FATE - a user-friendly alternative to EasyGen [Archive]

CooperHawkes

13th November 2005, 22:05

Finally, my terrain editor has reached a more or less bug-free alpha state...

For all of you, who do not like EasyGen and are tired of creating their terrain meshes triangle by triangle in GtkRadiant: Give FATE (Freehand Adaptive Terrain Editor) a try and tell me what you think of it please :-)

You can grab it here:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/

This is an early alpha release... so, please do not instantly kill me if something does not work the way you expected ;-) For a list of features please have a look at the website mentioned above.

And here are some teasers:

A screenshot of the editor.

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/gallery/geometryedit1.png

Some simple terrain I created with a few easy clicks and movements and 3 textures I downloaded from Sock's Simland (http://www.planetquake.com/simland/). You might notice the distortionless placement of the textures... all handled by FATE for your relief ;-)

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/fatesample1.jpg

Ifurita

14th November 2005, 01:38

Looks great. Will give it a go later.

Fusen

14th November 2005, 02:17

that hill looks awesome, anyone got anymore eye candy? ;D

Lanz

14th November 2005, 02:45

So far I've just been playing around with it a little and I really like it so far. The ways you can manipulate the terrain and the implementation of the interface is spot on! Easy to use and still very powerfull, especially impressed with the gadget and the geometry selection tool.

Very Good work! Will keep my eyes on this project for things you will implement next... :)

edit:
Found a silly bug. Well I don't know why I did it but if you have the gadget activated (not in right-click mode) and press ctrl + mouse wheel scroll it crash the program.

Brevik

14th November 2005, 07:26

Looks fantastic, I'm going to play around with it tonight.

Nice work sir! :)

Loffy

14th November 2005, 07:40

Will download and try a.s.a.p. Good job!

carnage

14th November 2005, 08:14

this is REALY REALY great

For all of you, who do not like EasyGen and are tired of creating their terrain meshes triangle by triangle in GtkRadiant

yes u read my mind

with this tool it looks like i could have made the map i am working on right now in a fraction of the time :banana:

great work congrats

the only thing that i would see as an improvemnt is if smeone build something like this as a plugin to GTK so it was easy to manipulate terrain as the map progressed not havin to faf around import/export

oh yeah and one more thing to mention. since it calims to bo of unlimited size and you can get such nice shapes it seems like it would be very good to make ETQW maps with when the time comes. Any plants to suport mega textures in the future?

kamikazee

14th November 2005, 14:36

Nice hill, and the app itself seems appealing. I'm going to try it this evening, I'll see if I can take my current terrain from Easygen by a heightmap.
(BTW: Does that hill use dotproduct2 blending? And is this program smart enough to write such shaders on itself?)

Smilie

14th November 2005, 16:38

Very nice prog pity i dont map much for ET any more (im more of a DODS mapper now) :bored:

maybe you could make a HL2 compatable version :P

kamikazee

14th November 2005, 20:30

I used it some time... And this program results from well spent programming time!
However I was unable to port my work from Easygen due to the lack of an 'import heightmap' feature, this program still kicks ass.
It is nice to see another approach on terrain building with a program, as Easygen and GTKGenSurf only generate x and y grids.

My wishlist of features: (in order)
-Heightmap import/export. (However import only could do, as I can export my map directly)
-Smooth tool (To get rid of those few 'jagged' edges)
-Some texture stuff working (Eventually you just color the tris with gradients to show what shader is on them)
-Height 'replace' function or a "flattening" tool (This is an easygen function I sometimes use to quickly make small paths running on a sloped hill)
(Allso note this last tool could be a custom plugin)

Of course, this is a wishlist, and I hope you keep improving this program is would be quite usefull for the Doom3 engine as well. (The new 'megatexture' system not considered yet, that may work differently)

Loffy

14th November 2005, 22:26

Hi! Great tool!

Got it to work. No screens atm. Will work more with this tool tomorrow.
I'm impressed by FATE although it is an alpha version yet.

I get the same bug as reported above by lanz:
Ctrl + mousewheelscrollup (or mousewheelscrolldown) when the gadget is activated (not in right-click mode) = crash.

//L.

CooperHawkes

14th November 2005, 22:31

Thanks a lot for all the kind words and the nice feedback! :-) It is much appreciated!

@Lanz: Oops, I knew that I have forgotten an "if" somewhere ;-) I will fix that...

@carnage: I hope to be able to provide map or bsp import in one of the upcoming versions... I hope that helps a little to achieve proper placement of the hills and valleys.
I didn't think about mega textures yet... TBH I am still fighting with myself what is the best (i.e. easiest) and at the same time flexible way to texture terrain. Therefore no "real" texture support in this release :-( If everything goes like I planned, the texturing capabilities might be quite powerful.

@kamikazee: I will see, what I can do about the heightmap import... however, the result might be somewhat inaccurate due to the hexagonal mesh structure... we will see. ATM the program creates an experimental bunch of shaders for you (using dotproduct2 and alpha volumes). I am still optimizing them, so they might not fit your needs. Additionally 3 textures will be created (red, green, and blue unichrome)... feel free to replace them with your own images... that's what I did to get that hill you can see above. Once there are some textures in place, the application won't overwrite them with the next export. Also see FAQ #2 on the web site...
Mesh smoothing is already on my schedule... (once again, see web site ;-) ... or the "Optimize" dialog)
Regarding a flattening tool: I'll see, what I can do, part 2 ;-)

... and now, back to work...

BTW: I will be offline starting from tomorrow evening until next saturday... so please bear with me, if I am not answering... thanks :-)

carnage

14th November 2005, 23:24

just had another qucik play with the tool, i think i gettin the hang of it a bitt better now. i think the key is to take a lot of time to sculpt very carfuly but the end results are much worth it

http://img418.imageshack.us/img418/4480/tester8if.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

thanx to the new trangluar mesh and much smaller divides terrain realy does look much more natural. particuly for smaller hills and sections that were very time consuming to make before

the tool imo is good enough to start making maps with now if only there was a blur tool present. any chance of a release soon with such a tool

CooperHawkes

15th November 2005, 01:46

What exactly do you mean by "blur tool"? Something that smoothes the edges or something to blur the straight (=unnatural) alignment of the triangles, i.e. a tool to add some jitter or Perlin noise? Or none of these?

Ifurita

15th November 2005, 01:56

Can you import blocks of caulk or placeholders into your tool? I'd love to be able to create a .map in Radiant, which consists of block placeholders (key buildings, etc), see it in FATE, then sculpt terrain around it.

CooperHawkes

15th November 2005, 02:23

Can you import blocks of caulk or placeholders into your tool?
I hope to be able to provide map or bsp import in one of the upcoming versions... I hope that helps a little to achieve proper placement of the hills and valleys.
... when it's done ;-)

Loffy

15th November 2005, 07:39

Amazing tool. And the interface looks neat.
Carnage, nice screens.

Will there be FATE t-shirts ready for x-mas?
//L.

carnage

15th November 2005, 07:45

kamikazee

15th November 2005, 12:21

as for blur i would like something that smooth traiangles so you could use it smooth unatural traingles. it seems when this occours there isnt much that can be done about it

in the CandC editor wich is pretty similar to this you could set it places a blur tool where you raised hills and things automaticaly to avaoid getting these kind of edges in the first place

2 tools i would realy like to see would be

-raise triangles to and exact height so its posible to create flat smooth planes where things like road decal could be placed

-the ability to lock triangles so when you have carved a road network out or whatever you can build hills around it without worrying about messing it upThe first tool you're pointing to is allmost possible using the square deformation function and a flattening tool. Of course the last one is the thing we're missing...

-The 2nd is a nice thought, I've cursed many times when trying to create little paths using Easygen.

-About the smooth tool: maybe you could make a geometry editing tool of it, which only smooths the selected polygons. (Ok, this will take quite some calculation, combined with the deformation functions)
If you later want to add a 'whole terrain smooth', you could simply use this tool behind the scenes for the whole terrain.

-I allso noticed the 'deformation amplitude' spinner (or how do you call such a thing again) goes quite slow, maybe it should have a greater step value? (Say about the edge's length / 2)
That way, you click the 'down' button a few times to select 1 row of triangles less instead of pressing it for a while or entering values manually.

A few notes on the heightmap stuff though: (once you take the time for it, choose your priorities)
-Easygen allways chooses the new terrain's dimensions after heightmap import, which is quite annoying.
It should import the heightmap, ask for the height balance and then import to the current terrain by overwriting it (ask for confirmation there) or it should ask the dimensions of the new terrain. If you're working on this feature, you could pay attention to it.

-One way to get a heightmap imported in this structure is to "virtually" stretch the heightmap image over the terrain. Each pixel will then form a square, and all vertexes in this square will be set to the height of the square's gray value. After the import, the user is taken to the optimize menu where he can do a 'global smooth'. Depending on the smooth function's implementation, this can allso avoid stretching of images as seen on steep hills created with easygen (or any other x,y grid) just by spreading the 'edge lengths'.

Ok, it's insane to ask that this stuff should make it into the next release. (especially the heightmap stuff)
I wouldn't bother if the smooth and heightmap functions are postponed to some later release, getting base editing and limited texturing done is allready good enough to create complete maps. And still then .map import has a little higher priority then the heightmap import as I could allso export my terrain from Easygen and recreate the terrain from the .map file. (The terrain would look waay smoother)

Ok, this post was long enough, I'll stop bothering you till next release or if I found a bug. :D

]UBC[ McNite

15th November 2005, 12:41

new trangluar mesh and much smaller divides terrain realy does look much more natural

= tons of tris, so be careful when creating the larger outdoor maps

From the screenies I m not happy with the mesh because with the old cube-split-diagonally-mesh you could easily cut triangles and adjust them to your brushwork/ have different triangle-sizes in your map according to your needs. This will be a lot more difficult to acchieve with this honeycomb-pattern imo, but i ll try it out anyways.

I ll have a look at it tonight, but I think it will be a real substitute for EasyGen only when it features .map-import and then exports the terrain as brushes. You really need that to adapt the terrain to your brushwork.

FinMJR

15th November 2005, 12:52

Where's the "New map" button? I think I didn't find one.

kamikazee

15th November 2005, 12:55

Where's the "New map" button? I think I didn't find one.On the screenshot it's still there, but it could be called 'Generate' now IIRC.

kamikazee

15th November 2005, 13:10

UBC[ McNite]new trangluar mesh and much smaller divides terrain realy does look much more natural

= tons of tris, so be careful when creating the larger outdoor maps

From the screenies I m not happy with the mesh because with the old cube-split-diagonally-mesh you could easily cut triangles and adjust them to your brushwork/ have different triangle-sizes in your map according to your needs. This will be a lot more difficult to acchieve with this honeycomb-pattern imo, but i ll try it out anyways.

I ll have a look at it tonight, but I think it will be a real substitute for EasyGen only when it features .map-import and then exports the terrain as brushes. You really need that to adapt the terrain to your brushwork.
If you used large tris to make the terrain, you can easily cut them up in Radiant. Merging them will be far more comlex though...

(Speculative:)
I peeked into the format used by this program to save files, and it seems it should be possible to split faces directly in the editor, just by adding a point in the middle of 2 tris and adding 2 edges Of course, you would get divided rectangles.
If it would be necessary, this program *could* generate and work with old-fashioned divided square's, as I think it operates on vertexes and not on a fixed x,y grid with each vertex simply a height value.
Allso note that this program *could* support a rotation and scaling too for editing the tris and aligning them to the slope.

One thing for sure: it allready exports .map files. Only importing them ain't done yet. And if this other things I mentioned here will be looked at is not sure.

CooperHawkes

15th November 2005, 17:30

@carnage: If I got you right, then the smoothing function I planned will do exactly what you are looking for. In the meantime you might play around with the "Subdivision" button, which gives you some sort of smoothing the brute force way by adding loads of new triangles ;-) (yes, I know, that's not what you meant with blur)
Flattening and locking are some nice features... I will add them to my ToDo list.

@kamikazee: nice ideas... I will take them into account.
Your speculations are correct. TBH I thought about adding an option to create x/y grid based meshes, but I dumped that idea because I thought "noone will use it anyway ;-)"

@McNite: high poly terrain won't be a problem any longer in the future if I get the simplification routines running... have a look at the ToDo list ;-p
The upcoming simplification of flat areas is one of the reasons why I put "adaptive" in the title string of the tool ;-)

... and now I'm off until saturday :-(

Loffy

15th November 2005, 18:21

Hi!
I get an error message when I export the file to map format:
"Error updating shaderlist.txt. Unable to find shaderlist.txt! Please add the following lines manually: fate_alphascale test_fate."
I wonder if it is a real error.
I have added those shaders to the shaderlist.txt.
//Loffy

Pytox

15th November 2005, 18:46

Is it possible to also import Easygen files? :)

kamikazee

15th November 2005, 19:02

Is it possible to also import Easygen files? :)Why should it?
Map importing isn't supported yet, but it allows to do more then Easygen alone.

carnage

15th November 2005, 19:08

i cant even see why you would want to. this tool is pre alpha and imo already better than easygen

nice to see the authour taking features that the comunity would like to see too. i can w8 to get my hands on the final version

Pytox

15th November 2005, 19:44

i cant even see why you would want to. this tool is pre alpha and imo already better than easygen

Hmm, but it could be good for old projects you made before so you can load them in Fate :) :banana:

kamikazee

15th November 2005, 20:09

But you'll still have the map file there, so importing native Easygen files remains useless.

Smilie

15th November 2005, 21:33

seeing this nice prog makes me wanna try one last time at ET mapping :clap:

Loffy

16th November 2005, 10:43

I tried it again yesterday and it an amazing tool.
The first thing I do when I get the map-file into radiant, is to press "1" to reduce the scale of the grid in the editor 2D window.
Then I selected everything ("i") and hit Ctrl + G. I think that is "snap everything to grid".
Why? Somehow I "feel" that snapping brushes to grid is a good think. Although I'm not sure here, in this case. Your comments on that one?
Then I tossed in some entities and compiled. There where alot of sparklies in the map. Anyone else having lots of sparklies in their FATE-generated terrain?
Some hills looked like crap, but some turned out really nice. I guess working with FATE will invoke wokring in small steps, saving, exporting map file, then trials, then reworking terrain again (in FATE) and so on.
//L.

kamikazee

16th November 2005, 13:13

sodsm live

16th November 2005, 13:21

i haven't had a chance to try it(eagerly awaiting the linux version). from the screenies and comments, it sounds awesome. i was kinda worried when i saw the first screenshot and realized it was for windwos but then i perked up with the news of a linux alpha on the way.

does anyone have a small .map they could send me so i can get a better look at what this thing can do while i wait? it doesn't have to be perfectly tweaked or textured, just a little sampling.

keep up the good work CooperHawkes :drink:

kamikazee

16th November 2005, 13:34

Technically, I believe it uses Open Source libraries that should be easy obtainable in Linux.
I hope he can fix the portability issues... (Some things like file handling without streams are not directly portable if you use OS calls, or if write code for a not-so-standard compiler like Borland)

Having the editor under Linux would be great, then I'm not stuck to Windows anymore for building terrains.

16th November 2005, 13:40

Having the editor under Linux would be great, then I'm not stuck to Windows anymore for building terrains.
Is there a benefit to this ? ...or is it a favorite flavor type thing ?

kamikazee

16th November 2005, 14:01

It is possible to run under Linux, as all the GTK library he uses are to be found in the GNU Open Source project. Problems may be in certain OS function calls, or third party libraries.

Having a Linux version would have the benefit that GTKRadiant, FATE and ET could all be used under Linux so one doesn't need to change to Windows to run Easygen, for example. Linux is slightly faster and responsive then Windows, but it remains mainly a 'favourite' thing.

]UBC[ McNite

16th November 2005, 15:16

@ Loffy:

I think its absolutely necessary to do the snap-to-grid thing because vertexes not being right on a grid can screw up map and/or compile time if you got too many of them. They can even lead to safe_malloc failures due to needing too much RAM in the LIGHT stage.
It is necessary for terrain exported from EasyGen too btw. And iirc sock recommended the snap-to-grid somewhere (that s why I did it in the first place).

Although I use grid4 for terrain, any smaller isn't useful for adjusting manually anyways.
If you used grid1, that may indeed be the reason for sparklies. Try again with a larger grid... then you ll see whether they r still around and whether they result from snap-to-grid.

16th November 2005, 17:03

=PoW= Kernel 2.6.5

16th November 2005, 22:58

I see the Linux version is under development. Thanks for not leaving us Linux only mappers out.

Keep up the great work.

General Eisenhower

19th November 2005, 00:11

That is a great tool! Much easier than heightmaps imo. Can't wait for the textures to be implanted. Great work!

Also, some sort of smooth tool would be nice. Great work and I cant wait to see more of FATE!

EterneX

19th November 2005, 01:46

i cant figure out how to make it raise up, i think that i have tried everywayi can, please help me

Thanks

kamikazee

19th November 2005, 09:02

You point to a vertex and the little arrow with a disc under it should pop up on that vertex.

Then make sure your mouse if over the arrow, and drag upwards.

Are there more steps to it?

Yojo

19th November 2005, 09:57

just a question on this because i might use this.
can u open .map files with it? or u have to start a map with that program? or?

kamikazee

19th November 2005, 10:54

Importing .map files ain't done yet, CooperHawkes will probably include it in a later release. (Don't forget this is an alpha)

Now, you need to start in this program to create your terrain and export a .map.
Of course, every time you want to change your terrain, the .map file needs to be exported again.

Der'saidin

19th November 2005, 12:33

Thats AWESOME.

Der'saidin

19th November 2005, 12:43

I found a bug: If you change the selection radius while the widget is not on the mesh then you get a crash.

CooperHawkes

20th November 2005, 00:26

I get an error message when I export the file to map format:
"Error updating shaderlist.txt. Unable to find shaderlist.txt! Please add the following lines manually: fate_alphascale test_fate."
I wonder if it is a real error.
No, it's not a real error... more of a warning.
This happens when you do not save the map in etmain\maps or if there is no directory for storing the shaderlist (etmain\scripts). The reason for that behavior is the search for the shaderlist which is done relative to the map file. (or to make it short: FATE tries to write in ..\scripts\)

Is it possible to also import Easygen files?
nope... and I am not planning to do that... I didn't have a look at the easygen file format yet, but I fear it might involve some kind of reverse engineering...

[...] "snap everything to grid".
[...]
Then I tossed in some entities and compiled. There where alot of sparklies in the map.
There should not be a need for snap to grid, because FATE snaps the vertex positions automatically to the nearest "grid 1" position during the map export. However, in some rare occasions I was able to reproduce those sparklies. I tracked that down to Radiant saving the vertices with a small rounding error, e.g. 4.0 becomes 3.99998.
Unfortunately, if you export a very thin mesh, the generated tetrahedral brushes might be very sensitive to such errors. Maybe I will be able to find a workaround for this. I have already something in mind, but this idea might eliminate the possibility of texturing the bottom side of the mesh (something that is not working right now, but I wanted to do).

Technically, I believe it uses Open Source libraries that should be easy obtainable in Linux.
I hope he can fix the portability issues... (Some things like file handling without streams are not directly portable if you use OS calls, or if write code for a not-so-standard compiler like Borland)
FATE makes use of the same libraries GtkRadiant uses... with the only difference that it uses the corresponding C++ libs instead of the crappy C functions.
I am using streams, so file handling is not the main issue (if you don't take Micro$ofts idea of a slash ('/' vs. '\') into account). Using streams also means that you do not get maximum performance while exporting a map... but... oh well ;-)

[...] Then make sure your mouse if over the arrow, and drag upwards.
Are there more steps to it?
Just in case some of you guys have trouble to hit the arrow: you can increase the size of the widget... I just wanted to make sure that you do not miss this feature ;-)

can u open .map files with it?
not yet... the next "bigger" release will support static map import, i.e. you cannot change the map geometry and it doesn't get exported, but you can see it. Maybe - far in the future - I will add the possibility to import the terrain brushes of an existing map for further processing.

I found a bug: If you change the selection radius while the widget is not on the mesh then you get a crash.
Thanks for reporting that. Actually, I already tracked that down to the same error Lanz pointed out earlier ;-)

Loffy

20th November 2005, 01:00

OK, then I can ignore the "cannot find shader" warning.
About the "snap to grid": I've stopped that some time ago and the problem did go away. No sparklies anymore.
Here's a screenshot from a test-map:
http://www.loffy.com/mapping/fatetest051120.jpg
Terrain works fine. Must work some more on shaders, to get better blending.
(I also get dark spots here and there. Must fix that too, but it's off topic.)
FATE is really easy to work with once you get into it after a few hours/days!
//Loffy

EterneX

21st November 2005, 03:50

i was also wondering may put this on my website as a free download?

Thanks

Eddie

CooperHawkes

21st November 2005, 23:17

In this early stage of development I would prefer a link to the web site instead of a direct download... just to make sure that people will get the most recent version. However, thanks for the offer to host a DL mirror :-)

EterneX

22nd November 2005, 00:04

no problem i willl just put the link then, thats fine with me.

Thanks

Eddie

SiX

30th November 2005, 13:17

WOW, this tool is fantastic :clap: :clap: :clap:

I may use this to update the terrain on my nemo map \o\

flower.Hercules

4th December 2005, 04:29

I was just wondering if you had a projected release date for Linux? I am really looking forward to it, this looks incredible.

Jaquboss

4th December 2005, 08:27

Woot! Terrain making for mapping noobs :P
Generated terrain looks really nice compared to existing maps , good job!

DAbell

4th December 2005, 15:43

Hi, All

Now i'm not sure if i'm being dumb or something isn't working right i can't this program to do anything for me at the moment apart from give me a migraine, could some one just briefly explain how it should work. I'm not a thick person but instead of beating my head against a wall trying to figure it out i thought i would just ask the question.

Thanks In Advance

<DJ>

D3C0Y

4th December 2005, 17:57

just place your mouse over the arrow or the circle in the grid and drag

CooperHawkes

5th December 2005, 01:44

I was just wondering if you had a projected release date for Linux?
Expect the release of 0.13 alpha in the next 2 or 3 days... This release will include a Linux version.
In the meantime you might want to have a look at this screenshot:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate_linux_sample.jpg

If you look carefully you can even see the JPEG artifacts of the imported heightmap ;-)

flower.Hercules

5th December 2005, 04:30

That is awesome :) I installed Windows on a spare machine just to use this program and, while it doesn't make me want to use Windows, I would sacrifice my linux time for Windows time if I had to; thanks for the quick response too :o Is that Openbox you are running?

König

5th December 2005, 05:08

Linux.. nice. I'll just wear the Windows version by now.

I Remember quite well the anal pain while creating the terrain of my map (Bastogne) with "Easy"gen....

I've got a Question, CooperHawkes... how about shaders with blendings in the terrain?

How would that be? It's the most difficult thing I had to do... and finally I drop it and my terrain now only has a single texture, without blendings...

Mr.Volcano

5th December 2005, 14:30

Im totally lost with this tool. I can have some color area but i cant add hills and like that things so what im doing wrong? oO

Lanz

5th December 2005, 20:00

Nice work CooperHawkes! Looking forward to the next version! One thing I would like to see in the GUI is the abillity to show/hide the side panel with some easy to access button or something similar. Would be nice to be able to do that while working on the terrain for us with small 17" screen.

kamikazee

5th December 2005, 20:05

Im totally lost with this tool. I can have some color area but i cant add hills and like that things so what im doing wrong? oOIt should be plain easy...

Move your mouse over a vertex. You will see a coloured area. Allso, a 'widget' should pop up (a cylinder with an arrow on top). Make sure the arrow gets coloured, not the cylinder. When you are that far, drag click it and drag the arrow up.

Selecting the disc will deform the terrain if you drag it up, down and left.

CooperHawkes

5th December 2005, 23:22

Thanks 4 explaining, kamikazee :-)

@Lanz: You can undock the side panel by dragging at the small handle bar on top of the panel... this won't give you maximum space for the 3d window, but at least it is much more than usual.

@König: terrain blending will be supported... however, not in the upcoming version... FATE 0.13 will still produce the automatic dotproduct/alpha blended terrain patches, like in 0.12.

@flower.Hercules: it's standard gnome running on a debian box. but this is only because i forgot to install windowmaker ;-)

Mr.Volcano

6th December 2005, 00:53

flower.Hercules

6th December 2005, 05:11

CooperHawkes: Woah, was I way off. Openbox has almost the exact same theme except without the left side titlebar button.

Back to topic:)

CooperHawkes

6th December 2005, 20:49

Ok i have got now widget to area but how i can make it colour?
Just move your mouse over the grey widget... either the arrow or the disc should turn red. Then drag the arrow or the disc with the mouse.

Or... are you running your desktop in 16bit color mode? There is a bug if you run FATE with less than 24bits!

[EDIT]
16bit mode bug is fixed now :-)

BTW: does anyone know a good / free / cross platform installer software? I know, that are 3 wishes at once... but... hey... Xmas is coming soon ;-)

Lanz

6th December 2005, 23:51

One that is good and free, though not cross platform is Inno Setup http://www.jrsoftware.org/ 2 out of 3 is not that bad.. :)

kamikazee

7th December 2005, 12:44

It may be possible to write a self-extracting Bash-script (it should only use tar and bash)
I haven't tried myself, but I'll give it a go this weekend.

Mr.Volcano

7th December 2005, 13:20

CooperHawkes

8th December 2005, 02:40

The problem with the installer is that I want it to install into two different locations... one is for FATE itself and the other is for the ET content files... but I already have an idea how to solve that... I hope this doesn't give me grey hairs ;-)

kamikazee

8th December 2005, 18:11

Eventually make a .zip first, and if someone finds the time he could make an installer?

CooperHawkes

9th December 2005, 02:11

If you are so keen to try out the (hopefully bug-free) release candidate for 0.13:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/files/FATE_0_13_alpha_RC1_Win32_update.zip

This is an inofficial update, i.e. you need 0.12 and you have to replace the old files with the 3 files in the zip archive.

Sorry Linux folks! I had much less time this week than expected... So please bear with me... I hope I'll be able to release an official version of 0.13 for win32 and linux on sunday.

Thanks for your patience!

flower.Hercules

9th December 2005, 02:31

Well...it isn't like we have much of an alternative but to wait :P

Unless we want to free-hand it --- at least you are working for a release...unlike ydnar who has no working links and offers no alternative to getting the latest release of q3map.

9th December 2005, 02:46

I used .12 the other day and tested some things....I think it's brilliant. The bugs are bearable as long as I save every minute... :P

CooperHawkes

12th December 2005, 02:32

doh! stupid me!
while playing around with the installer stuff i wiped some of my source files :-(
therefore, i lost most of the latest changes necessary for linux support *sniff*
well, let's see what i can get out of the backups... i am such a moron.

CooperHawkes

18th December 2005, 19:10

Finally... version 0.13 is out... for Win32 and Linux.
Sorry that it took me so long :-(
Now hurry up and grab it here: http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/download.html

@Linux users:
I hope the linux installer is working correctly and everything is installed at the right place. I wasn't able to test it with the latest q3map2, because it seems noone hosts a mirror for q3map2 2.5.16 for linux :-(
In case you get an error message concerning the shaderlist.txt while exporting the map file, be sure to place a copy of the shaderlist.txt into ~/.etwolf/etmain/scripts

Yojo

18th December 2005, 19:22

thx for not forgetting the linux mappers!
i am downloading it now.

one correction for your site allready, i have to install is with only sh blablabla.run
(no ./)

EDIT:
the start up took LONG
not just typing fate in cosole but first a lot of hard disk activity.
going to test the map part right now.

EDIT 2: second startup went faster. tomorrow i might need it to generate some mountains. will post the results from exporting then.

CooperHawkes

18th December 2005, 19:26

well, the ./ should not do any harm, or does it?

Yojo

18th December 2005, 19:29

well i didn't try it with ./ ;)
i only use ./ to execute bynary files (.x86, .out)

CooperHawkes

18th December 2005, 19:34

I just wanted to make sure that it works for the people without any special path settings ;-)
The first startup takes some time because FATE needs a shitload of libraries *g* On second startup the file system cache does its job or the libraries are still in memory. If it takes very long you should consider buying a new harddrive ;-)

Yojo

18th December 2005, 19:35

hehe, my hard drive goes pretty fast, searching the hole / takes only 3 minutes ;)

blabla off topic

anyway, the first tests look nice.

kamikazee

18th December 2005, 19:49

@Cooper Hawkes: Thanks for not letting us down, I'll have a look at it. ;)

However, if the code was Open Source I could let my Gentoo compile the whole thing and the download would be way smaller.

flower.Hercules

18th December 2005, 21:55

I'm downloading it now, I know what you mean about nobody hosting 2.5.16...the author can't even be bothered to respond to people that use his tool, if there was an alternative -- I'd sure as hell be using it.

Will leave feedback when this gets done downloading.

You can get q3map2.5.16 from gtkradiant 1.5.0...I know 1.5.0 is a bug with a couple features, but you can still use just 1.5.0 and continue to use radiant 1.4 for mapping ;)

Vattu

20th December 2005, 21:05

hi....

is FATE gonna support other quake engine based games like sof2, jka, q3????

it would be great if it did : )

CooperHawkes

20th December 2005, 21:13

@kamikazee: Believe me, compiling this beast from scratch is a pain in the ass, since it depends on even more libraries than GtkRadiant ;) I will release the source code in the future... but this needs a lot of code cleanup until I am brave enough to let other people have a look at my ugly lines of code ;)

@vattu: I never tried other engines... It might work with quake3... just give it a try and be sure to give us some feedback about your results *g* ;)

flower.Hercules

20th December 2005, 22:10

It certainly can't take longer than compiling Open Office or Mozilla from scratch :) I bet kamikazee is one of those weak ones that got the bin :p

kamikazee

21st December 2005, 13:28

It certainly can't take longer than compiling Open Office or Mozilla from scratch :) I bet kamikazee is one of those weak ones that got the bin :pThere's no other option, no?

So you should have got the bin as well. :D
BTW: I've never used any binary files for my Gentoo except the bootstrap, all fresh compiled.

flower.Hercules

22nd December 2005, 01:30

Only a true source fanatic will spend an entire night compiling OO:

kyle@home ~ $ genlop -t openoffice
* app-office/openoffice

Sun Jul 31 06:29:23 2005 >>> app-office/openoffice-1.1.4-r1
merge time: 5 hours, 49 minutes and 46 seconds.

There is the option of mozilla-firefox-bin and openoffice-bin because they both take half-of-forever to compile...anyways, release the source :)

kamikazee

22nd December 2005, 13:59

Ever tried compiling KDE 3 on a P3?
I surely did... Now that's wicked and takes 2 days. :P

On topic:
I'll have a look at the .run to see if I can't make an ebuild or rpm of it which will configure the dependencies. Using those, it will assure the libs are installed and you get a smaller binary file.
(More about the size of the windows one)

CooperHawkes

22nd December 2005, 22:08

@kamikazee: I can send you the tarballs, so you don't have to deal with the packaged .run. Thanks 4 the offer to build a rpm. deb files anyone? *g*

kamikazee

28th December 2005, 20:12

I got the tarballs out of the .run just by modifying the script, don't worry.

What's more of a problem, is that my Mandrake (an RPM based distro) died, so I won't be able to make an rpm.
The ebuild should work, but it takes time to find out what library is actually part of which install package.

CooperHawkes

28th December 2005, 20:20

just take the packages used by radiant
plus its c++ (aka *mm) offsprings
plus freeimage

that's it IIRC. I can give you a detailed list on the weekend if you like.

Thanks a lot for your efforts!

Shaderman

28th December 2005, 21:29

but it takes time to find out what library is actually part of which install package.
Maybe the search function on rpmfind (http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/) is helpful.

kamikazee

28th December 2005, 22:05

Heh.
Gentoo doesn't use RPM's, just .ebuild files to describe what can be installed. Thx anyway.

The problem mainly lies in finding out the dependencies of Fate in term of packages, and as there is no rpm or ebuild yet I've got to search what package supply what .so from which is linked. Ok, a .so file named libGTK.so is quite clear to identify, but there were other ones less straightforward.
I could of course reuse .so files from the large package, but Gentoo's vision is to split up things that do not belong together and let the installer system sort out the dependencies.

Shaderman

29th December 2005, 07:10

Gentoo doesn't use RPM's, just .ebuild files to describe what can be installed.
Sorry, didn't know that :(

flower.Hercules

30th December 2005, 03:36

# Copyright 1999-2005 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/x11-wm/openbox/openbox-3.3_rc2-r2.ebuild,v 1.1 2005/12/18 19:02:05 gothgirl Exp $

inherit eutils

DESCRIPTION="Openbox is a standards compliant, fast, light-weight, extensible window manager."
HOMEPAGE="http://icculus.org/openbox/"
SRC_URI="http://icculus.org/openbox/releases/${P/_/-}.tar.gz
mirror://gentoo/ob-themes-usability.tar.bz2"

LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="3"
KEYWORDS="~x86 ~ppc ~sparc ~alpha ~hppa ~amd64"
IUSE="pango nls startup-notification xinerama"

RDEPEND="|| ( ( x11-libs/libXrandr
x11-libs/libXt
xinerama? ( x11-libs/libXinerama )
)
virtual/x11
)
virtual/xft
>=dev-libs/glib-2
>=media-libs/fontconfig-2
>=dev-libs/libxml2-2.0"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}
|| ( (
xinerama? ( x11-proto/xineramaproto )
x11-proto/xextproto
x11-proto/xf86vidmodeproto
)
virtual/x11
)
pango? ( x11-libs/pango )
startup-notification? ( x11-libs/startup-notification )
dev-util/pkgconfig"

S=${WORKDIR}/${P/_/-}

src_unpack() {
unpack ${A}
epatch ${FILESDIR}/${P}-64bit-property.patch
}

src_compile() {
econf `use_enable nls` `use_enable pango` ${myconf} || die
emake || die
}

src_install() {
dodir /etc/X11/Sessions
echo "/usr/bin/openbox" > ${D}/etc/X11/Sessions/openbox
fperms a+x /etc/X11/Sessions/openbox

insinto /usr/share/xsessions
doins ${FILESDIR}/${PN}.desktop

make DESTDIR=${D} install || die
dodoc ABOUT-NLS AUTHORS CHANGELOG COMPLIANCE COPYING README

# Extra styles from http://home.clara.co.uk/dpb/openbox.htm
# These are included due to the poor usability of the default themes
# for users with limited vision. These are based on Jimmac's
# Gorilla and Industrial themes for Metacity.

insinto /usr/share/themes
#cp -pPR ${WORKDIR}/ob-themes-usability/* ${D}/usr/share/themes
doins -r ${WORKDIR}/ob-themes-usability/*
}

Is the ebuild for openbox, for an example; however, I think Shaderman was simply referring to rpmfind, not as a reference to download rpms but because it will tell you what package (which happens to be in the Redhat format) is linked to certain libraries. It is quite helpful as a resource other than RPMs. I used it quite a bit to resolve dependencies in other distributions, like slackware. For this, Shaderman's link and http://rpm.pbone.net/ are both quite helpful.

kamikazee

3rd January 2006, 23:58

After some tries, I think it won't help to try messing with your program and stripping all the precompiled libraries... :/
When running FATE on it's own, I get
bin/fate.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libglademm-2.0.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
bin/fate.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libgdkmm-2.0.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Gdkmm seems a part of the GTK+ package, and furthermore, I have these files: /usr/lib/libgdkmm-2.4.so.1
/usr/lib/libglademm-2.4.so.1

Is there a substantial difference between glademm 2.0 and 2.4 in terms of compatability?
Maybe it would work better if I could compile it from source as most Gentoo packages do... :bored:

flower.Hercules

4th January 2006, 00:47

Just a thought, did you try making a sym link from 2.4 to 2.0? That would be the best indication of compatibility.

kamikazee

4th January 2006, 00:57

Ok, it could work as an experimant and I'll give it a try tomorrow.
Compiling and linking to an existing library straight away is still the prefered method though, if possible.

I'm going to find out how GTKRadiant resolves all it's dynamic libraries first. Maybe there's something interesting to find there.

Yojo

15th January 2006, 10:10

i can try to make a .tgz of it hehe (slackware/vector) would be the first time i do that, but we have a manual somewhere, can't be to hard. (is it just ./configure, make) ?

CooperHawkes

15th January 2006, 15:13

it is a .tar.bz2 already (actually, two .tar.bz2)... just wrapped in a shell script.

... or maybe i just didn't get the point of creating a .tgz with worse compression than .bz2...

Lanz

3rd March 2006, 08:36

Hows it going with the editor CooperHawkes? I hope you're continuing development of it since it's a damn good one.

I do have a sugestion though that would make it great for me at least. The way the triangles are created when you export the terrain can be a royal pain in the arse tbh. It creates multiple triangles at the same location for the requested thicken value plus the way the bottom of the triangles follow the contour of the the top face. I do understand why you've done it this way, at least the last part to be able to move the verticies on the x&y. Though these things make it a "complicated" to actually fine tune/adjust the terrain in Radiant later. I would like to see two things: Do not create multiple brushes to make up the thicken value and make it so you can choose if you would like to lock the x&y axis to create a more manageable terrain that ends up more like easygens in the end. Though I've noticed that you really do not need to adjust and tweak the terrain as much as in easygen since it's so easy to manipulate it in FATE which I love.

I've read your todo list and the thing I look forward to most is the smothen function, since that's where I spend most of the time in the editor. Making a smoth terrain is what takes the most time as it is now.

Anyway, great work CooperHawkes, I really do love this tool and it's just so much better than Easygen. :)

CooperHawkes

3rd March 2006, 22:18

Unfortunately, I did not have much time during the last few weeks :-( I had to finish a quite important exam first...
But now as that is over, I can go back to code the next version of Fate. The tetrahedron madness you mention is something that bugged me too... the driving force for the current solution has been the intention to make it possible to use both sides of the terrain (top and bottom side). However, on the second thought texturing both sides of a terrain might be a rather special application... therefore I will change that and provide a less messy solution... and your opinion supports my decision :-)

Lanz

4th March 2006, 04:16

That's really great news CooperHawkes! I'll wait with anticipation for the next version. :)

CooperHawkes

6th March 2006, 01:42

[x] implemented less messy terrain brushes (.map file contains now only around 1/3 brushes compared to the old method)

[x] implemented mesh smoothing

and now... it is time to get some sleep ;-)

In other news: Shaun Murphy lost the Welsh Open Snooker finals.... *sniff*

Lanz

6th March 2006, 17:35

Wow, great!

You work fast. :)

Roeltje

6th March 2006, 21:41

dude, Fate just pwnz easygen so hard :P the only reason i dont really use it is becuz of the large file size :)
if u fix that, ur editor totally pwnz tha easygen! :P

CooperHawkes

8th March 2006, 00:11

@Lanz: it wasn't that much work... ;-)

@Roeltje: I am delighted that Fate r0x0rZ yoUr b0x0rz ;-)
What do you mean by "file size"? The size of the generated .map files? These will be much smaller in the next version (the factor is the same as the one mentioned above: map size will shrink to about 1/3rd)
If you don't like the file size of Fate itself... well... compare it to other executables... IMHO it is not such a heavy weight download. Unfortunately the Gtk libraries aren't the smallest DLLs in the world :-(

BTW: In case some of you are wondering why the Fate site cannot be reached: our Raid system crashed... yes, I know... it's not the idea of a Raid system to make your data go b000m... well... never buy an EasyRaid ;-)

Roeltje

8th March 2006, 05:52

nono i meant the .map sizes :)
i just hate it if i have to wait long for a map to load... :)
did u already made the thick mesh in new version cuz if i have that, then i will throw easygen in friggin thrashcan :P it drives me nuts all the time ;)

carnage

8th March 2006, 14:01

nono i meant the .map sizes
i just hate it if i have to wait long for a map to load...
did u already made the thick mesh in new version cuz if i have that, then i will throw easygen in friggin thrashcan it drives me nuts all the time

i dont even use easygen for terrian i can get much better results from manipulating vertices. having played with easygen this tools seems to be what could change all that

any idea when the next reasease we can get our hands on is?

Lanz

8th March 2006, 18:02

For me it's not end result in Easygen that is the problem, in theory you can do a lot of stuff and make it look great. It's just that the user interface is so extremly non user friendly. The only thing I've ever used Easygen for is to import a hightmap and then export a terrain, doing the rest of the clean up and/or changes in radiant.

=PoW= Kernel 2.6.5

9th March 2006, 22:45

CooperHawkes

9th March 2006, 23:24

@Roeltje: Thick mesh isn't implemented yet... I will see what I can do for the next release...

@carnage: Since I failed in meeting my last release dates I go with 3D realms and I'll promise the next release for the following date: when-it's-done ;-)

@Lanz: You might try the heightmap importer of Fate... in case you didn't already do so...

@=PoW= Kernel 2.6.5: Fate is available for Linux, too (starting with version 0.13 - which came out last December)... From now on the upcoming releases will be available for both platforms - Win32 and Linux x86. I will provide the Linux versions as some kind of update patches, too, due to the huge file size of the dynamic link libraries.

=PoW= Kernel 2.6.5

10th March 2006, 00:39

Dude. YOU ROCK !!!

EterneX

13th March 2006, 00:36

sorry if you have already answered this but i cant seem to get textures to work with fate, could someone please direct me to a tutorial or explain it, help will be greatly appreciated.

Eternex

CooperHawkes

13th March 2006, 00:41

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

EterneX

13th March 2006, 00:58

thanks, ill have a look at right now

Eternex

CooperHawkes

6th May 2006, 02:11

Yay, I am still alive... I found some time this week to continue work on this project...
just to keep you up-to-date, here is a screen shot of the upcoming version 0.14:

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/gallery/fate_map_import_gr2.png

looking familiar? :-)

Now, that FATE is able to read map files I might throw in the capability of creating high-res / orthographic command maps... we will see... so many ideas, so little time :-(

EterneX

6th May 2006, 04:26

nice man i like it, that will definantly help me out and probably many more mappers..

Eternex

Shaderman

6th May 2006, 05:33

CooOool!

Der'saidin

6th May 2006, 07:29

Zomg WOWOWWOWOW

pakalatak

6th May 2006, 10:37

looking familiar?

Goldrush ? :D great idea ! I have used Fate to work on the moutain of my first map (beer dump) : you're a leet : the program is very user friendly !

The main problem I got was sealing the terrain from the light probably because I stupidly asked for "not enough thickness" that leads me to a lot of work.
I got into trouble also when I tried to add some brush to the func_group (incompetent user I guess).

Thanks for your work, I can't wait for your next release :beer:

Codename Ty

6th May 2006, 11:55

When do you foresee Version 1.4 being released? This will most certainly help a ton, at least on one of the projects I'm working on. ;) Looking forward to it and thanks for the great tool.

psyco_mario

6th May 2006, 12:59

O wow! thats amazing

I bow to you! :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

Popcorn

6th May 2006, 15:28

Yep, great work. I never even see this program before. There are some features I would likse to see be included for the next release to make it easier to use.

Better Camera Movement - At the moment the camera movement is not very usefull and is hard to navigate around the terrain.

Thats the only suggestion I have for now. You've done a good job to reduce me to one suggestion. There was a bug in the version I downloaded by the way. When you press and hold the "Ctrl" key and try and move the terrain up or the down the program crashes. Or maybe it was shift, either way it crashed.

Hope to see more progress soon mate.

kamikazee

6th May 2006, 15:32

Better Camera Movement - At the moment the camera movement is not very usefull and is hard to navigate around the terrain.There is a GTKRadiant-like camera mode, found it allready?

Popcorn

6th May 2006, 15:44

Now I'm reduced to nothing.

Cheers though ;)

[Edit] : For anyone who wants to know how to get to the camera view you want. You can right click in the viewport and then move around in first person view.

carnage

6th May 2006, 19:31

this is a truly rocking program

I might throw in the capability of creating high-res / orthographic command maps

would be nice but i think there are other features that are more important for the terrain creation process that you could implemnt first

any news if you have flatten and lock terrain tools yet?

the only thing i could want more then this now is an actuly plugin for radient that does the same thing

CooperHawkes

14th May 2006, 16:45

ATM I am working on the simplification stuff... which is pretty boring TBH... and that's why I recently play more often than I code ;-) However, I try to finish this task during the next week. I have an idea for the flatten tool... a lock tool is straightforward and should be quite easy to implement... I hope, I can include these tools in 0.14... I am a little busy at work at the moment (I have to code a lot at my job... therefore I do not want to spend each minute of my spare time with coding, too). That's why I cannot give you an exact release date, sorry folks. Please, bear with me... you will get 0.14 "when it's done" :-)

carnage

14th May 2006, 19:56

great to hear the project is still on the way after a long time with no word was begining to fear the worst. gl and hope u get some free time soon

psyco_mario

14th May 2006, 20:12

lol! just give up the super uber buggy version! i need it asap for my map! xD

thefatladysings

14th May 2006, 20:21

glad to hear you're still working on this project :D
will there be some texturing tools in the next release?

anyway, keep up the good work :)

=PoW= Kernel 2.6.5

14th May 2006, 20:46

I've tried this tool on Windows and Linux.
All I can say is WOW !!

Nice work.

Aborted

14th May 2006, 23:26

Mate brilliant work, that looks fantastic how you can import .map onto your terrain.

Keep up the great work. :D

psyco_mario

15th May 2006, 06:42

Cant wait till this ver comes out!!!! :D :D :D

btw, what did you make it in anyway?

CooperHawkes

15th May 2006, 11:21

@thefatladysings: sorry, no texturing support in 0.14 (just the standard dot product 2 like texture as in 0.13)... texturing tools are planned for 0.15 though...

btw, what did you make it in anyway?
Please rephrase... I didn't understand... I am not a native speaker :-(

deej

15th May 2006, 11:38

I think he means in what programming language?

CooperHawkes

15th May 2006, 11:51

Programming language: C++
GUI: GTKmm / Glademm

Loffy

15th May 2006, 15:44

I am awaiting the new version.
Please hurry !

:-)

//Loffy

nightchaser

15th May 2006, 16:01

So you use FATE to import terrain to GTK or EasyGen?

carnage

15th May 2006, 16:31

:lol: :rofl:

radient. please try out fate or at least visit the website

psyco_mario

15th May 2006, 16:41

Ah C++, k thanks :) , was just wondering :P

soooooooooooo, any idea when next version comes out? or even a Beta/alpha or next ver comes out? :P

carnage

15th May 2006, 16:59

"when it's done"

soon hopeful cos i love this tool there are just a few things that make it a bit inpratical to use at the moment

Lanz

16th May 2006, 01:54

Same here carnage, it's the first terrain tool for q3 engine based games where I actually felt comfortable using the tools in it to create the terrain, instead of just using a hightmap to generate the terrain.

In (not so)easygen I usually created a hightmap and generated the terrain from that, imported to Radiant and tweaked it there. With this tool you can really do it all in the tool with ease.

So hats of to you CooperHawkes and keep up the good work.

CooperHawkes

17th May 2006, 14:07

Thanks for the compliments, guys :notworthy: :-)
... it's like steroids for faster coding ;-)

psyco_mario

17th May 2006, 15:19

This is exactly the tool we nearly ALL need!

Keep it up! :) cant wait for it to come out :D

Snake.

20th May 2006, 08:22

You really need to finish your terrain editor. The final version will rock

psyco_mario

20th May 2006, 09:25

Cooper, if you need a tester for it, i would happily test it for you! :D

=SC=Beef

29th May 2006, 09:24

A problem with fate i cannot solve....

and no they are not clauk 0.o

http://mod.silent-clan.com/graphics/fate1.jpg

http://mod.silent-clan.com/graphics/fate2.jpg

CooperHawkes

29th May 2006, 09:45

Cooper, if you need a tester for it, i would happily test it for you! :D
ATM there is a nasty bug in the simplification code which I am unable to track down :-( I will let you know, if there is something to test.

@=SC=Beef: it seems you retextured also the alpha volume brushes (the small little dots in the second picture, left hole) which control the blending of two texture sets. Or you didn't compile with the latest q3map2 (2.5.16 IIRC).
If you want to apply your own shader, please have a look at FAQ #2:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2
(section: " In case you want to get rid of the double layered terrain surfaces...")
If the problem still exists please send me your .ftm file. You can find my e-mail address in the about box or here:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/contact.html

=SC=Beef

29th May 2006, 10:01

ooooooooh i wondered what those squares were :O

any quick way to texture it besides doing one brush at a time?

CooperHawkes

29th May 2006, 10:20

use the replace function in the texture menu :)

=SC=Beef

30th May 2006, 17:45

i thought to myself eh, im not too botherd about blending yet i want to get the basics done. so i thought lets just remove the alpha blocks and it wont try to load up a shader, but it doesnt work...and now i dont have a backup (soooo stooopid of me) and seeing a FATE cannot reopen the terrain in a .map file im pretty screwed...

So do you have to use shaders fate gives you (i know you can change them) but i mean do you have to use them ?

also can you ungroup brushes in func_group ?

=SC=Beef

30th May 2006, 18:20

Wow, totally forget what i posted, i found out what it was.

Brushes were overlapping causing the transparency, and when i say overlapping, i mean 2 identical in the same place.

Solution: highlight a small area, you will see red and dark red. dark red are the duplicate brushes, unhightlight, select the ones what were dark red and then delete them. save, compile, done :D

psyco_mario

30th May 2006, 20:02

Hey, when will the version with .map opening come out?

My work on my new map atm is halted because i need this for it, please release asap :)

+ Im on my weeks holiday, so im on mapping steriods, so please release soon! :D

Popcorn

31st May 2006, 19:34

Why does Fate keep adding in stupid textures and shaders I don't want? I just want pure terrain and nothing else :(

Any help?

kamikazee

31st May 2006, 19:44

Because these special shaders allow more when you know how to use it.

I agree that it's quite too much for a beginner. CooperHawkes posted on his website how you can remove all those extra brushes.

Popcorn

31st May 2006, 19:58

I'm learning how to terrain blend at the current moment and with all these in place it's confusing me. It would help if I could start blank and figure how to do it by myself ;)

carnage

31st May 2006, 20:08

a feature idea

could it be posible to adjust the size of the alpha brushes that are exported. they are very nice visualy when they are small but if down the line a very small amount of editing was needed to be done in radient due to map changes etc it would be pretty frustrating to have to work with all thoes tiny brushes

CooperHawkes

1st June 2006, 11:30

So do you have to use shaders fate gives you (i know you can change them) but i mean do you have to use them ?
I repeat:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

also can you ungroup brushes in func_group ?
You can move them into worldspawn (right-click -> move into worldspawn... or something like that... I cannot remember right now)

Solution: highlight a small area, you will see red and dark red. dark red are the duplicate brushes, unhightlight, select the ones what were dark red and then delete them. save, compile, done :D
Once again... faq #2 is your friend:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

Why does Fate keep adding in stupid textures and shaders I don't want? I just want pure terrain and nothing else :(
Any help?

Guess what? faq #2 :-)
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2
BTW: it is an alpha... I think I pretty clearly state at the website that texturing is VERY experimental at the moment. (Sorry if this sounds rude... but at the moment, unfortunately, you have to live with that incomplete implementation of texture support)

I'm learning how to terrain blend at the current moment and with all these in place it's confusing me. It would help if I could start blank and figure how to do it by myself ;)
Did I already mention faq #2? Just in case:
http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2

BTW: If somebody wants to write down a more detailed guide how to get rid of the multi-layer brushes... feel free to do so... I will happily add it to faq2.

could it be posible to adjust the size of the alpha brushes that are exported. they are very nice visualy when they are small but if down the line a very small amount of editing was needed to be done in radient due to map changes etc it would be pretty frustrating to have to work with all thoes tiny brushes
nice idea... maybe I will add that (if there is some space left in the GUI)

My hope is that with version 0.15 or 0.16 there won't be any need to ever touch the terrain in Radiant again... The user should be able to texture the terrain with Dotproduct(2) and/or alpha volume blending in FATE... I also want to add the possibility to blend more than 2 textures by using multiple brush layers... and the user should be able to easily achieve this in FATE. I have a dream... ;-)

psyco_mario

2nd June 2006, 09:23

You should add a feature (might be in there already), so

It saves a copy of your current map (with a different file name) as a backup, without the terrain in, and saves one with the terrain in after :) (with a different file name)
so you get
Mapname_Bkup.map < Without terrain
Mapname.map < With terrian

Taddy

2nd June 2006, 09:41

yes

urded

5th June 2006, 21:42

1 Importing EasyGen files could be usefull to save time going from one program to the other and exporting the file
2 I don't understand that thing about GTK-Radiant...this program works as a plug-in for radiant too or what???
3 You could make it like EasyGen texture mode but with more tools like smoothing textures from one triangle to other or pretty thing like Flash...like didactic tools for fools :D
4 The same foor OPTIMIZE and GEOMETRY but I think that GEOMETRY is Ok
5 You could FIX the camera to make it as GTK-Radiant camera and maybe make a switch for a GTK-Radiant Camera Mode to a EasyGen Camera Mode

kamikazee

5th June 2006, 21:52

1 Importing EasyGen files could be usefull to save time going from one program to the other and exporting the fileThis takes some reverse engineering of the Easygen format. And what's more important: you'll surely loose the info considdering texturing.

2 I don't understand that thing about GTK-Radiant...this program works as a plug-in for radiant too or what???FATE is a standalone tool, only it can now import .map files as a reference. (Similar to Easygen)

3 You could make it like EasyGen texture mode but with more tools like smoothing textures from one triangle to other or pretty thing like Flash...like didactic tools for fools :D FATE uses another texturing technique called dotproduct2-blending. It should be possible to paint it as well, but fading it can only be done between endpoints of triangles.

4 The same foor OPTIMIZE and GEOMETRY but I think that GEOMETRY is OkI think it's quite good right now, and even better when the lock tool works.

5 You could FIX the camera to make it as GTK-Radiant camera and maybe make a switch for a GTK-Radiant Camera Mode to a EasyGen Camera Mode2 current options: FATE mode and GTKRadiant mode. Easygen's mode is not necessarily better.

Higgins

8th August 2006, 12:01

Where is the tutorial for FATE?

broloi

10th April 2007, 16:45

Sorry to bump this thread...

I'm wondering if CooperHawkes is still working on FATE, since i like it a lot..

Darkfrost

10th April 2007, 17:15

Sorry to bump this thread...

I'm wondering if CooperHawkes is still working on FATE, since i like it a lot..

I thought the same a while ago.

Just wondering, did the version with the .map reference ever come out?

Magic

10th April 2007, 18:48

PostPosted: 10 Mar 2007 00:58 Post subject: Reply with quote
thanks Shaderman Smile

I think I will release some sort of unstable preview in the near future, so that you guys will have at least the map import to play around with...

Speaking of map import (which currently just shows your existing brushwork) -- I am also thinking about the import of .map terrain brushes and converting them into fate terrain... does this sound like a cool feature to you, or should I skip that in favor of a somewhat earlier release date?

This is what he said 10.mars.

89blitz

10th April 2007, 22:25

Its looks like a good took :)
you can also use EASYGEN;)

==Troy==

11th April 2007, 09:22

This is the bestever software for generating terrain :o Huge thanks to author, and it makes a perfect pair with Terragen spftware, via importing a heightmap. Hope the work is still going.

kamikazee

11th April 2007, 09:26

Its looks like a good took :)
you can also use EASYGEN;)Seems you don't know what FATE can do. It uses a completely different technique compared to EasyGen.

broloi

11th April 2007, 12:59

Its looks like a good took :)
you can also use EASYGEN;)

easygen.... errrr.... no... i wanna use FATE... FATE is already better than easygen, eventho its still in alfa mod, or thats what i think.

murka10

11th April 2007, 14:31

yeh i hope a beta will be released soon, best3v4 terrain generator

carnage

12th April 2007, 00:18

yeh i hope a beta will be released soon, best3v4 terrain generator

it wouldn't hold your breath to for that. it has been a long time since this project started and there has been a slowdown in the amount of news releases etc and it still seems there is a considerable amount of work particularity in mesh optimization that needs doing before a realistically usable release can be made

and although it is a brilliant tool and far the best terrain editing program for quake 3 engine games its arrived a little late along the time line as more future engines seem to drop the idea of brushwork terrain in favor of using models. it is more complex but using models does have have a lot of advantages in runtime and during development. so if you are waiting for some kind of terrain or now working on any project i would recommended sitting down with a modeling program and have a play. blender is free and there are some great terrain tutorials over at kats webside http://www.quake3bits.com

perhaps to make the tool more usable for future engines it would be nice to be able to export the mesh directly to a .ASE format either to be used in a map as a model or so we can make the basic terrain in FATE then add finer detail in ones preferred modeling tool?

broloi

15th April 2007, 17:31

Ok... i send a mail to him, and here is his answer:

I am glad that you like FATE. :-)

Currently my real life is taking way too much time and my new job involves a lot of programming tasks... therefore I am usually too exhausted in the evening or at the weekend to do even more programming stuff... it's some sort of supersaturation effect. ;-)

However, from time to time I am still working on FATE and I hope that I can release a newer version in the next weeks... or months... ;-) you know how it works: "when it's done" ;-)

The terrain simplification code I wrote didn't turn out to work like expected, so I am rewriting it from scratch ATM. I am hoping to beat the brush count of easygen by a factor of 3 or 4 (less brushes, not more of course ;->) without a visible loss in quality.

The import of existing map geometry is working pretty well right now, however I do not import patch meshes or models yet... I am not even sure if I will add that, since it does not provide much more information to the user IMO.

Thanks for waiting so patiently for a new version while being forced to work with the crappy old version 0.13... ;-)

greetings

Cooper Hawkes

murka10

15th April 2007, 18:42

yay :banana:

Darkfrost

16th April 2007, 08:59

Woo!

shaunthorpe

16th April 2007, 11:21

i just used the gensurf plugin to make my terrain made some poor choices while doing so i am going to scrap it and i tried fatei seen you could not apply textures and easygen keeps giving me errors so yeah it would be cool if fate was done and i could use a generator.

[TFA]Violator

16th April 2007, 15:25

After a lot of messing about I have found a method which kind of works (tbh I've got no idea how to get FATE to work :D) -

Create basic hull shell of map in radiant (in the same style as http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16523 (S14Y3R's excellent tip)

Start EasyGen and set the extents of the terrain (ignore 'divisions' - set 'Widths' to the terrain width and height (eg 8192 x 8192). It will recalculate 'Div Width' from 'divisions' and 'widths', so reset this to 64x64 or some appropriate power of 2.

Import the rough shell map into Easygen to see where to remove unwanted bits of terrain.

As S14Y3R pointed out above, use triangle exclusion to (rather tediously one at a time - anyone know a better 'multiselect' way?) remove the unwanted triangles. Note - don't change the extents again or all the exclusions will be wiped!

Add the texture layers required (alphamap tab), and paint the texture maps onto the grid. Save the egn file for future tweaking.

Export the map. Click 'Preview' to view the terrain shader script. Cut and paste this into your map shader script. Click 'Continue->' and save out the file - EasyGen's job is done. I find the terrain editing in easygen a royal pain so I leave it all to radiant. Importing a heightmap file is also a pain as it also wipes the exclusion triangles (which there is no way of exporting separately).

Finally open your original hull map. Then open another copy of radiant with the exported map from Easygen. Ctrl-alt- select the func_group for the terrain. Hit Ctrl-C to copy. Go back to the original map and hit paste (copying and pasting between copies of radiant is very useful esp. for prefabs etc)

CooperHawkes

17th April 2007, 08:49

Violator](tbh I've got no idea how to get FATE to work :D)
How is that? Did you have any problems running the installer? Don't you know how to use it / how to deform the terrain mesh?
Maybe you did not install the "current" (ahem ;-)) version, which is 0.13. The previous version (0.12) was pretty buggy with regard to unusual desktop settings (i.e. 16-bit color depth). Unfortunately, FilePlanet et al keep hosting this old version, and I didn't ask them to do so in the first place. :-/

Darkfrost

17th April 2007, 09:24

Yay! Cooper's back!

[TFA]Violator

17th April 2007, 09:58

Not to worry, had a bit of a play tonight (I do have 0.13 and it installed fine, my blind eyes didn't see the combo on the right to change to 'geometry' etc. :) so I think I've got it sussed - very nice indeed :) Agreed about the fileplanet/filefront hosting of old versions.. I didn't ask them to put up (admittedly too many :D) old betas of my last map but they still moan about doing it :o

CooperHawkes

18th April 2007, 13:09

carnage

18th April 2007, 14:12

Yeah, I have to admit, that the manual (http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/manual.html) is very lean and not helpful at all. If somebody wants to add some content or produce a (video) tutorial... this would be really cool.

Most - if not all - control elements are hidden in the right side panel. The most important control/edit modes ATM are "geometry" and "export". I hope you already discovered the "GtkRadiant navigation mode" which should suit the guys who are used to the Radiant movement style... just do a right click in the 3D window without moving the mouse to toggle the mode of navigation.

some vid tuts would be nice and i had though about a written one based on when i used fate however with the tool being so early in development iim not sure it would be to start tutorials right now. if we had a version with some tris optimization then a simple tutorial could be made going though the process from start to a usable terrain

sal!b'M4n

9th May 2007, 09:24

oke, got 2 questions but couldnt find it on all pages of this TOPIC so here they are:

1ste - If I made a terrain I cant texture is cus I got this >
http://virusstyle.phpbb24.com/images/virusstyle/files/error_fate.JPG
how to get texturing work..?

2nd - When I am making a terrain, without texturing and want it to Export I got this ERROR >
http://virusstyle.phpbb24.com/images/virusstyle/files/error_fate2.JPG

somebody can help me?? :roll:

Thanks!

Kic

9th May 2007, 10:09

sal!b'M4n

9th May 2007, 11:26

but how did Cooper Textures this? with Radaint?? :o

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/fatesample1.jpg

broloi

9th May 2007, 13:21

yea, with radiant. No texturing in FATE yet.

Magic

9th May 2007, 14:39

Fate generates a shader when you export your map with default textures.
You can replace those textures with your own.
If you have set up the path right - you will find the shader in etmain/scripts/your.shader - if not you will find it in fate/scripts/your.shader

Kic

9th May 2007, 14:45

but how did Cooper Textures this? with Radaint?? :o

http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/fatesample1.jpg

I think that you dont know How to texture manually in Radiant with alpha blending - it is made with this way
Read this post and go on link I was mentioned, in this post you can also download example maps with alpha blending ( require installed Q3map2 2.5.16 !!!) http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16750

sal!b'M4n

9th May 2007, 15:50

oke, muchios gracia :roll:

CooperHawkes

9th May 2007, 17:03

When I am making a terrain, without texturing and want it to Export I got this ERROR [...]
IIRC this error occurs if you do not provide a valid file name for the .map file when exporting. It is already fixed in my subversion repository...
(also see http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15567)

but how did Cooper Textures this? with Radaint?? :o
nope... I did nothing at all in radiant... it is just the standard shader that is applied by FATE. The standard textures are simple red, green, and blue monochrome textures and I just replaced them with the grass, mud, and rock texture (for further info, please read http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~rose/stuff/fate/faq.html#faq2). In this case, the grass texture is applied to flat regions and the rock texture is applied to steep regions facing into X direction, the mud texture is applied to steep regions facing into Y direction (you can see a small muddy area on the side of the cliff).

btw. Cooper Howkes something New about New version of FATE ?
not yet... sorry :-(