AGEOD Forums

If someone were to make alternate regions bitmaps for Mud (like Winter currently has), would it require an engine change to make them used by the game, or is that modable by the user?

A few little engine changes, but globally the technique would be the same as that we use for winter bitmaps..the only trouble(s) are the amount of data to regenerate, for all region data files, and regions images (and for the latter its size, as you are in effect in need to double the maps graphics size)....

The naming convention for winter images being always the same, the actual filename for winter images stored in the rgn files is not used I think...

So one can imagine that the code look for Mud_MyRegionImage.bmp in case of Mud weather, that would not be too hard to plug (in the code yes).

As for the graphics, yes you would need to make them But memory load would not increase, as if you display Mud you don't display standard images, and images are rotated out of memory when not used (except for some ATI cards which crash after a while ).

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I was thinking of releasing a self contained Processing script that would generate mud versions of existing regions. So download size would be negligible, the user would just have to let the process run for a few minutes on their system.
Of course they'd have to rerun it after each patch that added or altered the Regions bitmaps and that could get confusing...

That would be awesome ... and re-running the script after each new patch a very small "price" to pay! Seeing the "mud" would be very helpful.

pakfront wrote:I was thinking of releasing a self contained Processing script that would generate mud versions of existing regions. So download size would be negligible, the user would just have to let the process run for a few minutes on their system.
Of course they'd have to rerun it after each patch that added or altered the Regions bitmaps and that could get confusing...

Automatic processing of those bitmaps sounds a bit like you are thinking of just changing some of the colors (e.g., replacing green by brown or such). If so, I guess that this could also be also done online, i.e., during the game: if there is muddy weather in a region, some colors are just replaced in copy the bitmap that is loaded into the RAM. Would such a process add significantly to the work load?

Probably more to Pocus and crew's workload than the CPU's.

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I should have mentioned that in my test scripts altering the current bitmaps it has actually worked just fine. I read in the .rgn files and use the data in there to make sure the new bitmaps are the right size and have the correct magenta matting. I have successfully loaded them into AACW and they display correctly, no missing puzzle pieces or other oddities.

Do you have a screenshot? 'Mudding' an entire region graphic... I'm unsure it renders well.

pakfront wrote:I should have mentioned that in my test scripts altering the current bitmaps it has actually worked just fine. I read in the .rgn files and use the data in there to make sure the new bitmaps are the right size and have the correct magenta matting. I have successfully loaded them into AACW and they display correctly, no missing puzzle pieces or other oddities.

Then what are you waiting for???
Show a picture!!!

[SIZE="1"](I can't resist an opportunity to use that one )[/size]

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Fair enough! Here's the test. I just switched the Winter bitmaps with my custom ones for purposes of illustration.
keep in mind it's rough, I'm sure we could get it looking a lot better:

You know, that doesn't look bad at all. Nice going, pakfront

Superb ... That would really add to the ability to quickly and easily determine best paths ... or, to not move at all and wait for better conditions.

I like it.

I like it

That would be a great addition to the game

+1

Yes, very interesting. Nice work there Pak!

Not bad at all, even good

But to be honest, mud support can only be considered as an unofficial add-on for now. We will need some time to think about the extra code too.

Of course. If you get a chance to add the extra code to load Mud_ bitmaps, let me know and I will release the image generating tool.

I can't give you an ETA, but this is on my to do list, in the first 25% of it even, so it should be in within some weeks. Can't be faster sorry.

Good news!