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[Chief_Mouser]

Suppose you don't bother about these troublesome pixels (for example you can fix the result on map them by adding road plates etc at those sites on the map). Then maybe some wizard  would be able to change the rules and gain the extra texture slots, what do you think?

Well, if you don't want roads or railways then I don't see why not. They are added to map_T as Addition layers, combining the underlying texture with the road. If you remake the railway/road .tga's, and add them as Normal layers then that 's three more useable textures. However, with the game reading every RGB above 31 as road/railways I'm not sure how you would go about freeing up the rest of the RGBs.
What might be interesting is making three modifying textures (RGB 32, 64 & 128) and keeping them as Addition layers, thus giving a huge number of combinations. It might look quite horrible, but something could come of it. An example would be town/village tiles with no grass/tarmac that would drop over whatever underlying background you want - thus avoiding the sometimes horrible demarcation zones between urban and rural tiles.

:cheers:

[lowfighter]

I think you can get still roads railways and highway ok but you have to change the rules the rgb's are interpreted on mapT. If there were no rails-road, rails-highway crossings there would be possible  redefining the rgbs and getting all the extra texture slots..How would you reassign rgbs meanings such that you'd get the least undesired effects?
If there were no crossings I think the count of used texture slots would be just 4*32=128?

Suppose you don't bother about these troublesome pixels (for example you can fix the result on map them by adding road plates etc at those sites on the map). Then maybe some wizard  would be able to change the rules and gain the extra texture slots, what do you think?

Well, if you don't want roads or railways then I don't see why not. They are added to map_T as Addition layers, combining the underlying texture with the road. If you remake the railway/road .tga's, and add them as Normal layers then that 's three more useable textures. However, with the game reading every RGB above 31 as road/railways I'm not sure how you would go about freeing up the rest of the RGBs.
What might be interesting is making three modifying textures (RGB 32, 64 & 128) and keeping them as Addition layers, thus giving a huge number of combinations. It might look quite horrible, but something could come of it. An example would be town/village tiles with no grass/tarmac that would drop over whatever underlying background you want - thus avoiding the sometimes horrible demarcation zones between urban and rural tiles.

:cheers:

[Chief_Mouser]

I think you can get still roads railways and highway ok but you have to change the rules the rgb's are interpreted on mapT. If there were no rails-road, rails-highway crossings there would be possible  redefining the rgbs and getting all the extra texture slots..How would you reassign rgbs meanings such that you'd get the least undesired effects?
If there were no crossings I think the count of used texture slots would be just 4*32=128?

Not quite sure why you are focusing on the crossings. Every pixel with an RGB greater than 31 is something to do with roads or railways. Crossings can occur on any of them that are greater than 63. But they don't have to though. Any pixel greater than 63 could have a crossing/intersection on it - the key factor is the underlying texture tile that is giving the combined RGB value. The only way that I can see to have more texture choice is to abandon one or all of roads/highways/railways. If you don't need them fine - but adding them using Objects might look ok but traffic won't follow the routes unless done manually.

The really big issue though is that getting rid of both roads and railways will only give you three new textures; which if you can use them as Addition layers opens up a load of possibilties. However, the fact that the game currently knows how to join to adjacent road/rail textures correctly makes me suspect that they are more than 'normal' tile textures.

:cheers:

[lowfighter]

Cat,
I believe it is because of the crossings of different types of roads that the game uses all the rgb's on mapT. If there were no crossings on il2 maps
32 (basic)+
32(basic+highway)+
32(basic+coutry road)+
32(basic+raiway)
=128
would be enough to tell the game engine how to interpret map_T.
When you have a crossing the game engine must know when interpreting the corresponding pixel from map_T whether is a crossing between country road and railway and so on.

 

[Chief_Mouser]

Cat,
I believe it is because of the crossings of different types of roads that the game uses all the rgb's on mapT. If there were no crossings on il2 maps
32 (basic)+
32(basic+highway)+
32(basic+coutry road)+
32(basic+raiway)
=128
would be enough to tell the game engine how to interpret map_T.
When you have a crossing the game engine must know when interpreting the corresponding pixel from map_T whether is a crossing between country road and railway and so on.

Ah, ok, I see what you're getting at. But if you do reassign all of the 'freed' textures to something else then none of the roads/rail on the map will be useable as there will be gaps where there should be crossings. On top of that there are no 'hard' textures existing for these RGB values within the game - they are combinations of other images. Wouldn't it take a hefty rewrite of the code to get them to behave 'normally'?
The other point to think about with road/rail tiles is that the game engine treats them differently to a normal tile. You must have seen the odd isolated road/rail tile that gets on to a map by mistake - it looks like a squiggle in whatever colour the road/rail is because the game engine doesn't know in which direction to draw the feature. The engine would probably screw up any texture tiles in the same way. If you remove the code that tells the road/rails to link up then you have no roads/rails at all - just a line of squiggle tiles.
I think that it would be hard to separate the 'normal' and 'crossing' RGBs - you have to have all or nothing.

:cheers:

:cheers:

[Uzin]

Just my 2pence, hope not nonsense:
what about totally omitting highways, rails and roads from Il2 engine ,
and replacing them by objects similar well-known to KevinP's ones  ?

[agracier]

Just my 2pence, hope not nonsense:
what about totally omitting highways, rails and roads from Il2 engine ,
and replacing them by objects similar well-known to KevinP's ones  ?

Not nonsense at all ... but even simpler: many maps do not use or need all 3 types. Pacific island maps can do very well without railways and get by with just one type of road, many desert maps don't always need railways either ...

Making roads by placing objects like KevinP objects is a rather intensive job though and one of the big drawbacks is that the objects do not always fit up well enough on hilly terrain ...

But even so, one less road type on most maps should not diminish their playability nor their appearance.

[Uzin]

... one of the big drawbacks is that the objects do not always fit up well enough on hilly terrain ...

There is somewhere a mod solving this drawback, as I remember.

Introducing the ways-objects  would solve also the problem of curvature of contemporary solution...

[canonuk]

The problem with having roads as objects is the memory demand - and the fact that it suddenly gets a lot more complex than adding roads is currently.

What if it could be tweaked so that it reads from a few map_t and load.ini files? Some way of ignoring a certain RGB value on each map_t and then combining the effects of several files? Just thinking out loud here.. no idea if it's even feasible.

[lowfighter]

Exactly, think and talk, something will come out of this discussion maybe 
Some compromise...
Please don't stop!

[Uzin]

The problem with having roads as objects is the memory demand - and the fact that it suddenly gets a lot more complex than adding roads is currently.

Maybe the straight roads as objects can be made as long as , say, 50,  100,  200 meters, what might decrease the memory demand? Something as river embankments in Peterburg set of objects ?
The turns of the roads might then be the only excessive parts demanding memory.

[agracier]

Maybe the straight roads as objects can be made as long as , say, 50,  100,  200 meters, what might decrease the memory demand? Something as river embankments in Peterburg set of objects ?
The turns of the roads might then be the only excessive parts demanding memory.

Long roads as objects will only work and look well on flat terrain. They will not follow the contours of terrain height differences and will either lay 180degrees flush on the highest point of the covered terrain, or else lay perpendicular to the terrain and also look quite funny.

You can see how it looks by analogy with putting (large) buildings on a relatively steep hillside. Not only does it look like the object is sticking into space unsupported, but it will also cast long shadows depending on the time of day ...