Merricksdad's Granitelands Tileset (Now EE)

!! EE Update !!

This is an EE update to the 2015 Granitelands Tileset.

• Now includes tile-edge fixes to hide seams that were very visible
• All tiles are now smoothed
• Includes texture-border fixes to reduce those patchy polygons that were out of place
• Includes low-poly walkmeshes now with unwalkable space on steep slopes
• Tiles are by-name and by-index  replacements for the 2015 set, so you don't need to rebuild areas from scratch
• Tiles are NOT exactly the same shape on the x-y plane, and verts will have been moved by up to 1m from 2015 locations, so you may need to update your placeable positions slightly
• Ground textures have been replaced with the fancymapped terrain textures from Windspear Hills Tileset
• Water textures have been replaced with water from the Deep Caverns Tileset
• The HAK filename is different, so swap out the old one for the new one. I didn't want to force you to overwrite your files if you wanted to keep the old one.

Unresolved issues:

• Set file has not been updated to supply proper pathing nodes
• Walkmesh does not include obscuring terrain, only non-walk terrain
• All the work I put into shadows has been removed. The goal is to wait for the new renderer before messing around with that again.
• Underwater terrain does not yet have a separate texture. Again, the goal is to wait for the new renderer before getting too specific with water.
• Supplied water texture is not fancymapped, and just uses the old TXI functions.

Previous Version Details

This tileset features a 4 elevation in one tile combination, with an additional level-zero water and shallows. It currently has no on-tile vegetation, streams, roads, paths, or connecting water features. It also has no buildings or places for door placement.

I've separated the tileset download into specific option packages. Available packages include:

• Separate file for WOK meshes. This allows you to download specific walkmesh options. The current option is free and open, allowing the player to roam freely. A future release will offer a closed walkmesh, blocking movement over anything over 45 to 60 degree slopes.
• Separate file for textures. Currently this offers a very large animated water texture from my animated water kit, also extracted from games like TorchLight2. Feel free to substitute in another texture, or remove the texture hack entirely, switching to override files.
• Separate file for visible meshes. This allows you to download just the updated visual meshes as they progress, without having to download everything else. It also allows you to download specific seasonal varieties of this tileset in the future. The next one which should become available will be populated with trees and boulders.
• Separate file for gamedata files. This currently includes the SET and construction palette for the toolset. It will eventually include an edgetiles file.
• Separate file for a testing module.

In the future, you will be able to download additional varities of each, or just plain updates. As extensions come out, additional named files will be added, and gamedata files will be updated or otherwise packed with the update kits.

If you choose to, you can instead download the "md_granitefull" package, which includes all the hak files needed for the full tileset experience, but does not include the testing module.

A Script-Built Tileset

Granitelands is my first released script-built tileset. Almost every single aspect of what you see in the tileset was constructed basically by a robot. I put far more work into the scripts than I did ever touching the meshes. Over parts of the creation process, I did tweak a few verts here so that I could learn how to teach a script to do the same. Examine the tiles and you will see that the underlying MaxScripts did the following:

• Corner elevations of all tiles
• Contour smoothing on height +1 and +2 transitions, as well as into shallow water
• Rocky noise on all tiles, and the smoothing afterward
• Adjusting mesh edges so that less jagged areas existed, simply by taking the more relaxed of two directions any cross-edge could be placed on a 4-vert polygon.
• Walkmesh creation from more complex mesh
• Shadowmesh creation and optimization
• Section division for texture application
• Water placement
• Application of Sen's multiple raise system

Four Height Transitions In One

Thanks to Sen, and the release of Sen's Multiple Raise System, this tileset makes use of up to 4 height transitions on a single tile, allowing the player to move from very high regions to very low regions, including multiple depths of water, within a very small 2D area. Because of that system, we no longer need multiple levels represented by differnet terrain types, or the limitations that come with that. We can now just use the raise/lower tool until we reach a maximum height of the toolset.

Special Thanks

This project is by no means just mine anymore. So many have provided input, and support. I'd like to list some names below, but don't think that if your name isn't on the list that you have not been beneficial enough to me.

• Sen for the Multiple Raise System and talking me through some of it while I figured out the bugs.
• OldTimeRadio for supplying endless links to what I need, and helping me understand some of what I am reading. And for pointing me toward the NWN Omnibus multiple times. And for scientifically studying the engine to reveal things we can use which we really should have had access to on day one.
• Rolo Kipp for kicking off this site project and making everything easy to find, and learn from, and for get those people interested who can actually help produce it. Also for encouraging me to document stuff as I go, so other builders can learn from me, and/or pick up where I leave off if I ever cancel a project.
• OldMansBeard for conversation and more importantly for CleanModels3. While I don't use it like I should, just watching it and learning to understand what it does and why is helping me tremendously.
• Joco for NwMax, even if I am using the old version, because you know I would not have bothered as much if somebody didn't do at least that much work for me.
• More names to come, but you know who you are!