Painting Forest Areas

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- Compiled by EvilViking, originally written by the Lead Level Designer at Massive Entertainment

Introduction

Forest areas in World in Conflict are used for infantry concealment ingame. When you add a tree prop to your map, it automatically creates a small "forest area" around it. However, as you place forests on your map, you may find that there are holes in the forest cover, which can make gameplay for infantry players frustrating. This short tutorial explains how to correct these holes on your forest cover.

Programs you need:

  • World in conflict map editor (WiCEd)
  • An image editor capable of creating and opening TGA images (Photoshop or GIMP [freeware] are most common)

How to edit your Forest Areas

Manually editing forest cover is quite possible, but its not as simple as one might think – in the map folder for each map there is a file called forestmap.tga. This is a black and white image created by wiced based on the placement of your trees. Each tree creates an aura of forest cover around itself, so if they are placed too far apart there will be “holes” in the cover. You will never have to directly edit this image; you will instead have to override it with an image of your own that you place in the map folder. Simple create any of the following files and then run the Nav Path Mesh finaliser in wiced and the new forest map will replace the old one.

There are 3 different kinds of override images that you can create:

  • forestmap_OVERRIDE.tga – this is essentially a new whole new forest map that will replace your existing one. You can copy the existing forrestmap.tga and then add or remove forest cover and then save it with the new name.
  • forestmap_OVERRIDEADD.tga – think of this image as a mask that will add forest cover to the existing forestmap.tga. Anything that is white in this image will be added to the forest map, while the rest should be black.
  • forestmap_OVERRIDESUB.tga - this image is the exact opposite of the previous file. It is a mask that removes forest cover by painting black and leaving the rest white.

Suggestions from EvilViking

To correct my forests, I open my map, and export a Raytrace top-down mask of my trees for reference (In WiCEd, File > Export > Top Down Mask - Make sure you have the "trees" box checked!). Then, I open the original forestmap.tga, and resize it to 1024x1024. I then copy it into a new image, and flip the entire new image horizontally. I then open my top-down Raytrace mask, also resize it to 1024x1024, and drop it into my new image as a layer below the imported forestmap.tga. I then make the forestmap layer semi-transparent (say, 59% opacity), and carefully repaint the forest areas on my map by hand. Be sure that the brush you're using is at 100% opacity, and that you're painting on the correct layer, which should be forestmap layer. Once I'm finished repainting my forest areas, I make the forestmap layer 100% opacity once again, and resize it back to 512x512. I then flip it horizontally once again to restore it to the correct direction. BE SURE that you re-flip it, otherwise, your forest map will be backwards, and it will not line up with your map! Finally, I re-copy my edited forestmap layer to a new 512x512 image named "forestmap_OVERRIDE.tga" in my map's directory. Now, I recompile my map, check out my forest areas, and re-edit as needed!

- EvilViking

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