ReadL2 Util

[Skyfire76]

May I say that if there is a feature/transition mess, it's because there are not enough tiles to do the job ?

Ideally, for each unique tile (plain terrain or transition) in a theater, we should have 255 other tiles with features (river or roads), or at least all the roads should be represented (if we overwrite rivers with roads)

We are far from this : look at my conf file in the example (in the ReadMe), you'll see that for, say, a forest to farm transtion to the north of the tile, there are only 1 tile with road, and 1 tile with river.

Regards.

[Snake Man]

I have never used those "all in all" tiles where you have transition + feature all in same tile, never.

I'll check the readme.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

Hum, and how do you do when there is a river starting in a forest and ending (or keeping on running) on a farm terrain ?

You sure have to let the river pass on a transition tile ...

Regards.

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by Skyfire76:
how do you do when there is a river starting in a forest and ending (or keeping on running) on a farm terrain ?

I use forest-farm river transition tiles; 128, 130, 132 and 133. Korean tile set.

Also same for forest-farm road transition tiles: 131, 134, 135 and 137.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

Of course, but this is exactly the problem : for a forest E - farm W transition you have no other choice but use a E-W road (or river).

What if there is a river N-S ? What if there is a bridge ? Or a T-junction ?

Regards.

[Snake Man]

Then we have to use non direct tiling methods, meaning moving the features to match.

How this would be done in CATE, I have no simple answer. We could of course start with the same type of code like in bridges, only to tile those that we can.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

You can do this as you wish with the last version, since you can define which features won't be tiled, or which will be replaced by others ...

BTW : how are the TDF files created ?

If the paths in these files were fine tuned, that would also sove a lot of problems ...

Regards.

[Snake Man]

TDF files are made by DEM2L2 converter.

I don't see how we could clean up the tdf's because the tdf's don't know about transition lines...

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

I don't know, but if there are several roads parallel to each other, it's because there are more or less defined in the TDFs, for example.

Anyway, I may have an idea. I'll do some tests today. And no, I won't tell you what is that idea, so that in case this doesn't work, you won't be disappointed

Regards.

[Romolus]

Hi everyone

I got to this board about 3 days ago from a link in another F4 forum (Frugal's or F4Community I don't remember) and read this thread with much interest.

Especially the feature/transition mess got my attention and I was thinking about a solution.
After making myself familiar with the work of tiling by downloading the tools and trying the tutorials I also came up with the same idea to tweak the TDF files. As I could see from the .e00 files this are only vector data so it's possible to combine the river and road data to find crossings that aren't able with the existing tiles and replace them with doable crossings by changing and adding points to the vector data.


Unfortunately I haven't gone far with this idea because I didn't ask for the DEM2L2 converter to look at the final TDF files.

[Skyfire76]

Yep, that was more or less what I was thinking about, but it's a little more complex than that.

1 - As you say, these are vectors, or I rather call them waypoints, within a path. So, unless you define each and every tile in the path, CATE has to do some guesses between each waypoint.

2 - We do not have all tiles, with all possible features. So, something that would work on a plain terrain (like a bridge in a farm terrain) would not work in another (the same bridge, on a farm to forest transition tile). And TDFs files are unaware of the terrain ...

3 - I have no idea of how we could tweak that TDFs files anyway.

Regards.

[Romolus]

But you don't have to change the TDF file and make a new one since you read them in with CATE (if I got that right).

So first take the vector data from the TDF file and apply your tile grid to simplify the data (make new vector data with the resolution of your grid), after this search for unwanted crossings and replace them (since your resolution now is the tile grid this should be more easy than with the original data). Finally combine the data with your terrain knowlage and fix the transition problems by shifting a bridge for example one tile to a non transition tile.

[edit]
Sounds much easier than it is, I know

By simplifying the vector data to match your tile grid you also get rid of paralel roads or rivers and you easy get it when there is a road and a river paralel in one tile.

[Skyfire76]

Yes, CATE reads the TDFs files, but I don't see what you call resolution here.

A TDF file is a list of features, saying (for each feature) where that feature should be going.

For example, a :

ROAD 2 0,0 1,0

Would be a road of two tiles, first one being the one in the south west corner, and second being the one immediatly to the east.

So, what do you mean by grid, and resolution ?

Regards.

[Snake Man]

Welcome aboard Romolus!

Skyfire, I tried the latest v4.01 and the readme example conf files - works great!

Now I can have roads and rivers to nicely transition from forest to farm type. great.

I'll do some more testing.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Quicksilver]

Hmmm... CATE v4.01... :p

So when are we going to see this one? Still v4.00 at the DL section

Also, when are we gonna have a feature freeze on CATE? It gets a bit frustrating to put off getting it, just 'cause we know there's a new version just around the corner?

In fact, instead of trying out one new idea or another, how about tightening up the program as it is? There's already some serious power available in CATE, now how about making it a bit more accessible to non-codeheads like me? I don't have any specific ideas right now, but I think most would agree that CATE is a fierce, yet hard-to-master, little beast.

Any ideas?

[Snake Man]

There is new versions too fast for me to update the downloads page

Feature freeze would be good to have when we have the basic feature and transition tiling working.

It is indeed very difficult to configure, it was demonstrated today by me! heh. But don't worry we are going to make thorough tutorial web page for CATE along with direct example files for default korean tile-set.

Just a few days more...

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Quicksilver]

Copy that Snakeman!

BTW, good job in v4.0 with the new features & transitions format... much easier to use and understand.

But WHAT ELSE could one want with these, so that Skyfire's still working on them? )

[Romolus]

Sorry for confusing you Skyfire

I got DEM2L2 and made some TDF files with it.
The ideas I had have to be done with the orgiginal .e00 files, but since the DEM2L2 converter allready does this quite well it would be useless to rewrite it.
So I'm looking at the TDF files now for a possible solution. I have some vague ideas but no quick solution for the moment.

I'll keep thinking about this since it's verry interesting problem.

[Skyfire76]

Hi guys,

At this time, I think we can say v. 4.01 should be a rather stable version. What I mean is that I have no idea about how to enhance it right now.

Well, there's still the problems of lakes, but ... ?

Anyway, if I can manage to find a way to screw up Quicksilver's conf files, I'll let you know

Regards.

[Snake Man]

Actually we still have issues with roads.

Tiling technically terms it does perfect job now, it does not leave any loose ends for feature tiles.

However it does cut off roads alot on transition areas. If we eliminate this road cutting effect... I see no other showstoppers for CATE being the full auto tiler of the terrain scene.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

It's up to you to decide if CATE will or won't cut the transitions with roads.

As said in the readme, if you do not define a road for a transition tile, CATE will cut the road. But you can replace a transition tile by a normal tile so that CATE will put it instead.

Arrrgh, again, I bet this is not clear, let's take an example.

- You want to tile a N-S road on tile #64 (forest in SE corner, farm elsewhere). This corresponds to a tile that does not exist. If you define nothing in conf file, CATE won't tile any road at all in this tile. If you want CATE to tile something, use a rule like :
Tile=64 5/288 which will replace the transition tile by a full forest tile with a road (tile 288).

Don't forget also that you can replace some features by others already defined (CATE does this by default on all undefined tiles with roads+rivers : it replaces them with the same ones with roads only). In this case, the rule looks like :
Tile=48 224/396 240r224 which says for a 4-rivers crossing in farm (a tile that does not exist), use instead a 3-rivers crossing (index 224) that is tile 396. It is important in this case to use the "replace" feature, so that CATE knows that it is indeed tiling a 3-way river instead of a 4-way one.

Regards.

[Snake Man]

No... I used the readme conf files and it works great (like I said), but the roads do get cut on some difficult transition areas.

Cut is not meaning that it lefts loose ends, no the roads are nicely stopped because there is difficult terrain ahead, which technically is OK but in terms of reality is not acceptable. If we have road from Ras Al Khafji to Kuwait, how can the Iraqi army assault Ras if the road is cut/ended because of CATE

I can mop up screenshots in no time if thats required, but in minute or two with your vietnam L2 and readme conf files you can see it yourself.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

Again, I have to say no too.

The conf files in the readme do not have what you 're looking for.

Re-read my post above : if you want CATE to not cut the roads, you MUST define, for each possible tile in the theater, what are the tile numbers to use when there are features, and possibly use tiles without the transition if necessary.

In the readme conf files, I've only defined the existing tiles, but if you want to overwrite transitions with roads (and not the contrary), you MUST define it.

Regards.

[Snake Man]

So can you please send me the korean tile-set conf files so I can test it out?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

Hehe, no, since I did not define them

The idea is to define features for every tile you used in the previous passes (transitions, cities, full terrain, but not airbases since I suppose you don't want to break airbases).

Regards.

[Snake Man]

Ookey... will be taking some time then, I have absolutely no idea how to configure it at the moment.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Romolus]

After thinking a long time about the feature/transition mess I came up with a lot of ideas but nothing to program in reasonable time.

Since the main problem is that we only have few tiles to match the roads and rivers drawn in the TDF files (especially the bridges), perhaps there could be done some more tiles to reduce the problems of automatic tiling.

From your experience in tiling is it possible to solve a big part of the tiling problems with a few new tiles?
(Perhaps 50% of the problems could be solved by making one new bridge tile for example?)

And how many new tiles can be added within the memory limits of F4?

[Snake Man]

Adding new tiles is no problem.

Adding new tiles is not the solution here.

Human tilers have solved the transition feature messes from the beginning of times. Its now time for CATE to learn that too.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Romolus]

Crearting new tiles was just a thought for an easier approach

Of course did human tilers solve the problem, but a human tiler has the overview and knows how landscape looks like. But to teach a program to have this overview is a really hard and long task until you as a human tiler have defined rules how you solve specific tiling problems.

Adding 100 cases to solve different tiling problems is much easier than teaching CATE how to move and change rivers and roads like a human tiler.

But if you really want to take the hard approach I can work on a few ideas for how to make a program aware of rivers and roads to arrange them properly.

[Snake Man]

Okay guys, why don't you tell me what kind of those transition-feature tiles would be like then?

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Romolus]

Perhaps CATE could offer a small statistic what kind of new tile is the most usefull for a specific map since I guess that CATE knows what kind of tile it would need in case of a problem (river from N to S and road from N to E eg.).
So that the human tiler can decide if it's worth to crate such a suggested new tile if it would solve much of the actual tiling problems for a specific map.
This wouldn't solve the feature/transition problem but sure safe time instead of fixing all the problems by hand.


An idea for making new tiles more easy is to create the actual tiles out of some kind of "sub-tiles".
The sub-tiles could be a quater of the original size so that out of 2 straight river and 2 straight road sub tiles a normal tile could be done with a road and a river runing beside. Or a river N to E and a road S to W also out of 1 turning river, 1 turning road and 2 sub-tiles without features.
This way the pathmaking could be done in resolution 4 times higher than now (since 1 original tile would be made out of 4 sub-tiles). The sub tiles could then be placed together in a graphics program after the statistical suggestions of CATE what new tile would be the most needed.
It would be an effort to make those sub-tiles out of the existing (larger) tiles but once those are made it will be easy to make all kinds of different tiles much faster.

[Skyfire76]

quote:Originally posted by Romolus:
Perhaps CATE could offer a small statistic what kind of new tile is the most usefull for a specific map since I guess that CATE knows what kind of tile it would need in case of a problem (river from N to S and road from N to E eg.).

Nice idea, I think this could be done, though I have to check a little more than that.

Regards.

[Snake Man]

New CATE v4.05 has been added to the download page.

Thank you Skyfire!

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[Skyfire76]

Hey, thanks to you SnakeMan, for hosting it :

Version 4.05
 Another "integer" problem with airbases corrected.

Version 4.04
 SnakeMan managed to produced a file with more than 32767 rivers in it ! ! ! Result : CATE crashed. I changed some integers into longs to correct this.

Version 4.03
 Beta version, some tests in tiling

Version 4.02
 Modified how CATE shows rules for features autotiling : limited number of rules shown to 5, because of out of memory problems when too many rules were there

Version 4.01
 Modified CATE so that when you want to make only a BMP of your theater, CATE won’t translate back the terrain as if it were about to save L2 and O2 files.
 Roads are now cleared up like rivers
 Added a pass before this « clearing up » to gather agin terrain info : apparently, in some cases, CATE was out of synch about terrain features, and some rivers or roads were not cleared up as they shoud have been
 Modified roads and rivers paths calculations so that CATE tries to tile them where we have available (i.e. defined in the conf file) tiles for them.


Regards.

[Quicksilver]

Way cool! )

So guys, I'll let you know about the results, and if you like them, you can also have my config files for use or improvement.

Wish me luck...

[Quicksilver]

While working with CATE (not done yet!), I've come up with a small bug.

Here's what goes on exactly:

I load up my City config file, and the start & result theater files. This config file contains only rules for placing city tiles, and contains the paths for all City TDF files (one file for each country).

I press "Read Data", and the program loads the config data. After I press OK, it then tries to load the TDF data, but then it freezes and this warning box comes up:

"Erreur d'execution '6':
Depassement de capacite"

And the program crashes.

[Quicksilver]

OK, another problem now, more serious, again with my TDF files.

I get this message:
"Erreur d'execution '9'
Indice en dehors de la plage"

...when I try to process city, road or river TDF files for the 2 largest countries of my theater.

The message appears once I press the "Update data" button, and after the data has been read properly.

Mind you, all these files ARE pretty large (they only open in WordPad, not Notepad), so they may be stressing CATE too much.

Hmm... maybe if I broke these files in two parts each... would that make it work, or would these files be corrupted? They sure do seem like a bunch of raw data to me... hmmmmmm... lemme try this...

[Quicksilver]

quote:Originally posted by Quicksilver:
Hmm... maybe if I broke these files in two parts each... would that make it work?

Nope. Same error.
So, anybody else got any bright ideas?

[Skyfire76]

First question : are you running 4.05 version ? Your first problem should have been corrected with this version (unless it's a new one, of course ).

Well, anyway, all we can do is : send me your data files (the ones you use in your two problems) (zipped, please) by email (I'll drop you a private message here with my mail), and I'll look where the problem is.

Regards.

[Quicksilver]

All right, I've sent you the trouble-maker TDF files. Using v4.05, problem only appears with these (rather large) files.

If this can halp you fix a bug in CATE, that would be great.

BTW, I'll have a report on my work with CATE in a day or two, right now I'm fine-tuning my config files to get the best results.