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This introduction guide will try to motivate you as to why decals can be important to both the experience of the player and the perception on the product as a whole. Essentially it is the finishing touch on a beautiful cake, the final mile of a marathon or the last tweaks on that hobby of yours.
And exactly that is why it is one of the hardest phases of the development of a map: it is already fleshed out, the resources are in place, the strata are done and as a whole its seems to be already good and playable. Why spend hours and hours on those decals?
Well, good of you to ask. Lets go on a journey together.
It is important to understand what it is that we're trying to achieve. With my students I like to work backwards: we start looking at the result and try to understand what it is trying to tell us. And let us start off good with some animated content of maps that are either in the vault or under construction. The purpose is to try and understand what it is that these decals mean to you. What is their added value in your own experience?
Hymn and Bone: there are no decals in the slider.
Fifth Nomad Mission: there are only decals in the slider.
Seton's Clutch: There are no decals in the slider
Next off we have a bundle of images of maps. Feel free to post your map down below and I'll ponder on whether it fits the next series. All of them have 2 sections that do show decals and two sections that do not show decals. Again, the purpose is to try and understand what all of this means to you.
Nomad Mission 5, under construction as of writing
Long John Silver, under construction as of writing
Mellow Shallows
When looking at the examples, determine what it is that you think that decals are doing to the map according to you.
Wild Path
Seton's Clutch, before Forged Alliance
Rainmakers Survival
Don't stop here. Experience it live yourself - open up one of the following maps in the Ozonex or GPG editor:
The GPG editor crashes when it is trying to open up a map made by the Ozonex editor that is saved as version 60 (forged alliance), instead of version 56 (vanilla). You need the Ozonex editor to open these up and save them in version 56 of the map file format in order to open them in the GPG editor.
You can find maps that you have downloaded in:
You can find the default maps at the installation folder of Supreme Commander Forged Alliance.
There is a Hide all and Unhide all button to quickly switch. You can find it under Decals -> Tools.
Use CTRL+A to select all the decals. Then press Delete. You can now quickly switch between a view with and without decals via using CTRL + Z and then deleting them again.
I hope this gives an idea to you as to what decals mean to you. This can be anything - there is no good or bad here. Use this as your argumentation.
The next topics cover as to what decals mean to me. We don't have to agree and a discussion is always welcome.
Decals on their own do not affect the simulation. After all, they do not make the terrain more bumpy or change the terrain type - it just looks more bumpy or more grassy. Nevertheless, to me they do affect the interpretation of the simulation. In other terms: to me decals have influence on the gameplay.
Let me elaborate via the usage of strata. Typically a rock stratum is used for places that are expected to be unpathable, such as cliffs, mountains and steep hills. This is done in almost every single map. Especially the default maps that are shipped with the game both learn us and use this association to make it easier for the player to understand the simulation.
In its essence: the rock stratum communicates some form of state to a player: this piece of terrain is likely unpathable.
Other instruments that communicate state are:
And that is how we get back to decals. Decals allow you to tap into a source of associations that the player typically learns throughout playing the game. This source of associations can be used to make your map easier to understand. As an example, would you say there is a hill on this bit of terrain?
After some careful consideration you'll probably say: 'Yes, of course! Look at the lighting on that piece of terrain. There must be some elevation there.' And you're right: there is.
Typically though, after play testing the map with new players, people build turrets behind the hill such that the hill blocks all projectiles flying towards units that are in front of the hill. In turn this forces me as a map designer to question as to why this is.
The reason turned out that even though the state was communicated through lighting, it was communicated too poorly. People do not have time to inspect the terrain when they are playing a real time strategy game. And because the lighting wasn't that significant, people just generally just overlooked the hill.
To communicate 'the hill' better I decided to place a few decals on it.
After which I never had the complaint again of their turrets shooting some hidden hill. Players either made their turrets in front of the hill. And if not, at the very least understood what went wrong and that they could've known about it before hand.
Therefore to me, decals can help you as a designer to communicate state.
The magic circle is an interesting concept in which a user accepts to drop the normal rules of the physical rules and replace them by new rules - allowing you to enter a world such as a game, or a movie, and emotionally live along with that world.
It is the reason that people can cry at the end of a movie: they accepted the environment which describes whether or not a user can accept a new reality as a truth - and in turn, accept anything that follows from that reality.
One can argue that initially when you start playing a game decals can help a lot to capture your imagination. It is what makes the world feel more acceptable - imagine playing this game the first time when all of the maps had no decals on them at all. The gameplay may be just as interesting. All the trailers, footages of the game and other PR material on the other hand would appear blunt and less appealing to you. In turn, you would be less quickly drawn towards the product.
The same still holds if you do not play the game competitively but more casually. The graphical appearance of a map can introduce all kinds of play and allows people to see a higher contrast in this world of play, or, step into it more easily.
We started off with a question what decals are for you. Throughout the article we have tried so far to answer this question by comparing maps with and without decals. The hard truth is however that the majority of popular maps barely have any decals on them at all.
Some people were discussing this fact in the Map & Mod Making Discord channel, and they have a good point. When we take the top 20 of the 18th of August, 2020 then the results are as following:
The overall consensus is that decals aren't that important for a map to be popular. Surely people may enjoy aesthetics maps, but generally, they won't choose a map for aesthetics. They choose a map for the game play experience that the map facilitates. And decals aren't a part of that choice.
There are maps out there that do not have that many decals, while still being appealing all on their own. And there is something to say here: decals are not a necessity. In my opinion they are a powerful tool to enhance an experience, but they cannot create the experience on their own.
A map that is beautiful on its own with a mere 318 decals on it, of which 44 are unique
And all of this brings us back to the original question: is it worth spending time on carefully placing decals on a map? This is question that is for you to answer - some will say no, others will respond with an astounding yes. I hope this article allows you to make this argument with yourself.
For more information on the magic circle:
A few good talks from GDC about level design:
If you have interesting sources, approaches, opinions or ideas that are not listed yet but may be valuable to the article: feel free to leave a message down below or contact me on Discord. The idea is to create a bunch of resources to share our knowledge surrounding development in Supreme Commander.
If you've used this resource for one of your maps feel free to make a post below: I would love to know about it!
A survival unlike any other - fight with up to two additional friends in a race against the clock. The map is designed such one needs to expand in order to survive. Due to the behavior of the AI having only point defenses will not take you far - it will try and evade threats while it is on its way towards the artillery stations.
The goal is to keep two artillery installations alive while they make it rain in another operation off-site. Hence, they are nicknamed the Rainmakers. The enemies will be fierce and they'll try to out smart you whenever they can. There are various difficulty settings available in order to tune the map to your rating. By default the map is a fair fit for a team with an average rating of 1100 (ladder).
Other relevant information:
Link with more information:
Trailers:
A map made in collaboration with @archsimkat . The map is designed to have clear primary and secondary expansions and therefore providing a variety of opportunities for other players to raid. It has been in ladder in October 2020 and hope to see it played more competitively .
Links with more information:
A map made with naval play in mind. The map is designed to have clear primary expansions in the center and the outskirts of the map to assist people in expanding and making map control more worth it. The map is reduced in size to about 26x17. Players start off with relative little mass the further they are from the center to discourage rushing tech 3 air.
The map was made to bring in more attention to the fact that islands are slowly disappearing throughout the globe due to the raising sea levels.
A map made with land play in mind. The map is designed to have clear primary expansions along with various paths one can take to harass the other player. The back-side plateau is an example which is key to protect to prevent your base from being shelled from above.
The map as made to bring in more attention to the fact that in some parts of the world nature is lost to a phenomena called 'desertification', where parts of nature that are near deserts are slowly converted to more desert due to climate change.
The map has all kinds of little tweaks, including but not limited to:
A map made for the SC:TA mapping tournament. The idea was to replicate the TA map 'Long Lakes'. In practice the map doesn't quite look like its target.
A map made in collaboration with @Eo_Empiran. The idea was to create an alternative map for 'Ozone Islands' because we wanted to see something new. In practice the map plays quite different to target map.
The map heavily relies on navy play but with the current balance in combination with the vast distance on the map one can quite easily rush tech 3 air. Suggestions on how to combat this are welcome .
A map made in request by @LegendSmith where he wanted to see more 3 v 3 v 3 maps. The map is heavily reliant on navy play. There are multiple player layouts possible for the map. The intended layout is to have one member of each team on their corresponding main islands, such that there are various 1v1's breaking out. In practice this turned out to be a horrible layout: as soon as one island is won then that team will generally win as a whole.
A map inspired heavily on the Astro Crater map made by BSR_Astro. The map uses the latest map development techniques such as a map-wide lighting and normal map.
In contradiction to the original there is minor reclaim in the spawn locations and there is quite some reclaim in the center. The center is directly influenced by your neutral civilian settings. You can freely enter and exit the water anywhere outside of the craters to allow your commander to easily get out of a dangerous situation.
Link with more information: -https://gitlab.com/supreme-commander-forged-alliance/maps/battle-of-the-craters
A map inspired heavily on Sludge made by GPG. The map is made with the game mode Phantom in mind. It can accompany up to five players. You can reach both neighbors with tactical missiles, but you can only reach one neighbor with a t2 artillery at any time.
A map made for one of the developers of LOUD. The map is inspired upon 'Valley Passage'. The idea was to have the layout similar to the original, while giving a major aesthetical boost.
this map is not available in FAF
A map made for one of the people that provided a design in the collaborative design topic. For more information:
This map is the first design but certainly not the last design made from that topic. The aim was to improve the workflow. This was accomplished by removing Photoshop from the equation entirely - this map uses World Machine and Image Magick in a semi-automated workflow. It took roughly 10 hours to get the map in its current state. There is an easter egg in the center.
at the moment of writing this map is not yet in the vault
A mod made as a replacement for the current featured King of the Hill mod that is part of FAF. At the moment of writing it supports:
It works on any map and there are a few options available:
A point is given for every 30 seconds of control. The hill can be controlled by either having your commander on the hill or reaching a mass threshold with (land or naval) units. A hill can be contested by having your commander on the hill or reaching a lower mass threshold with (land or naval) units.
A series on how water works in Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. Includes all the information one needs to get started on not only using water more creatively but also understanding various concepts surrounding water more thoroughly.
@nine2
This is in the GPG editor ! It doesn't use any stratum layers yet so there is still loads to gain.
I discovered what caused the artifacts: terrain that is too 'perfect' or 'smooth' causes the sediment to pile up. The piled up sediment causes artifacts.
I think the boundaries straight-line are some artifact from how the erosion splits up the terrain into blocks, allowing it to run on multiple threads. But that is just a guess.
The same location, but now without those artifacts .
@RandomWheelchair said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@veteranashe But it works? People are getting banned all the time? Hell, there are instances where people are getting banned for stuff they should never have been banned for. So I really don't get it how you can come and say that it doesn't work? Maybe instead of crying you should just make proper report next time with proper evidence?
@veteranashe But it works? People are getting banned all the time? Hell, there are instances where people are getting banned for stuff they should never have been banned for. So I really don't get it how you can come and say that it doesn't work?
Maybe instead of crying you should just make proper report next time with proper evidence?
This is exactly the type of toxic attitude that resides in this community. Your reply is harsh, is empty content wise and is at best trolling in this context.
As an example, do you understand the full context of @veteranashe ? Did you ask him how he makes his reports? And if you did, did you tell him how to make a better report?
With your response you're just telling him to 'stop crying' and 'do better' without telling him how to do better. How would you react if your professor would give you an C- and then just tells you to 'stop crying and do better'? Does that tell you anything on what you did wrong? Does that tell you what topics you don't understand yet, and why? Does that help you prepare better for your next exam? It doesn't - as much as your post doesn't help anyone reading it either.
If you are going to tell someone to do better, at least state how better should look like. That may or may not help veteranashe, but perhaps it can help someone else and it appears a lot more friendly to the random reader that right now reads 'stop crying, do better - cheerio mate'.
Back on topic: I joined faf years a go just to leave it within a month. It wasn't a skill issue, it wasn't any technical issues: it was toxicity.
Every single game I did everything wrong because I did not understand the meta in map X or map Y. And I'm leaving the map names out with a purpose - according to every map that a host hosts there is a meta and if you don't get that meta then you apparently suck ass and should just uninstall the game. This while I could beat all my friends and the original AIX in the base game at that time.
This kind of %$#@ still happens and is widely mentioned throughout this thread. Sadly, it is not only in the game itself but also in our discord channels. Including the creative discord where content is made for this game.
Apparently people find it important that their opinion is always heard, even though there is no reason to state it with the attitude that sometimes is used. Multiple people have left the creative discord after or during their first map because of toxicity in the form harsh comments or opinions that were not required at all.
Throughout the last year we've lost at least three people that I can name from the top of my head that were either making content, or were at the start of making content and got demotivated or insulted because of the harsh responses that they got while showing their map and / or asking for feedback.
On top of that - the forum and the discord channels are essentially public - how does it appear to the random reader when its filled with toxicity? It wouldn't be that much inviting to me.
Alas, the only reason I came back two or three years ago is because this is the only reliable platform on which I can publish content for the game - and I enjoy doing that a lot.
Image editing tools, such as:
Map editing tools, such as:
On the 30th of September, 2020 the Ozonex editors renders water differently than in the game. Thus it is not representative to what you would see while playing. On the contrary, the GPG editor utilizes the exact same procedures as the game does and is therefore representative. If this is no longer the case when you read this - do notify me and I'll remove this paragraph .
For this article I assume that you have extracted all the textures the game has to offer. If you have not done so and / or do not know how to extract all the texture, I advise you to check the FAQ in the overview article. There is entry explicitly on how to do this properly to allow the GPG editor to generate the correct relative paths to the textures.
Normal map A normal map is commonly used in older rendering engines in order to create detail that cannot be represented by the geometry of a shape. This is quite a sentence and I encourage you to look at the following article:
Water map A water map is a lot like the common normal map, but with a different interpretation of the alpha channel. And because of this difference I do not just call them normal maps, but water maps because the alpha channel is only taken into account when it is used to render water. This article describes the exact interpretation in depth.
It is important to understand the goal of this article. Personally I like to work backwards: we start looking at the end result along with the context and then try to understand how this is accomplished.
A visual comparison between different types of wave normal maps
For more context on what this all means I encourage you to open up the GPG editor and import the following water settings:
You can either download the file or create a new file with a .lua extension. Once inside the GPG editor you can import the configuration via File -> Import -> Water.
For this article we'll look into how the waves on the water surface take shape. This is accomplished by combining various water maps. We'll discuss where we can find the assets regarding to water that the game provides, how we can interpret these assets and how we can make our own.
The game provides a bundle of water maps by default. These are used throughout the default skirmish and campaign maps. Assuming that you have extracted the textures correctly previously, you can find them at:
%InstallationFolder%/textures/engine/
Once inside you'll find a bunch of water maps: waves.dds (no foam channel)
waves000.dds (no foam channel)
waves7.dds (completely white foam channel)
waves001.dds (with foam channel)
waves6.dds (with foam channel)
For each image, the normal map is in the top left and the alpha channel is in the bottom right part.
You are not limited to using these - any repeating normal map can be used! You can think of normal maps that are generally used as strata textures. This can create all kinds of interesting effects. A typical normal map will have an opaque alpha channel - this may cause the water surface to become completely white. When this happens, read the next section carefully: not all normal maps are fit as a water map out of the box.
A water map is the typical purple-looking normal map one would expect, including an interesting interpretation of the alpha channel.
The latter indicates whether or not there is foam on the water. Foam is generated when the total foam value after combining the various water maps is larger than 1.0 (more than white). This effect is generally not visible because the majority of the wave maps provided to us have a black alpha channel. The only reasonable assets that generate the effect is waves001.dds and waves6.dds.
Water of the map Paradise, with foam on the top left and without foam on the bottom right
When you open up the standard map Paradise (scmp_035) you can see one of those water maps among the water properties, in turn generating a small foam effect.
Enable the Water layer (F9) and click on 'Water Properties' in the toolbar of the editor. The tool window will respond and change into a 'Water Properties' window. For this article we're interested in the very last properties: the texture, direction, speed and frequency of the water maps.
Showing the properties in which we're interested in for this article
Assuming that you have extracted the textures correctly previously, click on the '(...)' button and navigate towards the location where they should be stored:
Choose any of the water maps and start experimenting with them.
Other interesting properties are the direction of a normal map, its speed and how often it is repeated on the water surface. You can change these live in the GPG editor:
Direction: Water starts movingtoward top/north. Increasing the number will rotate the effect clockwise.
Speed: The speed in which the water moves, the lower the value the slower the water moves.
Frequency: The size of the texture on the surface. Lowering the value causes the texture to be tiled more on the water surface.
Toying around with the water maps and these settings can create all sorts of interesting effects. From here on the journey is yours. Feel free to share your findings in the comments below!
A visual comparison after changing some of the wave normal maps
You can store water maps inside your map folder. For stratum textures and decal textures there is a specific location where these should be stored. For water there is no hierarchy that you need to use in order for the game to find the files. It is good practice to store them inside the env folder that the other textures require in order to function - this keeps it organized.
As an example, you can store them in: %MapName%/env/
For this tutorial we'll use the following normal map:
You will need an account to be able to download the normal map. The website is free and you will get 15 points for free each day allowing you to download seamless textures. If you are aware how hard it is to make these kind of textures then you know we are practically robbing them via their own freemium model. Do take note of the license on the textures - as an example we cannot share them without explicitly using them and you need to mention the source in the description of the map.
Any normal map texture from the internet will likely have a fully opaque alpha channel. We just learned that this is used to generate foam on the surface therefore you may want to make it black or give it some interesting shape. Save the texture in the .dds format. You can do so by opening it in your favorite image manipulation program that supports the .dds format, such as Gimp or Adobe Photoshop. Use BC3 / DXT5 as your compression algorithm.
A visual example of water that appears to have really large waves in it
When you upload the map to the vault the name of the folder of your map is changed. The path to your custom textures is not adjusted accordingly, in turn the game cannot find the corresponding textures.
To approach this you can use the Ozonex editor to bump your map version which creates a new folder with the correct version and in turn you can use the GPG editor to set the corresponding paths to the new folder structure. When uploading the name of the folder of the map no longer needs adjusting and everything will be good.
With Supreme Commander we are in a unique position in which we can not only toy around with the graphical assets, we can also see how these assets are used in the rendering pipeline of the game. The (HLSL) shaders can be found at:
%InstallationFolder%/gamedata/effects.scd
To strengthen our understanding of this article it is nice to see how the assets are used in the rendering pipeline. For this article, the following bit of code inside the water2.fx file is particularly interesting.
float4 HighFidelityPS(...){ // (...) // calculate the normal we will be using for the water surface float4 W0 = tex2D( NormalSampler0, inV.mLayer0 ); float4 W1 = tex2D( NormalSampler1, inV.mLayer1 ); float4 W2 = tex2D( NormalSampler2, inV.mLayer2 ); float4 W3 = tex2D( NormalSampler3, inV.mLayer3 ); float4 sum = W0 + W1 + W2 + W3; float waveCrest = saturate( sum.a - waveCrestThreshold ); // average, scale, bias and normalize float3 N = 2.0 * sum.xyz - 4.0; // flatness N = normalize(N.xzy); float3 up = float3(0,1,0); N = lerp(up, N, waterTexture.r); // (...) }
The waves that makes the water appear so alive is nothing more than a summation of a bunch of normal maps, each at a different position to simulate the idea of movement.
The values mLayer0 up to mLayer4 are computed in the vertex shader, at an earlier stage of the pipeline. In turn these values are used to get pixel information from a texture using tex2D along with the according texture samplers that describe how certain situations should be taken care of and the coordinates that we wish to sample.
After which the various normal maps summed together, resulting in a single vector. The vector is first used to compute the wave crests values that in turn are used later as part of generating the white foam on the surface water. Take note that the foam value solely uses the alpha channel! The normal is adjusted accordingly to match the fact that we added four normal maps together. It is then used for lighting, reflection, refraction and speculation computations down the road.
The flatness that we can define in the editor is applied as a linear interpolation between the up vector and the normal computed at the surface of the water. The more we flatten the water, the less of the computed water normal will be used and therefore the water will appear to be more uniform.
For more information on the operators used:
You' are using water maps that have (completely) white alpha channels. The alpha channel is interpreted as foam. If you want to use those water maps, change their alpha channels to black (no foam) or some other pattern to introduce foam in a more natural manner.
For the first normal map that has a white alpha channel this doesn't have an effect. Foam is rendered on the water surface when its value is larger than 1.0. In other words: when the combined normal maps have an alpha channel that is more white than white itself.
Two examples of problems with foam
When you upload the map to the vault the name of the folder of your map is changed. As an example,
from: %MapName%/ to: %MapName%.v0001/.
The path to your textures is not adjusted accordingly and in turn the game cannot find the corresponding textures when you download the map from the vault.
To approach this you can use the Ozonex editor to bump your map version and then use the GPG editor to set the corresponding paths. The Ozonex editor already prepares the correct name of the folder of the map. When you upload the map no adjustments are required and therefore no renaming happens.
For more information on normal maps in general:
For more textures that you can use in your projects:
Special thanks to @keyser for providing feedback on the article.
I was wondering if it would be possible to have read-only sections of the forum where only a specific number of people (from a given group, for example) can write to.
Specifically I am referring to the balance team having this option. Not because I don't think they are doing a great job but because I think their discussions can provide a great deal of insight to (new) players.
If this would be possible, the balance team has a clear section in which they can discuss everything without interference. And the community can read this and make new topics to ask questions and / or make suggestions in the 'general balance section'. The original section that is 'read-only' for anyone but the balance team remains concise.
An example of why I think this is relevant:
I'm not 100% confident if these are guaranteed balance changes or not, but if it would be, people are generally unaware (beforehand) unless they stumble upon it accidentally. And then you can ask 'why', which is not explained in the pull requests. I bet there has been a discussion about this somewhere that reveals all kinds of insight but I can't find it and I'm confident that a lot of other members are unable to find it too.
And again: without judging whether the change is good or bad: I think the discussions can provide insight to (new) players. And those insights are key to the game and I feel they should be on the forum. But, if and only if it can be protected by the suggestion mentioned earlier. Otherwise I can see myself (accidentally) diving into a topic with a context that I'm clearly not aware of, or ask questions that have been answered months ago and cluttering up the whole (original) discussion.
As a visual example:
Where the 'internal' balance discussions can only be written to by members that are part of the balance group (as there is a 'council of setons' group, 'moderator' group, etc)
edit: I do not speak for the balance team - this post is the result of a discussion I had with another member. I hope someone from the balance team can come on in and share their tale.
A new map enters the arena! Welcome to Root of Beta that attempts to experiment with the latest techniques in making maps. Including but not limited to the following:
Root of Beta
There is a timelapse of the first 8 hours of the process in the make. You can expect it next year .
The mass values in the last screenshot is not as much as it seems - I've taken two times the square root of their original values. E.g., the Monkey Lord is not worth 15K but only ~300.
The majority of gamers that play a game do not know what they want with the game. Suggestions on balance for example that make sense in some context can easily rip apart the balance in ten other contexts. Just check the balance forums before the new rules got in place. Same idea, different topic: maps that one person thinks is amazing, can be terrible in the mind of another. Just check this post for a good example.
The suggestion of @Suzuji to become this crowd-opinion-based-machine with regard to the matchmaker (or in general: make it more 'democratic') is not something that I'd want to see happening. You're never going to please everyone - have a vision on what you think should be ladder maps and let us vote on that.
There are some differences between the two (four?) applications that I'd like to mention:
In my opinion the two only real applications are those of Ftx / Morax.
I don't play match making or the game itself enough to understand half of what all the applications consider a problem at the moment. As a mapper however: I think the PC (being the person that is ultimately responsible for adding maps to matchmaking) should have a clear opinion on what he / she thinks makes a ladder map good. A few examples:
The reason for this is simple: I'm guessing as a map maker and I completely rely on the expertise of tournament players to help me out. I'd like to have an objective line to follow when thinking in terms of competitive maps. A line that should not be based on what people think in general is right, but on what the PC thinks is right for the pools for the next year. And this is something that people can vote on.
And I'd like to see a list of common things that can go wrong when you consider a map for ladder. Common annoyances that I therefore do not experience myself. I discussed this idea here and I'd like to see that grow somehow so that map makers in the future can at least look at the future list and make a conscious decision as to whether they support mechanic X or Y at location A or B on their map.
And again - this should be composed by the PC and not by the community - as a casual player will have wildly different ideas in comparison to competitive players. As an example this topic. I don't think this is something people should vote on, as these are more generic. But I'd like to see the list anyhow.
At the moment of writing the Ozonex editor renders the water quite differently. In turn the rendering of the water that you see in the Ozonex editor is not representative to what you'd see in-game. The GPG editor uses the exact same procedures and is therefore completely representative.
The primary usage of these elevation parameters is to both define the water surface and the range of the water ramp.
Surface Defines at which height the surface is. There can only be one surface of water - multiple surfaces to support maps with varying water height is not supported. Is also used as a marking point as to where the water ramp starts.
Any value above the surface will share the same value as the one on the surface. Uses the pixel in the most top left corner of the water ramp.
Deep Has no meaning of any kind. It is an aesthetic parameter as it is mentioned in the shader that renders the water, but never referenced anywhere in a computation. Has no game play effect of any kind.
Abyss Defines at which height the water ramp is at its lowest. Has no game play effect of any kind - solely used for coloring the terrain underneath.
Any value below the abyss will share the same value as the one on the abyss. Uses the pixel in the most top right corner of the water ramp.
Water with a surface in the left top slice, water without a surface but with the water ramp applied in the right bottom slice
The sun color parameters influence the color of the reflection of the sun. This reflection is a form of specular lighting and the options for the specular lighting are below the header 'Sun and Fresnel', discussed below. The sun color is a typical RGB color component as one would expect.
The values range between 0.0 and 2.0, which allows you to overload the color significantly. This is useful in the case that color is reduced due to shadows of some kind. Typically the range is between 0.0 and 1.0, representing values between 0 and 255 in integral-based colors.
Red The red component of the sun color.
Green The green component of the sun color.
Blue The blue component of the sun color.
A slice with red and a green sun color
The reflection of the sun is unrelated to the angle of the sun defined in the lighting settings. It is always most visible when looking perpendicular at the water, where as the reflections are invisible when looking parallel with the water.
Surface color and interpolation The surface color parameters influence the color of the surface itself. It colors the entire surface based on an interpolation of depth of the water. Lets look at the code to find out how this plays out in practice:
float4 HighFidelityPS(...) { // (...) // as found in water2.fx // we want to lerp in some of the water color based on depth, but // not totally on depth as it gets clamped float waterLerp = clamp(waterDepth, waterLerp.x, waterLerp.y); // lerp in the color refractedPixels.xyz = lerp( refractedPixels.xyz, waterColor, waterLerp); // computations such as reflections and wave crests }
The waterDepth is a value in the range between 0.0 and 1.0. At 0.0 we are at the surface height, at 1.0 we are at the abyss height. We defined these values earlier. The water depth is clamped between the two interpolation values. This has a set of consequences:
That means that if we have a minimal value that is larger than 0 all the water will always have some surface color and isn't transparent. This causes a visual annoyance when zooming out described in another article:
Now that we're aware of this we can also understand why the water becomes opaque when we up the values: we are interpolating between the refracted image of what is behind the water over a single color that we defined ourselves. When we up the values, all that remains is the surface color we defined.
An inconvenient error is that the depth of the water is inaccurately defined. This isn't as obvious when you view the water from up top, but it becomes clear when you view the water from an angle.
The reason for this is that the surface is changed in color, but not the color of the terrain behind the surface. That color is changed according to a water ramp, which we'll touch upon in this article and discuss in another.
Reflections of the sky and water crests will always appear on the surface - these are computed and combined after the surface color computations are complete.
Essentially what the surface color and its interpolation values describe is how clear the water is. Take the water from that cup standing next to you in comparison to water that you mixed with lemonade: the former is clear (hopefully) and the latter is almost opaque.
Reflection is the idea that water reflects light of its environment back to its environment. This is effect becomes more apparent the more parallel our viewing angle is with the water.
Refraction is the idea that water changes the angle of light that passes through it. This effect becomes more apparent the more perpendicular our viewing angle is with the water.
Sun A linear interpolation as to how reflective the sun should be. Not sure where this is being used directly.
Sky Determines how much the sky (cubemap) should be reflected.
Unit Determines how much a unit should be reflected.
Refraction Determines how strongly the water distorts anything that is under water.
The sky reflection parameter has precedence over the unit reflection parameter. If there is no sky reflection, then there won't be a unit reflection either. This correlation exists because the sky reflection parameter is used, on its own, to determine whether we reflect anything at all.
float4 HighFidelityPS(...) { // (...) // as found in water2.fx // lerp the reflection into the refraction refractedPixels = lerp( refractedPixels, reflectedPixels, saturate(skyreflectionAmount * fresnel)); // (...) }
As a result, if you decrease the amount the sky is reflected you'll also decrease the amount a unit is reflected by the water. If there is no sky reflection then only the refracted pixels and the surface color remain.
If you have interesting sources, approaches, opinions or ideas that aren't listed yet but may be valuable to the article: feel free to leave a message down below or contact me on Discord. The idea is to create a bunch of resources to share our knowledge surrounding development in Supreme Commander.
If you've used this resource for one of your maps feel free to make a post below: I'd love to know about it!
This is a blog post on where you can find the current decals, how you could potentially edit these decals and how to add them back into your map. Take note that I am no designer, hence the 'edits' will be relatively simple.
This blog is also useful for adding custom stratums and, in the near future when it is supported, custom props.
We'll go through the steps with a case study for the one of the missions of the Nomad campaign.
Interesting sources A list of sources that you can use as inspiration for new decals, stratums and textures in general.
A video tutorial by @Morax about the same topic, with the focus on stratums instead of decals:
Tools
If you cannot afford Photoshop then you can use Gimp as an alternative. Gimp supports the .dds format used by Supreme Commander by default.
Take note that Supreme Commander also supports the .png format by default.
The case One of the nomad maps have lava in them. The map doesn't use the default stratum textures for lava, hence creating cracks like in Haven Reef is rather difficult.
The expected results:
The current results:
As you can see the colors do not match as nicely as one would like. Therefore we decide to make a small but evident change to the textures.
Where to find the original decals of Supreme Commander The game itself typically resides inside your Steam folder, from there you can go to:
Copy the file and change its extension from .scd to .zip. Extract the .zip file you just 'created' - the contents contain all the stratum textures of the game, nicely organised per theme.
The files we need for this case study are:
On Windows 10 .dds files can be visualized in the Explorer. Make sure that your view is not on details but instead of large or very large pictograms.
On editing decals I cannot pin point what to do for every possible edit. But I can give you some pointers and will tell you what I do to my textures to make them fit in more.
First of all, lets talk about the alpha channel. This isn't a separate alpha channel as one would typically expect, instead the base layer is not a background layer - it is a separate layer that has alpha encoded directly into the layer itself.
The channels of the decal
The layers of the decal
Therefore whenever you work with an alpha channel, think in terms of layer transparency. This is also useful to know when you search on the internet.
In our case we simply want the colors of the decal to match the colors of the stratum. Take note that the decal has different colors in photoshop than it has in the editor - this is due to the lighting settings of Supreme Commander that are applied to the decal. You can change these settings in the editor.
For the purpose of this blog we want to match the color of the decal with the color of the stratum used commonly on the plateau's. This allows us to more easily 'hide' the decal, making our life easier in the long run. We can do this by navigating to Image -> Adjustments -> Match Color and then choosing the stratum we exported along with it as source.
The original decal
The adjusted decal
Other tools that are certainly interesting without breaking any tiling patterns are:
And pretty much anything inside Image -> Adjustments is generally worth knowing about its existence.
Adding the decal back in Now that we have made our adjustments it is time to make it available within the Editor and within Supreme Commander for usage.
Navigate towards your map. We refer to your map folder as root. Add in the following folders to your map:
Save your decals in .dds format in the decals folder and save any new stratum textures in .dds format into the layers folder. Take note that this nicely matches the structure of the original env.scd file that we extracted earlier.
For the future, you can add in custom props by storing them into root/env/props.
From this moment on the decals and / or additional layers should be visible in the Resource Browser of the Ozonex editor. Choose as Type the Map folder, and the corresponding Category. From this moment on everything works as expected and you can even load in the decals from the old GPG editor.
The outcome of the change
The difference is small but it is now nearly invisible unless you pay really, really close attention to the decal work and know what to look for. In both cases, players either don't do that or they don't know what to look for. All is beautiful.
About you If you have interesting sources that aren't listed yet: feel free to contact me on Discord or the Aeolus in Forged Alliance Forever! Take note that for the latter, if I did not respond, I may have missed your message.
@tagada It is called Chess
There is also a mod where you have a fixed income - that may be interesting too for this queue
@blodir I will also establish the Russian, German and Finnish language faflive streams for the event.
I smell a biass here.
I'd like to submit Rainmakers, but I'm not sure if it is casual enough edit: it is 30 mins tops on default settings
@biass Alright, so I've had time to make a proper response. We've already discussed some parts in private, I'll keep those short.
Before I start - thank you for your time on the elaborate feedback. It is so elaborate that reading the feedback of other maps is informative even though I did not make the map.
Of course, the map wide decals provide a far superior output compared to what can be done with the limited resolution on a regular sup com mask file. You'll not find anyone who can outpaint this when you can export files at 8 times the resolution. It was possible when WM use went as far as erosion, because it still had to be added to the same old sup com layer file. But it won't be the same for decals like these. It even forced me to budge from my old man biass "wm is bad" hill.
I'll take budging you as a compliment. The resolution difference is 32 times - not 8.
Furthermore as this might be regarded as a "higher quality" world machine output - rightfully so as you're the one who created the method, the concerns grow with it.
I understand - there is more than just a map-wide decal and world machine output. For now though I am still searching for the boundaries of what can be achieved with World Machine reliably - this map is part of that journey and it is reaching its limits. Neither editor is equipped for the type of work that I want to be able to do.
The first thing I want to point out the attention of is the theme of the map, this will begin my series of thoughts relating to "things dealt with after the fact". Items that look like they were afterthoughts and that damage the map as a whole.
About the theme in general. The original map design had water in it, but the final map design did not except for the small patches of water that you see on the map right now. Therefore there is no previous underwater area. This is my mistake - I should've been clearer.
The theme of the map was that it was a beautiful valley but an alien pathogen was introduced. Whether this was via a meteorite is up to debate - as you mention the crash site is too perfect. But however it happened, the pathogen is introduced. Because of that parts of the map that are near water, or near the water level, slowly decay causing dead trees and other dead fauna. This is also used to color cue the map: high areas will have the lovely green bits, low areas will have the decaying bits.
In that sense: yes, the center of the map is a bit of an after thought as the theme of the map changed in the last few days. I was unable to produce a nice crater in the final hours reliably and the deadline was closing in.
I think I should've spent more time on it to indicate this properly. I've spent some time on the map yesterday to improve it using stratum layers.
Second, the edge building. Or more specifically the methods used to indicate them.
I've noticed after showing them in the discord channel that the opinions on this is rather diverse. As was with the heightmap lines I suggested in another topic.
We discussed the buggy part in private: you teleported the engineer on a location that was not pathable. Therefore, since it was already in a state it shouldn't be able to get in to, it was able to just traverse to the top. That said: that spot in the video was not accessible manually and that is on me. I've changed that for version 4.
These elements exist because people are having trouble determining where to do the edge building. Whether the mechanic is a gimmic or close to an exploit is not up to me. People do it, and they want to do it reliably. This is one solution. People suggested to make it less... artificial. By using a decal that is used underneath UEF buildings for example. I personally don't agree at the moment. But I'd love to hear what people think.
Decals, same as in cherry blossom valley, are nil.
The reason is time. That is not an excuse, just an observation. There was already over 50 hours spent on the map and spending another 20 hours on manually placing down decals was not going cut it in my opinion. In the future, when I've made my own decals, I may do so still but then the decals will cover more ground, making the entire process easier.
Tree groups, as is also a problem on Mauve, are often entirely floating in the air due to the erratic changes in elevation due to world machine.
I noticed this issue right after submitting it. I've checked this before submitting, but I may have been time drunk. I still missed a lot. That is fixed for version 4.
The civilians on this map are extremely weak.
Weak is a big word, but I agree they are not as solid as in the map of Robustness. I'll add a ravager to make them stronger .
My closing thoughts are really as follows. It's clear you've skyrocketed above a lot of map creators because of your work on technical artistry. However that is only one aspect of creating a map. Make sure you spend the time to ensure all elements of your work are up to the standard you've set with world machine, or they'll prove to be a massive bottleneck. The road is long and there is still a lot more to go.
I agree - I could've spent more time on other elements. That is why I appreciate the feedback a lot .
After all these world machine outputs are above what a lot of people can run, and when they need to remove them in order to play - what are they left with?
This is cheaper in practice than having 400+ decals on screen. Do you have statistics on this?
I've also seen the 3rd version (this is version 2) because the client forced me to play on it. I would suggest that instead of gimping the map to have nothing to contest, create different choices of equal value. This creates variance.
I'm open for suggestions. As with any map, I'm not a tournament player and I don't have a checklist to check. I rely on the opinion of others a lot more than I want to admit.
Overall - thank you for your feedback and I'm going to improve Mauve a bit too this week .
Well - it is a bit of both. If a map requires too many specific things (like Thomas hinted to) then I think the map is trying to do too much.
Interesting issue. I think you could take it into account when designing your map. It is something you don't want if it is in the center for example, as in Mauve. But I'd say it is also on the player: you could navigate them less close to the edge or not use attack move.
edit: especially because now there are neutrals there, but it could've been a mass extractor too.
Your image actually visualizes the problem exactly. If the target and shooter are at the same height, the shot is pinpoint accurate.
That image is not taken with orthographic projection and your drawing is made as if it is made on a perfect X / Y plane. I can come up with another angle that would proof the opposite.
The observation of BlackYps is solid and counteracts your observation: if what you say is true, then the projectile should hit the ground in front of an extractor when the extractor is at a higher altitude. It doesn't - it still tries to hit it somewhere behind it.
There is no such thing as a "partial" hit. Either the shot connects or it doesn't.
There is such a thing as a partial hit if your projectiles split up into 4 separate projectiles and two hit the target while the other two don't. You mentioned this behavior in your post.
This is an interesting pattern I hadn't noticed. I wonder if the problem can be worked around by increasing the minimum muzzle velocity of the shot, or by changing the projectile's behavior. (Increase speed OnCreate if target is higher, reduce of target is lower.)
Do you want me to share the small mod I made for testing this? Then you can tweak around
@blackyps Solid observation
@Auricocorico To limit the issue you can move the artillery back until the target is almost out of range.
This rainbow takes out the t2 artillery in the blink of an eye.