person915 11 Posted June 19, 2013 It was an error in the pathname where the folder had a space between Kharghar and Valley, but then I had to change it to put the words together, and everything had to be updated in the .rvmats. Now, though, Bulldozer runs fine, binarization works, and the modfolder is enabled in game, but it doesn't show up as a selectable map in the editor. Did I choose the binarization path wrong? What did I do? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted June 20, 2013 Once again - triplecheck everything... First thing I'd check is the modfolder itself - make sure you have an "@Something" folder - with another folder called "Addons" inside - and your terrain inside there. If the modfolder is correctly loaded you should see it mentioned up in the top right corner of the main menu when you load the game at first. If that doesn't solve the problem then... In BinPBO, - check all the paths are correct as per the Guide - make sure *.wrp ISN'T on the "list of files to copy directly", and that *.rvmat IS on there. Try binarizing again... Sounds like you're nearly there - just some odd error or omission holding you up now... B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
person915 11 Posted June 20, 2013 I'm checking the modfolder, and could this be a problem? Cannot register unknown string STR_STATE_HEALSOLDIER Cannot register unknown string STR_STATE_FIRST_AID Cannot register unknown string STR_UI_RADARRANGE Cannot register unknown string STR_ACTION_LAUNCHCM Cannot register unknown string STR_ACTION_NEXTCM Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_ACTION_CONTEXT Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_OPTICS_MODE Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_ZEROING_UP Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_ZEROING_DOWN Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_NETWORK_DS_INTERFACE Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_BULD_TERRAIN_RAISE_10CM Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_BULD_TERRAIN_LOWER_10CM Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_BULD_TERRAIN_RAISE_50CM Cannot register unknown string STR_USRACT_BULD_TERRAIN_LOWER_50CM Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_0 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_1 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_2 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_3 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_4 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_5 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_6 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_7 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_8 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_9 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_10 Cannot register unknown string STR_INPUT_DEVICE_FREETRACK_11 Cannot register unknown string STR_DISP_LEFT Cannot register unknown string STR_DIFF_CAMERA_SHAKE Cannot register unknown string STR_FREETRACK Cannot register unknown string STR_ADDON_ACTIONS_INSTALL_CORE Cannot register unknown string STR_ADDON_ACTIONS_INSTALL_MOD Cannot register unknown string STR_ADDON_ACTIONS_PLAY_MISSION Cannot register unknown string STR_ADDON_ACTIONS_TRY_ENTITY Cannot register unknown string STR_ADDON_ACTIONS_TRY_WEAPON Cannot register unknown string STR_MSG_ADDON_NOT_FOUND Cannot register unknown string STR_MSG_ADDON_CANNOT_OPEN Cannot register unknown string STR_MSG_ADDON_UNKNOWN_PRODUCT Cannot register unknown string STR_INCOMPATIBLE_LOAD_GAME_ATTEMPT I know most of these don't matter, but some of them have to do with the terrain, and the last few scare me. ---------- Post added at 02:55 ---------- Previous post was at 01:41 ---------- Once again - triplecheck everything...First thing I'd check is the modfolder itself - make sure you have an "@Something" folder - with another folder called "Addons" inside - and your terrain inside there. If the modfolder is correctly loaded you should see it mentioned up in the top right corner of the main menu when you load the game at first. If that doesn't solve the problem then... In BinPBO, - check all the paths are correct as per the Guide - make sure *.wrp ISN'T on the "list of files to copy directly", and that *.rvmat IS on there. Try binarizing again... Sounds like you're nearly there - just some odd error or omission holding you up now... B Odd error, indeed. The .wrp was missing an e in valley, so it wasn't being binarized! Unfortunately now it does show up in the editor, the unfortunality being that I have yet ANOTHER error... http://i.imgur.com/IAwleZe.png (194 kB) Apparently .png images are just SO freaking big in size, because this one is small and it's still almost twice the size limit for in-thread viewing, so... In game, in first person I just see a black shadow where the nopx should be, but in third person I just see tan- just 1 shade that's affected slightly by lighting and elevation in the same place as the shadow in first person. I'm going to look at the directory and the file name to see if it is wrong, because that would make sense why it wouldn't load, but please tell me where to look in the meantime, and any other info you may have that could help. Thanks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted June 20, 2013 Apparently .png images are just SO freaking big in size, because this one is small and it's still almost twice the size limit for in-thread viewing, so... Yeah - forum pics are tricky sometimes... I use .jpg cause they're generally smaller, plus when you save a .jpg from photoshop you get a quality slider with a filesize readout, so you can reduce size to something reasonable, and even drop a quality level or two if you need to.... Anyway - looking even more promising now... Once again, my first suggestion is to triplecheck filenames and all paths everywhere that are anything to do with groundtextures - your layers.cfg, cfgSurfaces, the rvmats, the actual filenames of the textures themselves... one letter out of place anywhere is enough to trip things up... It's a pain to do this stuff by hand on every file, and it leaves you open to making mistakes... Once you have an idea of what you're doing and why you're doing it, and you're a little more familiar with the various files themselves, it's likely you'll simply use bulk search and replace routines in Notepad or Notepad++ - maybe use the handy "file renamer basic" program I recommend in the Guide for renaming groundtexture files, etc... The main reason for talking you through line-by-line while you manually rename stuff is basically to make you look at the files a little more closely than you did with Sgt Aces Tut, where you simply assembled the correct files in the correct order... With this tut you "touch" every file just about - it's a good introduction to the various necessary components and it'll come in handy soon, since the next stage after this is - your own first test project! Quadruplecheck every path and file, one more time... my money's still on a simple typo somewhere... If you can't find one, then we'll take a closer look at your main config files and see if we can spot some other minor flaw.... Nearly there - don't despair! ;) B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
person915 11 Posted June 20, 2013 Yeah - forum pics are tricky sometimes... I use .jpg cause they're generally smaller, plus when you save a .jpg from photoshop you get a quality slider with a filesize readout, so you can reduce size to something reasonable, and even drop a quality level or two if you need to....Anyway - looking even more promising now... Once again, my first suggestion is to triplecheck filenames and all paths everywhere that are anything to do with groundtextures - your layers.cfg, cfgSurfaces, the rvmats, the actual filenames of the textures themselves... one letter out of place anywhere is enough to trip things up... It's a pain to do this stuff by hand on every file, and it leaves you open to making mistakes... Once you have an idea of what you're doing and why you're doing it, and you're a little more familiar with the various files themselves, it's likely you'll simply use bulk search and replace routines in Notepad or Notepad++ - maybe use the handy "file renamer basic" program I recommend in the Guide for renaming groundtexture files, etc... The main reason for talking you through line-by-line while you manually rename stuff is basically to make you look at the files a little more closely than you did with Sgt Aces Tut, where you simply assembled the correct files in the correct order... With this tut you "touch" every file just about - it's a good introduction to the various necessary components and it'll come in handy soon, since the next stage after this is - your own first test project! Quadruplecheck every path and file, one more time... my money's still on a simple typo somewhere... If you can't find one, then we'll take a closer look at your main config files and see if we can spot some other minor flaw.... Nearly there - don't despair! ;) B Literally NO idea what to tell you. All directories were fine, all paths too. I went into the .rvmat for sand_nopx and took the path for it, pasted it in a note file, and browsed for the same file again, pasted the directory for that, and they were the same. I re-imported the sat and mask, reconverted everything in bulldozer, and re-binarized it all, and now it works. Well... atleast it works... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted June 21, 2013 I re-imported the sat and mask, reconverted everything in bulldozer, and re-binarized it all, and now it works. Heheh... Yeah - sometimes if you can't find a problem, stepping back a stage or two and "doing it again" can magically fix things... Visitor can be a little... temperamental sometimes... Still - there you go! TWO tutorials done! - By now you should have the beginnings of a grasp of the basic procedures you have to follow, the basic files that are required, where they "live" on the P:\ drive structure and what parts need "personalised" for each individual project... Next step is to actually create some content of your own! For the actual "P:\YourTag\YourNewProject" directory structure and basic fileset, you can repeat my Guide tutorial over again - renaming & repathing in just the same way, but this time to your "MyNewProject" names, paths and tags - then all you need is your own heightmap, satellite layer and mask layer... This is where the creativity starts to kick in - at last! ;) There's a selection of free ready-made heightmaps here, which you might find inspiring, and for some basic Sat layer & Mask layer creation guidance, the "Next Tutorial in line" is... Mondkalb's Terrain Tutorial Well done so far! and.... Good Luck! B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Chairborne 2594 Posted June 29, 2013 (edited) I have a question regarding terrain texture and satmap. What is the real purpose of the MCO type textures and how do they affect the visuals in arma? I tried making my own but in game they look damn ugly and very VERY dark. http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/2748/cxl.png (849 kB) Aside from my incredible skills in Photoshop :D the texture next to the sea should be bright sand and it appears like this instead. Is there anything that regulates transparency between surface and actual satmap? The grass-type terrain uses arma 2 "original" textures taken from chernarus and everything works as it's supposed to be but with the textures i made i get this mess instead (so it is certainly something i did wrong). Also, i read that the layermask should have very defined borders between one surface type and the other but in game they appear way too marked, is there any trick to blend them better in a more natural way? EDIT: ok after playing around for a while with MCO files i think that the darker they are and the more transparent they become when in game. I'll just have to balance the colors a bit better now but i think this is solved. I'd still like to know if there's any way to blend the layermask surfaces better without causing problems to the engine. Edited June 29, 2013 by Chairborne Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted June 30, 2013 (edited) The individual ground texture MCO files are enlarged to the size of a Texture Grid (You set this size as part of your Visitor 3 terrain parameters, where it's known as "Base Texture Layer Size"), and then multiplied with the satellite map to provide some additional middle distance ground detail to the player in the 5/10 - 40 meter range. You see it working best on surfaces where there's no clutter, like beach sand, tarmac, gravel or ploughed fields, and they're where a good MCO can add a nice extra level of detail at the ranges where the ground texture itself is starting to lose detail, and the sat layer is beginning to be apparent... They're not greyscale images, even if they look like they are - they're regular 24bit RGB colour images, but they're "colour averaged". In an RGB image, each channel effectively holds 8-bit information - that means numbers ranging from 0 to 255, so the "middle shade" is 128 When the MCO is overlaid on the in-game sat map and multiplied with it, the "middle shade" becomes transparent. Really "low shades" that are very dark, or really high shades that are really light will lighten or darken the sat layer accordingly - producing the visible effect of the MCO. You're not seeing the MCO itself directly - it's acting like a sort of "pixelshader/control layer" basically. The closer the shade of any particular pixel of the image is to 128, the more transparent it will be. So, in practise, all the "mid-range" shades of the MCO image effectively disappear, leaving the remaining light and dark shades to affect the visible sat layer. Heres a quick way to make them... Lets start with a familiar texture.... You can see I've switched to Channels mode here and it's a regular OA 3-channel _CO groundtexture image... Now I go to the "Image > Adjustments > Levels" option and it looks like this... Now you can see I've chosen the Red Channel only, and in the histogram you can see the range of shades in use on this channel... Click the "Auto" button and you'll see the histogram average its range of shades in the center, around that happy 128 value. Now use the popdown above and do the same to the other two channels in turn... it's important to do them separately too - don't cheat and just "auto" the whole RGB image at once ;) Once you've done that the image itself probably won't look too different - maybe a little odd, but there's still too much information here... Remember, the MCO is being enlarged and overlaid on a relatively large area... The actual visible _CO groundtexture itself may only cover 2x2 meters or so, but if you've set a Base Texture Layer size of 40 x40 meters, then this single MCO will be enlarged to cover that whole area... This means you need to think about the image carefully - you don't really wan't large definitely recognisable things like rocks or twigs in there - they'd be grossly enlarged... You really just want a shading of light detail generally suggestive of the main texture in use, as seen from a little distance... This means that the MCO texture need not always match the _CO texture, or be based on it - though they usually are... Anyhow, to tighten the colour range still further we'll use another Photoshop option, the "High Pass Filter" Go to the "Filters > Other > High Pass" menu option and it'll look something like this... Woggle the slider around and you'll see that you have considerable control over just how much of the image detail you want to compress down into that "mid-grey" shade... All of that will be effectively invisible in-game and only the lighter or darker details will show... Sometimes a little 2 pixel gaussian blur afterwards takes the edge off oversharp details, but it's relatively quick to try them out in Visitor/Buldozer until you're happy... If you're a determined Gimp user then the same facilities exist in Gimp for the levels averaging stage, but there's no Hi-Pass Filter built in... You can get a Gimp Hi-Pass filter plugin on my website in the resources & handy things section... Or, if you haven't already, you could rush to Adobe.Com Free CS2 Downloads and grab yourself a totally free and legit copy of Photoshop ;) B Edited July 1, 2013 by Bushlurker Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Biggins61 10 Posted November 3, 2013 I am not sure as to whether or not anyone has run into the issue with BullDozer via start up through Visitor3. I have gone through the installation but when it comes time to launch I get an error message. I am not sure if anyone has come across this issue but I have gone through and tried finding what it could be but to no avail. Any help would be appreciated. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
m1lkm8n 411 Posted November 3, 2013 (edited) I am not sure as to whether or not anyone has run into the issue with BullDozer via start up through Visitor3. I have gone through the installation but when it comes time to launch I get an error message. I am not sure if anyone has come across this issue but I have gone through and tried finding what it could be but to no avail. Any help would be appreciated. Well your description here is pretty vague. A little more info would help, such as the error message. Also you should really create a new thread if your search provides no valuable info because this thread is for bushlurkers guide to microterrains Edited November 3, 2013 by M1lkm8n Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted November 3, 2013 Yeah... M1lkm8n's absolutely correct... we need more detail Biggins... Especially if you're just starting out - and maybe even following this guide - there could be multiple reasons for errors... Take a little time and detail what you've done so far, and precisely what error you're getting, and we'll see if we can narrow things down to a specific problem... B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Mike_Styles 0 Posted March 27, 2017 Well it appears that the download links to the source files are dead :( Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
R0adki11 3949 Posted March 27, 2017 14 minutes ago, Mike_Styles said: Well it appears that the download links to the source files are dead :( Alas the author bushlurker passed away recently :(. Which means its likely the files may not be restored, unless someone else has the files. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
