Maps

[Desocupado]

- No more graphic glitches

Would that mean to be able to use more than 10 different sprites per battle?

[gomtuu]

When you uploaded this file, did you accidentally muck up the permissions on your /fft/ directory? I get 403 forbidden when I try to access it. You had some great info there.

No, all I did was move it here. Funny, I mentioned my site to Zodiac once when I first told him about map2gl through email, before I really knew what you guys had already figured out here. Once I saw the things you were working on, I didn't think my site had much info you guys didn't have already. So I never mentioned it on the forum (as far as I remember). I didn't think it'd be missed. Hehe.

This sounds awesome.

Keep in mind that this feature is in the "gee, that would be neat" stage of development.

[gomtuu]

- No more graphic glitches

Would that mean to be able to use more than 10 different sprites per battle?

No, I think Zodiac means that my map viewer has glitches I need to fix. I don't think he's talking about anything in the game itself.

[Xifanie]

I don't know if it's normal for the cutaway mode but I always have graphic glitches unless I'm at 30 degree altitude or lower.

And I don't know if the other one happens frequently but the blue panel is under the texture?

Other than that I had trouble switching with the new mode & cutaway mode, it would sometimes ignore when I pressed "t" and was stuck in either off or on mode... this seems very random as I can't easily reproduce the effect.

[gomtuu]

I don't know if it's normal for the cutaway mode but I always have graphic glitches unless I'm at 30 degree altitude or lower.

That's not a bug, it's a feature. The map files contain information about which angles each polygon is visible from. This is used both to avoid drawing polygons that wouldn't be visible anyway (which is what's happening in your screenshot) and to avoid drawing polygons that would obscure the scene (MAP011 is a good example of this). It's important for map2gl to support this feature so it can display maps the way the game does, but it can be annoying when you view maps from angles they weren't designed to be viewed from. That's why cutaway mode is on by default, but has a toggle. BTW, the maximum altitude without glitches should be 38 degress. I'm fairly sure that's what the altitude is when you elevate the camera during a battle.

I had trouble switching with the new mode & cutaway mode, it would sometimes ignore when I pressed "t" and was stuck in either off or on mode... this seems very random as I can't easily reproduce the effect.

The reason you can't always toggle cutaway mode and terrain mode has to do with which part of the map2gl interface has focus and can intercept keyboard events. I'd have to learn more about event handling in wxWindows to fix it.

As a workaround for now, you should be able to click the mouse once in the main viewer window to get map2gl to respond to keyboard commands. I plan to add some more GUI interface stuff to let you control those things without the keyboard, too, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

And I don't know if the other one happens frequently but the blue panel is under the texture?

Yeah, that one is relatively rare, but I do hope to fix it. It's because I don't know exactly where to draw the terrain tiles. I'll have to do some tests in-game to see if I can figure that one out. This also affects the bridge on Zirekile Falls (MAP083) and the arches on Underground Book Storage Third Floor (MAP059), to name a few.

- Enemy starting positions

I worked on this today, and while I was at it I added a Scenario Chooser (in the File menu), which uses the data in ATTACK.OUT to make a list of scenarios. When you choose one, it loads the map with the proper weather, ENTD, and placement grid information for that scenario. So that'll be in the next version. The ENTD information is frequently wrong about where things are, though. I assume this is because the characters get re-positioned by event scripts, but maybe I'm just reading the data wrong? Anyway, here's a screenshot of a map that works well:

[Cheetah]

Well Gomtuu, you certainly know your stuff.

[Sen]

Have you checked the map on chapter 2 the Execution Site the wooden platform that is so high you must have fly to get there was there an item?

[gomtuu]

Have you checked the map on chapter 2 the Execution Site the wooden platform that is so high you must have fly to get there was there an item?

Nope, here are the items (the magenta squares). They match the Move-Find Item FAQs on GameFAQs.

Note that this is a map where the ENTD info doesn't work very well. This is partly because, when a square on the map has two heights (like a bridge and the ground beneath it), I don't know how the game decides where to start the unit. So map2gl just draws the starting location tile on both heights for now.

[Cheetah]

You still around Gomtuu?

[gomtuu]

You still around Gomtuu?

Yeah, I've been lurking now and then. But no, I haven't been working on map2gl for a few weeks now... My interest in it has waned for now, I guess. That's how it tends to go with my hobbies...

[Cheetah]

Well I'm very excited to say that I finally found a way to get map2gl working for me. I had to get Parallels working on my mac, but the map2gl.exe works great and fast too. This is certainly an awesome piece of programming, I have just spent about two hours just poking around with the maps. The weather affects and map info overlay are especially cool. There are a lot of locations that are barely seen or not at all that are really cool. The four room map is especially cool, and it seems like it would make for a rather fun spot to battle. Though I suppose as a map viewer you have pretty much completed your task. Are there any other features you were hoping to implement? I would personally like to see a tile ripper so that I could get a better look at the graphics used. Much more than that and you would be making a map editor, which of course would be amazingly exciting.

[gomtuu]

Glad you got it working!

Are there any other features you were hoping to implement? I would personally like to see a tile ripper so that I could get a better look at the graphics used. Much more than that and you would be making a map editor, which of course would be amazingly exciting.

It's so far from being a map editor that I don't even want to think about it.

As for a tile ripper, that's somewhat complicated. There isn't really a concept of graphical tiles, it's just a bunch of textured polygons, and I've explained before about the difficulties with the textures. It wouldn't be impossible, but I haven't really put any effort into it yet.

Some features I'd like to add to map2gl in the short term are:

• Add a tile-by-tile terrain inspector using a cursor similar to the in-game cursor. When the cursor is on a tile, display information about that tile's height, surface type (grass, river, bridge, etc.), traps, and items.
• Improve representation of items. Instead of just turning the tile magenta, display the item's name and possibly its icon on the tile, or off to the side with a line pointing to the tile.
• In terrain mode, display a number on each tile indicating its height.
• Add more GUI controls so you can toggle lights, terrain mode, etc. via the GUI or the keyboard.
• Allow camera panning, not just zooming and rotation.

Some medium- to long-term features I'd like to add are:

• Display unit sprites on their starting locations (as read from ENTD files) instead of just turning the tiles orange.
• Implement the more complicated polygon animations, like doors swinging open, the clothes on map047, which I think are supposed to sway in the breeze, and a few others.)
• Implement texture animations, like water and lava. Some gates also open via texture animations. (They become transparent.)
• Use event instructions to determine character starting positions, since the ENTD information often doesn't show you where the units really are when the battle starts.
• Add ability to view PSP maps.
• Texture export.
• Polygon mesh export, as 3DS or something.

Some fantasy features that may never happen are:

• Allow custom textures to be substituted for the in-game textures, so you can (manually) create high-resolution, full-color versions of the textures and then have map2gl display the map with those instead of the normal textures.
• Execute event instructions so you can watch cinematic sequences. (Note that this is a fantasy feature and may never happen.)
• Fully re-implement the battle engine! (Yeah, right.)
• Map editor.

[Cheetah]

All very cool and exciting sounding stuff. I  able to see the "textures" with the graphics viewer I'm using, but I have no idea how it is actually organized and i couldn't find anything that looked like a palette for anything. So I think I kind of understand what you mean about there not being textures. Is it like there is just one picture file with all the textures for one map on it, but how each part is divided and use is completely unique to each map?

Besides maybe messing with textures on maps I only have one other though about map editing. Do you think you know enough about the map information to kind of "complete" the cutscene maps? Like how not all the transparencies activate correctly from some angles (angles never ment to be seen), and how the black fill isn't always present. Just figuring out some of those things would make some of the existing maps actually playable.

Is there really unit placement information stored for every map? If so why?

[trickstardude7]

geez just reading the post of Gomtuu right now it seems that maps are EXTREMELY complicating in Final fantasy tactics because in other games its so simple because some are 2-D so the complications are minimum but FFT maps are 3-D so there is A LOT more work to implement a program to correctly edit them, so all I have to say so far to Gomtuu's progress is amazing work!

[gomtuu]

I'm able to see the "textures" with the graphics viewer I'm using, but I have no idea how it is actually organized and i couldn't find anything that looked like a palette for anything. So I think I kind of understand what you mean about there not being textures. Is it like there is just one picture file with all the textures for one map on it, but how each part is divided and use is completely unique to each map?

I didn't mean to imply there aren't textures, just that they're not organized in a way that would make it easy to extract and manipulate them.

The system used for applying textures to the polygons is referred to as UV mapping, and it's very common in 3D graphics in general. The trick is the weird way that the palettes work. Different areas of the texture image are rendered with different palettes, and the only way to know which areas get which palettes is to look at the polygon data, which contains a palette index for each polygon and UV coordiates for each of the polygon's vertices. The UV polygons might even overlap (I don't know if they do in practice, but there's nothing stopping them techincally), so it's not 100% guaranteed you'd be able to get a clean representation of which areas use which palettes.

Do you think you know enough about the map information to kind of "complete" the cutscene maps? Like how not all the transparencies activate correctly from some angles (angles never ment to be seen), and how the black fill isn't always present. Just figuring out some of those things would make some of the existing maps actually playable.

For the visibility angles: I know how you'd have to do it (what data you'd have to change), but I don't know how it could be made easy. The polygons aren't sorted any particular way that I know of, so you'd need a way to locate the polygon you wanted to change. I could add a feature to help with that into map2gl, but it'd still be kind of clunky.

As for the black fill, that's a matter of adding more untextured black polygons wherever you need to cover something up. To do that, I think you'd need to make the map files larger, which might be okay most of the time, but for some files there might not be room without moving the files to different blocks on the CD...

Is there really unit placement information stored for every map? If so why?

I know, isn't that weird? My guess is that it was really easy for them to make the placement grids with whatever program they used to make the maps, so they just always added them in case they needed them later.

...

Either that, or I'm reading the data wrong. But it looks right most of the time, right? And it's even better with the scenario chooser, since it only uses the placement grids the game would've used for that scenario.

[gomtuu]

FFT maps are 3-D so there is A LOT more work to implement a program to correctly edit them, so all I have to say so far to Gomtuu's progress is amazing work!

Thanks!

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, just because the map files can store arbitrary 3D meshes doesn't mean that a map editor would have to let you create arbitrary 3D meshes. We could start off with an editor that only lets you do certain kinds of things. It wouldn't let you edit existing maps, but you could create new ones from scratch.

The editor wouldn't even need a 3D interface necessarily; it could represent the terrain data schematically somehow (or even as text) and then generate polygons from that behind the scenes... Texturing would still be tricky, but not beyond reason...

Hmm... Why didn't I think of this before?

[Zozma]

i would personally just be happy if i could get enough of the program to open long enough to let me change the music on a certain map or change the number of units you could place... i never manged to get it to run

[Cheetah]

I like where you are going with this Gomtuu. The maps can actually be very simple in design but very effective. They are just a grid, with each square adjusted to a relative height, and then a "top" at a certain angle and direction. A thought for a visual representation of the maps would be to display them as a collection of bar graphs. So you could be looking at one column of the Z direction, and all the different heights of the X grid panels in that Z column would be represented. Then by going through all the Z columns you could setup out entire map. Then of course you could switch to looking at the X columns(or rows) and it would be like looking at the map from a different direction. So that one bar graph just represented a slice of the entire map.

Well I hope that makes sense because it is kind of hard to describe, but I think it is a decent idea to set up the kind of parameters you are looking for without having to actually manipulate things in three dimensions. Or at least I hope so...Of course this would only work for very simple maps, without stuff like archways or windmills.

[gomtuu]

i would personally just be happy if i could get enough of the program to open long enough to let me change the music on a certain map or change the number of units you could place... i never manged to get it to run

What was the last PM you got from me, Zozma? I sent you 2 messages that sat in my Outbox for a long time, and now they're not there anymore, and they're not in my Sentbox either. I'm just wondering if you got them. If you didn't, I can try to remember what I said and send again.

Anyway, map2gl isn't an editor. It won't let you change the music or the number of units you can place on a map. I don't think there is a program that edits these things yet, so you'd have to use the specs I posted in this thread and edit the data manually.

[Zozma]

oh, i see ill read up more closely. i can play around with a hex editors and stuff i know how to do that much, just cant seem to run this afterall, all that I REALLY want to do is change how many units are allowed in certain battles and the music that plays.