Topic: Jagged Alliance

[Will]

Now here's some overlooked high quality strategy/RPG game I am working on. There are 60 sectors to be done. I'll be indicating the hidden supply caches, traps and objects lying around and mapping out the interior of buildings. Enemies will not be indicated because they are randomly positioned and vary in number through difficulty levels. Also the mercenaries and guards won't be shown since they can be varied entirely by the player's choice. The toughest thing to get right in the maps are the rippling water positions. I should like a little help from the strategy mapping specialist LDK to arrange the water once the maps arrive and if I've missed anything on each sector point it out.

[Paco]

The toughest thing to get right in the maps are the rippling water positions. I should like a little help from the strategy mapping specialist LDK to arrange the water once the maps arrive and if I've missed anything on each sector point it out.

I see, hope you fix this Problem. ^^ Good idea to use a Flag to mark mines.

[LDK]

yeah I exactly know what you are refering to because I've tried map this game in past. But I didn't have enough patience to pinpoint every box, gun, mines etc. and I didn't want to submit half finished work so I abandon this project.

On the other hand I would love to help you. Water ripples are tricky but white shore waves has pretty slow framerate so it just matter of right timing of taking screenshot. I've set a macro to capture whole map in couple a seconds and then another Photoshop macro to stitch them together so basicaly you can have sector mapped under a minute. Then I took shoreline screenshots to correct stitched sector. At this point this has been my standard mapping procedure - make a macro for mapping, make a PS action (or macro if you like) for stitching, correct stitching errors.

Now from what I remember I was planing to release map of a whole island instead of individual sectors. As for water ripples further from shore I would create a seamless body of water (from one screenshot) as big as whole island and just replace original badly stitched water with my own.

I hope it will help you a little.

[Will]

I'd be delighted to see the result. I also found that locating mines, caches and others was no picnic. Sometimes my mercenaries say there is a trap, but even use a metal detector on the spot I have no idea what I'm looking for.

I've also been examining the NDS version for comparison and I can't say it reaches up to quality. The graphics of the DOS version are a lot more crispy, exotic and fluid. The graphics of the NDS version are a little rigid, the water doesn't flow and the trees are dotted rather than scattered.

[LDK]

Unfortunately I don't have any map files from my previous work at this project but, If you want me to, I could create rough map of all sectors and you could add mine placement, boxes, interiors etc.

I'm for DOS version for sure. Graphics has that wonderful "old game feel" which I realy like

[LDK]

So I've played around PS little bit and I think I've solved your problem. Unfortunately shorelines has to be corected manualy, everything else can be automatized.

This came out from stitching screenshots together


after repairing shorelines I've selected all blue pixels (with magic wand tool, tolerance 150, AA turned off) then contracted selection by 4 pixels (in order to preserve original shoreline waves and details) and hit delete. Result:


Then I've created new ocean from single screenshot. Water tiles are repeating in chunks 32x28 pixels with some random variations in wave pattern. And finaly whole sector with new ocean


Here you have ocean pattern. It can be stacked in both horizontal and vertical axis without any seams

[Will]

I think that default water layout looks handy. Filtering the current sea from the shoreline ripples and replacing it with that layout may just work. Rivers shores unlike sea shores don't have shoreline ripples, which further eases the task.

[KingKuros]

That's how I did the ocean in The 7th Saga.  It also has animated shorelines as well.

[Will]

By now I have mapped out 12 out of 60 sectors (the last and penultimate east column sectors to be precise).