I didn't like the OC interface with the world map. So it got me thinking. If an interactive one could be made. Also to put into perspective how large Faerun actually is! There is almost 200 hrs worth of work and its unfinished. It is to scale to what the mesh would alow.
I am having a major problem with the river systems and the water. They don't show up. I didn't catch it untill late into making it. So I tried underpining the water with a colour. So at least you know that a river is there. I was hoping that the latest patch and the new MOTB would clear it up but NOT! So getting on the frustrated side I left it. Its been sitting on my HD for a while so I might as well share it with the community. Too bad really, It does look cool from the toolset.
Not much is there. Just water raised terrain.
If there is a Huge interest. I might finish what I can. But for now Its an "as is". Maybe someone over at Atari will take a look and fix up the watter issue (hint, hint) ;)
Enjoy
*2007/11/13
This is now a work in progress. As the water is now working. Keep checking back for updates.
*2007/01/14*
Somehow the map has been horribly corrupted. I though I had cut out enough to work ahead, But It keeps coming back. So I have resised it and posting it as final. Im guessing that the issue started when I first made it with an older version of the toolset. For me to fix it I will have to start from scratch. And I don't have the energy to do that.
So Enjoy use it any way you like. But I warn you!....ITS POSSESSED! lol
This as far as I can make the map as their is a hidden bug in it. Ive tested it, It runs ok. But I strongly suggest you do NOT to try to retexture it. That's when the trouble happens. Other then that. Enjoy!
I hate to admit it. But the bug came back. There is enouph of the map to post for people to play with. I going to take a break for a wile. Recharge my batteries if you will. I find im just not having fun with this. There are some other things I would try for now.
Been burinig the midnight oil. Im so tired I accedently uploaded the new file and deleted the old one. Lost all the stats. Oh well.
FYI. There was a really bad corruption that got into the map. After spending many hours trying to fix It I gave up. Loaded from old backups, But the problem kept coming back. I was seriously stuck! Again I gave up and was going to delete (resize) the lower have of the map and post it as finished. Then I started thinking, What if I add them back on? Maybee the trouble has cleared up. So far there had been no trouble.
One thing I knowticed was the toolset start marker pointer thingey now sits flat on the ground.
Everyting south of Amn has been deleted. The oceans have now been flatened out. The toolset water had now been deleted. Only the watermill water is being used. From now on I will call it.....water :))
Hopfully I wont be fighting with the toolset and can now start to be creative.
Fixed and re-posted the mod. Thanks for the heads up. I never seen this one coming. Turns out that the toolset had crosslinked/currupted the tilesets. It looked ok from the toolset but untill you run it as a mod the curruption is hidden. What really ticks me off is I lost alot of work. The good news is that the curruption is isolated to the last 3 meggapixle rows.
Again thanks for the heads up. As I probably wouldn't have tested it untill I was done.
I can't get this mod to load every time I try my game crashes..
Posted by Daelos at 2007-12-21 10:51:36 Voted 10.00 on 12/21/07
You are God _________________________ NWN Spanish Community Link
Posted by thasic at 2007-12-08 04:56:54 Voted 10.00 on 12/08/07
I love the idea. This is a great way to move between areas, it looks so much better than the OC. The potential here is incredible. Great job and keep going. The last screen shots you had were fantastic! _________________________ Failure is not an option
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-18 15:27:48 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Semperphi, please contact me gsmith (at) middletonfire.org
They Idea is pretty good :). I always remember such "maps".Long time ago when i player Secret of Mana for example when u got the flying dragon to fly over the world map - that was just cool. Something simelar for NWN2 would be just great - keep on working. I do not vote because its not ready yet - but be sure: Even for the idea you should get a good vote.
No offense taken. You pritty much got it right. This would mostly be used as a tool by modders for replacing the current world map system. With a little creative scripting the sky is the limmit. Like shrinking your charaters down to an acceptable size. Changeing the movement rates. Place hook points to link diferent moduals together.
If you like to use the current world map system. You could take screen shots of my map and use that.
If you don't need the whold 32x32 map, Just remove the areas you don't want and have the unused areas as a back drop.
Excellent work, I really hope you finish this as it's a good alternative to the campaignmap. It will also probably be easier to script things such as travel distance and supply useage.
i'm amazed to see what you did here, and i'm a little bit proud that my plugin was helpfull... and yes, watermill _is_ rather touchy to use, it was meant to be a "proof of concept" rather than a really productive tool, but even though it is a hard to master, it may be better than having no tool at all. _________________________ TerraCoppa, WaterMill, NWN2Packer & Packistani, WorldGate, RRN-Docs, RePlug... PW Weltentor (german)
OMG, I got the water to work! Pressing on to finish all the rivers. (new pic) So it looks as if I can finish this with the standard items in the toolset. Im also underpining the shorelines to stop the water cliping around some of the lakes. You will see some funny shading on the rivers because there is actually 2 layers of water. When the water is done. Im going to try an experiment to clear that up. If it doesn't work, Its good enough to move on to the next stage.
Also with the watermill plugin. Will alow me to raise the land close to the mountains. Alowing the river to run down hill. Being forced to work at the height of the water was such a pain. I was constantly juggling with respect to the river and vice versa.
It is so cool walking around the map, thinking hay that is were Wesgate is and, Oh look that is were Thay is. Um were is Cormyr, oh im standing in it LOL.
This is a fantastic idea and i will probably use screenshots of this for my world map. Thankyou so much. Even if you don't get any further with it you have still done a great thing.
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 22:24:17 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Re: Watermill and loss of rivers/killing ocean:
Rivers - Read the Watermill instructions carefully, particularly the part about how to save the work so it shows in-game. I got the same result you did a couple of times til I got the hang of it.
Ocean-B-Gone - Be sure every time you run Watermill to re-import the "toolset water" and re-import your chosen fake water texture. Also, this is why I mentioned saving to multipel files, so you can drop back to a pre-watermill version, edit, then re-apply watermill. *OR* you could do as I did above with making ALL water on the map be Watermill water and use NO toolset water. (Major rework indeed!)
It *is* a great plugin, but touchy.
The base textures of course are not scaled for this type of use. Would be nice to have some that are. However, I do not think this detracts at all from the usefulness of your idea.. as with most things NWN2, one has to make certain... allowances for limitations of the tools provided. It cannot be perfect, but it can be "Good Enough" (freakin cool, in this case).
I think, Im pushing the engine way outside what it is capable of. As you can see in the last screenshot. Also the watermill kills the ocean (EEK!) Don't get me wrong it an excelant plugin.
So back to square one again. Im going to lookaround and see if there is some sort of cyan (prefer reflective) texture I can import, And while Im at it look for a decent grass I can use for a base. Im not liking the stardard textures.
This was somthing I wanted to stay away from but I don't think there is any other choice.
Please keep at it guys! This looks very promising. It could eventually be used by many many mods as a world map. Thanks for you hard work Semperphi, and your ongoing help, iotech. _________________________ E.C.Patterson Gaming Parents Studios
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 13:16:13 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Tip for you re: Watermill and this mod. Save early, save often... and every *and I mean EVERY* time you save the module, use a different filename. You'll understand why about the second time you try to open a mod after running Watermill on it.
Peace out.
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 13:11:30 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
My pleasure!
It never ceases to amaze me... the generosity of this community.. where someone can spend 200+ hours on a project, and simply give it away to others. I have been with NWN from the very beginning, and while NWN2 has it's issues, it is obvious that the Devs are trying to make it all it could be within their constraints. The community for NWN2 is not nearly as large or productive as the NWN side of things, but NWN has had years to accumulate community content. Those of you posting content for NWN2 should be extra proud of your work, for it is you who will let NWN2 succeed where it might otherwise ultimately fade away.
I have not learned the NWN2 toolset nearly as well as I knew the NWN version, but I am rapidly approaching it. I fired up the NWN system the other day, thinking I'd grab some nostalgia.. and I did... but within minutes of being in the old toolset, I felt limited by what I cannot do in it, that I can do in NWN2's toolset. The scripting engine is more robust, more feature rich. The graphics of course are superior. NWN2 will survive as long as NWN did (and does) as long as people like you, Semperphi, continue to share your work. Will there still be issues that keep a lot of people from switching? Yes, undoubtedly. Still, others will pick up and go with it, and NWN2 will grow.. when *critical mass* is reached.
Critical Mass is not a new game by Bioware.. it is when the average talented scripter/moddler/builder gets an idea for his/her module and can find it, or something very like it, on the Vault. It's when Obsidian releases a couple of XPs that enrich the pallette, when we have enough creatures to choose from or tilesets to make most any scenario possible. I dont like the Campaign Map system in NWN2 (my opinion only), but you have given me a viable alternative. Thank You for every one of the 200+ hours you've put into this, and for the many more ahead of you (I hope).
Remember this is almost 6 months old now. (since it origonaly made it).Also I havent been on this site for a long time. I didn't know about the watermill plugin. Thankyou for giving me the heads up. That will solve it. I will pickup were I left off.
You want to hear somthing scary?! It nearly got deleted twice! But so much work went into it I couldn't do it.
As far as scripting and modding goes Im about a 4 out of 10 for skill. Im going to have to re-learn this stuff again.
iotech, you just keep posting away. Keep an eye out for some updates. And Thankyou
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 12:26:36 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Ok, using Tanita's Watermill, setting "toolset water" and adding the sand texture, the area has water in all the right spots in-game. Looks a mite odd in the toolset, though.
Tired of hearing from me yet?
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 11:47:14 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Found that my problem with Watermill is from my lack of experience with the plugin. Had I included "toolset water" in my watermap build, I'd have had success. Strike what i said above about major re-work of the base terrain, it is not necessary to repaint all underwater areas as the replaced texture (i.e. sand)... just the rivers, which you have done. Curious.. did you use Watermill orginaly?
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 11:21:10 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Wow... I successfully used Tanita's Watermill plugin to completely hose the area. LOL. I think using her plugin will be key to fixing the water issue, but on the negative side, it removes an available texture slot from normal use (and after more thought, would also require a major rework of the base terrain). Note, when I tried to have Watermill restore the original backed-up terrain, it did so.. and completely flattened all of it too. *sigh*
Re: performance issues: this is why I removed the trees and cattails and went for texture to denote terrain type. As for the scaled down buildings... the engine loads the full sized model and textures then scales it... if we had some models (low res would be fine) *created at an appropriate scale*, there would be less overhead for the engine to load, store, and not have to scale. Perhaps scaled down large objects would be ok if placed trees are not used at all?
Before I messed it all up I did load it into the game. The textures looked better than I had hoped, but I did find the missing water you mentioned. I see that you laid down sand where the water belongs, and when I ran Watermill on it, the rivers were all fine.. but lakes and seas were gone ('cause they have Grass texture under - this is the base terrain re-work I mentioned above).
It occurs to me that the scale of the map may also be key to success or failure. The toolset brushes, set to 1 with no outer, still do not produce a sharp defined line, either for texturing or raise/lower. Now, if the map were the same physical size, but for a region of Faerun (like, Sword Coast), the raise/lower brushes and texturing brushes set to 1 and 0 outer would be useful for making roads, river channels etc. I do not know if I am expressing this clearly or not...
Continuing to experiment...
Posted by jallaix at 2007-11-08 10:50:47 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
I checked and I confirm it's an amazing work.
Maybe with the help of iotech you could improve and finish it ? _________________________ Spellcasting Framework Wild/Dead Magic Zone (Spellcasting Framework add-on)
You hit the nail right on the head. This would open up soo many doors. Again the problem I had was that stinking water. The texturing was next, but I hated the way the water/river was working. So I kept abandoning what I was doing and kept trying to fix the rivers.
As far as texturing goes. The fun part :) You are limited to X amount of textures per grid. Because this map is so huge, you have to be very very careful many you use.
Using the map as a reference there is alot open to interpretation. This is were I kept fliping back and forth on what to do. Like to I add height (overeggagerate). Perfomance issues, when I started addding trees and scaled down objects you started seeing a huge performance hit. Or do you use colour/textures insted.
I also wanted to keep things as vanilla as possible.
Posted by iotech at 2007-11-08 08:05:26 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
Semperphi (excellent name, btw) this is fascinating! Such a simple concept, yet.. what fantastic possibilities are brewing in my head! I give this a 10 for the novelty and potential alone. Please do continue to work on this. Here are some suggestions (for you or the community):
1. Texturing for plains, mountains, snow capped peaks, desert, etc.
2. Get some talented modelers to make mini-sized cities, towers, etc (yes, I know I can scale current placeables like you did, but a palette of map-tokens would be most excellent.
3. Scripting to enable/disable transition triggers based on variable/flags (like the built-in campaign map system).
I'd also like to see you post a nice How To explaining in detail how you did this. Would be very useful for those of us who do not base their mods/pw in Faerun!
Well done, I say!
Posted by jallaix at 2007-11-08 05:05:43 Voted 10.00 on 11/08/07
I'll check this map this evening, but from what I've seen on the pictures It looks like a marvelous work.
I started something like this a while ago using Campaign Cartographer, but I stopped when I saw how had it was... _________________________ Spellcasting Framework Wild/Dead Magic Zone (Spellcasting Framework add-on)
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