Ryandor.com

What should i do to correct this ?

sorry mate..
you must have a broken link or something. Nothing to see..

_________________
Dragonfire
http://www.tragena.net
New screen shots added!

try this:

http://www.geocities.com/bsashard/a.htm

or this

http://www.geocities.com/bsashard/Error.jpg

*sigh*
ok this is a very common problem with mountains (specially when you don?t read the tutorial).

The problem.
The problem is that the UO map is based on a grid. You can tell each grid area (tile) to be whatever you want it to be. You can also tell it to be whatever height you wish.
Now the problem you have is that you can see 1 tile (the mountain edge) at say 30z and behind it you see the ground at 0z.

There is actually nothing wrong. The map tile is doing exactly what you told it to do.
However, the result is somewhat undesirable leaving those unrealistic jagged edges you have in your screen shot.

The reason.
If you have a really good look at the UO default map you will see OSI have cheated somewhat. What you think you see and what?s really there are two different things!

Almost all of their mountains on the east/south side start at about 15z rising to about 25z.
The west/north sides start at about 6z and rise to 12z. Only in the middle of the mountain range do they rise to about 45z.
You remember that mountain passage west of Britain? The one where you feel you are walking up hill into the mountains?? Well you?re not. It?s an illusion. That mountain pass is actually flat. But on the south side of the path they make the rock lower so you feel you are getting higher.

The solution.
What you have to do is use the z lvl?s I just told you so the edges of the mountains blend in. When there isn?t such a big difference in the heights of the tiles they will be more rounded and blend right in.

So..
just remember mountains aren?t boxes. Take your time building up to the height you want. E.g. 1 tile at 6z, 1 tile at 12z then the mountains at 25z-30z and you will be fine.
Anything that you are not happy with now can be fixed with some fine tuning..

If you follow this you wont have 3 problems
1) no jagged edges
2) there are no very high mountains that take a long time to draw as you run past them. (specially with slow dial-up modems)
3) you wont have any ?hidden? areas behind mountains where bodies cant be seen etc.

Hope this helps a bit?
Heh Rosethorn will have me shot at dawn for telling all our secrets! .. oh well.. I need a break!

_________________
Dragonfire
http://www.tragena.net
New screen shots added!

What you said helped a lot, but i still have one question:
How can i get this 6z, 12z (...) if in the color palette starts with 20z ?

Farther on the palette there are lower mountains. Something like 10 (and it's almost white) and It goes up by like 10 from there.
But I'm not at home to check this out. So I might be a little off. But I do know for a fact that there is the lower mountains.

_________________
People ask me why I do this. Why I write such gross stuff. I tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
~Stephen King

Yeah? what Katz said.
The mountains are the only z lvl?s on the pallet that aren?t in height order (for some reason??).

Also.. I never used the 90z mountains (too high) so I changed it to 15z. That helped a lot!

_________________
Dragonfire
http://www.tragena.net
New screen shots added!

The reason the mountains are out of order is the original Dragon didn't have some of them. I didn't want to break compatibility of the mod with the original at the time, and since then it's just stayed put.

That being said I encourage people to learn the scripts and modify it to their needs.

Excellent post Dragonfire!


-Ryandor

newb question:
Where can i script the z's for mountains ?

I really haven't messed around much with this script... but I'm almost sure it's in maptrans105.txt. The part you want to change should look something like this:

And I believe that if you just change this part:

See what the 090 in there is the altitude. So I believe that if you just change that to something smaller... like this (or whatever altitude you want it to be):

You should be good to go... but then again like I said I really haven't messed around with this script (or really many of them). So I could be wrong.
Well anyway hope that helped.

_________________
People ask me why I do this. Why I write such gross stuff. I tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
~Stephen King

If you are using the version of Dragon that I have in the mod (v1.03.62), then it's maptrans.txt
If you are using the newer version of Dragon (v1.05) then it's maptrans105.txt (and needs to be renamed maptrans.txt)

maptrans.txt


In maptrans105.txt, there is an additional "group" number at the beginning of each line. Don't change that.

Changing the altitude should be the only thing you need. But remember the colortable will not reflect your changes, so remember which ones you change. It's only a guide so you'll not have to change it to make it work.

Also, take a look at the notes at the beggining of almost all the scripts for more information regarding what each file does and how it's setup.

-Ryandor