Desert Mountains

How can I create desert mountains without placing their facades peice by piece?

When using the 'Edit terrain...' function in WorldEd, it lets me drop regular mountains just fine, but will drop the appropriate surrounding terrain (snow/desert/tropics) for the other types, but without any mountains to be seen.

Rather irritating...

 

Some terrain types are unfinished. However, it's quite easy to make them yourself, as they're just premade maps from which WorldEd generates new sectors.

Terrain types are stored in the 'terrain' folder in Arcanum2.dat. Just create a new module, copy the terrain types you're interested in to the 'maps' folder of the module and you'll be able to edit them.

BTW, I've made a Void terrain type.

 

Great, thanks for that - creating the new terrain is easy, and all works perfectly.


But here's a strange problem:

In Arcanum2.dat/terrain, one of the terrain transition folders is incorrectly spelled: 'desert moutains to desert', missing the 'n' in 'mountains'. The desert mountains terrain type is spelt correctly in the base 'desert mountains' folder, and is spelt correctly in the terrain.mes everywhere that type is mentioned (in both the base and transition sections).

Now, even without replacing the empty maps with my completed terrain maps, if I just rename the incorrectly spelt transition map to what it should be and recompile the .dat - a bunch of the base terrains (at least 'plains' and 'swamps') now render blank* in WorldEd...

Any ideas why??

And if I do replace all the empty desert mountains folders ('desert mountains', 'desert to desert mountains' and 'desert mountains to desert' with my newly created ones, I can get them working perfectly (provided I do rename the 'desert moutains to desert' folder to it matches with the 'desert mountains' folder and the .mes) - except the plains and swamps are all screwed up.

*well, not blank - but entirely made up of the 'ILLbse0a' tileset.

 

I suppose I could get around it by just ignoring the problem: by adding the fixed terrain maps to a new .dat, giving them a new terrain type name (something other than 'desert mountains'), and add the new names into all the appropraite places in terrain.mes in Arcanum2.dat; but that doesn't really solve the weirdness.

 

You don't even have to create a new .dat. Just make a 'terrain' folder in the 'data' folder and put your terrain types there, the 'data' folder has the highest priority, so it will override everything in .dats. And recompiling the original Arcanum2.dat isn't recommended.

P.S. Would you mind sharing the fixed 'desert mountains' terrain type you've created? It'd be useful to everyone.

 

Even better; thanks man - 'Master of Arcanum' indeed.

Sure, here it is: http://rapidshare.com/files/255915118/desert_mountains.zip.html

Is just rapidshare, so if they're actually wanted someone is welcome to host them elsewhere.

They're identical to the template of regular mountains, just with the desert mountains facades instead, with desert instead of grass... I've only tested with applying them to what is already desert, so there could be weirdness if trying to apply to other terrain types directly, I dunno.

Like Drog says above, chuck them in data/terrain to get them working.

 

Thanks. I've checked them out and fixed a few things: there were two misaligned facades in 'desert mountains to desert', also in 'desert to desert mountains' the whole right edge was off, and there were some wrong tiles.

Uploaded the fixed files to the Modding/Tools section. With a credit to you, of course.

 

Great, thanks a bunch for your help.