Wilderness Overhaul

[l3lessed]

How's it going. I'm getting my head around this and how you're setting it up.

• You are creating a tileobject object, which stores the tile type and the tiles four corner types into byte data.
• You then are using the lookup table to create each individual tile object and store it into the table (The tiles are flipped and rotated when the tile object is created using MakeLookUp); here you're hand keying in each byte array for each tile type so the table has a byte array for every tile in the texture sets for proper marching algo operation.
• The last step is the AssignTilesJob which grabs the tile byte data for each corner and then tries to find a proper neighboring tile by using a byte array formula to scan the byte array for the tile that fits the proper corner transition.

I understand the concept pretty well now; however, the moment I see the actual math equations for parsing the data, I start swimming again. I need to load up your scripts and see what it is outputting to see how it is working in game, and that might help.

[l3lessed]

Can you explain how you're handling the shapes and ring computation? It isn't in your code, and it is shown in marching squares documentation for sorting out what tile transition is correct. Is this because you're hand coding in each tile set yourself?

Same with the ring computation, which is critical to telling the algo where the tile transitions are happening in the array. I don't see this in your code.

I may be misunderstanding this because we have more tile types than the documentation I am generally seeing. But, if you look on page 6 of this document, you can see they are using both a shape and ring computation to get a clean transition between water,dirt, and grass.
https://www.omiod.com/docs/pdf/Squares- ... rching.pdf

[Daniel87]

Thank you for the help!

So, I spent the whole day trying to understand the bit-operations of the marchin square algo and came to realize that the algorithm can only work with linear gradients like water > dirt > grass > stone.

After considering this approach a dead-end, I wrote my own Lookup Table for all transitions (still in progress but got more now than there were in the base game) and created a new Class TileObject, which stores the tile itself (byte) and the 4 neighbours tile type (int).
Now marching square instead of performing bit operations, is just calling Array.Find(bottomLeft, bottomRight, topRight, topLeft).

It works like a charm. Performance hit is 100-150ms loading time per MapPixel, which is quite okay. The fireflies and shooting stars consume way more (200ms avg.) as they are gameObjects instantiated and destroyed at runtime (hundreds of em), but they can be disabled in the Mod Settings. My basic stochastic algo distributing the nature billboards still has to be optimized for more performance.

Performance:
W/o mod - 500-600ms/MapPixel
W/ mod 1000-1200ms/MapPixel
Tile transitions via Marching Squares only contributes to about 100-150ms of that difference and is now quite performant.

So basically we can now consider the Tile Transitions done and working. Now I have to be creative about how to tile the landscapes, as there are no limitations to transitions anymore.

Spoiler!

As you can see, transition between stone > dirt works fine (was not in the original DFU and DF). Didn't have the time yet to insert all transitions as well as transitions for 3 different neighbour tiles, but it will all be possible now
In the picture, the not yet included transitions are depicted as water tiles.

[l3lessed]

Great work man. Yeah, looking at your code, I was like, this seems like it should work, but I'm a math scrub, so I wasn't sure.

Was interesting learning how byte arrays work and how they can be used, so thanks.

Yeah, my particle sparks cause a bit of a cpu drag on older, basic systems. Those dang particles are not cheap cpu wise.

[Daniel87]

Can you explain how you're handling the shapes and ring computation? It isn't in your code, and it is shown in marching squares documentation for sorting out what tile transition is correct. Is this because you're hand coding in each tile set yourself?

Same with the ring computation, which is critical to telling the algo where the tile transitions are happening in the array. I don't see this in your code.

I may be misunderstanding this because we have more tile types than the documentation I am generally seeing. But, if you look on page 6 of this document, you can see they are using both a shape and ring computation to get a clean transition between water,dirt, and grass.
https://www.omiod.com/docs/pdf/Squares- ... rching.pdf

Yeah I just deleted the shape and ring computation a couple of minutes before, as it is not needed anymore. I will hard code in all transitions, since the performance hit this way is not significantly bigger and wasting too much time thinking about how to change the ring and shape algo, will just kill motivation

Great work man. Yeah, looking at your code, I was like, this seems like it should work, but I'm a math scrub, so I wasn't sure.

Was interesting learning how byte arrays work and how they can be used, so thanks.

Absolutely! I always shied away, when I saw bit-operations. Finally I overcame my anxiety and learned how this ancient technology works hehe.
Sorry for making you learn that hell xD and thank you for your support! Knowing you are also looking into this, gave my motivation a huge boost.

[l3lessed]

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. That was my thought too, but wanted to verify if I was correct or you needed the assistance still. The documentation actually mentions hand coding in the tile transitions like you did for larger tile sets because of the very thing you mention. Anyways, great work as always. You're a madman with the terrain/environment modding you're doing.

[Daniel87]

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. That was my thought too, but wanted to verify if I was correct or you needed the assistance still. The documentation actually mentions hand coding in the tile transitions like you did for larger tile sets because of the very thing you mention. Anyways, great work as always. You're a madman with the terrain/environment modding you're doing.

Haha, damn. I could have saved myself 6h of trying by just reading the documentation.
As we say in Germany "What one doesn't have in the brain, one got in the legs" meaning, if one doesn't use the brain, one has to walk the way double
Definitely a good description for me.
Alright, time to lay flat. Hit my 5 am threshold again and gotta go to dentist in a couple of hours >_<

[l3lessed]

Do it all the time myself. I can't tell you how many hours I wasted coding stuff or working on stuff for my mods just to scrap everything because I found a better approach.

Understanding how tiles are assigned will be helpful anyways once I get back to the interactive terrain mod. The code is setup for it and I submitted the speedchanger script updates to the pull request. However, until now, tile assignments and ids were a mystery to me. Getting the documentation from interkarma and you is helpful. This verified that I need to be excluding transition tiles in that mod and having movement only affected when the user moves from one filled tile type(all snow tile) to another filled tile type(all sand tile) and some weird movement changes are a result of odd tile transitions. Interactive terrain with this mod would make the landscape feel much more immersive, alive, and realistic. Combine it with the climates mod, and we will have some real brutal immersion. Won't it be fun trying to make it through a desert without dehydrating, when you are slowed down by the soft sand. Or have fun trying to track through thick snow in the middle of a snow storm and not freeze to death.

[carademono]

This mod is looking more and more amazing every day. Would it be possible to scatter small rock models (a la Kamer's World of Daggerfall) on the rock textures? Because that would be *chef's kiss*

[Daniel87]

This mod is looking more and more amazing every day. Would it be possible to scatter small rock models (a la Kamer's World of Daggerfall) on the rock textures? Because that would be *chef's kiss*

I would love to add 3D objects, but I am no modeller, just simply a coder.