Ryandor.com

Hey folks, I really appreciate your help, and have another question for you. I've been working on a map with Mod 9+, but once I got the link to Mods 10 and 11 I downloaded and installed both of them (in different folders, of course). I looked carefully at the color tables and decided that the Mod 10 was best for my needs, then proceeded to throw together a little test map using some of the Mod 10 terrain colors. I'm using the Mod 10 color chart and I'm sure I'm running the right Dragon.exe file (It says "DRAGON for Windows V1.05.00 Beta - Prerelease#6" along the top ) but when I compile the map the terrain comes out screwy, and I can't figure out why. The shape of the map is right, but the actual terrain tiles are completely wrong. I made sure it's saving as a 256 color file, too. Has anyone else had this problem? Can you tell me why it's not working?
Thanks for your help,
-Janice
aka Sparkle!
P.S. I've been using Paint, which worked fine with Mod 9+, and all the colors seem to be right.

Make sure the image itself is using the right colortable, especially with mod 10 because it is so radically different from the rest, it is difficult to convert. Mod 11 is much closer in structure to original through mod 9 and therefore easier to convert, but still you must make sure the image has the correct colortable.

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I tried it with a completely new map, nothing but grass and a few small pieces of terrain, all drawn with the colortable that is included with mod 10. The forest came out as dirt and sand at different altitiudes, and the rock came out incorrectly also. It seems like it must be a colortable issue, but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. :( Has anyone else had this problem with Mod10 and Paint?

Thanks for your help,
-Janice
aka kirax2

Paint? Like MS Paint? I'm not sure the palette is right for it. I work with Photoshop, although I exported to whichever other format it supported as well. Wonder if it's up to date.

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I exported it again, but my password isn't working to upload it to the ftp. Have to get a hold of Ry.

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Thank you for your help. ^_^ Yes, I'm using MS Paint right now, per Melody's tutorial. The colortable for mod 9+ worked fine in Paint, so I don't know why mod 10 doesn't seem to be working right. If you'll let me know when you've re-posted it, I will download it and try again.

I really appreciate that you're taking time to help me with this. Thanks again. :)

-Janice
aka Sparkle!

Hi man, I had the same trouble with MOD 11, I never did get it to work right. I went back to 9+ I tested mod 11 more then I can count and found this out. I installed my Mod 11 and mind you I did this on 2 copies of PhotoShop (7, and CS) and both did that to me, Erratic land tiles. The final straw for me was this, I started a brand new map and laid out a grid for ALL the tile colors and Z ratings, then I compiled it 30 time, with no changes at all done to the map, on like the 20th to 30th compile my map changed.. yes changed, for NO reason. Sand chanded to dirt swamp to Cave floor and so on, I was lost. So I went back to 9+ its not as verstial but its very stable I wish I could make Mod 11 run. looks GREAT but it dont like me .

Fast question, LoL kinda kidding kinda not, is there a way to disable the 15 second splash screen on 9

Odd. If you can send me the map files I'll take a look at them. I've done pretty extensive testing, but it's possible I overlooked something. Also mind you if you are using the 3d client it isn't going to come out right. I've only worked with and tested for the 2d client. I have tryed out the 3d client and I really dislike it so it wasn't worth the trouble for me to do a 3d client compliant set of scripts.

You need the newer Dragon executeable, Darus finally got rid of the splash screen by request. To use it with mod9 you just have to replace the maptrans.txt contents with those from maptrans105 (I think Ry included it in mod9).

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Sorry it took so long to get back to you been abit sence I can here. I dont use the 3D Client either, I done like the models, landscapes cool but the models and other things leave ALOT to be desired. Here is the only Modd11 map I can find. at least I think it is still Mod11, I deleted all the Modd11 work I was doing. I stopped here because it was still a good base, but I cant trust 20 or 30 compileis down the road this will compile but the shore stinks, Never got that to work eigther. South shore looks fine but the N,E,W shores ...well are very bad. they look like blocks are missing (I ran DragonSP) andway heres the map. Also you said that I could use the Mod11 client with Mod9+ I tried what you said and it didnt work (kinda) I may have misunderstood. Do I use a base Mod9+ and replace the Dragon.exe with the one from Mod11 then replace the maptrans.txt in Mod9+ with the maptrans105 for...? Mod9+? Mod9+already had a maptrans105.txt and a maptrans.txt. do I copy the content fron the maptrans105.txt into the maptrans.txt file? I also had to transfer over a stucts.txt from Mod11 becasue it wanted it. I finaly got it to work but the outcome Looks like..well No shoreline (even after run through DrandonSP) no shore line, South shore looks like land runs straight into the water. No cliff type edge. Looks like grass to withing one tile of the water the slants down and goes right into the water. N,E,W shores....None. Im lost.. Lol. could you kinda/maybe walk me through using the Mod11 Client with Mod9+ please and thanks.

http://home.comcast.net/~warloxxx/Island.rar

Uhhhh....that's a mouthful. Let's see....yes, replace the dragon.exe with the one from mod 11. The maptrans you got right also, replace maptrans from mod 9 with the maptrans105 from mod 9. I'll take a look at the map. With mod 11 the coastlines are potentially a lot better but need some manual tweaking with worldforge. I posted a tutorial somewhere.

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I ran the map through mod 11, it compiled fine. It is using my current palette so that isn't a problem.

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Well I did the coping over of the Dragon.exe and the I renamed the maptrans105.txt to maptrans.txt and ran it..drum roll please well it compiled and I ran DragonSP.exe and it to completed... but when I went ingame and looked at the cost line all the coast was there and so was the static water tiles (where the coast and the water meet) but it looked like the land had slid over some here is the image ill try to make for you, say you take 2 quarters and set them ontop of each other, so they match perfect, now slide the top one down and to the right just a hair. thats my coast line ..LOL Mod 11 HATES me man, im tellin ya

FYI, there is a bug in the maptrans105 file that comes with Dragon Mod 9. Where it says:
// (07) snow
60 18 000 011a 011b 011c 011d
61 18 002 011a 011b 011c 011d
62 18 005 011a 011b 011c 011d
63 18 010 011a 011b 011c 011d
64 18 012 011a 011b 011c 011d
etc...
It should read:
// (07) snow
60 07 000 011a 011b 011c 011d
61 07 002 011a 011b 011c 011d
62 07 005 011a 011b 011c 011d
63 07 010 011a 011b 011c 011d
64 07 012 011a 011b 011c 011d
etc... (all the "18"s in this section should be changed to "07"). If you do not do this, your snow transitions will not work.

I have also been having difficulty with the coasts, and I've been trying different things all day. I'm starting to think that I may just let UOCoast handle them, though. ^_^;;; (Damn coasts! LOL)

-Janice
aka kirax2

Cool thx, Ill correct the Snow part, as for UOCoast, I tried it but I got the same coastline on a Mod11 map as I did when I ran the map through the normal Dragon.exe and DragonSP.exe but I may have an OLD version of UOCoast). I deffinetly will be correcting the snow thing though thx again.

Last time I used UOCoast I didn't find it any different than Dragon (original through mod 9). Mod 10/11 coastlines should be different, because I've completely rescripted them. Coastlines are a pain because they involve several rows of tiles and statics unlike simple land transitions where you just have to find the tile that is the combination of A and B that fits in one of 8 orientations. The newer versions of WorldForge make fixing it a lot easier though. What you need is to randomize the elevation of the second land tile in (what looks to you like the first, because the first is actually the slope that you can't see), dragging it up and down 1-3 tiles on the north and west coasts breaks up the blockiness and makes them look like they should. There just isn't any way to automate it right now because I don't have any program that is capable of doing the calculation involved.

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I spent several hours yesterday trying different combinations of things, and here are the results I got:

1. Dragon 9+ Executable with Dragon 9+ water2x/x2water map and statics scripts: give an almost perfect coastline, though I still have trouble if the water/terrain are anything other than -5/0. For example, if I use water 5/terrain 10, I get that corner of water sticking out the side.

2. Dragon 11+ executable with Dragon 9+ water scripts: Some of the north coastlines look ok, but the rest are brown lines, especially southern coastlines.

3. Dragon 11+ executable with Dragon 11 water scripts: At first I had a problem because my water was too high, so I had to go into maptrans and make the water section lower, as it is in the mod 11 maptrans (i.e. -15 instead of -5.). Once I did that, I got coastlines that looked very nice, but what looked like one tile offset in the water, so that in the middle of the water one tile out from the coast there were - you guessed it - ugly brown lines.

As for UO Coast, it seems to work only when Dragon has not already tried to define the statics, which means that you either have to disable *all* x2water/water2x scripts (including things like grass2water) or else do what I did and redefine water as a different group in maptrans, similar to the "ocean" group in map 11. I actually created an "Ocean" group when I was attempting to use mod 11 scripts, and UO Coast worked fine on it as long as DragonSP didn't touch it.

Anyway, I really prefer the Mod 11 executable, so it looks like I'll be leaving my coasts funky-looking for now and then later either running the mod9+ executable when I'm finalizing my map or else running UO Coast.

BTW, I understand how mod 11 is supposed to make the coasts - it tiles the "bottom" with a layer of brown on the map and then tiles over it with static ocean tiles. I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, though, since it seems like it would just make your statics file a lot bigger. What is the advantage to making coasts in this manner? I'm just curious. ^_^

Thanks,
-Janice
aka Sparkle!

Well the executeables are not so much related to the mod as just what version was current at the time. Although 1.5 was out when mod 9 was released, Ry decided to stick with 1.362. I'm sure he had a reason but I don't remember what it was. Mod 11 has the newest version of 1.5 which I think was PR8.

If you want to use UoCoast still, you can choose not to freeze the water statics out of the list when you run DragonSP. You can actually pick and choose any of the statics files to freeze or not.

The main advantage of the static water tiles is there are some scripts that will check if it is static or land for shallow/deep water. Mainly fishing and some spawners. Otherwise there isn't much purpose to it, and yes, it does increase the statics quite a bit.

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This is true of the water2x/2xwater scripts, but the grass2water-light and dark scripts are actually map-based. :) By the way, Dragon is actually much better than UO Coast because Dragon is more flexible. Dragon works with anything - i.e. Dragon will fix up water around the base of a stone cliff to look right, but UO Coast can't. UO Coast seems more reliable, but much more limited. I suspect that what I'll end up doing is having one kind of water for Dragon to handle and another one to use on "problem spots" so that UO Coast can do the finishing on those.



Ah, I see, that makes perfect sense. Tough decision, actually, whether to stick with the old coasts or try to get the new ones to work, both systems have their merits. I'll have to give it some thought. ^_^

Thanks so much,
-Janice
aka Sparkle!

Yeah,
Completely forgot about that.

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