2 replies to this topic

[MattTheLegoman]

G'day, this topic is WIP as I compile and find more ways to fix a broken map.

 

Too many trees and shrubs, they disappear

For whatever reason, you've added too many trees and shrubs, causing them to dissapear in World Builder or the game.

I'd like to test this method to see if it fixes faulty AI on modded and vanilla maps.

• Open World Builder
• In one window open your map.
• Zoom out and select all objects.
• In the Scripts menu click on Export Scripts.
• Select all the relevant map features you want to copy over to a new map.
  • terrain texture
  • terrain height
  • selected objects
  • waypoints
  • areas
  • water areas
  • lighting
  • players
  • passability
  • and all scripts
• Open another window of World Builder.
• Create a new map with the same size as your map.
• In the Scripts menu click on Imports Scripts and import your map data.
• Edit - Map Settings. Re-write your Map Name and Description.
• Save the copy of the map with a new name (e.g. version 2) and check for any errors.

This method does not work all the time.

 

I do not know if this will help but perhaps you will decide not to export all the objects or maybe you will decide to set up the players and teams again.

 

Tip: Please remember which map is which. Opening the scripts window will "edit" map.

 

Faster Save and Load

While you are testing your new map, save it uncompressed to quicken saving and loading the map, in World Builder and in the game.

• Edit - Map Settings.
• In the Compression drown-down menu choose No compression.

 

Select all and replace objects

• Select the object that you want to replace all.
• Ctrl - M will select all the same objects.
• Edit - Replace Selected to choose a new object.

Worldbuilder has crashed, I was working on a map

• Worldbuilder has an autosave function, it will save your map every two minutes. The autosaved files are in the userdata folder (same place as your options.ini file). You can get to the appdata folder by pressing Start and typing %appdata%
  

  C:\Users\MattTheLegoman\AppData\Roaming\My Battle for Middle-earth Files
  C:\Users\MattTheLegoman\AppData\Roaming\My Battle for Middle-earth(tm) II Files
  C:\Users\MattTheLegoman\AppData\Roaming\My The Lord of the Rings, The Rise of the Witch-king Files

• The most recent autosaved map will be called WorldBuilderAutoSave1.map and you can check the Date modified.

 

ToDo and Updates

• How to fix World Builder not opening - reinstall the game. https://forums.revor...allation-guide/
• How to fix World Builder crashing all the time - use large address aware on it.
• How to fix water gaps - make the terrain invisible.
• How the terrain mesh works, why the terrain mesh at the edge of the map is bad - your map is the wrong size, don't use the edge of the map.
• How to properly resize your map and not ruin terrain textures - its to do with the texture size and texture mapping on the terrain, you'll need to add the full size of your largest terrain texture.
• I'd like to add some real guidelines about how many of these objects you can have in the map but I have no data about how many you can add. There may be some hints in CnC 3 and CnC 4 World Builder, but I haven't found them out yet.
  • objects - maybe this is to do with memory or textures or materials or meshes
  • trees and shrubs - the same, although perhaps trees and shrubs are unique types of objects (they have their own counter)
  • terrain textures - the textures are placed on a large, square texture atlas (big texture), so there may be a way of optimising the number of textures you use
  • terrain blends - I don't know if these need limiting
  • water areas - I don't know if these need limiting
  • ect
     

Edited by MattTheLegoman, 07 April 2019 - 03:01 AM.

[-SilverBane-]

This topic is very useful and should be pinned. All those little tricks would help new mappers significantly.

Regarding limits I know from my own experience that shrubs start disappearing when going over 800 of them and trees over 1200 (I also remember I read somewhere about 14 tree types limit but im not sure about that one as I never placed so many different trees)... So somewhere below 2000 "grass" objects is desirable in a map.

[MattTheLegoman]

These miscellaneous tips are quotes from the Command & Conquer 4, I'll have to look at these again and consider how I should add this information to the main post.

 

Object Counts

• The number of objects on your map is displayed on the far left side of the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
• Limit the number of objects you use to around 3000.
• Be careful when creating cities and forests with high object counts. Remember that you are creating a battleground with the impression of a city or a forest, you are not creating the city or forest itself. You need fewer objects to create a simple impression. For example, you can create the impression of a forest with no more than 40 trees [matt note: a small forest has about 400]. Practice to see what you can get away with, and remember that the quality of the gameplay is always the overriing factor.

Steep Slopes

matt note: The manual has a section in Elements to Optimize about steep slopes, it doesn't say why steep slopes should be optimised but it does explain how - the smooth tool.

 

Blended Textures

• You must blend textures to create more natural effects, but do not blend textures unnecessarily. There is always a resource hit when blending textures.
• When in doubt, start over painting textures, and try to avoid overlaps.

Map Size

... there's a lot more for me to read.