[eTUT] Constructing custom wall sets with building and testing help files included

from Elemental Forums

 

CONSTRUCTING CUSTOM WALL SETS

 

I. Tips for understanding various  wall sections. Information on how to connect them together, and what they bring to your city

II. Tips and helper files for making your own wall set 

III. Testing the appearance of the custom wall set in game

I.

The walls around the Elemental cities are made up from 4 basic sections. There is the gate section, straight wall section , inner wall section, and the outer corner section.

Gate is made with a 2x2 tile that has a specific tag in .xml to make it use only middle half of the tile. In practice, the gate tile is not really a  2x2, but rather 2 1x1 tiles next to each other, but lumped into one.

Straight, inner, and outer wall sections use 1x1 tile.

You may, and should have several versions of straight, inner and outer wall tiles that share the same wall ending points, but have different clutter to fill the area both inside and outside your city, so when, for example, the game connects 3 straight tiles in the row, they don't all look exactly the same. The gate only needs one tile.

The objects you use to construct the wall itself should be exact same scale across all of your wall tiles, else you will have height/thickness difference issues. Clutter scales may vary.

It's also very important to keep in mind that all the sections share 2 certain connecting points across multiple tiles, and not adhering to those will result in gaps, overlaps and general ugliness in your wall.

So, how exactly do various wall sections connect into a single whole?


 How A, B, C and D  wall sections from the picture are oriented  in the builder's forge:

 

Note that the wall splits each tile in 2 sections: inside the city walls and outside the city walls.

The wall set is actually a great tool to bring more life to your city through the little details it can add. You can have one inner wall section have a statue inside, another add a water well with some trees, and another yet a bench and a weapon rack. Corners can have watch towers, etc. The variety is limited to only to your imagination and just how many tiles in total you are willing to create to make your wall and city appear more organic.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

II.

You have three options to go about creating your new wall set.

Option A

You can modify and save the existing kingdom/empire wall tiles under new name. For example, default basic empire fence set can be opened in the builder forge and then modified. The fence set has the following naming pattern:

Gate: F_Fence_Gate_01

Straight wall: F_Fence_Stight_01, F_Fence_Stight_02, F_Fence_Stight_03, F_Fence_Stight_04

Inside wall: F_Fence_Inside_01, F_Fence_Inside_02,F_Fence_Inside_03

Outer corner wall: F_Fence_Outside_01,F_Fence_Outside_02, F_Fence_Outside_03

Option B

You can use my wallset building help files instead of kingdom/empire tiles.  Click here to download.

Drop them into your ...My Documents\MyGames\Elemental\Tiles folder to be able to open them in the builder's forge.

Included in the archive is 1 Gate tile properly tagged in .xml to behave like a gate, 1 straight wall tile, 1 inner wall tile and 1 outer corner wall tile. They do not actually have any actual walls, but they have two spear poles each designating EXACT connecting points of the wall sections. You can put your own wall between these (not necessary in a straight line, just make sure that end points of the wall are meeting the spears!), safe in the knowledge that there will be no gaps or drastic overlaps. Small overlaps may or may not occur, depending on how well you can fit your wall between my spear poles.

It's generally a good idea to put a column/spire/small pillar and such at the end points of some section because they help mask the connecting irregularities. Trees can help as well. Just don't go overboard with them if you don't want your city to appear overrun with with greenery! For thicker castle walls towers work nice to hide the edges as well.

Towers also work as great corners instead of the actual wall, as long as their dimensions fit between the connecting points.

When you edit either kingdom/empire or builder help tiles, save them under a new name that makes sence. For example, if you making a wall set for expanded factions golem race, save your modified gate tile as ef_uu_golem_gate_01, outer wall section tiles as ef_uu_golem_outer_01, ef_uu_golem_outer_02, etc, etc, for the other sections.

Option C

Lastly,  you can make your new set from scratch. It's time consuming, requires some understanding of editing your tiles in .xml to properly align the connecting poitns of the walls, and I would rather not explain it in great detail unless someone specifically asks me!

I don't recommend it, because my first original wall set was a royal pain to create, and if I had the wallset help files I am providing you, I'd never bother!  I also feel that those tiles I provided are a good middle ground between editing the default walls and creating new ones out of nothing, so save yourself some time and don't do option C!

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

 

 

III.

After you have your wall tiles made, it's time to see how the set looks in game. 

For the sake of examples, let's assume you have named your tiles in the following pattern:


Gate: ef_uu_golem_fence_gate_01

Straight wall: ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_01, ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_02, etc.

Inner: ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_01, ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_02, etc.

Outer: ef_uu_golem_fence_outside_01, ef_uu_golem_fence_outside_02, etc


To see them in game, you have two options. Option A:  hook up the new wallset to a new race if you are working on that. And option B: use my helper files that include altered Altar raceconfig to start up a new game with Altar kingdom using the new wall as their basic fence.

OPTION A

You will need to do two things.

First, define a wallset and assign your new tiles to it. And second, tell your race to use the newly defined wallset as their base wall so you can see it right from the start.

Step 1

To define the wallset, you will need to bundle all your tiles in an .xml file and give them an internal name that can be then referenced.

For example, create an .xml file called TestWallset.xml with the following code and place it in your  mods folder together with the other .xml files for the race you are making a wall for

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<CityWallSets>

  <!-- Fence Set -->
<CityWallSet InternalName="test_wallset">

    <StraightIcon>gfx/TacticalIcons/Wall_Stright_Dotted.png</StraightIcon>
    <InnerCornerIcon>gfx/TacticalIcons/Wall_Inside_Dotted.png</InnerCornerIcon>
    <OuterCornerIcon>gfx/TacticalIcons/Wall_Outside_Dotted.png</OuterCornerIcon>
    <GateIcon>gfx/TacticalIcons/Wall_Gate_Dotted.png</GateIcon>

    <StraightSelectionIcon>gfx/City_Select_Stright.png</StraightSelectionIcon>
    <InnerCornerSelectionIcon>gfx/City_Select_Inside.png</InnerCornerSelectionIcon>
    <OuterCornerSelectionIcon>gfx/City_Select_Outside.png</OuterCornerSelectionIcon>
    <GateSelectionIcon>gfx/City_Select_Stright_2.png</GateSelectionIcon>
    
    <Straight>ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_01</Straight>
    <Straight>ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_02</Straight>
    <Straight>ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_03</Straight>
    <Straight>ef_uu_golem_fence_straight_04</Straight>

    <InnerCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_01</InnerCorner>
    <InnerCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_02</InnerCorner>
    <InnerCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_03</InnerCorner>
    <InnerCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_inside_04</InnerCorner>
    
    <OuterCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_outside_01</OuterCorner>
    <OuterCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_outside_02</OuterCorner>
    <OuterCorner>ef_uu_golem_fence_outside_03</OuterCorner>

    <Gate>ef_uu_golem_fence_gate_01</Gate>

    <Filler>K_Empty_01</Filler>
    <Filler>K_Empty_02</Filler>
    <Filler>K_Empty_03</Filler>

    <DefenseBonus>0</DefenseBonus>


  </CityWallSet>
  </CityWallSets>

End of quote

Notice <CityWallSet InternalName="test_wallset">. test_wallset will be internal name of the whole collection of the wall tiles that can be looked up from the other .xml files.

<Straight> tag defines straight wall sections.

<InnerCorner> tag defines the inner inside wall sections.

<OuterCorner> tag defines the outer corner wall sections.

<Gate> tag defines the gate section.

 

Step 2

Find a ...RaceConfig.xml file for the race you'd like to test the wallset with, and find the line tagged with <DefaultCityWallSet>.

If the race was based on a Kingdom it would usually look like this:

<DefaultCityWallSet> CityWalls_Fence </DefaultCityWallSet>.

And if the race was based on an Empire, it would look like this:

<DefaultCityWallSet>CityWalls_Fallen_Fence </DefaultCityWallSet>.

You will need to replace either CityWalls_Fence or  CityWalls_Fallen_Fence with the name you gave to your wallset. In this case it's test_wallset.

And lastly, save your ...RaceConfig.xml and start a new game with the modified race to see your wallset in game!


OPTION B

Get my .xml helper files. DONWLOAD THEM HERE.

You will need to drop them in your mods directory in My Documents folder. Also, VERY IMPORTANT that you open rheia_test_wallset.xml and change the tilenames between <Stright>, <InnerCorner>, <OuterCorner> and <Gate> tags to YOUR tiles' names. Otherwise this won't work!

Then, start up the game as kingdom of Altar to see how the wallset looks in game. The walls may use Altar color scheme, but otherwise, it should be just fine to do it this way.

Don't forget to remove those two files when you aren't modding and just want to play the game! Poor kingdom of Altar will appreciate it!

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

And this concludes the small tutorial on wallsets. It's oriented more towards people who, like me, work more with the builder's forge and a lot less with the actual in game code. 

I hope it is helpful, instead of confusing, especially the third section about testing the appearance of the wallset in game. I can usually find my way around .xml code, but I tend to avoid it whenver I can, so it probably shows...

If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer to the best of my ability, and I am sure other more experienced modders will chip in if I make a fool out of myself ;).

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Great stuff! For the record, the wallsets looks exactly the same in XML when you use them for fortress, fort or castle buildings. They are just hooked up differently, ie you won't write it in the raceconfig.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I can't edit since the page is b0rked, but I want to post before I don't remember. I think it would be of great help if you included a sample wallset xml, and say replaced the wallset for kingdom of altar with it. That should help people get started extra fast.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Sure, I will do that.

Will edit it in a little later... hopefully a moderator will fix the thread by then so I can include it in Part III post for the sake of organization :/.

Edit: Updated part III with Kingdom of Altar as test bunnies for new wallset.