Lion.Kanzen

Dev Diary: Creating Tile-Based Texture Maps for Games One of the key difficulties in creating good looking ground materials is trying to stop visual repetition when seen from a reasonable distance. There are many techniques that can be used to achieve this including detail textures, various methods of blending between textures, and tile-based texture mapping. In Path of Exile we use tile-based texture mapping extensively to break up the repeating patterns that would otherwise be very unsightly. One problem is that there is very little in the way of information for artists about how to create tile textures. This tutorial is designed to give some insight into the process we use when creating these textures. Technical Overview In order to make a non-repeating texture, one approach is to use tiles. You can imagine this just like assembling tiles in a 2d game. If we have a set of tiles then we can randomly place them in a grid and we shouldn't ever see any large-scale repetition. For this to look good we need to make sure that the seams between the tiles are continuous. The problem is that if all tiles have the same repeating edge then you would see a clear square pattern to the texture at the edges where each tile goes to the next one. To break this up we want to have more than one different tile edge that can be connected together. On the right you can see a set of 16 tiles. Each blue vertical line will tile with any other blue vertical line and any orange vertical line will tile with any other orange vertical line. Similarly for the horizontal lines. By constructing a texture in this way we can get a set of textures that can be tiled for a long time without being able to see any large scale repeating patterns. Using the GPU its possible from an image like this to generate a very large non-periodic texture. Here is an article about the details of implementing this on the programmer's side. The remainder of this article describes how an artist can go about creating these textures. Step 1: Source Textures The first obvious step is to get a good photo base. I currently get about 90% of all my textures from CGTextures.com. When I started out, I had this idea that I needed a personal texture library. I soon realised that it takes a lot of time to index and sort a collection that is large enough to be useful. CGTextures does all that for you and has a huge number of good texture photos. There is no need to have a library of your own except for a small number of special things you need or exceptionally cool texture photos that you manage to take yourself. To the right are the four photographs that were used to create this texture. Generally you would want to avoid stitching several textures like this together, but it can be hard to find photographs that cover enough ground for tile textures. Because you need an above average amount of source ground they must be taken from a higher position than a typical photographer would use. Step 2: Stitching TogetherHere the textures were put together in different layers in one big 1024x1024 map with some basic fixes such as lens correction to remove distortion and some vertical perspective depending on the base texture. The perfect base texture for a ground texture is taken far away straight onto the surface. As this isn’t always practical, most photos will be taken with the lens close to the ground with some lens distortion. You also often get some vertical perspective as the area photographed is limited by the feet of the person taking it, causing the photographer to take the shot aiming slightly forward rather than straight down. In addition to the lens and perspective correction, hue/saturation, match colour and brightness/contrast were used to make the photos fit better together. Any seams within the texture can be fixed by erasing the upper layer in which they can be seen. Step 3: Getting Uniform Luminosity In this step I want to get rid of any large differences in luminosity within the texture to help it repeat better. To the left below you can see the big differences in luminosity if the texture is repeated next to itself. This is something you can do quite late on a "normal" repeating texture, but here I need to do it before I fix the large number of seams, as a blurred layer above would affect the seams if it's done afterwards instead of before. The steps taken for this in Photoshop are: merging all to a single layer, duplicating that layer, invert, desaturate, blur and then set to overlay. You can then adjust the layer with brightness and contrast if needed. The overlay texture that is created with this process is shown here in the center. On the right is the texture tiling with itself after this process. As you can see the texture now has a uniform luminosity and so it tiles much better. Step 4: Adding DetailsHere I brought in another texture I made before to get some interesting grungy damp moss in between the stones. By putting the moss texture on top at 50% opacity, I could manually erase the parts that would cover stone that I wanted seen. I ended up using a layer with 33% opacity and another layer on top set to overlay on 33% opacity. Both of those layers were adjusted with brightness/contrast. In retrospect I probably could have skipped this step as it didn't turn out that well. This type of thing can also be added as a last step with some extra work which will give you two different textures you can use. Step 5: The Tile GridThis red and orange grid shows where the texture is supposed to be seamless according to the technical description at the beginning of the article. One pixel on each side of the seam is left empty to make it easy to see exactly where the seam is. Step 6: Assembling The SeamsOne seam section is chosen and copied over so that the blue vertical parallel lines are filled with the same seam part. It does not really matter from where on the texture you copy the part that is to be used as a seam. To make the seam less noticable it is good to not use anything that would stand out too much on the seam itself. If I had chosen a section that was covered almost entirely by a single stone I would run into problems later. Likewise if I used almost only a dark part between stones it would make the seam noticable at the end. The same process is then repeated with a different seam for the orange vertical lines and then for the blue and orange horizontal lines. Step 7aHere you can see all the seams in a layer above the texture. As you can see there is quite a lot of work required to get the texture to a completely seamless state. Step 7bI start out by adding a thin line showing the exact place of the seam. I then start to carefully erase the sides to make it meld in better with the rest of the texture beneath. Step 8Here's the base texture with the seams fixed. The layer containing the seams currently looks like the left bottom image. I also made a few changes to the layer below to stitch it together better. Final Colour TextureStep 9: Normal MapThe following steps vary a lot between different textures. For environment normal maps, I use the excellent program CrazyBump. In order to "help" CrazyBump read some stones as higher up than the soil between them, I have one 50% opacity layer where I paint white on top to make a few chosen stones to come up more. Make sure that you duplicate the white on each repeating place on the seams so that the normal map will work properly as a tile texture too! Step 10On stone floor textures you can use the CrazyBump shape recognition to get stones that are angled in different ways. Here I added a couple of stones from each of the shape recognition directions to make the normal map more interesting. Step 11Some colours and luminosity from the normal map are baked into the colour map. In this case it was two layers. The first layer was set to overlay and 50% opacity with reduced saturation and auto colour balance. The second layer was set to luminosity with 10% opacity and the contrast turned up a lot. I also made a specular map in CrazyBump. The Final ResultThis is the end result of the colour, normal and specular maps viewed in our asset viewer tool. As you can see there are certain parts of the texture that are repeated on the surface. These repetitions are placed randomly, so you can’t discern any repeating patterns even when viewed from far away. Below you can see the final ground material in the game. source https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/55091 _____ I like the technique used for give some uniform brightness to the texture

I found a interesting article about persian( Sassanids) in late antiquity/early middle age related to AoK http://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/t423a/gameplay_vs_historicity_day_14_the_persians/ Every time the Persians were conquered, they had a habit of conquering their conquerors with their traditions, culture, and infrastructure. When a new administration came into power in other parts of the world, often times they would cut out the previous traditions and replace it with their own ranks and bureaucracy. Civilizations that neighbored Persia or were under Persia's suzerainty would see Persia as sort of a golden goose, and why would you ever kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? They'd often inherit and adopt the Persian ways, such as their roads, trade routes, etc. These civilizations included the Macedonians, the Parthians, the Arabs, the Mongols, and the Turks. You can interpret this bonus sort of like this: you can destroy the Persian player's Barracks, Stables, Castles, etc. but you'll have a much harder problem destroying their Docks and Town Centers and once you've eliminated their military, they will still have their economy pumping out Villies. The Persian economy is also an interesting one; only 11% of present-day Iran is arable for farming. The core Persian cities are set mostly on that arable land, and on natural harbors so a creation speed bonus makes more sense than, say, the British cheaper Town Center bonus or the Japanese cheaper Mill bonus. Persian ships were pretty good and fishery was important to them although they didn't have a massive military fleet especially in the Middle Ages, so I don't quite know why the Docks have such a broad bonus. I think the Greek naval traditions came from Persia...or not, I don't remember the actual research done on that subject. Still, the Persian Navy had holdings as far as present-day Yemen. GONNA CONQUER IRAN CAUSE I HEARD PERSIANS GOT @#$%ES, SEND ABU BAKR WITH SOME GOONS, KURDS DO MY DISHES UNIQUE UNIT: War Elephant Ensemble Studios mentioned that they knew that Elephants were very rarely used in medieval times outside of India, and the War Elephant was included purely for fun. The War Elephant was also the first super-expensive, ridiculously powerful behemoth unit in the game as the War Wagon and Turtle Ship were only added in The Conquerors, so it was a truly one-of-a-kind gameplay idea. The War Elephant is the most powerful unit in the game, beating every other unit 1v1 (except arguably the cavalry archers, but a cavalry archer would need, like, 10 straight minutes of micro to defeat a War Elephant), and this is pretty much true in real life. If it was you versus an Elephant by yourself, you were probably screwed. You were probably screwed if it was you and 10 of your friends unless you were properly armed. The War Elephant's main weakness is, of course, it's huge cost, and that's true in real life, especially for the Persians. Elephants have the longest gestation period of any animal and they take even longer to mature. Then, you had to transport them out of India, and then you had to feed them! Indian Armies were able to field thousands of War Elephants, while Persians were lucky if they could put out a couple hundred Elephants. the War Elephants are very historically inaccurate for one main reason, and that's because the Elephants are just walking around with nobody to guide them (although, Onagers, Scorpions, and Trebs do the same thing while Rams are implied to have dudes inside pushing them around). As a matter of fact, Elephants almost ALWAYS had a group of dudes riding at the top and arguably this was their biggest advantage. A War Elephant would always have a guy who controls the Elephant (a Mahout as I'll explain later), a couple of Archers, and occasionally some guys armed with really long pikes. The Archers would have a fairly secure and mobile firing platform. They would all be sitting on a big ol' platform with some cover and a height advantage on their enemies. Anybody advancing on the Elephant would have to deal with the Elephant itself, who not only had it's feet, tusks, and trunk but also had maces attached to their trunks. Of course, Forgotten Empires is going to introduce an Elephant Archer which is more historically accurate. UNIQUE TECH: Mahouts The word "mahout" is an Indian one, and it means Elephant Rider. The Persians got their Elephants from India, so of course their riders would also be Indian. This tech almost implies that the War Elephants don't normally have Mahouts and while you don't see anybody riding the Elephants in AoE2, simply draping armor over an Elephant and coaxing it onto the battlefield in real life is pretty much suicide. War Elephants always had a Mahout, sometimes a couple of them. Elephants had to be captured in their infancy and raised from early life to seek to appease their human masters in order to make useful mounts. Elephants could be tremendous liabilities so a Mahout would carry a hammer and small spike to jam into his Elephants heads in case the Elephant was too wounded and started to panic. Incapacitating and killing the Elephant quickly would result in less possible damage to the friendly army in formation around the Elephant. Sassanid Elephant Corps Commanders were known as the "Zend-hapet" or Commander of the Indians. This could mean he was the Persian overseer of the Indian Mahouts or he was an Indian Mahout in charge of the other Indians. BARRACKS: no Eagle Warrior, no Two-Handed Swordsman As the only civ to lack Two-Handed Swordsman, the Sassanian Army was noted to have pretty mediocre infantry. Their professional and best troops were all mounted, and the mass conscripts who fought on foot lacked decent equipment and basically served as meat shields. Most Sassanid melee infantry were equipped with spears. It makes sense to consider the Halberdier the mostly unskilled, irregular light Infantry armed with the crappy weapons. It's much easier to pump out a ton of Halbs than Champs, so you definitely get the idea that infantry was an afterthought for Persian armies. The Persians get Halberdiers mostly to counter enemy Camels. A Persian army is a Cavalry heavy army, which means a civ with Camels (Byzantines, Saracens, Chinese, Turks, Mongols, other Persians) can severely mess up most of the Persians' rushes. This interestingly leads to the Persians' historical archenemies having advantages over them in-game: Saracens with higher HP Heavy Camels as well as the powerful Mameluke, the Byzantines simply have the best Camels due to their unique cheapness, and Turks mine gold faster for their gold heavy Camels. So the Persians NEED Halberdiers for balance purposes. Speaking of the Turks, there is an interesting parallel; the Turks are the only civ to miss Pikeman while the Persians are the only civ to miss Two-Handed Swordsman. Thus they both have limited infantry. ARCHERY RANGE: no Arbalest, no Bracer The best of the Persian Infantry were Bowmen, and they were very good archers armed with composite bows. In AoE2, they lack Arbalests for the sake of balance and to encourage you to use their pretty good Cavalry Archers as the Parthians pretty much invented Horse Archery. They're not quite as good as Saracen, Turkish, or Mongol ones, though. Obviously the Parthian Shot tech comes from the Parthians. The Sassanian Dynasty modeled their military after the Parthian Dynasty and used Cavalry Archers extensively. The Persians get the Hand Cannoneer possibly because of the Safavid "Gunpowder" Empire. The lack of Bracer also ends up encouraging the player to use Hand Cannoneers instead of Crossbowmen. Heck the faster Aging up and strong economy might lead to a fast-Imperial strategy involving upgrade-light Hand Cannoneers. This portion of the tech tree is similar to the Turks; the Turks lack Elite Skirmisher and the Persians lack Bracer, but they both lack Arbalest, forcing them to use Cav Archers and Hand Cannoneers. STABLE: Persian Cavalry was always top notch and they are the only ones who get all of the Stable techs. Persia is full of great, green pastures and their proximity to the steppes helped, too. Not only horses, Camels are all over Persia. Pretty much every kind of cavalryman of various armament, from bows to lances to swords from light to heavy were used in the Sassanian Army. The Persians are also historically very vital because they pretty much innovated the medieval heavy cavalryman. The Roman Cataphract is derived from the Persian Grivpanvar, and so too are the Sarmatian heavy cavalry. From those two sources comes the European Knight. The Saracen Mameluke and the Turkish Sipahi (the word for army in Persian is Spahi, and that's also where the Indian Sepoy comes from) were derived from the Grivpanvar, as well. It's possible that the heavy cavalry units of the Turco-Mongol peoples were imitations of Persian heavy cavalry, as well, due to the Persian Empires' constant wars with them for control of Central Asia. Their Stable deserves to be the best in the game. SIEGE WORKSHOP: no Siege Onager, no Siege Engineers For nearly a thousand years prior to the Middle Ages, the Persians and their predecessors were taking on cities with siege towers and catapults. So you'd expect the Persian siege to be good, and it is. The only unit they miss is the Siege Onager, and the Onager itself is pretty adequate. The only historical inaccuracy is the lack of Siege Engineers, and the Siege Engineers tech implies a higher level of technology and learning, which the Persians most certainly had and possibly more than any other nation besides China. You'll notice that the two Siege civs, the Mongols and Celts, lack only 1 Siege weapon and have Unique Units that are related to Siege, both being able to eliminate enemy siege and allow their own to shine. The Persians are kind of the same way with War Elephants proving to be a truly ultimate guard against cavalry and infantry who normally counter siege. LANGUAGE: Farsi Farsi is definitely an Indo-European language, and is most closely related to the languages spoken in India, while ultimately it is related to English, Italian, Greek, Russian, etc. Over the years, Farsi has had many words loaned to it by the Arabs and vice-verse. The Persians in AoE2 use the word "Salam," as well as the word "Sahi," which means "correct" or "true." The Turks notably use the word "Tamirci" when referring to repairing buildings and "Madenci" for mining, which are derived from the Persian words "Tamir kar" and "Madanchi" respectively. Today, certain groups in the "-stans," such as Afghanistan and Turkmenistan use languages related to Farsi, and in fact these Iranian-speaking peoples were and are still referred to as "Tajiks," and while they lived in very different lands from the Persians, they still took many cultural cues from them.

making a ship... i solved all building position

yeah need rework that button

Actually is lion.kanzen but I have long time without play as multiplayer, is very laggy for me

Here is our Interface "Modern Total WAr "

Thank you Sanderd17

WIP

A list of phoenician gods Anyhow a simple search in the Encyclopedia Mythica http://www.pantheon.orggave me all these divinities (I deleted a few not actually related): 1. Adon A Phoenician dying and rising god associated with crops and the seasonal agricultural cycle. Popular during the Hellenistic period, the cult of Adon rose to prominence circa 200 BCE and persisted into Christian times, circa 400 CE. Major cult centers... 2. Anat The name Anat occurs in several forms in Ugaritic, Hebrew, Akkadian, and Egyptian. In the Ugarit V Deity List it is spelled da-na-tu to be pronounced 'Anatu'. Otherwise in Phoen� 3. Horon The Phoenician god of the Underworld. 4. Aleyin A Phoenician god of springs and vegetation. 5. Baal-Malage A Phoenician (west Semitic) local tutelary god. 6. Kothar The Phoenician god of arts and crafts and the builder of the palace of Baal. 7. Aion The Phoenician god of time and passing of life. 8. Yamm The Phoenician god of the sea. Yamm was the original head god of the pantheon but was driven from the role by Baal. 9. Al Ait The Phoenician god of fire. His worshippers were called Alethai. 10. Abadir 'Mighty Father', a Phoenician name for the highest deity. 11. Baal-Qarnain The Phoenician mountain-god, named 'lord of the two horns' after the two mountains with the same name in the Gulf of Tunis. 12. Mikal A Phoenician god who was revered on Cyprus. He may have been a god of plague and pestilence. 13. Siga The name of a goddess of probably Phoenician origin. She can be compared with Minerva. 14. Baal-Addir The Phoenician god of fertility and the underworld. He is the patron deity of the city-state Byblos (near Beirut) and from there his cult spread all the way to Carthage. The Roman troops stationed in North Africa called him Jupiter Valens. 15. Baal-Samem The chief Phoenician god, the 'lord of the sky' and master of the stars, rain and thunder. His cult was spread over Carthage, Cyprus, Syria and northern Mesopotamia. He is depicted holding a sun with seven rays in his hand and he has a (half) moon on... 16. Baal-Hammon The chief deity of Phoenician Carthage and a fertility god. His cult spread to Malta, Sardinia and Sicily, and sacrificing children played an important role in this cult. His names means something like 'lord of the incense-altars'. The Greek equated ... 17. Melqart The chief god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, but also venerated in Carthage and Gadir (C�diz Spain). Melqart, also called the Tyrian Baal, is connected with the sea and sea-faring and on coins he is portrayed riding on a sea-horse. Under the name 18. Astarte The Phoenician goddess of fertility and reproduction and the principal deity of the port city of Sidon. As Astarte she was worshipped as far west as Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia and Cyprus. She was also the sister and co-consort of Baal, sharing t... 19. Dagon Dagon was the principal deity of the Philistines, whose ancestors migrated to Palestinian shores from Crete. He was the god of fertility and crops. Dagon also figured prominently in the Philistine concepts of death and the afterlife. In addition to his .. 21. Misor The Semitic (Phoenician) god who discovered salt. 22. Shadrapha A Phoenician god of healing. 23. Taautos The Phoenician precursor of the Egyptian god Thoth. 24. Saps The Ugaritic, and later also Phoenician, sun-goddess who is called 'light of the gods'. She is similar to the Akkadian sun-god Samas. 25. Gad A Semitic (Canaanite, Phoenician, etc.) deity who personifies good fate and fortune. This female deity protects people and places. The name means literally 'good fortune'. Gad is also a certain Nabataean god. 26. Asertu A west-Semitic goddess who is identical to the Phoenician-Ugaritic goddess Atirat. Among the Hittites she is Aserdus, the consort of Elkunirsa. 27. Ugar The ancient Syrian and Phoenician god of agriculture. He is also the messenger of the god Baal, together with the god Gapn. The city of Ugarit is named after him. 28. Sadrapa The Phoenician god of healing who was worshipped in ancient Carthage. The Syrians also worshipped him, mainly in Palmyra. Sadrapa is the protective deity of small insects and snakes. His Greek name is Satrapes. 29. Rephaim Ancient Syrian and Phoenician chthonic beings, associated with fertility and the underworld. 30. Eljon An ancient Syrian/Phoenician sky deity. He belongs to the first generation of gods and fathered the sky god Epigeus with his wife Beruth, the mother goddess. Eljon's name is derived from alaj ('rising'). He is also known as Elioun and Eliun. 31. Baal-Gebal The supreme goddess of the Phoenician city Byblos around 3000 BCE. Her name means 'lady of Gebal', which the city was called in those days. The ruin of the temple once dedicated to her can still be found in the village of Djebail (some 30 km. north-e... 32. Eshmun 'The holy prince'. The god of the Phoenician city of Sidon, and a god of health and healing. He was known in Tyre, Cyprus, and Carthage, but not in Ugarit. In the 5th century CE, Damascius identified him with the Greek god Asclepius. Possibly a versi... 33. Resef The Ugaritic and Phoenician god of lightning and pestilence. His name means 'fire' or 'plague' and he spreads plagues and death. The Egyptians saw in him a god of war. He is portrayed with a shield, a club and a bolt of lightning. His symbolic animal... 34. Ashtoreth Also Astarte or Ashtar. The supreme female divinity of the Phoenician nations, the goddess of love and fruitfulness. She symbolized the female principle, as Baal symbolized maleness. The Babylonian and Assyrian counterpart of Ashtoreth was Ishtar. 35. Clio The Muse of historical and heroic poetry. With Pierus, the king of Macedonia, she is the mother of Hyacinth. She was credited for introducing the Phoenician alphabet into Greece. Her attribute is usually a parchment scroll or a set of tablets. ... 38. Baal The antiquity of the worship of the god or gods of Baal extends back to the 14th century BCE among the ancient Semitic peoples, the descendants of Shem, the oldest son of Biblical Noah. Semitic is more of a linguistic classification than a racial one... 40. Beruth Earth mother goddess of the Phoenicians. Today's Beirut is her city 41. Arsay 'She of the earth', 'daughter of ample flows'. Baal's daughter. 42. Atik The 'calf of El', an enemy of Baal. Slain by Anat. 43. Arsh The 'darling of the gods', a monstrous attendant of Yam, slain by Anat. Arsh lives in the sea. 44. Elsh He is the steward (carpenter?) of El and of Baal's house. His wife is the stewardess of the goddesses. 45. Asherat A fertility goddess and goddess of the sea of ancient Syria and Palestine. The consort of Il. Probably another variation of the goddess Ashtart. 46. Mot The god of death and sterility, and the arch enemy of Baal. He fought Baal each year and slew his brother only to see Baal rise from the dead to rejuvenate the lands for cultivation. 47. Tarhun The weather god of Hatti or the Hittites. The brought fertility each season by bringing rain to the dry Anatolian uplands and through this he was seen to bring authority to the king. 48. Baalat Baalat is queen of the gods. She is associated with books, libraries, and writers. She was worshipped primarily in the city of Byblos (which is the original source of papyrus) and Byblos is what the Greeks called papyrus and, eventually, books. 49. Athirat also Asherah, Ashtartian - 'the Lady of the Sea', Elat - 'the goddess'). El's loving consort and is protective of her seventy children who may also be known as the gracious gods, to whom she is both mother and nursemaid. Her sons, unlike Baal initial... 50. El Leader of the gods. The first Canaanite god, El dwelt on Mount Saphon, and it was under his aegis that Baal married Anat, defeated the sea god Yam and the death lord Mot, and was installed as the divine bestower of life-giving rain. Represented as ... Edited by Maju

I like how works now, in other titles you spam a bunch of soldiers and you win, and counter was easy and all secret was spamming units with 6 barrack without micro I think our game can be the hybrid between 2 worlds simulation and RTS , will be very unique and not another clon.

sanderd17 the other goods is hard to find but , the basic are very easy to create, the generic I mean. The basic goods shared by all civilization in the earth are: God of war, God of death, God of earth ( agriculture related) God of love( agriculture and sex. fertility in some cases) and unique God( monotheism) in others, even a triad of gods, in this age the gods are very similar only are clon from other or a evolving from other more ancients http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19468 Here we can found more gods http://www.pantheon.org Even basque gods ( Iberian) http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/basque/articles.html

We can implement strategic technologies with some buildings have economic and military. These technologies have the difference to toggle on and off between you play implement in AOE 3 as tactics and in AOEO for Persian Pro Civilization.About the gods, can be nice select some goods and give bonus for units , but little, another brick that build great strategy wall.

is part of helmet, you can't, is a single piece with the helmet

All you need is know the name of props. In xml file unit ( in actor folder)

Ok later I will try ---- you see my loading bar screen ? How can disable the desing behind it? And where can find the xml related actual design have a lot of files is like a maze and that is mess.---- I'm trying to implement New Menu based in Rome 2 tw and Attila tw , obviusly I'm imitating my own design

Feneur how..?

When can be possible this ?( pathfinder) and who is working on it ?

He want custom his own units ( he ask me in MP)

hacha hahaha is this seriuos? I Mean this the max height ?

You can but not in the editor Map.

try agaist other archer champions like Mauryans female archers

New Loading screen... WIP there are an Object

Ok, thinking good this... the best way to use this is like AoE 3 and the glory manage splited by other resources. You gain experience ( glory) points with your actions. This even remember crowns in EE 2