Vegetation Earth map

[Volutar]

Project GLC2000 provides hires info of Earth surface.
40320x16353 pixels sized tiff file with quite precise info of surface type.

I think such info could be helpful when you want to create realistic ufo-like geo->battlescape transition.
Picture in example is shrinked

[Yankes]

at last, we could shoot down ufo and fight in city

[kkmic]

Good catch.

However, this should be a post v1.0 modification.

[Volutar]

post 1.0??
I see this could be used for totally different project... with colored hi-res textured globe:)

[hsbckb]

at last, we could shoot down ufo and fight in city

Actually, there is no City Map in X-com. There isn't any multi-storey building.

 

[kkmic]

post 1.0??
I see this could be used for totally different project... with colored hi-res textured globe:)

I thought the v1.0 goal was to have a close recreation of the original UFO (with some improvements), not a totally altered game... yeah, I like the 'pixelized' look of the old games

TBH, I would LOVE to see such a detailed globe in OXC. I would also love to have a "modern "OXC with updated high-resolution graphics, while keeping the same original core gameplay. However, like I said, I feel that these are updates that belong to the post v1.0 OXC.

[luke83]

Question ( sorry for going off topic to your original Post volutar)  , How is the Globes graphics and Landmass made up? Would it be possible for a unskilled person like me to change Earth to another planet (different colours, different regions, different land-water mix), this would most likely not be for a x-com spin off , i am thinking something more along the lines of Necromunder ( not a direct clone but similar in style , Gangs fighting it out for supremacy).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromunda

Maybe have it change throughout the gaming experience , Ice Ages or Global Warming maybe

( I am not asking for it, i just want to know if/how i oneday could do this)

[moriarty]

that is a very good question, I think. afaik, the globe is made up from irregular triangles, and each triangle has a defined "terrain", which determines how it looks on the globe as well as the kind of ground mission terrain spawned, right? so in order to change the globe (not just the terrain, but the layout), you would have to entirely re-define the triangles... which is really too much trouble, right?

ah, I looked around in the globe.cpp and stumbled upon the reference to the UFOPaedia, which contains the necessary information, I guess...

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=WORLD.DAT

I'm going to read this and see how much I can understand


EDIT: for personal reference: https://volutar.eu5.org/worlddat.zip

[SupSuper]

It's not technically complicated, WORLD.DAT is just a huge list of triangles, which all come together to form the landmass (or the ocean in TFTD). It'd just be an incredible pain to edit by hand, unless you're really good at visualizing coordinates.

[moriarty]

yep, that's what I figured out, too maybe someone really skilled at programming could make a visual editor...? that would be really nice.

If I was able to do it, I would change the globe to a true geodesic sphere with much higher triangle count, and build a program that lets you paint it while looking at it in 3D... if I was able.

[luke83]

It's not technically complicated, WORLD.DAT is just a huge list of triangles, which all come together to form the landmass (or the ocean in TFTD). It'd just be an incredible pain to edit by hand, unless you're really good at visualizing coordinates.

coordinates you say , would i be able to export this data into a CAD package , that is where i really shine

[Volutar]

I was developing software for viewing world.dat file and posted it on the forum(->here). Editing feature was planned, but become unneccessary after Yankes' shading was implemented. Because main idea was lessen polygon granularity in order to improve land shading. And now, when there is no ugly polygon shading left, adding more details while keeping 320x200 is little out of proportions. Default world.dat have 666 polygons, and each of it projected and processed each frame, though back-side polys are skipped for drawing. Really I dont like how it made, but it work for that detail.

[luke83]

How much extra work would it take to add the EDIT functionality, and would we be able to then make a NEW planet or is something else still required for that?

[Volutar]

luke83, edit functionality will be quite hard, though, it's possible to make some kind of converter dat->obj, obj->dat, in order to edit it within any cad/3d edit program supporting obj files. I was stopped only because of surface type assignation in obj file. I suppose it should be done as color coding? Polygon conversion is a piece of cake, but surface types is not that easy.

[moriarty]

Volutar, could you add a function in your viewer that lets you change the surface type of a selected polygon and write that to the file? If we have that plus a converter to .obj, we can change everything, right?

btw, what would openxcom do if we provide a world.dat file with more than 666 surfaces? would it run just as fine? because then luke83 could create a completely new planet without any problems. except for nation borders and cities, of course, but that's another story...