Merricksdad's Placeholder Tileset

This package contains a placeholder tileset; a kind of tutorial. I set out to produce a 3 height transition tileset with a few crosser types, and leave the tiles untextured, so that anybody building a tileset could use these as placeholders for their own tiles. Combining their own tiles with these into a new SET file, or otherwise overwriting my "TMD05_#####" tile filenames with their own file, would allow the builder to see what tiles they were still missing, without breaking the toolset, or otherwise not being able to view their own tiles they had already completed.

Within the package are approximately 600 tiles, arranged into a HAK file, complete with SET file. The set contains tiles for level 0 and three height transitions, which, via previous work by SEN, we can now show without external modification via the GFF editor, or by using other messy placement hacks.

In addition to 3 height transitions, this set contains a base-level water terrain (no waterfalls or height transitions), and a complete set of smooth crossers for ALL tile combinations, and adjusts only edges where terrain jumps one height transition. Meaning you can smooth base level to water, base level to +1, +1 to +2, and +2 to +3, but not other combinations such as +1 to +3.

This set contains at least one tile for any given purpose, and may include up to 3 tiles total which fit any given need. Some of these alternate tiles include diagonal ramps between two adjacent height transitions.

Also included in this package is a texture named "TX_GRAD05", which if put in your override directory, or placed into the given HAK file, will make all but 6 of the packed tiles a color gradiant by height. Intended water tiles are shaded blue, base level is green, +1 is golden, +2 is dark gray, and +3 is light gray. This does not carry from tile to tile, unless all corners on 4 adjacent tiles are of equal height and base position. It is meant only to show the height transition on any individual tile, not the entire map.

I have also included a Open Office spreadsheet (ODS file) containing SEN's original height adjustment details for a tileset containing up to 4 height transitions. I have modified the data for tile 0200 after finding that it did not match up to what was actually used in his tileset, and would neither work for this one. I have also included, for ease of use, an Aliases column, so that if you create tiles which are rotated in a different x/y facing than the ones he made, you can find your corner combination on that set of columns and find the correct offset and modification data.

The SET file included also adds a variable for each tile entry. You can now find, via custom programs, or by using Windows INI reading software, a variable on each tile named "TileCode". Instead of reading individual data, such as TopRight, or Left, you can now fetch all data with a single request of TileCode. You will get a single string code in the following format:

[top left][top right][bottom left][bottom right]_[top edge][left edge][right edge][bottom edge]

This will give you a readout for a tile such as 0011 with the smooth crosser applied across the height transition: "0011_0ss0"

In addition to the SET file modification, each of my tile MDL files contains a dummy structure named "tileData" with the following children:

• offset_#
• corners_####
• crossers_####

Offset represents the value the tile is shifted in Z-axis. Offset_1 represents a tile which was moved -1 height transition. In the case of this tileset, that value is -300.0cm.

Corners and Crossers both match up with their respective parts as noted in the TileCode entry in the modified SET file.

Tileset TMD07 (Placeholder Tileset 4W) DOES NOT contain tileData blocks, and does not contain special tile data entries in the SET file.