Another newbie intro....

[Polak]

Hi my 1st post here.
I knew your interesting site an forum from some time, but until now was not interested in F4. Just recently, as late as it may appears to be I decided to leap into this and must say I really regret that it was not earlier. I play F4AF and I am truly impressed.

My interest is mainly in the terrain. I was involved in some projects for other simulations namely: MSFS scenery, some items here and there for SF:P1, even SB1 and lately TAW. I have some knowledge and experience in 2D /3D applications as well as some curiosity in hex probing of files.

For now I have some general question regarding tiling of F4 world. I read most if not all PMC tutorials as well as I visisted that 360combat.org site. And after all that I still must say do not quite understand what is the major and general principal of tiling in F4? I realise that there must generic tiles and transitions. So on the example of the coast can someone explain to me how its all working and where is the list of the tiles with the its main structure?

Other than that warm hello and please feel free to use my modest skills if and anywhere is needed.

[Snake Man]

Hi my 1st post here.

I was about to say welcome, but you've been here since 2004 so I say thanks for the first post hehe

I have some general question regarding tiling of F4 world. I read most if not all PMC tutorials as well as I visisted that 360combat.org site. And after all that I still must say do not quite understand what is the major and general principal of tiling in F4?

Okay, just to check, did you read the tiling tutorial which should explain the basic tiling?

I realise that there must generic tiles and transitions. So on the example of the coast can someone explain to me how its all working and where is the list of the tiles with the its main structure?

Coast is like any other "feature" terrain technically. You just basically have a tile that has half water half land, that makes it a coast. List of tiles are in texture.bin file which tells F4/Terrainview which tile offset numbers there are. If you want to read it (besides using Terrainview), you need to convert to text format with the perl scripts.

Other than that warm hello and please feel free to use my modest skills if and anywhere is needed.

Well we could always use some texture/tile makers, could you create some tiles?

And eventually when we finalize the our theaters CATE tiling, we'll have to adjust some areas by manually tiling them, but that is still far in the future in my estimate.

[Polak]

2004 eh? How this time really fly fast.

Yep I have read most of the stuff, but it is not to say that all is well understood just from reading it. In one of tutorials I found that the CATE assigns generic tiles according to altitude of the terrain. So I guess this is as other TE (Terrain Editors) are doing this job too.

However, my follow up question is how many transitional tiles F4 typical terrain uses between two generic tiles. I would have guessed that 1/2 rotated 4 times, 1/4 rotated 4x and 3/4 again 4x, thats 12 plus 2 generic thats 14. So maybe to top it off - there are 2 additional like two 1/4 in two oposite corners. All total would be 16. Is my assumption correct?

Is that what you need to enter into CATE? And to make the bitmap or pcx pictures of course.

Thank you for quick reply to my 1st post. Sorry it took me so long to enter this , but better late than never

[Snake Man]

I found that the CATE assigns generic tiles according to altitude of the terrain.

Yes if you configure it to do so.

However, my follow up question is how many transitional tiles F4 typical terrain uses between two generic tiles.

One tileset usually takes up to 15 tiles, this includes the terrain type tile too.

Is that what you need to enter into CATE?

Yeah you need to write the tile offsets to the config file. Luckily we have already the korean texture.bin conf files available for download. Also I think I posted the complete Europe Theater airbase config somewhere.

[Polak]

I am reading more into it . Found this topic on this forum:
viewtopic.php?t=20703&highlight=korean+texture+bin

I guess this is more fundamental than my question about transitions, however, still is not quite clear to me why 15 and not 16. Doeas full set include both generic tiles or just one generic and rest of transitions to someting. And is there any limitation on max number of such a sets?

Interesting to find out that beyond auto placement according to the altitude there is someting like placement according to bitmap. Has this been developed further since that thread I link to?

Questions , questions ...

[Snake Man]

And is there any limitation on max number of such a sets?

The limit is 256 sets I think.

Interesting to find out that beyond auto placement according to the altitude there is someting like placement according to bitmap. Has this been developed further since that thread I link to?

Well CATE is at v4.17 and its all in the config files what you can do with it. There is so much choices what can be done, its really a great tool.