When everything is said and done?

If it's in the air, nothing can move beneath it. I suppose it could be out over the river.
It depends on it's size, really, and on whether I like it being permanently in the sky over New York. I sort of doubt that it's there all the time.
Plus, and I mean no disrespect to Mystik, if it's unfinished, my inclination would be to make my own if I wanted one, and I'm not 100% convinced yet that I do.

I'll keep it in mind though.

[style]

Honestly it would only be a good idea to include this if you solve your standing on top of buildings dilemma. Then you can have it close by Stark Towers in the air. ;)  :P And How someone would get to it well I remember playing a mod in which you stood on this transpoter pad and it would transport you to another area. It would be cool to do something like that with this! :thumbup:

[tommyboy]

Honestly it would only be a good idea to include this if you solve your standing on top of buildings dilemma. Then you can have it close by Stark Towers in the air. ;)  :P And How someone would get to it well I remember playing a mod in which you stood on this transpoter pad and it would transport you to another area. It would be cool to do something like that with this! :thumbup:

There will be no so-called "Stark Tower" in this map...there is Avengers Mansion, right there on 5th Ave, overlooking central park. That is where the Avengers are based.
There will be no "new avengers", no "mighty avengers", no "superheroes" who shoot people with guns, or tear superskrull heads off.
There will be no "house of bendis".
That is all.
Return to your workstations until further orders.

[djfredski]

 :angry: all that burn it tommy! i was looking to chop off a skrull heads or two. ;) :P :D :lol: :thumbup:

[tommyboy]

:angry: all that burn it tommy! i was looking to chop off a skrull heads or two. ;) :P :D :lol: :thumbup:

Well, you can't. The worst you may do to them is hypnotize them into thinking that they are cows...or maybe some light punching. But no punching them when they are cows! :P

[djfredski]

 :lol: :lol: :lol:

[GogglesPizanno]

But no punching them when they are cows!

How about tipping??
Tipping is supposed to be fun...

That should be a new FFX swap..."Tipping"

[tommyboy]

But no punching them when they are cows!

How about tipping??
Tipping is supposed to be fun...

That should be a new FFX swap..."Tipping"

I have consulted with the Council of Watchers, the Living Tribunal and the Supreme Intelligence, and it has been deemed that Cow-Tipping is acceptable.
However, should you hypnotize any Skrulls into believing that they are flies, I should warn you that fly-tipping is strictly prohibited...

[doctorchallenger]

Milkk the cows at your own risk.  And if you try to milk the flies, well, you are just disturbed.

[stumpy]

But, no fly tipping. Let's keep the streets clean.  :P

BTW, it looks like the idea might have come and gone by now, but if you need a script to bump the z-axis locations of layout objects by some amount, let me know.

[Epimethee]

There will be no so-called "Stark Tower" in this map...there is Avengers Mansion, right there on 5th Ave, overlooking central park. That is where the Avengers are based.
There will be no "new avengers", no "mighty avengers", no "superheroes" who shoot people with guns, or tear superskrull heads off.
There will be no "house of bendis".

So... no Paste Pot Pete?

Can we petition Marvel to make you editor for the Avengers books (or what's left of them)? Please?

[cmdrkoenig67]

Honestly it would only be a good idea to include this if you solve your standing on top of buildings dilemma. Then you can have it close by Stark Towers in the air. ;)  :P And How someone would get to it well I remember playing a mod in which you stood on this transpoter pad and it would transport you to another area. It would be cool to do something like that with this! :thumbup:

There will be no so-called "Stark Tower" in this map...there is Avengers Mansion, right there on 5th Ave, overlooking central park. That is where the Avengers are based.
There will be no "new avengers", no "mighty avengers", no "superheroes" who shoot people with guns, or tear superskrull heads off.
There will be no "house of bendis".
That is all.
Return to your workstations until further orders.

Tommy, you are the most awesome!  Rock on!

Dana

[tommyboy]

Try to imagine it with a skin on, and you'll get what I'm going for here.


Of course, you cant actually stand on it as yet....

[ow_tiobe_sb]

I predict that you've just tickled the fancies of several community members here, Tom. ;)

Nicely done. :)

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning