[fabianfred]

Here is the one pixel (in map_C) canal and the 1000m stream, with another stream twice as wide, and also 500m. and 250m. lengths, and a bend

plus a shot of the 500m. wider section up a hillside in Chiangmai

[lowfighter]

Hey Fred, this looks very promising! I don't understand all of it but anyway here's a question: suppose you have some 10 Km length of narrow river you want to build using the river plate(s). The river runs north-south but has a snake-like course with some straight portions, what's the number of plates you estimate you'll need to cover the 10 Km?
Then in the last pic I see the plate river assuming the slope of the hill, is that using aligntoland=1 for the plate?
Last thought, even if it would require too many plates for long water courses, the thing can be used to simulate the river origins, last kilometers from a river spring...It's pretty foolish seeing a hundred meter wide river ending abruptly, as we have.
Nice...

[fabianfred]

I tried puting alignoland=1 bu it made no difference

he long river secions are 1 km. so to make ten km. wih long and shorter and the odd bend would need about weny sections

the 1km pieces are 256kb tga; 500m = 128kb; 250m. = 64kb.; bend = 32kb.

alhough added to a mission file they do not increase its size by that amount..... maybe the same if adding them in the map actors static

[fabianfred]

I painted the thinnest one with a 5 pixel brush in photoshop
the thicker with a ten pixel brush
and a 24 pixel will give you the same widh as the 1 pixel river in map_C

of course any colour can be used for the water...with shallows and deeps and riverbanks if you are artistic

[shakthamac]

seems to me like you could just take a screen shot of the water in game and use that as the texture, shoals and all.

Nice work though, fred

[fabianfred]

seems to me like you could just take a screen shot of the water in game and use that as the texture, shoals and all.

Nice work though, fred

yes, I just sampled the colour of the water in a screenshot to use as the water colour in Photoshop...

[dunkelgrun]

Does water on plates act like water, i.e. will it go splash if something falls into it?

:cheers:

[fabianfred]

Does water on plates act like water, i.e. will it go splash if something falls into it?

:cheers:

probably not ...it isn't real water you see...just a photo impression....you could taxi your plane over it too and not sink in :?

but it does seem to look better than the wide rivers we have been stuck with up to now...especially being able to change the colour and use them up hillsides and for the higher reaches of a river

[fabianfred]

I laid some out like a stream coming down from the hills...with different sizes and the joins masked by patches of woods..



and trying out the canals...maybe can replace the old ones made in map_C

[lowfighter]

It looks nice, maybe some color change will make it even better, seems to me a bit too bluish...Also I think it would be nice to have slight color variations along it to simulate river depth, river bed composition etc...I think there's a lot to explore making it look "real"!
Working too on old Oleg rivers, have tried many random things but results are not so good and a bit unpredictable, still digging :wink:

Some idea starts to form in my head, sure I'll let you know :wink:

[dunkelgrun]

Here's what I've done:

Rivers made at just 1 x 50m pixel, only connected at bends by the corners, in other words the smallest river that can be done.
I copied the layer (three times so far).

Layer 1 - Gaussian Blur 1.0. On its own this caused a lot of gaps in the river and it appeared 'shallow'.
Layer 2 - Gaussian Blur 0.4 and merged with Layer 1. Still a few gaps but overall not a bad result.
Layer 3 - No blur; simply merged with the other two. Here's the result:



As you can see from the grid the average width is about 100m, but every now and then these very thin North/South strips appear, width about 25m. I was hoping that the addition of Layer 3 might widen them out a bit but no luck. As I am trying to create streams I don't really mind, but it only ever happens N-S.
Just about all of the gaps have gone, but the blur has eliminated a lot of the islands that I had put in - two pixels of land between streams. These look like shallow patches.

However, the worst thing about these 'streams' is that vehicles drive straight across them, even the 100m wide bits. Is there a minimum width before water acts like it should?

:cheers:

[fabianfred]

I think the ed_map_t.tga has something to do with were the vehicles and ships can go...

but if the rivers are above sea level and cannot use the default bridges (like on my Thailand map) then vehicles/trains can cross anywhere, except for open water like the sea

[lowfighter]

Been doing too millions of experiments. So far this one looks promissing: start with a 1 pixel river (rgb=0). Apply simple (not Gaussian) blur. Look in game: it is very narrow (maybe 20-50 m) but it has a lot of discontinuities. Go back to gimp and select the blured thing and make a lot of copies. To each copy apply brightnes reduction ( I decreased in steps of 10). Back to game. As the copies got darker the discontinuities began to disappear but when all gone the river was to wide say about 100 m. However looking at the copy with 20 reduction in brightnes, that looked the best, not many discontinuities and also pretty narrow. Back to gimp and look at the discontinuities. Picked the lowest gray and painted them. Still we need a faster method since we don't want to spend ages at each Km of river...Here's some pics of the same river, average width I think maybe 50m, sometimes width reach close to 100 sometimes... Still digging