4.157 - Legacy Map Conversion

[Ssnake]

Any scenario based on an unpublished map can only be tested from within the Mission Editor.

If you want to run it in single player mode, or host it in a network session, the map must be published (...and distributed to the other network clients).

[Gibsonm]

6 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Any scenario based on an unpublished map can only be tested from within the Mission Editor.

If you want to run it in single player mode, or host it in a network session, the map must be published (...and distributed to the other network clients).

It is published.

 

Please refer the first point and subsequent comments.

 

I'm aware of the distribution issue, that's part two.

 

Part 1 is getting the "publishing" to work

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Ssnake]

Okay.

Try exiting Steel Beasts, then open it again and see if it works now?

[Gibsonm]

It was "published" this morning (30 JUL 0522 as per the screen shot) and Steel Beasts wasn't launched again until 1700, but any way I'll give it another go.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Gibsonm]

No change.

 

Same error message in both versions ("standard" and "server").

[DarkAngel]

you have published the base map not the delta.

[Gibsonm]

2 minutes ago, DarkAngel said:

you have published the base map not the delta.

 

Well this suggests to me that I have:

 

 

Note the word "deltas" in the path???

 

If I haven't:

 

1. How do I know.

 

2. What additional steps are required

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[DarkAngel]

Well I tried to come help you.

[Gibsonm]

17 minutes ago, DarkAngel said:

Well I tried to come help you.

Great, that's all I need half the story.

 

Yes and I explained we were in the midst of something else and requested that you join the conversation here.

 

I'm not holding them to be diverted to something else.

 

I'll wait for Ssnake or Retro to get back to me.

 

Help without the attitude.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Ssnake]

When clicking on the "Map Editor" entry in the main menu and it opens the map selection dialog, you can filter the displayed maps by their published/unpublished state. This might give you a clue whether or not a map is published (also, if you open it and the tools are all greyed out, that's a clear symptom of a published map).

[Gibsonm]

OK. I'll try that.

 

Wait a few minutes.

 

It has:

 

"OTW Beaudesert ver3 [Published]"

 

So I'm assuming its "published"?

 

No idea about "deltas" as I haven't edited the map, or done anything, I just used the Map Package Creation Wizard.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Ssnake]

At this point, either there's a confusion as to which map your scenario uses, or whether the map it's based on actually is published or not, and if we can rule out both you may have discovered a bug.

[Gibsonm]

18 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

At this point, either there's a confusion as to which map your scenario uses, or whether the map it's based on actually is published or not, and if we can rule out both you may have discovered a bug.

Hmm,

 

But in that case why would the scenario happily load in the Mission Editor (whereas before [several days ago now at the start of this thread, not recently] it generated the error about "published)?

 

Later tonight I'll go back to the start of this thread and start over (just in case). I'll delete the allegedly "published" map and maybe it will work - the multi step version of "turn it off" / "turn it back on again".

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Ssnake]

The Mission Editor doesn't care if a map is published or not (to allow you to test a mission and, if you discover a terrain dependency (that units get stuck in a certain place with regularity) you could then edit the map to eliminate this problem). Once that you want to use it outside of the test mode however, you need to committ to the map that you have at this point, and publish it.

[Retro]

If you open the map in the mission editor, and bring up the options -> map info dialogue, it should show you which map it's actually using.. so this should give us a clue what's going on

[Gibsonm]

4 minutes ago, Retro said:

If you open the map in the mission editor, and bginr up the options -> map info dialogue, it should show you which map it's actually using.. so this should give us a clue what's going on

 

Yes and I used that at the very start - post 1 or 2 of this thread.

 

[Retro]

Sorry I don't see them.. just to be sure, I'm talking about the following menu item/dialogue in the mission editor (there the scenario can be opened without problems)

[Raven434th]

THIS is why I benched on another map...its wayyyyy complicated and un-intuitive

[Japo32]

The update is really good in lots of areas. Congratulations!

But one thing I loose is the full compatibility that we had in the past. For me that is not a big deal as I like the changes, but I would like to understand how can I play old missions. I put 2 examples:

 

https://gyazo.com/8c4c46502975dd2d3a4a98fba4951937

 

https://gyazo.com/f1368a73afb95b1a3609c608b172a97e

 

In the mission editor I don't find any of those 2 maps (I find a sweden1 but it is only terrain geometry:
https://gyazo.com/b802c6dded1e609972e4a60c237c5420) I suppose those maps where in any area of 4.023 instalation but I removed all the files. Do I have to install again 4.023 to have some of the old terrains to make conversions? Or can I download them in this steelbeast.com download area? How could I play old single player missions downloaded from here. There are not so many that are compatible (4 or 5) with 4.1X version.

 

Thanks.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by Japo32

[Ssnake]

I think we're still installing the legacy maps in the traditional location. To that extent, no need to reinstall 4.023.

 

Where a scenario refers to a .raw file instead of a .hgt, this indicates that it's REEEALLY old. I believe we switched the file extensions no later than version 2.4 but probably with 2.370 already or so.

ANYWAY, the references in your examples are to "sweden1.raw" and "Irwin.raw"; if you find "sweden1.hgt" and "Irwin.hgt" you can assume that these are the actual files; we didn't change the file format, just the extension, to resolve the confusion with the TER files (which were originally also in RAW format, talk about "designed to confuse").

 

But --- suppose you can no longer locate the .TER and the .HGT/RAW files: In that case reinstalling version 4.023 could be justified, to open the scenarios there and to extract the map data from those scenarios. That way you'd have scenario specific parts of those maps which you can then convert in 4.1 (convert "from TER", in this case), and afterwards you'd choose to replace the map (and use what you just converted).

This is admittedly a rather stony and convoluted migration path, but if the original source data are lost, what can we do. This is the next best workaround, other than simply giving up on it.

[Ssnake]

As it happens, I found the Irwin and sweden1 height maps on my computer, but not the TER files.

13011-4157-legacy-map-conversion.rar

[Volcano]

Regarding the questions in this thread:

 

The "issue" is that the new system is not fully understood since the update came out one day ago. This is to be expected and as I had said, there will be growing pains. The issue is that we all know the old way, and we have to understand the new way. This will take some time.  There is information available (the release notes I thought), but we will also work to provide more information elsewhere too.   A lot of this is due to the natural desire to just dive right in and hit the ground running, converting everything ASAP.

 

Let's try to bring a couple of things into the light here:

 

1. Gibson, with all due respect, its difficult to help you via the forum here, given that everyone is busy and being able to verbally figure out what you are doing is going to naturally be better, and quicker to do, and less frustrating for everyone. I recommend that you talk to someone on Teamspeak to help you understand the process. Its also confusing to figure out the issue over many posts that are sometimes contradicting each other and superseding the other. Let me know when and where and we can try to help over voice.

 

2. Raven434th, I have explained how to convert 4.0 scenarios to 4.1 here:

 

But if you are talking about converting a map into 4.1, then its even simpler. I will type a similar post about that soon (I thought it was unnecessary at the time, but I guess that is not the case). I will get on that as soon as possible.

 

3. This is described above in my post.  If you are having a map that is basically empty there, then it is because of one of two reasons:

 

a) You are using a map that is extracted from a scenario (like one that has "sce_" on the front of the name, which means its pretty much empty except for the specific place the parent scenario modeled - which is exactly how it worked in 4.0 (all the way back to 1.0 actually).

 

OR (more likely)

 

b) You are choosing an autocreated base map -- autocreated base maps are BLANK, they are height data only.  You are simply choosing the wrong map to replace in the scenario.

 

Looking at your two examples, off the top of my head here are some replacements:

 

FAKE_EASTFIN5   -->  sce_FAKE_EASTFIN10

73 Easting RWC   --> NTC Ft Irwin CA 50km_10m  

 

In the case of 73 Easting RWC, this map does not exist in 4.1, which tells me it is a community scneario. Here is the simple issue that is unavoidable: there are maps that the community created that will need to be converted. Once that happens, scenarios will need to be updated to point to those maps and then everything is off and running (this only has to happen ONCE).  The NTC map I mention would probably work well enough in the mean time (being that the height map is NTC -- this is the most important part).

 

Beyond that, we converted maps that were required by the scenarios that are in the SB installer. Other maps in the community were not converted, because it would be ridiculous to have done that, due to file size, time and the fact that no one knows which map is the most recent. This is where the community will come in and have to convert their maps to 4.1 and then upload them to SB.com.  This is something that we will have to work through in the coming weeks, as SB.com sets up a method to share those 4.1 map files.

 

Once community maps start getting updated, then so too will community scenarios as well. If someone in the community has made a scenario, and if they care enough about the scenario, then they will update the scenario to use the 4.1 maps. If they don't care about the scenario, or if the user isn't active anymore, then whoever likes the community scenario enough to play it will have to update the scenario.  You can update any scenario in a matter of a couple of minutes, but the issue is of course choosing the correct map to replace it with.  No one can really answer that except for the scenario designer (or someone who is experienced enough to know the map just by looking at the filenames). In most cases though, the map might be tailored to the scenario and so it needs to be extracted into a TER in 4.0 (which is a normal process to anyone who made maps and scenarios), and then that needs to be converted into a delta map in 4.1.

 

So let's take a step back, calm down, and I will create a post later about map conversions in the Support Forum.  Anything beyond that will likely require some additional help which (as mentioned) would be easiest to provide verbally rather than forum posts.  Eventually the goal would be to get a detailed SBwiki page up and running (of course), but please be patient.

 

 

 

 

 

[Gibsonm]

Update:

 

1st map:

 

I binned everything I've done so far and started over.

 

For the "delta obsessed" there aren't any - its just an attempt to convert "a" map, not an edited version of an existing map.

 

I used the TER update option. Why?

 

Because I tried the HGT option and even though it "automatically updates" the TER file I got a file with no vegetation, roads, waterways, etc.

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Gibsonm]

Volcano,

 

Thanks. The problem with verbal support is I'll have to write it out and take screen shots as we go anyway, but anyway.

 

I was intending to create something with step by step instructions screen shots, etc. based on my success here (or otherwise).

 

My key concern was trying to get something sorted for a session in about 27hours. We started something in 4.023 and I wanted to finish it in 4.175.

 

Now that that is done (caveat: test session in about 2 hours) I can try and sort things out at a more leisurely pace, but with a whole bunch of maps to do I don't really want to spend X days per map.

 

The second map is throwing up new challenges (buildings gone, vegetation different, to name but two known [as in things I've noticed] issues using the TER Map Conversion process).

 

With 1400+ Terrain files to convert, I had hoped for "drag and drop" simplicity.

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by Gibsonm

[Ssnake]

Converting a map from HGT will, indeed, convert only the elevation profile.

THEN you could convert the various TERs after the original HGT conversion was published as a base map. This will then store the TER conversions as delta maps, using less storage space.