Palm trees on woodland theme

[Lumituisku]

 

So here is the thing. I have stumbled upon this once too many times now.  I am working or modifying scenario and want to change theme and then I start stumbling upon lone or sometimes groups of palm trees that are so out of place compared to rest of the terrain.

 

This has happened when I have been editing some very old scenarios.      But now I found palm trees from "Salisbury plains" map as well. 

 

So far I have spotted palm trees appearing on following themes on Salisbury plains map that i am currently using in mission I am working on. 

• Esim Woodland Summer
• Esim Woodland Autumn
• Esim Winter

 

I guess there isn't easy solution to this. Is there?

 

I once went to such length as to remove / change tree type  one after another. But that took so very long and I am not going to do that for missions that I intend to play with others.   

 

 

[CalAB]

I could be wrong but I think that if you open the theme editor you can identify the culprit in question and change it there.   If that’s the solution then save the theme and update any missions with the corrected change. 

[Ssnake]

I would be highly interested in map files which show no such thing in version 4.0 (or older) but which, on conversion, change other trees into palms.

This was reported by @gibsonm too but so far we could not replicate this behavior. I am convinced though, there is a bug in tilemap conversions which seems to be rather good at hiding. That bug has a very high priority for us.

[Gibsonm]

Thank you @Lumituisku, I was starting to think I was the only one.

 

[Lumituisku]

I am rather busy most of today so I am afraid I cannot be as much help with this as I wish I could.   However I can point the spot where I see that palm tree.

 

 

 

 

 

Also beside palm trees..  there is this weird tree or bush that doesn't behave as other trees when changing theme..  other trees change color whether it is Spring, summer, Autumn or winter.. this one doesn't

 

 

 

 

 

And beside this..  Prior to new version I saw this happening on Finnish map named Pahkajärvi.  But no longer in new version.    That was really odd  case back then as palms visibly appeared where there was no trees at all.  I guess back then those appeared in place of a bush.  But yesterday when I tried to reproduce that I wasn't able to.  

 

Also I have tried to recover some of Zipulis missions named "platoon in attack" or "Puolijoukkueen hyökkäys"  and when I converted that I 

used terrain named "Puolijoukkueen hyökkäys.ter" That I had extracted from mission in editor.  And height map  "sweden1.raw"  result was abundance of palm trees here and there. Sometimes in groups.  If that is any interest to you.. i could upload that map here too...  oh fuck.  I could but that would be very little of use as that was the case where I removed those palm trees one by one.   Oh... I have another one of those as Zipuli apparently made so many different map edits for each of the missions on same map area.  ill upload a edited terrain map "FakeEastfin2" instead that as well can be used with sweden1.raw height map.  On that there is palm trees so many here and there.   Though I am not sure if that is any use to you guys. 

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lPoj5nm9IAQJxX_CAIM5jkc-seeUg6Gc

 

once downloaded place it to

 

 

and in mission editor you should be able to use "Fake_eastfin2" terrain  on  north east part of the map -  very small area

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lumituisku]

That's all that comes to mind at this point. I will be going to sniffing mode to hunt more palm trees once my chores are done for today. 

[Gibsonm]

Ah ok.

 

My issue is slightly different and happens during the conversion / update process:

 

4.023:

 

 

4.157:

 

 

But as Ssnake mentioned, they are looking into it (as well as towns that disappear).

[Lumituisku]

Well...  I believe that all that I mentioned happens during conversion.  As prior to new version these maps had no palm trees.     there are palm trees on version 4.029.. and for some reason I find this very odd.. 

I clearly remember playing these maps and missions on these locations without.  Strange... 

 

Though on Salisbury plains case I can see why there would be palm tree on new version as well.  >.<     This old one in version 4.029 is easy to slip in.

 

[CalAB]

Ok.

So I took the time to download everything regarding the Salisbury Plain palm tree anomaly.  I've uploaded the files here.  the location near to the single tree is 51 degrees, 14 minutes, 8.58 seconds North and 2 degrees, 2 minutes, 54.52 seconds West.  When looking north from that position you see the tree plain as day.  Hope this helps.

metadata.mrf Salisbury_Plain2.ter

Salisbury_Plain-0_[autocreated_base].rar

Edited October 6, 2019 by CalAB

[Ssnake]

Our assessment of the situation so far is this:

 

The 'weird tree' here is a 'wattle' tree and it only has a 'TIS' and 'woodland' texture, so there's no other texture to use if the environment (winter/autumn/etc) changes. In which case it gets replaced by whatever Steel Beasts deems "at hand" which can, of course, deliver surprising results. But it doesn't seem to be a bug per se, just the fact that the Australian wattle tree would never be found in a non-summer climate. They basically have two seasons, "hot" and "everything's on fire", and in some blessed regions also "we're drowning from rain".

 

As 'Lumituisku' pointed out, some of the old maps (like Salisbury Plains) do actually have palm trees on them, it's just that the old models looked a lot less suspicious.

 

I guess the only thing we could do would be to make sure that at least all official eSim 'European' maps really do not contain any palm trees (although Spain and Italy and even some places on the English coast, or Mainau Island on Lake Constance have them, and they are Europe, too), and just pick 'a' 'European' tree that most closely looks like the old palm tree instead - and then you'd all have to replace the themes in your maps

 

Ultimately however I think it's one of the growing/transition pains where new approaches that allow for new things invalidate old tricks that are probably best described as hacks or poor compromises, requiring everybody at the time of their creation to squint - but everybody was squinting all the time, and the explicit goal of the paletted land objects in our new theme files was that everybody needs to squint less (creates wrinkles and makes you look unhappy).

[Volcano]

OK, lets be clear about several things:

 

1. Palm trees always existed on the standard themes, it is no different now.

2. The palm trees look different than how they appeared before, because the old palm trees were "fantasy" and the artist wanted to make some more realistic looking ones.

3. The palm trees on the maps shown in question (shown by Lumi) do exist on the map itself, and they are replaced now with other palm trees. It seems someone placed individual palm trees by mistake, or intentionally, I don't know, but the conversion is correct per se. If the individual palm tree bothers someone, then they would erase/replace it on the map, surely, since it always existed before. 

     (note: One reason why this might have happened is when someone making the map picked several types of "random trees" to place on the map, one of which was the palm).

4. Gibson's issue is something else entirely (apparently).

5. Just changing the default themes (to remove palm trees) is pointless (and a bad idea in general). The theme is embedded into the map, and if someone placed a palm tree on the map originally, then it will always be a palm tree unless someone replaces the theme, or removes/replaces the tree on the map.

6. The wattle tree never had a winter texture, ever, being that it was intended to be used on arid/dry maps.  Its no different with that tree in 4.1 since version 2.0 or 3.0 when the tree was added. Like the palms, and all the "AU" trees in general, the wattle was part of the standard map themes so someone must of placed on on this map by accident (or maybe they intended to - who knows).