D2kEditor v1.4 new feature preview + new tileset research!

[Cm_blast]

I am here again; I have a new computer, but I still have the content of my old hard disk, so I still have gruntmods (but struggling to avoid the game to looks a bit blurry with the vanilla resolution), the maps, tools and so on. So yeah, still getting used to a new computer, windows 10 and mostly, playing games that I couldn't play before.

I doub I will do maps or something, but meanwhile I am seeing here interesting things like:

On 2/13/2020 at 10:47 PM, Klofkac said:

And here is the most useful combo: Combination of "Occupied by Building" attribute and hint text. This way, cursor will turn into selection cursor and structure name will be shown. And in addition, the structure will be drawn in respective color on minimap. But beware that minimap color is driven by respective side's allocation index, so if you alter allocation indexes, the minimap color will change too.

This is interesting; although I can see a small problem with the use of a custom text.uib. Let's say I want to create a new campaign using the heighliner tileset. Right now I can do it right, but if he (or you) add a custom text.uib to show "Harkonnen LRA" or whatever; well, what happens if the game it is not in english? Like those russian guys, or myself being spanish. If I use that tileset with no custom text.uib to keep other parts of the game in spanish it will show a random name when my mouse goes over that, whatever it is in the spanish version (and I mean spanish but there are russians as well);

I don't mind playing Fey's smuggler campaign in english because he uses custom files for the most parts; but if I do a campaign for myself (or other people that have no idea of english) it could be a bit weird having the campaign on non-spanish for 1 mission. still playable but a bit weird having 9 missions with 2 of then on english for no reason (for a player that have no idea of modding, it will be "for no reason").

Although in this case I guess the "best" it's just not using that custom .uib so my game, instead "Harkonnen LRA", will show whatever word/phrase the spanish text uib may have there. Or my picking the spanish text uib, and asking to Fey "hey man, which lines you altered to do the same for spanish" which can be a bit of inconvenience if the modder it's not active or if Fey don't remember what he did.

On 2/16/2020 at 10:15 PM, Klofkac said:

I also modified minimap color rules, fill area rules and spice restriction rule in original tileset .ini files to follow the changes in editor. For example editor attributes now use different hexadecimal values. You will need to modify your custom tiliset .ini file to make it work properly with new version of editor.

This "fix" the RED-GREEN-BLUE order right? like how in the .ini had Red and blue in swapped positions, but now you made it the correct order, did I get that, right?

On 2/20/2020 at 11:29 PM, Klofkac said:

This time the main new thing is adding support for up to 8 different paint types. Previously the editor supported only 4 paint types, which was pretty much enough for standard Dune2000 tilesets, which had just Sand, Rock, Dunes and Ice. However, with custom tilesets (most notably Warcraft2 tileset done by @Cm_blast) 4 types were just not enough, because there were more different terrain types than in Dune 2000.

But besides this, the most important improvement is improving the auto-smooth edge feature. Now this feature is much more universal and usable for all possible terrain types, not just only Rock and Dunes in standard Dune2000 tilesets. You just need to configure it properly and then you can do lot of magic with this feature!

Here is demonstration of how the new features work with Cm_blast's snowy Warcraft2 tileset.

This is very cool, having more squares it's good. Vanilla tilesets will have as many too?

On 2/20/2020 at 11:29 PM, Klofkac said:

And now, with a few shift-clicks, I can change that map to this within several seconds.

This is also very cool, not all people have the patience to do that manually, and this makes things ever easier.

On 2/20/2020 at 11:29 PM, Klofkac said:

With this, I needed to change the way how paint tiles are defined and change the meaning of editor attributes. You no longer use editor attributes to mark paint tiles for specific paint type, but instead, you define directly the tile numbers in paint groups. Here's example from BLOXBGBS tileset:

I like the idea of doing the smooth as part of the .ini and not the editor atribute, probably because a .ini it always can be edited anyplace, anywhere, even with a formated computer you can edit an .ini :P.

On 2/25/2020 at 10:50 PM, Klofkac said:

And I made support for 4 common paint groups, two of them are reserved for thin spice and thick spice (with special behavior), and the other two are reserved for concrete and void. Pre-placing concrete on a map could potentially be useful, althrough in original tileset it is not possible to build on concrete, it can still be used as some decoration, or better, take advantage of newly discovered tile attributes to pre-place a real working concrete. Void (black tiles) are not so common and natural to use in normal tilesets, maybe it can be used to make non-rectangular maps (which was never used yet, at least what I know), but it's useful for Heighliner tileset.

For vanilla maps maybe the tiles containing the concretes could be on one of the preset instead the painting, because people will think that you can build on top of that (well, when I mean "people" I mean that 1 guy that decided to do a map xD). For the Fey's tileset using actual buildable concrete it's fine having it, for vanilla maybe not as usefull and, if using non-buildable it's placed for decoration, then it's like other tiles (harversters crased, spikes, holes): simply a decoration, and reserving the "painting groups" to actual usefull groups, rock to build, dunces to slow, sand to place spice... So those fake concretes can be into the "other special" section that for the most part are empty, just have 3-4 groups there if I remember well, so for the fake concrete that will serve just as decoration can be placed there.

On 2/25/2020 at 10:50 PM, Klofkac said:

As you can notice, paint tile list is repeating same tile number. This way you can force higher or lower probability of specific tiles. For example for vertical platforms, there are three different tiles available, where one tile has a hole in it. When you paint a vertical platform, there will be 4 in 8 chance the first tile is used, 3 in 8 chance the second tile is used, and only 1 in 8 chance the tile with hole is used. You can clearly notice that the tile with hole is much less common than other tiles.

This is really interesting, I have the warcraft which 1 tile has like a small detail that it's not big enough to not be walkable, but having too many tiles with it looks a bit odd, so having a priority of "use this only 1 every 3-4 of the others" it's a nead idea.

On 2/26/2020 at 11:17 PM, Klofkac said:

I completely reorganized the block presets. Now all presets of same platfom type are gathered together under same preset group, which is more logical (you can place all possible tiles from the same platform type without switching preset group), but most importantly, you can take advantage of auto-smooth edges feature.

Here is how it looks like:

I like this; I didn't work with the original one, but this looks a bit better to find any corner or side for the specific color, the original I think I had all the corners (different colors) in one preset or something like that.

On 2/26/2020 at 11:17 PM, Klofkac said:

And voila, here's how the auto-smooth edges feature can work in practice. On left side raw painted platform, on right side after shift-click:

 

It is really amazing man. seems lots of prework (tileset, the .ini) but it may worth it for future maps.

On 2/26/2020 at 11:17 PM, Klofkac said:

So creating terrain with Heighliner tileset is now much easier and faster, isn't it?

I hope so; I have in mind 1 campaign using that heighliner tileset. not anytime soon, but I may even use the auto smooth! (if the day come).

Just a quick question; my retro dune 2 tileset uses an already present vanilla .bin, it is using BLOXBASE values (I think, or BLOXBGSB, one of those); my idea was just to not add more files to avoid troubling people "hey, use this, and that, and the other thing"; but if i understood weel, I can still use the auto-smooth by setting in into the .ini directly, right? 

By the way; feda it's suppose to be working on something too; but he realize that doing 9 maps per faction (plus a few more for imperials) it's a reaaaaaallly big task xD; so nobody know when he is going to finish that; but at leats he can be counted as modded (or it could, I hope he didn't give up on these weeks).

Edited March 4, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Klofkac]

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

I am here again; I have a new computer, but I still have the content of my old hard disk, so I still have gruntmods (but struggling to avoid the game to looks a bit blurry with the vanilla resolution), the maps, tools and so on. So yeah, still getting used to a new computer, windows 10 and mostly, playing games that I couldn't play before.

Welcome back bro and thank you for this post!

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

I doub I will do maps or something

Well, I really hope, once you explore all the new stuff you can do with your new computer, you get back to some mapping for Dune 2000. There are lot of new possibilities coming and working with custom tileset is far easier than ever before, so let's not waste this opportunity.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

This is interesting; although I can see a small problem with the use of a custom text.uib.

Well, I am aware of that and agree, you explained it pretty well. But on the other hand, please consider, that for example any custom missions already have briefing and event messages in english anyway. As far as I know, neither mission launcher nor the game itself support translations for briefing/custom event messages, so if anyone uses spanish, russian or whatever translation of game, the custom stuff is still in english. It's even my personal case as well: I'm using Czech translation of game, but when I play custom missions, the briefing and messages are in English. Or when I play maps with custom TEXT.UIB, the whole game will become english.

But I don't really mind that. I can understand English pretty well, and I commonly play games in English, not translated into my native language. It was always a problem when I was a kid, but now, as an adult, this is no longer problem at all. And considering, that people who want to play custom missions must go to this forum and download them, and to be able to understand what is going on here and where to download custom missions, they simply need to understand english. So at least I consider english as the common universal language everyone should understand to some degree.

But still, if you for example want to provide your stuff to spanish-speaking audience, there's possibility to provide more than one version of mission .ini file as well as TEXT.UIB, so in spanish version of TEXT.UIB, you would simply provide spanish translations in for the extra custom stuff.

And lastly, this is much more general problem rather than something related exclusively to custom tile hint messages. There are campaigns and mods that use custom TEXT.UIB with modified names of units, buildings and other stuff already.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

This "fix" the RED-GREEN-BLUE order right? like how in the .ini had Red and blue in swapped positions, but now you made it the correct order, did I get that, right?

No, the order of red and blue colors is not changed. Basically the swapped order of red and blue color is not something I came up with deliberately, but that's just how the program interprets numbers as colors. I order to change the order of red and blue color, I would need to add some extra logic to swap the colors internally after loading them from numbers. I could do that, but I'm a bit afraid it could break existing tileset configurations.

What was actually done, I changed the way how the rules are defined (the part on the right side of = sign). I also added functionality into the program itself to help define the rule. You will see it.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

This is very cool, having more squares it's good. Vanilla tilesets will have as many too?

No, vanilla tilesets mostly use just three (sand, rock, dunes) or four (ice). Those extra squares exist only for custom tilesets, and in vanilla tilesets, they stay blank.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

This is also very cool, not all people have the patience to do that manually, and this makes things ever easier.

Hell yeah, I personally did not have patience to place the tiles manually, which discouraged me from making any maps with the tileset. So I was eager to implement this functionality and now creating maps is 10 times faster.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

For vanilla maps maybe the tiles containing the concretes could be on one of the preset instead the painting, because people will think that you can build on top of that (well, when I mean "people" I mean that 1 guy that decided to do a map xD). For the Fey's tileset using actual buildable concrete it's fine having it, for vanilla maybe not as usefull and, if using non-buildable it's placed for decoration, then it's like other tiles (harversters crased, spikes, holes): simply a decoration, and reserving the "painting groups" to actual usefull groups, rock to build, dunces to slow, sand to place spice... So those fake concretes can be into the "other special" section that for the most part are empty, just have 3-4 groups there if I remember well, so for the fake concrete that will serve just as decoration can be placed there.

Well, this is really something I had hard time deciding about.

The main reason why I added it, is Heighliner tileset. It uses 8 different types of platforms, which takes up all 8 available paint groups. But there is also Void, which I need to be able to paint as well, which is 9th paint type and there is no more room for 9th paint type. And I did not want to sacrifice any of those 8 platform types to make extra room for void, which is very important.

So I decided to add two more available paint groups (on the row where was thin spice and thick spice), but wanted to use them for something so that they would not remain blank. One had to be Void, and in order to occupy the second free paint group, I decided to use concrete. So honestly I did not add concrete because I wanted to add concrete, but just because I wanted to occupy a free slot. I know that it is not so much useful in vanilla tilesets where concrete is not buildable, but this makes concrete more visible and tempting to use, for example as a decoration in situations where you can't build any buildings on it because you cannot have MCV in that mission or anything like this. And this also makes concrete much better accessible for custom tilesets where you can make it buildable by changing its attributes.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

I hope so; I have in mind 1 campaign using that heighliner tileset. not anytime soon, but I may even use the auto smooth! (if the day come).

Yeah, as I said , please don't give up creating new stuff for D2K completely, especially after I invested so much effort into this new stuff.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Just a quick question; my retro dune 2 tileset uses an already present vanilla .bin, it is using BLOXBASE values (I think, or BLOXBGSB, one of those); my idea was just to not add more files to avoid troubling people "hey, use this, and that, and the other thing"; but if i understood weel, I can still use the auto-smooth by setting in into the .ini directly, right? 

My main goal is to move all extra tileset configuration used by editor into .ini file only. So you do not have to add any extra attributes or stuff into .BIN file anymore, everything for editor will be in .ini.

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

By the way; feda it's suppose to be working on something too; but he realize that doing 9 maps per faction (plus a few more for imperials) it's a reaaaaaallly big task xD; so nobody know when he is going to finish that; but at leats he can be counted as modded (or it could, I hope he didn't give up on these weeks).

Well, hopefully he will notice all the new stuff here and create something with all the new tilesets. We have enough "classic" campaign maps taking place on vanilla tilesets, so there's still enough possibilities to create some new original stuff.

[Cm_blast]

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

Well, I really hope, once you explore all the new stuff you can do with your new computer, you get back to some mapping for Dune 2000. There are lot of new possibilities coming and working with custom tileset is far easier than ever before, so let's not waste this opportunity.

I mean anytime soon, I already have written concepts for 4-5 missions for a future campaign; it is set to use at least 2 heighliner maps so far; will depend on how I write the story, something about 4 minor factions joining and coming, so at first 3 goes to arrakis using mercs frigates taking from that heighliner, and later the 4º faction join, so it needs a second mission on that tileset; so I eventually will work on something new.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

Well, I am aware of that and agree, you explained it pretty well. But on the other hand, please consider, that for example any custom missions already have briefing and event messages in english anyway. As far as I know, neither mission launcher nor the game itself support translations for briefing/custom event messages, so if anyone uses spanish, russian or whatever translation of game, the custom stuff is still in english. It's even my personal case as well: I'm using Czech translation of game, but when I play custom missions, the briefing and messages are in English. Or when I play maps with custom TEXT.UIB, the whole game will become english.

The only solution it's a "deal with it", and if I use the heigliner tileset just let the game to show a random word or line. And yes, custom stuff it is in english, but that's unavoilable if I am playing somebody works; whoever, if I load any of my own works (1 campaign of mine), nothing it's on english; but doing that campaign with 2 heighliner maps then you have suddenly 1 with all the options on english for no apparent reason. Not a big deal since audio and briefing still in spanish.

But again, I know, limitations and all; the "best" possible could be calling that part of tileset that use the text.uib with the .ini itself; for example, the frigate you pointed uses line number 307 that sais "LRA Harkonnen", on the .ini for X map, I write 307 and simply rewritte for a spanish counterpart.
Which this is something I always wanted, being able to "overwritte" lines from the game. Some people have been doing maps that instead "X side now it's hostile" and changed into "Alarm! Alarm! enemy spotted" that only trigger if you attack an enemy with a St.Fremen though a custom text.uib; I only can imagine if "airstrike ready" "Fremen Ready" or any other automated messages could be changed by using the .ini instead adding 1 custom text that only may change 1 line.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

But I don't really mind that. I can understand English pretty well, and I commonly play games in English, not translated into my native language. It was always a problem when I was a kid, but now, as an adult, this is no longer problem at all. And considering, that people who want to play custom missions must go to this forum and download them, and to be able to understand what is going on here and where to download custom missions, they simply need to understand english. So at least I consider english as the common universal language everyone should understand to some degree.

Except if you do a campaign on Czech to share with your people that know Czech; they will said "wait, why english suddenly, we were having fun..." playing other people works yes, but when you play your own work that's another story.

Another solution would be that, having 2 set's of custom text.uib, or even 2 set of tile attributes, the second without that marked to not appear nothing at all when pointed.

But I know you never can make everybody happy.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

No, vanilla tilesets mostly use just three (sand, rock, dunes) or four (ice). Those extra squares exist only for custom tilesets, and in vanilla tilesets, they stay blank.

Can you make the editor to reconice how many there are? for example, if vanilla tileset, 2 rows of squares; 8 in total, 2 for spice, 3 for the others (and the rest blank, except with Ice); but if you load a custom tileset with more, the third row appears; just to avoid a third row that appear blank with every tileset done by westwood.
Maybe it's a bit hard to do that, I don't know. I mean because right now there are 2 tilesets only, I think, that can use a third row, and will look a bit empty overall when using any of the other 10 tilesets.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

Hell yeah, I personally did not have patience to place the tiles manually, which discouraged me from making any maps with the tileset. So I was eager to implement this functionality and now creating maps is 10 times faster.

Well, was much worse when you couldn't separate the tiles but searching and placing them manually, then I learn the position on the keyboard and I didn't use too much the auto-smooth.

for custom tileset it's another story, I won't learn the position of the corners on the keyboard for that heighliner if I can use that feature.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

So I decided to add two more available paint groups (on the row where was thin spice and thick spice), but wanted to use them for something so that they would not remain blank. One had to be Void, and in order to occupy the second free paint group, I decided to use concrete. So honestly I did not add concrete because I wanted to add concrete, but just because I wanted to occupy a free slot. I know that it is not so much useful in vanilla tilesets where concrete is not buildable, but this makes concrete more visible and tempting to use, for example as a decoration in situations where you can't build any buildings on it because you cannot have MCV in that mission or anything like this. And this also makes concrete much better accessible for custom tilesets where you can make it buildable by changing its attributes.

Fair enough. Let's people place concrete and then scracthing their head because cannot build anything on top of them xD. we all have been on that position before xD (dune 2 campaign myself xD).

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

Yeah, as I said , please don't give up creating new stuff for D2K completely, especially after I invested so much effort into this new stuff.

Yeah no; just with time. Like I said before I already have 5 concepts for the first 5 missions on a future campaign; with time I will think on many more. I also have the idea of doing a massive campaign of 30 missions or something traveling to all the worlds, the giedi prime, luminar's night mission, heighliner, wacraft... and the enemy won't be Atr.Har.Ord but new factions that use tech not be seen before. It may take a while to do it (when I was thinking on the mission based on the Dune emperor final map, I developed over 3 campaigns since I got the idea and I did it), so that's something I want to try to do; I did sometime ago some research to be able to spawn Fremen from the buildings destroyed instead infantry (and I did, spawned much less fremen because the health of the unit if I am not wrong).

But you know, new computer, new possibilties, but I cannot stop myself from doing anything dune related, even if it is just playing it.

I even like to play very old works from time to time; sometimes there area ideas on them that I can reuse later.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

My main goal is to move all extra tileset configuration used by editor into .ini file only. So you do not have to add any extra attributes or stuff into .BIN file anymore, everything for editor will be in .ini.

Good to know.

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

Well, hopefully he will notice all the new stuff here and create something with all the new tilesets. We have enough "classic" campaign maps taking place on vanilla tilesets, so there's still enough possibilities to create some new original stuff.

A bit the problem with new custom tileset it's the "raw" stuff, like the blooms; you need to altered the data directly to make new blooms (or the holes when the floor it's being shooted) and will look a bit bad on those tileset; I already blanked the crates (no graphic) for the my Christmas mini-campaign so they won't appear making the effect ugly, but even for the retro 2 the data change the visual to 8 bit; the crates I added are not the same color that the floor.

But if I do my massive campaign "travelling the galaxy" one idea I have it's using every resources with different values; making gems worth more, tiberium being more time consumed, Gold from the Red alert being grabbed instatly, the woods on the wacraft worth only 300 credits per full harv... things like that, so every planet has resources that can change the gameplay (even if the player itself still use the same exact tech as usual; I plan to keep that so your well know faction travel and face people with non-classic arrakis tech, but you do).

Pd: did you play my christmas mini-campaign? it's at least a non-arrakis kind of map and gems worth 1000, that alone change the gameplay, although the maps are really really narrow to navigate.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Gruntlord6]

This is great work! Keep it up.

[Fey]

I've been following this thread still without replying, myself Been unbelievably busy. I'm still excited!!!

And, you CAN change automated messages. 😮 On some of my missions, if the player captures a Tleilaxu Palace of Diplomacy, the message will be, "Fedaykin Gholas ready." or something. Also, Cm's Christmas mini-campaign was a riot and I totally recommend it, Klof. XD

[Klofkac]

Another new feature I just finished...

A "Preset Helper" feature. You remember how difficult it was to manually write all the numbers into .ini file when you were creating block presets. Now it's much easier - you will just design your preset here, and then copy all the numbers and paste them into your tileset ini file.

Specifying blocks made up from tiles that are not continuously arranged in the tileset ("Custom tiles" mode as shown on screen) is also easier - you no longer need to have separate [Custom_Blocks] section in tileset ini file, but you directly specify the block inside [Block_Preset_Group_X] section. The way how you distinguish continuous blocks (specified as X and Y position in tileset) and custom blocks (specified as list of tile numbers) is, that for custom blocks, the first two numbers specifying with and height are negative numbers.

Apart from that, I added possibility to have "blank tiles" or basically "holes" in block presets. In other words, the presets do not strictly need to be solid rectangle shape, but they can be any shape. When you place such block on map, then blank tiles will not affect the terrain under them (example shown on screenshot). Block presets with blank tiles are not yet used in any original or custom tileset, but it is potentially usable for example in Red Alert tileset, where as you may know the blocks are not always solid rectangle shape, I mean this:

On 3/4/2020 at 9:14 PM, Cm_blast said:

But again, I know, limitations and all; the "best" possible could be calling that part of tileset that use the text.uib with the .ini itself; for example, the frigate you pointed uses line number 307 that sais "LRA Harkonnen", on the .ini for X map, I write 307 and simply rewritte for a spanish counterpart.
Which this is something I always wanted, being able to "overwritte" lines from the game. Some people have been doing maps that instead "X side now it's hostile" and changed into "Alarm! Alarm! enemy spotted" that only trigger if you attack an enemy with a St.Fremen though a custom text.uib; I only can imagine if "airstrike ready" "Fremen Ready" or any other automated messages could be changed by using the .ini instead adding 1 custom text that only may change 1 line.

 

3 hours ago, Fey said:

And, you CAN change automated messages. 😮 On some of my missions, if the player captures a Tleilaxu Palace of Diplomacy, the message will be, "Fedaykin Gholas ready." or something.

Well, actually, what I found out, you can only override event messages using the map/mission .ini file. When I tried to override any other text using ini file (like unit or building names), then text specified in ini file was ignored and original text from TEXT.UIB was still shown. That applied to tile hint messages as well. I think it's a pity it cannot work with ini file universally for any text in game, and you always have to use custom TEXT.UIB if you want to modify other stuff like unit or building names etc.

But anyway, Heighliner tileset ALREADY uses its own modified TEXT.UIB with for example Wind Trap renamed to Reactor etc, so I see no reason why you would not use the custom TEXT.UIB for Heighliner-based maps in your campaigns. Yes I know, the game won't be in Spanish or whatever translation the player uses, but everything will turn English, but still, that's just how the mods work, there has to be a trade-off we should deal with.

And I was not aware you could override automated messages with mission .ini file, I thought you could do only scripted event messages.

On 3/4/2020 at 9:14 PM, Cm_blast said:

Except if you do a campaign on Czech to share with your people that know Czech; they will said "wait, why english suddenly, we were having fun..." playing other people works yes, but when you play your own work that's another story.

Well, honestly, I would never do a campaign targeted only to Czech audience. The audience would be extremely limited (less than 1% world population speak Czech), so it would be a waste of my effort for me. I'm always targeting the whole world audience for any work I do, considering English is the general world language anyone should understand on the internet. The reality is that still not all people in the world can understand English, but at least, English can be understood by the highest amount of world population. That secures if I provide my work in english, I'm targeting the largest potential audience. With Spanish, however, the situation may be different, so I can only advise you to distribute Spanish version of modded TEXT.UIB for Heighliner tileset, and tell in instructions "If you're Spanish, use this file instead".

On 3/4/2020 at 9:14 PM, Cm_blast said:

Can you make the editor to reconice how many there are? for example, if vanilla tileset, 2 rows of squares; 8 in total, 2 for spice, 3 for the others (and the rest blank, except with Ice); but if you load a custom tileset with more, the third row appears; just to avoid a third row that appear blank with every tileset done by westwood.
Maybe it's a bit hard to do that, I don't know. I mean because right now there are 2 tilesets only, I think, that can use a third row, and will look a bit empty overall when using any of the other 10 tilesets.

Well, I was thinking like this myself. I have two possibilities, what to do when a paint slot is not used: make the button disabled (like how it is now), or make the button completely invisible. If I go with the second option, then there would be a big empty hole between sand/rock/dunes buttons and rest of controls, which I thought would not look good. Shifting all the controls upwards if the third row of buttons is unused would be quite complicated to implement, so I just did not bother with that.

On 3/4/2020 at 9:14 PM, Cm_blast said:

did you play my christmas mini-campaign? it's at least a non-arrakis kind of map and gems worth 1000, that alone change the gameplay, although the maps are really really narrow to navigate.

Not yet. But I want to eventually give it a try most probably after I finalize D2kEditor 1.4.

15 hours ago, Gruntlord6 said:

This is great work! Keep it up.

Thanks! I hope, that after I finalize version 1.4, you would help me update it on D2K+ website for download.

Edited March 7, 2020 by Klofkac

[Cm_blast]

12 hours ago, Klofkac said:

A "Preset Helper" feature. You remember how difficult it was to manually write all the numbers into .ini file when you were creating block presets. Now it's much easier - you will just design your preset here, and then copy all the numbers and paste them into your tileset ini file.

Amazing feature; I had to work on plenty of presets myself because the original authors have no idea how to do it (or the patiente/time); this is trully incredible.

12 hours ago, Klofkac said:

Apart from that, I added possibility to have "blank tiles" or basically "holes" in block presets. In other words, the presets do not strictly need to be solid rectangle shape, but they can be any shape. When you place such block on map, then blank tiles will not affect the terrain under them (example shown on screenshot). Block presets with blank tiles are not yet used in any original or custom tileset, but it is potentially usable for example in Red Alert tileset, where as you may know the blocks are not always solid rectangle shape, I mean this:

Some Custom tileset would have blank tiles; for example, the snowdy one:
 <-- here; one have his own snow floor, but the other not, I added one random snow floor because the preset needed 2x2.

12 hours ago, Klofkac said:

But anyway, Heighliner tileset ALREADY uses its own modified TEXT.UIB with for example Wind Trap renamed to Reactor etc, so I see no reason why you would not use the custom TEXT.UIB for Heighliner-based maps in your campaigns. Yes I know, the game won't be in Spanish or whatever translation the player uses, but everything will turn English, but still, that's just how the mods work, there has to be a trade-off we should deal with.

If you are using a Fey's custom text.uib to be applied directly into the heighliner tileset: don't do it. Fey altered plenty of names that will mess the natural game. Palace of deceit, shock raider, Ghola Fremen and more. Nothing of that exist in Dune 2000 (and "shock raider" would appear on top of a grenadier, for example); if a custom text has to be added to that tileset, Fey need to actually redo a new custom text.uib more clean that only add "<Side> frigate", it cannot be used the same because it won't make sense not even for english users.

But I guess I am not forced to use an specific custom text.uib for a tileset, right? If Fey redo it and only add "Harkonnen frigate" (and the other sides) to the graphics of the frigates, I am free to pick his text.uib, see which lines he altered and doing the same myself for a spanish custom text uib that I can use later; simply telling the map I am doing to load my own version if I want.

12 hours ago, Klofkac said:

And I was not aware you could override automated messages with mission .ini file, I thought you could do only scripted event messages.

You can only override with a custom text.uib, not with the .ini.

Edited March 8, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Fey]

18 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

If you are using a Fey's custom text.uib to be applied directly into the heighliner tileset: don't do it. Fey altered plenty of names that will mess the natural game. Palace of deceit, shock raider, Ghola Fremen and more. Nothing of that exist in Dune 2000 (and "shock raider" would appear on top of a grenadier, for example); if a custom text has to be added to that tileset, Fey need to actually redo a new custom text.uib more clean that only add "<Side> frigate", it cannot be used the same because it won't make sense not even for english users.

Pardon, I need to read through everything here when I have more time but this caught my eye.

The Heighliner mini-campaign used original game values, nothing modded in-game. So, the .uib for that campaign is 'pure.'

[Cm_blast]

5 hours ago, Fey said:

The Heighliner mini-campaign used original game values, nothing modded in-game. So, the .uib for that campaign is 'pure.'

He mentioned that on that custom text.uib you had "windtraps" renamed as "reactors", so I don't know if we are talking about the same file.

I just hope that if later you add other things like "Atreides Frigate, Harkonnen frigate" or "void" or anything you may thing it's necesary... you can tell me later which lines you altered so I can do the spanish version, even if it is only for myself.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Fey]

6 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

He mentioned that on that custom text.uib you had "windtraps" renamed as "reactors", so I don't know if we are talking about the same file.

I just hope that if later you add other things like "Atreides Frigate, Harkonnen frigate" or "void" or anything you may thing it's necesary... you can tell me later which lines you altered so I can do the spanish version, even if it is only for myself.

Yee. Since the text.uib doesn't really change the original game, it didn't count as "no mods" for the mini-campaign. In the Summers campaign, EVERY map has a new .uib because something changes on every map, and sometimes that includes new units / structures. However, the Heighliner mini-campaign does not use any mods, only exclusively Heighliner / structure interior maps. So the text.uib changes general things, like Spice to Mass, or Wind Traps to Reactors. This is purely optional too, like, Base Platform is said to mimic the elements to allow standard base construction using structures meant for Arrakis. So, it's conceivable that Wind Traps would work similarly; it was a stylistic choice to call them Reactors in the Heighliner mini-campaign.

With Klof's new developments, it'll be possible to name more stuff when it's moused over, like Mass Deposits or Freighters.

I'll be sure to let ya know whenever it is I do update things. I've got a lot I wanna do here, but you know. Busy, and re/playing your campaigns comes first as well. XD

[Klofkac]

Maybe I found out a good solution how to deal with those custom tile hint texts and TEXT.UIBs.

You can simply add additional text into TEXT.UIB file after the the very last text, instead of replacing any existing text. So let's say for example the very last text in original TEXT.UIB is "SHAI-HULUD!" (which comes from the final credits), the number is something like 1323 on my end (it might probably differ for various game translations). So you will add several additional empty texts (just to make sure you skip any additional text that can appear in various translations) and then you add text like "MD Pad" or "Harkonnen Frigate" or anything, which will have number 1350 or something like this.

Then in case game loads Heighliner tileset with original TEXT.UIB which has less texts than 1350, then no hint message will display when you move mouse cursor over respective tiles at all. But if you start game with your modified TEXT.UIB, the game will display message that was added into your TEXT.UIB and has number 1350. So this way you can make both sides happy: Those who won't use custom TEXT.UIB will not see any nonsense text, but those who will use custom TEXT.UIB will see the correct hint text you intend to show.

[Cm_blast]

1 hour ago, Klofkac said:

You can simply add additional text into TEXT.UIB file after the the very last text, instead of replacing any existing text. So let's say for example the very last text in original TEXT.UIB is "SHAI-HULUD!" (which comes from the final credits), the number is something like 1323 on my end (it might probably differ for various game translations). So you will add several additional empty texts (just to make sure you skip any additional text that can appear in various translations) and then you add text like "MD Pad" or "Harkonnen Frigate" or anything, which will have number 1350 or something like this.

Then in case game loads Heighliner tileset with original TEXT.UIB which has less texts than 1350, then no hint message will display when you move mouse cursor over respective tiles at all. But if you start game with your modified TEXT.UIB, the game will display message that was added into your TEXT.UIB and has number 1350. So this way you can make both sides happy: Those who won't use custom TEXT.UIB will not see any nonsense text, but those who will use custom TEXT.UIB will see the correct hint text you intend to show.

That could be a solution but with a little "but"; every text.uib has different number of lines; I am not sure why, but I realize this in my earlygoing as modder where we were altering vanilla briefings to display into the game when overwrite maps was the only posibility to play a custom map.

The spanish one has less lines, the German one has more. The french also has more than english, but I think the german it's the one that has the most; maybe it's part of the credits with more staff involved into the translation, or maybe the distribution crew, I don't know.

But yes, from 1355 on onward those lines could be used... however, there is another "but".

Gruntmods version of the text uib has lines there.

But in this case the number starts at 1391, so from 1355 to 1391 there are +30 slots to add whatever it's necesary.

So in short, just taking in consideration where exactly the empty slots are, it could be possible to add "freigner" "frigate" "dark portal" or whatever the author wants but if I play with any other vanilla or even a totally different custom text nothing will be display on the screen.
I only have the doubt if actually will be shown in the screen, even if it is a very small rectangle, but even that still adds detail, like reconizing: yes, this is a "building", but since didn't exist in the original, it doesn't appear any text.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Cm_blast

[Klofkac]

6 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

if I play with any other vanilla or even a totally different custom text nothing will be display on the screen.

Well, that is what we would like to achieve to secure compatibility: Showing nothing is better than showing any random nonsense text, which would only confuse the player.

6 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

I only have the doubt if actually will be shown in the screen, even if it is a very small rectangle, but even that still adds detail, like reconizing: yes, this is a "building", but since didn't exist in the original, it doesn't appear any text.

I tested this. I tried to use an empty line from credits (there are plenty of them), and as you say, a small black rectangle appeared when I moved mouse cursor over the tiles.

Then I tried to use higher number that is number of lines in TEXT.UIB, in such case, nothing appeared at all (even not a small black rectangle).

I rejected the idea of using an empty line from credits, because as I found out myself, the position of credits lines is varying across different versions of TEXT.UIB, so if a player has different translation/version of TEXT.UIB, then random line from credits would appear.

So I think we could probably safely use any number from 1360 - 1390, in case player is using Gruntmods version of TEXT.UIB then a small black rectangle would possibly appear, which is still better than showing random garbage text.

[Cm_blast]

10 hours ago, Klofkac said:

Well, that is what we would like to achieve to secure compatibility: Showing nothing is better than showing any random nonsense text, which would only confuse the player.

Agree. Because sooner or later somebody will play or create a map not having any idea about custom text.uibs or having any knowledge about them; also, if fey add whatever he wants to appear in his map I can do a spanish custom one for myself and going straigh to the line number 1350 (or whatever it's the first entry possible), much better than searching for the others lines just trying to find where he wrotes "Harkonnen frigate".

By the way, this can be used with the spice too? I mean, adding a attribute to the spice to call for a different line, so a custom text.uib will have his original "spice" line but later it will have "mass deposit", "valuable resources", "Tiberium" or whatever? and even differences bewteen thick and thin, like "gems" that are the thick, "gold" the thin; sorry if you already said it was(n't) possible before.

10 hours ago, Klofkac said:

I tested this. I tried to use an empty line from credits (there are plenty of them), and as you say, a small black rectangle appeared when I moved mouse cursor over the tiles.

Then I tried to use higher number that is number of lines in TEXT.UIB, in such case, nothing appeared at all (even not a small black rectangle).

Probably because the ID given, that have "credits" that have a purpose while the higher doesn't have an id reconiced by the game, either way, it is a good thing.

10 hours ago, Klofkac said:

So I think we could probably safely use any number from 1360 - 1390, in case player is using Gruntmods version of TEXT.UIB then a small black rectangle would possibly appear, which is still better than showing random garbage text.

Agree; also right now there are more than 1 or maybe 2 versions of dune; there is a page you can download the game with the launcher, online (dunno if the missions are there) and people there fixed the briefing no appearing in mid game (custom maps only); mostly because we use "mission 0", because the others will show one of the vanilla briefings.

By the way, It could be possible for the .ini, when asked to use an specific text.uib, and if it is not available, just using the default one?
For example, my Tleilaxu campaign has like only a few lines altered: Ghola infantry, Ghola Trooper, Axolt Tank; but besides those 3 (and 1-2 more) the rest of the text.uib it's unchanged, just to give the impression that you are a tleilaxu faction.

So, if a player pick up my campaign but doesn't copy the file or move it in the wrong site, the game will crash saying it cannot find it. Some maps will "broke" inmersion (like Fey campaign) by using a default version instead, but for those people that have no clue of this kind of stuff (I copy - I play - doesn't work - I delete) I won't mind if the map still could be playable if the units are called as default value and just let people imagination do the rest. Maybe this is not possible from your side and should be more diggin into dune2000.exe or something like that, but I consider the posibility.

Maybe like a line setting up 2 (or more) specific text uibs, so I set "tleilaxutext.uib" and "text.uib"; game try to load using the first, but if it fails, then try with the second one.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Cm_blast