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#4588205 - 12/31/21 01:54 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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With the help of Larry Hookings' research, I was able to generate tiled maps of the m1tp2 Worlds.

Great progress RP!

From what I know contour lines never materialized, but I think even the semitransparent layer with topo contours would be a great help in evaluating the terrain before a battle. In fact, there is something to that end already implemented and it is "L" keystroke which when pressed consecutively several times would sharpen terrain topo contours.
Other than that I would like to check-in greater detail what is the relation and similarity between tiles of M1TP2 vs. Gunship for some perhaps swapping exercise. Will try.

Keep a great work RP!

Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#4588223 - 12/31/21 06:28 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: Polak]  
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Originally Posted by Polak
Terrain system and files of M1TP2 are very similar to that of the Gunship! The major difference is the lack of Treerun.dat and more types of tiles in Gunship! It was never done or attempted but it would be a real treat to play M1TP2 in Gunship! environments.


That would be amazing


-Sir in case of retreat, were we have to retreat??
-To the Graveyard!!

sandbagger.uk.com/stratos.html
#4588288 - 01/01/22 01:21 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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Thank you again RP for your work on M1TP2 maps. Here are some initial observations and request.

Below is enlarged example of single grid cel where 16x16 basic M1TP2 terrain textures are placed according to Terrain.dat file (?). As you can see when the 16pix grid is overlayed on this crude enlarged and "zoomed in" picture you can still recognize how the tiles are made and placed. Firstly it appears that
there are no transitions between the tiles as they are in later Gunship! (hopefully we will get there some day in the future). Secondly in M1TP2 there are very few types of tiles and I will post them later on with excel spreadsheet and a picture of each tile.

And thirdly and finally (and that puzzles me a little) there are only few diagonal transitions between forest and grass and water and grass ...and they are only runing NW->SE . There are no complementing NE->SW corners and each lower bottom corner of the forest and water is sharp. Whatever the reason it is very crude and this (forests and tree runs and maybe water) is few of the items of modding we could initially consider. Those green Tree Runs are separate constructs and to make it simple they should be at the start of this simply removed by zeroing Treerun.dat files in each and every map.

[Linked Image]

#4588316 - 01/01/22 09:20 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: Polak]  
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RandomPinhead Offline
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Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku, Polak!
Confounding news on the terrains!
I think each of M1TP2’s terrain half-cells tries to cram 16 X 16 terrain tiles into a big square, and then that block of 16x16 images gets cut along a diagonal from upper left to lower right so only a triangular half of it is displayed in the game. If it’s a lower half-cell being tiled, only the lower triangle of the block is shown. If it’s an upper half-cell being tiled, the upper triangle from the block is shown. To make it slightly even more confusing, the tiles are upside-down within the block.

As you can tell, I’m experiencing my usual difficulties in explaining things.

As a test, I altered the water0.pcx tile to look like this:
[Linked Image]

Then, I changed the first byte in the NTC world’s terrain.dat file to 07. According to the Tiles.txt file in the World\NTC folder, the 7 would refer to water.pcx files. The first byte in terrain.dat refers to the first triangular half-cell on the world’s map. It’s a lower half-cell. The next byte would refer to a triangular upper half-cell. The triangular half-cells alternate from lower to upper for the entire length to the terrain.dat file.

Here’s the result of altering a single half-cell in terrain.dat:
[Linked Image]


Weird!

I’ll try to respond to your post soon as possible. I hadn’t expected you to have already played around with the tiled map files.
Sorry, gotta' run.




Last edited by RandomPinhead; 01/01/22 09:30 PM.
#4588322 - 01/02/22 12:04 AM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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As they say the "proof is in the pudding".

To be exact in overlay of the values found in Terrain.dat for Moldavia map and its upper left corner 16 x16 terrain tiles (not the yellow grid tiles) .

The values where the left lower and upper right diagonal is different match perfectly.

[Linked Image]

Color and byte legend:
04 is tile with sand
00 is green grass
06 dark green forest.

Last edited by Polak; 01/02/22 12:10 AM.
#4588378 - 01/02/22 07:45 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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Excellent graphic, Polak. That’s an extremely clever technique for visualizing the relationship between the binary data and the map image!

(From earlier post)
Quote
There are no complementing NE->SW corners and each lower bottom corner of the forest and water is sharp.


This is due to the shape of the half-cells, because a complete cell is divided on a NW→SE bias.

(From earlier post)
Quote
… it appears that there are no transitions between the tiles as they are in later Gunship!


There aren’t any real transitions to speak of, and I don’t know if it’s even possible to have GS!-style transitions at all. The tiling of the half-cells presents a very difficult problem for even moderately sophisticated transitions.

Using the altered terrain tile from my previous post as an example:
[Linked Image]


The game would tile it like so for lower half-cells:
[Linked Image]

And like so for upper half-cells:
[Linked Image]

I don’t know how you could get that group of “mini-tiles” within each half-cell to work as a single large transition.

#4588379 - 01/02/22 07:56 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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Then, I changed the first byte in the NTC world’s terrain.dat file to 07. According to the Tiles.txt file in the World\NTC folder, the 7 would refer to water.pcx files. The first byte in terrain.dat refers to the first triangular half-cell on the world’s map. It’s a lower half-cell. The next byte would refer to a triangular upper half-cell. The triangular half-cells alternate from lower to upper for the entire length to the terrain.dat file.
Here’s the result of altering a single half-cell in terrain.dat:

Weird!


Since we both know how that should work in Terrain.dat indeed changing 1st byte to 07 and leaving the subsequent byte to itself should produce half-cells with water at the lower left. However, with water that may be a little different. Now we are in a good position to test all our questions and theories. To that end, I produced a test Mission below which I call PolNWCorner.txt which positions own M1ABT platoon and some companions in the upper left corner of the Poland map. Maybe of any use to us both and others if we should try to verify something in the same start/test position and condition.

[Linked Image]

Mission belongs in Battle/Player folder and can be started from Single Mission menu in the game.


PolNWCorner.txt
Quote

TITLE: PolNWCorner
BATTLEFIELD: poland 60 60 0 15 1 1
ENGAGEMENT: BLUE MISSION_BLUE_CONTACT 0 0 266
ENGAGEMENT: RED MISSION_RED_MEETING 0 0 86
RUNAI: RED
SIDE: 0
MACHINE: 1

PLATOON: 0 60 60 274 0 400 400 1 5
ORDER_MODE_WAYPT:

PLATOON: 9 60 70 274 0 400 4001 11
ORDER_MODE_WAYPT:
SUPPORT: 86 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 6

PLATOON: 60 800 800 274 0 400 400 3 0
LOGIC: LOGIC_RECON


#4588387 - 01/02/22 11:21 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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Hand editing Terrain.dat is working as expected lower half-cells even offsets and upper ones odd offsets. Here is even offset half-cell changed to water 07x and odd cell where the tanks are left as grass. Tanks cannot enter water areas as well as forests.
[Linked Image]

What is also revealed here is that greenish overlay on water which probably comes from Shade.dat (not sure?).

Anyway, so pretty much that's that!

Manipulation of tiles from M1TP2 is a little pointless cause they are rather primitive and crude. Maybe we should explore taking them from Gunship!

Last edited by Polak; 01/06/22 08:15 PM.
#4588707 - 01/06/22 08:20 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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The benefit of having tiles firmly outlined in the terrain allows positioning tanks on the edges of the tiles and empirically measuring the size of the tiles with the laser rangefinder.
Despite what some documents said I was expecting a little different result from 750 m but alas, it is 750m.


[Linked Image]
[Linked Image]

Last edited by Polak; 01/06/22 08:20 PM.
#4643947 - 03/17/24 07:28 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: RandomPinhead]  
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hello!

great stuff everyone!

I too am interested in bringing this game/sim back to life
my objective is to bring the game up to modern funtionity standards

such a resupply, ready racks etc

Yes i am aware of SB i have been playing that sincce i moved away from M1TP 18 odd years ago.

#4644093 - 03/20/24 10:31 PM Re: Modding M1 Tank Platoon 2 (Again) [Re: LtHedgehog]  
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Originally Posted by LtHedgehog
hello!

great stuff everyone!

I too am interested in bringing this game/sim back to life
my objective is to bring the game up to modern funtionity standards

such a resupply, ready racks etc

Yes i am aware of SB i have been playing that sincce i moved away from M1TP 18 odd years ago.


Way to go Hedgehog! smile

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