Multiple theaters tileset

[diomedea]

A good idea by Crossup explained here, to re-use installed tilesets: http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/show ... adid=39232

Now, it raises my questions: to what extent could the concept be exploited? Could we eventually have a single tileset for every theater that uses that resolution (64, 128 and so on?). Will Sp4 (or Spx) cover this?

To theater developers: how different from a standard tileset are yours creations, have you liberally numbered your custom tiles or have you used a common schema?
Sorry for my ignorance so clearly showed on the subject (not being myself a theater dev).

Diomedea.

P.S. at present, the theaters page on this site is not updated about Hawaian theater.

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by diomedea:
Could we eventually have a single tileset for every theater that uses that resolution (64, 128 and so on?).

To pick a nose, TILE-SET is one set of tiles like farm road or desert city. Whole texture.bin is the theaters full terrain tiles.

Ah well stupid but thats the way I see it.

So yes, we could have only one texture.bin for all upcoming theaters and CATE conf files & terrainview.ini to go along with it.

When ODS texture.bin is finished, it will be used for Vietnam, Europe and Afghanistan too.

To someone who doesn't really understand this, here is simple example. Imagine the texture.bin as the jigsaw puzzle layout (the pieces to fit together), now the TILES itself are the image that comes out from that puzzle layout. Whether its image of Ferrari Testarossa or a teenage porn, it does not matter. We can change the tiles graphics as long as the tiles match with texture.bin.

quote:Will Sp4 (or Spx) cover this?

No. SP4 will have nothing to do about user made theater terrain tiles/texture.bin.

quote:how different from a standard tileset are yours creations, have you liberally numbered your custom tiles or have you used a common schema?

ODS, Vietnam, Europe and Afghanistan use the original Microprose tile naming system pretty accurately (can be few mistakes though). Read more about it here

quote:P.S. at present, the theaters page on this site is not updated about Hawaian theater.

Right, I'm lazy, sorry. I bet Crossup will punish me on #falcon4theaters

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[diomedea]

OK. Thnks for all that good info.

So I understand that, after development is completed for ODS, its texture.bin could become "the" standard for every theater.
If I am correct over that, is it possible to modify the installer for all other theaters, so to take advantage of an already installed standard texture.bin?

What about Balkan theater (one of my favorites)? I know there were custom tiles in that. Can't those become part of "the" standard? or else, could only the non-standard part be included in future installers, so to always have every installed theater refer to a single terrain.bin complete with everything needed by every installed theater? So to avoid the Falcon4 folder getting in the 10GB size region?
(sorry if I'm breaking eggs here)

Diomedea.

[Snake Man]

quote:Originally posted by diomedea:
ODS, its texture.bin could become "the" standard for every theater.

Yes. We dont stuff that to anyones throat but yes its a plan to add the texture.bin in normal bin and text format, then the CATE config files to match that texture.bin so all theater makers can just use their own original L2, TDF and airbase CSV files to create nice terrain tiling.

quote:is it possible to modify the installer for all other theaters, so to take advantage of an already installed standard texture.bin?

Hmm not sure what you mean by installer... installer is the... heh well Installer, nothing to do with texture.bin

Can you be more specific what you mean by installer?

quote:What about Balkan theater (one of my favorites)?

I dont know about Balkans, you should ask on the Balkans area.

quote:Can't those become part of "the" standard?

Balkans uses korean texture.bin mostly. ODS is brand new stuff.

quote:So to avoid the Falcon4 folder getting in the 10GB size region?

Actually you cannot avoid megabyte sizes with several theaters even though they use same texture.bin - they still have to use their own terrdata\<theater> dir which means terrain + textures.

PMC TFW
Snake Man

[diomedea]

quote:Originally posted by Snake Man:
Hmm not sure what you mean by installer... installer is the... heh well Installer, nothing to do with texture.bin

I take what you say as truth itself. Never programmed an installer myself. In my view, the installer creates the folder structures, fills in the files, expands them, creates references in the registry, checks everything is OK. I suppose that the installer could be programmed to use already existing data on the target machine, instead of replicating the same data in another folder.
Every theater til' now has an installer that provides everything needed to install the new theater on a clean SP3. I suppose that some parts of every theater are common ones, so I would like to install them just once, then install theaters in a way to use the already installed common parts.

quote:Actually you cannot avoid megabyte sizes with several theaters even though they use same texture.bin - they still have to use their own terrdata\<theater> dir which means terrain + textures.

Really there is my target: could something be arranged to have a common terrdata\alltheaters to include every common texture + custom textures.

I would like to see that in case of a texture improvement (like highaltpatch, airbases, twaelti tileset) the improvement is to be done just once, for every theater.
Maybe I'm totally wrong, but my guess is that now these changes have to be repeated for every theater, because each theater has its own terrdata\<sometheater>.

Diomedea.

[crossup]

Sorry Diomedea but I wasnt promoting a "universal" tile set. If fact in real life my idea only has merit to small time theater builders who cant spare the time or man power to make a theater full of custom tiles. I mentioned if I have my way... well that was in refererence to a project of mine to use Fly!2 textures which are unique- thereby increasing texture.zips size up to 1000x!!!! worse case. SO the real problem is how to seamlessly integrate repeating and non repeating terrain to keep file size within reason, frame rates too. There are only a handful of theater makers and I think they are all aware of using other's tiles.
But thanks for taking up the cross...so to speak.

[diomedea]

Thanks Crossup for explaining the point.

Diomedea.