Ryandor.com

Been working on a new transition from watery swamp-grassy swamp and grassy swamp-grass (take a look at the OSI map if you don't know what I am talking about. Going through this though I want to bring up something I been thinking about since I started with Dragon; getting rid of some of the terrain heights that are just not practicle. Like say swamps; does anyone out there use anything besides Swamp 0? Would give more space to use for other more useful and interesting things.

I'd like to submit this transition for the next mod when I'm done with it and I was planning on leaving swamp 0, making next swatch my "grassy swamp 0" and then wiping the rest of the swamp colors off the chart.

Ry? Others?
Good idea? Bad idea?

Is this the transition you're talking about? (in the screenshot below)

If so, try dragon mod 9.....let me know if this works or not.....I also have some other ideas.

good luck!

Nope, that's not it Melody, that is not even mod 9; it's original Dragon transition.
Load up the osi map and take a walk around the great swamp.
I'll put up some screenies later, have to go to work now. I've got the transition made already; just tweaking til I am 100% satisfied with it.

You're refering to the "rough" grass tiles?
I can see a use for those.
Are you using only one color for it? Like you propose for the swamp color in the next mod?

-Ryandor

Yeah I guess you could call them that. They are the tiles surrounding the dark green "watery swamp" tiles. I haven't straightened out IIS on my server so I've got nowhere to put screenies right now but it's what is used as the transition to the grass on the shot Melody posted.

I was thinking maybe cut the swamp row down to just the 2 types of swamp tiles at altitude 0. That would free up a bunch of colors to be used for say proper cave entrances and transitions(my next project). I'd like to do quite a bit of pruning to the terrain groups and palette but it's something the mod community should discuss.

I'll submit the tables later on tonight after I've had a chance to go over them a little more. It looks really good but it could be better.

Don't forget to look at the new post regarding the colortable:
http://www.ryandor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=728

-Ryandor

Ok it's all posted in submissions forum. I don't think I left anything out. I went with the spots in the proposed next mod color table. I also made it work with the current mod with a few small changes that I posted. The technique here is to use what is currently swamp 12 to make your big swamp mass and then make shapes inside it with swamp 0. Or just outline your current swamps with a bit of swamp 12 color.

On a side note map2bitmap will bring up a whole swamp area from OSI in color like this. The program isn't busted. You just need a color assigned to each terrain type and altitude. For all its limitations I still find it a handy program.

Also I have to say that I could not have made this transition table without worldforge; or at least not in the few hours it took me. Even thought WF doesn't display swamp tiles it does return the tile id number for a given spot.

Enjoy!
Storm

A very useful set of scripts. Like I said, it will make it into the next mod.

I generally say that the map2bmp program is broken mainly because 95% of the time people think it can be used for editing the Brit map. This, as you know, would be very difficult. At best, it's good for a reference but since it would be impossible to map all the transitions to a color, it can confuse people easily. That's why I don't include it in the mod download either.

After the next mod is done, I'll be revisiting SMC and TBC, which does allow conversion both ways easily. It is, however, quite a bit advanced as it uses a true color colortable, and can map every single color. However, it's not very good for creating a map from scratch. It can be just as bad as having to use WorldForge from scratch! (Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt!)

-Ryandor