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Tiling Grass


soapmode

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I notice there's a lot of individual grass tiles which all fit together in fairly specific ways to provide a uniform appearance, but the submap editor only allows for placing one tile at a time. Further, it's a matter of guesswork as to whether the tiles will fit together without the textures producing an obvious seem.

Could the submap editor be updated to include some sort of fill option that can be used to cover large sections of ground? I know you can load up one of the premade grass fields, but these are 10x10, so it precludes making larger maps unless you want to go through the painstaking task of filling a 20x20 submap with individually placed ground tiles.

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There's no way to do this at present unfortunately. Every single submap you see in the game, I manually added the ground by hand, tile by tile. Maybe we'll get a program to autopopulate the maps before release but right now we don't have the coder time spare.

The tiles are named appopriately though, as "tilename_<column>_<row>.png" and you just need to paint them in appropriate order (open up one of the maps and check them out for a better illustration).

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Ok, before I go sinking any more of my time into a ground tiling program. Is this even needed? I built one so I wouldn't have to match ground tiles. Is the submap editor going to auto match the ground tiles down the road? Or is there another forum member already working on something that auto matches ground tiles?

At any rate, I tossed a quick app together that loads in the various ground tile sets. You then select the tile set you want to work with from a drop down and start painting ground tiles. The program auto matches the tiles for you. You can also fill an entire map or fill only empty tiles. Currently it just dumps the map into a text box, which is then copied into a text editor and saved as an xml file. The xml map file loaded up fine in the submapeditor.

If there is any need or interest for this? If so I'll clean up the interface, have it save to an xml file, and upload it to the forums.

Edited by irongamer
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Ok, hopefully this will help with making quick map fills and maybe some floor plans. You will have to stomach... Adobe Air. I know that can be hard for some. You will need to install Adobe Air.

After installing XenoFloor:

1. First you will need to locate your Xenonauts folder.

2. Enter rows and columns for a map size and press build map (or press enter)

3. Choose a tileset from the drop down list.

4. With the paint radio button selected you can just start clicking (or click then drag) to fill in tiles on the map.

Move the map around by holding down shift then click and drag.

When no pick tile is selected the program tiles as if image 00-00 of the tileset was placed where you first click.

The pick radio button allows you choose a specific tile from a tile set and a specific location on the map. Once you have selected a pick location (it will have a blue/green inner box on the tile) the program will tile based off that location and the tile you selected. You must click the paint radio button again to resume painting. Painting over tiles replaces the old tiles with the new one.

The fill buttons will function off a pick tile. Fill will use image 00-00 from a tileset if no pick is selected.

I'm not really familiar with tiling processes or what standard use should feel like. There is currently no way to place one specific tile at a time, unless you just keep changing the pick tile. There a few items I'd like to add or adjust when I have more time.

I can't seem to manage file attachments on the forum so here is a link to the Air install file:

http://www.irongamer.net/blog/xenonauts/Xenofloor.air

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Update to Xenofloor.

There is now a build radio button. The build radio button will build a single tile set from the tile you click. The tile you click places image 00-00 and then builds out from there.

Usage:

1. Select tileset from drop down.

2. Click the build radio button.

3. Click a tile on the map to build the tile set.

The post above this contains the download link.

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I tried to install this, and I'm unclear how it works. Is it loading the "tilesets" from the /tiles/ or the /maps/ folders?

In game terms, a "tileset" is something like Industrial or Farm. It looks like the tool is loading the submaps from all of the tilesets in the /maps/ folders. This isn't ideal, because it doesn't allow you to filter them by tileset (there will be a LOT of maps as development continues), and it also doesn't seem to load the maps in the subdirectories - such as Target (crashsite) or Spawn (dropship) maps.

It would make more sense if it somehow loaded files from the /tiles/ directory and allowed you to generate maps using that.

Is there a technical difficulty with doing that? If so, let me know and I might be able to suggest a better way for the tool to operate. I think it could be very useful but right now it needs a little more work.

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I tried to install this, and I'm unclear how it works. Is it loading the "tilesets" from the /tiles/ or the /maps/ folders?

In game terms, a "tileset" is something like Industrial or Farm. It looks like the tool is loading the submaps from all of the tilesets in the /maps/ folders. This isn't ideal, because it doesn't allow you to filter them by tileset (there will be a LOT of maps as development continues), and it also doesn't seem to load the maps in the subdirectories - such as Target (crashsite) or Spawn (dropship) maps.

It would make more sense if it somehow loaded files from the /tiles/ directory and allowed you to generate maps using that.

Is there a technical difficulty with doing that? If so, let me know and I might be able to suggest a better way for the tool to operate. I think it could be very useful but right now it needs a little more work.

Since the term tileset is already in use, perhaps some other terminology would be better. I'm just going to use repeated set for this post, is there a specific name for a set of ground/floor tiles that repeat?

The program is currently using the assets/tiles folder. It does not use the maps folder. Currently the program searches each folder in assets/tiles for any folder named "ground". It then adds each subfolder in the ground folder as a repeated set. When asked to locate your xenonauts folder just select the base "xenonauts" folder.

It would be simple to divide the tiles into separate sections like industrial or farm. Right now all the subfolders in discovered "ground" folders are just added to the same drop down and sorted by name. I had not really looked at including crashsite or dropship tiles yet. The idea was a program to quickly setup the ground or maybe some floor which is then loaded into the real submap editor for building the rest of the map or making tweaks to the ground.

Ground tiles inside the root tileset folders, like industrial, confuse me a little bit. Tiles like "GroundTarmacLightCornerE" and "GroundTarmacLightCornerS". The ground folders had a more defined structure so I ran with those first. Is the game making use of both ground/floor tiles in the ground folders and the "loose" ground tiles in the root of a tileset folder?

I'll look at including other repeating ground/floor tiles (like those in the root folder of a tileset) with the next release and including/dividing them by their respective tile subfolder (industrial, farm). Since the UFO's have a different folder structure their name may be a composite (UFO-Scout-Undamaged) or something.

Edited by irongamer
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Ah, I see. The problem was I didn't have the tiles I was trying to use in the /ground/ folder. I can just move them in there and name the folder appropriately - CrashedScout etc.

It might be better to put in two drop-downs for tile selection though. One that selects from all the folders in the /tiles/ directory, and then a second one that displays all the tiles in the /ground/ directory of that folder. That'll keep things nice and easy to sort.

Sound workable?

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Ah, I see. The problem was I didn't have the tiles I was trying to use in the /ground/ folder. I can just move them in there and name the folder appropriately - CrashedScout etc.

It might be better to put in two drop-downs for tile selection though. One that selects from all the folders in the /tiles/ directory, and then a second one that displays all the tiles in the /ground/ directory of that folder. That'll keep things nice and easy to sort.

Sound workable?

Yep.

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I've just tried the tool out properly with a bunch of new tiles and, other than the selection issues mentioned above, this is a great piece of work. Saved me a couple of hours! Thanks.

Awesome. I'll most likely be able to update the program closer to spring break (couple weeks), this term of classes has kept me pretty busy.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Is it possible for this tool to combine the tiles into a single larger tile?

For example putting 25 roof tiles back into a single 5x5 roof?

That would make adding the roof or a second floor to a building easier if you have already saved one and you are doing multiple buildings of the same size.

I have just tried it out for its intended purpose and it is a really good bit of work, well done :)

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Yeah, I'm not working with anything above layer 0. Adding the other tiles has been challenging as they do not all follow the same layout mechanics as the tiles tiles in the ground folders. Many of the other "floor" (layer 0) sets cannot be "built" or "painted" in the same fashion as the ground sets. Also, the new ground tiles have completely different dimensions than previous "floor" tiles. Previous floor tiles seem to share the height of the unit selection 3d box while the new tiles do not. Anyhow, the additions are going to take a while.

Sadly I could not finish up the next version before classes started (seemed like a very short spring break).

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