VTP over custom textures do not show up?

[Guest]

Dear friends,I am having difficulty with the wave effects showing over land classification derived custom textures.What I mean by this is that a set of photo tiles were created using resample with a photograph as a source file. The portions where there is water were assigned transparency.The bgl that calls these photo tiles was created using a land classification source file where land portions where given class # 253 and water portions away from the coastline class # 254.The advantage of this approach is that it solves the problem of redesigning the coastlines. These are defined in the photo tiles themselves.But now, what I need is to add the wave effects to the coastline. I produced the asm file for this purpose. I tried increasing the layer number from 8 to 100 and reducing it to 0. Nothing seems to work. I know that the waves are working because if I disable the land classification bgl, the waves show up.So the question is: Does this approach disable this kind of effects? It does not make much sense because coastlines appear on top of landclass in the default case. Do I need to try different types of coastlines that match the current class, ie, LC#253??I tried to look at the landclass bgl using a hex editor in the hopes that I could find the structures as described in the SDK but the structure seems to be different. I was hoping to fing the layer number used for the placement of the photo tiles.Any comments on this?Cheersjmf

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi jmf.A CUSTOM texture will exclude everything... it doesn't matter if it's placed with a CUSTOM BGL or a LandClass BGL ( they are the same thing! ).No VTPs or LWMs can show over the CUSTOM groundtile... and neither can the wave effect tied to the VTP shoreline textures by 'terraintextures.cfg'.But... there should be a way to assign an effect to a CUSTOM texture... the Niagara example has effects! So you should be able to assign effects to your CUSTOM textures, including waves.This is one reason why I'm leaning towards the idea of using CUSTOM slices as templates for VTP and LWM polys and lines. Custom groundtiling has some of these inherent problems with lines, effects, seasons, autogen. There are work-arounds, but with the labor amount, it might be more efficient to make the VTP and LWM BGLs... and if default textures are used, there is no texture storage overhead... just the BGLs.Dick

[Guest]

Hi Dick, >A CUSTOM texture will exclude everything... it doesn't >matter if it's placed with a CUSTOM BGL or a LandClass BGL ( >they are the same thing! ). >>No VTPs or LWMs can show over the CUSTOM groundtile... Oh!, I wish that were the case. Are we not forgetting the LWM flattening coastline poly's that seem to resist all attempts to be overwritten/excluded or have I missed something in a recent thread.Regards,Chris Wilkes

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Chris!You're right, the flattening stays, as far as we know, and why that was left in the terrain engine is anyone's guess!"CellGrid / Remesh" shows a picture of David's remeshing program! You might want ot talk to him.Dick

[Guest]

Hi Dick,Thanks for your reply!What you are saying makes sense. However I have in mind the very same thing! Microsoft did it! And its nothing to do with the terrain bgl because that one we can build ourselves as described in the sdk.At first I thought that this effect was within the very same bgl file, in this case, NiagaraFinishedSample.bgl (I can't remember the name exactly) but then I remembered that this bgl is produced by resample alone (unless there is a way to merge bgls). On the other hand if you disable this scenery or this bgl, the effect is still there and looks basically the same. I think this effect is comming from a default bgl somewhere in the scenedb folders or main fs2002 scenery folder which I couldn't locate yet. This bgl may provide some clues to this secret.I also tried to put the same effect on the same area I can't put the waves using bgl placer and it does not work. But if I move the effect further away from those custom textured tiles, then the effect work as well as my waves. So what is the difference between this and Niagara Falls scenery?Maybe what you are suggesting is that there is a tool similar to the anotation tool where you can place effects in a similar fashion to autogen objects.cheersjmf

[Guest]

Hi again,One other test I will try later is to try and add an effect to the niagara falls area. I will try and add some waves to the river!If this does not work, it supports our assumption that there is a special (non documented) way of adding effects!If it does work, I don't know what to think ;)Cheersjmf

[Guest]

Dear friends,Update information:For some strange reason, I can now add the Niagara falls effect to my target area. So I managed to do what Microsoft did in the Niagara Falls scenery area. This is using the bglplacer tool. However, I didn

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi jmf.The Niagara effects are in "C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFS2002SCENEDBWesthemusglScenery", and named 'fx_usgl.bgl'. They are part of the default FS2002 scenery.I don't know a lot about effects, but they are definitely possible with CUSTOM textures. As for waves, perhaps the default structure for waves needs to be changed somehow. They were designed to be used with the shoreline textures.Dick