texturing with vasara

[doctorbenjiphd]

I'm back.

Well, really, I never left. But I stopped making maps for a while. Mainly because all the time and effort I put into them is all for naught. I realize some of my levels aren't up to the quality of a lot of the mapmakers nowadays (fuck you Ryoko) but, hey, you know what? I don't give a damn. I like making maps. And I started another one the other day, and it is my first built ENTIRELY outside of emulated Forge/Anvil (this means Weland for the grid and visual mode lua plugin thing for Infinity). It's nice to finally get away from those transparent line limitations. But having to jump back and forth between the game and the editor when it comes to visual mode is a pain in the ass.

Whatever.

The point is, I laid down a buttload of groundwork for my new level, estimating heights and such, and fired up Infinity to lay some textures down and get a feel for the environment. So I spent an hour or so texturing, and then thought, shit how do I save this? Being stuck in the engine, I simply hoped that quitting would save my progress. NOPE! What a waste of time. The question is--how do I save what textures I have applied in Aleph to the map?

Another somewhat related question. Since we have the source code for the engine, and have taken out many of the previous limitations, why hasn't someone gone into Forge and removed the limitations there? I realize the source code to Forge was never released, but you are all programming geniuses, can't someone look under the Forge hood and tweak the limits? We would still be making Aleph maps, just doing in with native tools in Sheep Shaver or whatever. And those of us who grew up map making with Forge can stick with it, because, with all due respect to the Weland developers, Forge with visual mode is a much better editor.

If I am conveying too much of a dickhead attitude, I'm sorry. Just annoyed that all my texturing efforts weren't saved. Hope the community (what exists of it?) is doing well.

[Tycho X]

Welcome back, I guess?

When you're in Vasara press the ' - ' or ' # ' button. I can't quite remember but if you press some button to the far right of your keyboard a small 'tab' will pop up at the bottom left. Type in ' .save ' and voilà, it's saved.

Also, in all honesty, the Forge texture/height editor is shit. I mean it's fine, but don't ever modify heights in that mode - you'll get inaccurate results.

Good luck, I can't wait to see the next batch of maps!

[Wrkncacnter]

I'm back.
If I am conveying too much of a dickhead attitude, I'm sorry.

Not only are you coming off as a dickhead, you're also making yourself seem completely incompetent. It's a good strategy, I'm sure people will want to help you now.

[Crater Creator]

I'm sorry to hear you lost a lot of texturing work. Here's what to do next time.

To save your work, press the "Chat/Console" key (default is backslash: \ ) and then type:

.save level my-fabulous-level.sceA

I was thinking Vasara could be modified to save on quit, like so:

Code: Select all

function Triggers.cleanup()
   Game.save()
end

But this didn't work when I tested it. I suppose cleanup() is tripped too late in the process to alter the UI flow with a save dialog.

Actually I seem to recall someone did hack away Forge's dialog box warnings back in the day. Of course, stripping the warning away doesn't keep the application from crashing.

Anyway, you're right that the source code for Forge was never released, and that is why it won't be improved. It's not like asking someone to tune an engine. It's more like asking someone to take the egg yolks out of a cake after it's been baked.

[doctorbenjiphd]

Thanks for the answers. Pretty useful to know!

I notice that every polygon side texture needs to be aligned. This is, of course, incredibly annoying. Is there some obvious "auto-align texture sides" checkbox I'm missing, or do individual sides have to be manually set every time a polygon is textured? I would just texture with visual mode in Forge, but it keeps crashing.

Not only are you coming off as a dickhead, you're also making yourself seem completely incompetent. It's a good strategy, I'm sure people will want to help you now.

I deserved that. Sorry again. Was just very frustrated.

[Hopper]

Is there some obvious "auto-align texture sides" checkbox I'm missing

"Align adjacent" is on by default in Vasara's Options screen, and should re-align all touching sides of the same texture when you set or drag any of them. A great place to try it out is at the blue walls near the start of Rise Robot Rise, which wrap all the way around the room.

I was thinking Vasara could be modified to save on quit ...

".save level" is a completely separate function from "Game.save()"; the latter is the same as using a pattern buffer. Triggers.cleanup is probably too late in the process, but you might have gotten a saved game from your testing.

The ".save level" functionality is only available from the console, and no Lua script can trigger it. The way it's currently built, it can create or overwrite any file anywhere on your hard drive (subject to OS permissions). That's pretty dangerous behavior to trust to a Lua script, especially when you consider net scripts. Even auto-save-on-quit might trash your work unexpectedly, if you screwed something up and really did want to revert. A poorly designed Lua API could cause just as much grief as the current situation, and designing a good API takes time that could be better spent working on Visual Mode for Weland...

[doctorbenjiphd]

Hi again--I'm having another problem here. When I save the level, I can't seem to find the actual new file. It doesn't seem to save to the preexisting map. I will do some texturing, save the map, tweak around with some stuff in Weland, and return to see the results, only to see my texturing was not saved. The popup text says the new level file was saved in Aleph One application support folder, but I can't even find this folder on my drive. Searching the disk doesn't find the file name I saved.

This also makes me wonder, does texturing not override the existing map file? In other words, every time I texture, do I need to save a new map file, and then every time I tweak further in Weland, is it *another* unique file? Or once I start texturing, am I prevented from altering the map in Weland any further? If this is the case, that is weak sauce!

Sorry if my questions are unclear, it's kind of hard to explain.

I will add, though, that texturing in Aleph and Weland is much easier than I thought it would be. It is very intuitive, and while I am very much conditioned to Forge and visual mode, this is quite easy to get the hang of. Even the issue of going back and forth between Aleph for texturing and the grid on Weland is hardly annoying anymore--God forbid I have to waste an extra six seconds!

Though I would add the that the thing I am missing most is there doesn't seem to be an eyedropper in draw mode (there might not even be one in visual mode, which would suck, but I'm hardly that far yet)...when dealing with multiple floor heights in the elevation mode, it's is very nice to just option-click on a polygon and have its height selected, rather than having to click directly on the poly and then go back to the elevation editor and manually select the height. Again, all this would do is save a few seconds, but it sure is nice!

I'm also going crazy making this map in Weland...have over 1500 polys already and still have some more building to do. Having truly escaped vanilla Marathon engine limitations, I'm just getting a kick out of being able to do things I was never able to in the past. The only problem is that texturing seems SOOOOOO daunting, that I may never even finish this map, heh.

[treellama]

Though I would add the that the thing I am missing most is there doesn't seem to be an eyedropper in draw mode

Right click.

[doctorbenjiphd]

Right click.

I was certain this didn't work when I wrote that, now it does...hmm...still wish someone could help me with the saved texture file, I'm at a standstill, cannot progress on level until I figure this out! Thanks tho treellama

[Crater Creator]

When I save the level, I can't seem to find the actual new file.

So when you type .save level name, what does the console print out?

P.S. Ah yes, of course. .save level is completely different from Game.save(). I don't know what I was thinking.

[doctorbenjiphd]

So when you type .save level name, what does the console print out?

I had followed the route and the reason I couldn't find it was that it was saving to an invisible folder in the Library--Application Support. So, cool, figured that out! Is there any way I can change the save location of the new level files? That's a pretty deep, obscure place to save the file. And I'm pretty simplistic when it comes to computers; typing commands into the Terminal always makes me nervous.

[Crater Creator]

So long as the engine saves to that location, everything has to revolve around that folder for mapmakers seeking an efficient workflow. Read this.