DracoAlphaX wrote:Alrighty, then! I've just done a butt-ton of research into PH using JR and other assorted Tres resources. Some of the finds are fascinating.
Let's begin!
First thing I did was to create an object to texture the base image onto. How did I figure out the coordinates? I've noticed that the offsets of terrain corners for Tres retail WTDs are usually powers of two (or sometimes, different powers of two added together). I noticed in my map-overlay that the left boarder of PH was somewhere between 0 and 100 units off to the right of 0,0,0 (note: the Zandor map shows the coordinate plane rotated at 180, to match the true cardinal directions of Cocos island). So I made this line be 64. Then I looked at how high the top boarder was, which was between 700 and 800. The powers of two 512 and 256 add to become 768, so I used this. Then knowing the terrain would be 2048x2048 square, the rest followed naturally. As it turned out, it fit perfectly.
If you look here, the thick grey boarder we believe to be a ridge between IJ (JR) and PH goes pretty far into the other level's current playing area... This will actually help bring down the size of the IJ playing area if it becomes as "open" as I want.
You can see here that in its default state, that wide light-grassy area in PH goes right ontop of the mountain. Hmmm..
You know those hexagonal base terrain objects in some levels? The ones in JR, at least, were at a scale of 128.
However, if you reduce this to 64, the power of two just under it, it's a perfect fit with the hexagons in the PH base.
See these brown patches here? It gets pretty blurred in TresEd, actually, even on High texture res. I'm going to make a quad-split later to help see the true lines for terrain objecting.
However, it's already easy to tell that the "HvytoLtTrans" (Heavy-to-Light Transition) terrain objects from JR, without any scale alteration, fit right into these spots. I was also assisted by looking at the original base texture off to the side.
I made a temporary terrain object out of that pond textured with the base "medium" grass. Not a perfect fit to anything, but seems like it probably goes somewhere in here..
Rex and I were thinking maybe the moss texture from those trnobjs in JR was actually the base for PH.
Except, it seems to fit certain other colors just a bit better..
To show that the streambed in JR is way more thin than anything in PH, I went and got this pic..
Did a quick comparison of a super-scale on that new gorge object from JR 96. There seems to be some vague correlation in certain spots, but it's probably nothing..
I've been thinking for a while that the Mayan thing should go in PH. I may have found where it goes.. This was the only spot it could really fit in.
The placement of it didn't make much sense to me. Not only that but of course, I was thinking that the grey zone would fit better if the terrain moved from under it over the X-axis. So, I moved both the Mayan trnobj and the entire base trnobj on the X-axis to see what would happen of that Mayan scene were on the very top of the mini-mountain.
Looks pretty cool, eh?! At the same time, the break between the grey blobs and the light grass happened at the same spot where the angle of the mountain changes.
It also fits the side of the mountain which would be just on the shoreline, too (note that the general height of the terrain here needs to go down to near-zero for the actual beach).
So then I started bringing in crap from other levels.
Here is the
dark dirt object found in BE. Seems to fit this shade of brown rather nicely - I believe there was quite a lot of it, used in a similar fashion to what you see
here.
Tatu's PH streambed! Works like a charm, color fits awesome.
The beach-grass terrain hexagon from BE. Seems to fit at least one of these greens...
The unused "cycgrass" trnobj from PV. Does anyone know what "cyc" might mean? I can only think of "cycads", which are a kind of ancient palm-type plant..
The
used cycgrass trnobj from PV doesn't fit quite as easily. Best match I got was way out here, which is probably just a transitional color between the base grass and what appears to be the PV base..
And well. What would PH be without the Plantation House, eh? This little splotch here was the closest thing I could find to a "footprint". It
is on the far corner of the level from where you enter, so it makes sense.. And it is slightly northward of the Stream, though not by much (not much space for a path), but there is the great opportunity nearby for a bridge. Seems that the area surrounding this spot is pretty heavy with varied trnobjs, I bet they didn't make it easy to reach the house once you saw it..
I then started looking into IJ, the other adjacent level. First thing I noticed was this:
Can you believe it?! TresEd's own "average" color for the base terrain of IJ (the only surviving level in 96 to use the old moss-mud combo) matches the base color of PH almost perfectly. This makes using that texture as a base in Tres Reloaded
very, very likely.
I tried importing several IJ objects to look for correlations. Most of my searching turned up in vain, but I did notice some things.
One was that, although the
new gorge in IJ2 does not really match the grey mass in PH, the base object (-00) from the IJ basement happened to land right ontop of a part of the grey mass. Coincidense? Who knows... The object is referred to as "mount tile" (though this could be about Mt. Watson. HOOOLLLMMMEEESSSSS!!!!).
That cool light-to-base transition object from IJ has a nice match with its grass texture, but the mud (base) inside, not so much..
Does that gravel in IJ look at all like the grey mass's texture? Not really.
Okay so, the next awesome step was to export the IJ terrain as a TPM and import into my heavily modded JR as an invisible instance to see how it looked. As you can see, it extends significantly into PH... It's also interesting to note that it almost seems as if the stream you see in IJ could flow down into the streams of PH and out into the ocean right there.
Took and overhead viewpoint and noticed that if you cut off the IJ road (which is really JU, remember) up to the point with that pesky little pond (the one seen in the Other loading image), which is also where the bend occurs, it actually lines up very, very nicely. The main reason for cutting it off is because the terrain under that first segment is heavily detailed with trnobjs, so it makes much more sense to be a part of PH. This is how I'm going to handle the transition from PH to JU.
It's worth noting that the level ground at the far edge of JR is at the very same height as the road in IJ, with no alterations. o_O Oh and the height of this road is NOT the same, if you go over and look at the part of IJ which comes after the end trigger of JR. Another artifact of the alteration made when PH was removed.
I then imported a TPM of JR's own terrain to shift along the X-axis for comparison of where I wanted to shift the terrain. After aligning the top of the mountain with where the Mayan trnobj should go, I noticed something amazing! Its edge had lined up exactly with that of IJ.
!!!
I went to do a little teaking so that the edges lined up
perfectly to the decimal. Then I noticed that a major quad division from JR lined up perfectly with the far side of the PH base terrain.
.. I must be doing SOMETHING right!
Remember that discussion about the ridge being off to the side in JR? Well, that happened on its own, too! XD Of course, it also extends too far out into the ocean, now, but that's fixable. This is how I'm going to base the new sculpt for
IJ in reloaded.
And that's all for tonight!!! Happy analyzing. This dream is looking more and more possible all the time.