Trouble getting reliefTiles images to appear in the game
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I'm trying to add blue dots to my map to show where the canals are. The blue dots show up fine in my reliefTiles folder, but they seem to be totally overwritten in the actual view of the game, even with "Show Map Details" on. I tried using the "Tile Image Reconstructor" and just wound up with a totally blank PNG.
I think maybe part of the problem is that the base tiles have filenames with serial numbers and are all perfectly square, but the relief tiles are named after territories and are shaped like the territories, so maybe they're just not matching up properly. I don't know why not.
Anyone have insights or suggestions?
Sumatra in the original large map file (canal dots visible, which is good):
Sumatra Base tile (no canal dot visible, which I assume is appropriate because this is supposed to be black-and-white):
Sumatra Relief file (canal dot visible, which is good):
Appearance in TripleA (no canal dots visible, which is bad):
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@Jason-Green-Lowe said in Trouble getting reliefTiles images to appear in the game:
I think maybe part of the problem is that the base tiles have filenames with serial numbers and are all perfectly square, but the relief tiles are named after territories and are shaped like the territories, so maybe they're just not matching up properly. I don't know why not.
How did you create the relief-image? It's been a while, but IIRC the relieftile is just an additional layer that matches 1:1 the basetile. In other words: The relieftile files are named the same way as the basetile files.
For example file 2_3.png in the baseTile folder has its file 2_3.png relief layer placed in the reliefTile folder.
Your example images seem to indicate that it is not only the filename that does not match. Haven't you used the Tile Image Breaker to create the relieftiles from your relief-layer png?
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I've tried running (A) running the Relief Image Breaker in Other: Optional Things, and I've tried (B) running the Tile Image Breaker in Step 2: Map Utilities, and saving the images to reliefTiles.
The images in my post above were from plan A.
When I use plan B and turn Map Details on, I get the image below, which has the canal dots, but is losing all of the national colors that show who owns a territory, and that's not OK. There's also a NullPointerException, presumably because the Persian reliefTile is somehow missing.
What is the proper technique for creating the reliefTiles? I'm happy to follow instructions; I'm just not sure what to do.
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@Jason-Green-Lowe said in Trouble getting reliefTiles images to appear in the game:
What is the proper technique for creating the reliefTiles? I'm happy to follow instructions; I'm just not sure what to do.
Basically AFAIK it works like this:
While the basetile image defines the territories, seazones and borders only and are relevant for the polygon grabber., the relieftile image only adds another partly transparent layer that brings for example the streetmap-like view and the different blue scales of seazones offered in some maps - of course you are free to add whatever visual effect you like.
In the map.properties file you define the pixel size of your map. This pixel size must be exactly the same as the size of both of your images, the base-image as well as the relief-image.
In the image editor software you now would work on images of this size.
You would now create a base layer (basetile) and draw the outlines of the map. After that you would add another layer (with transparency ) on top and add for example the cartography and other visual stuff you might want. This additional layer is the relieftile image.You would save both layers as separate png-files, preserving transparency. The image breaker is used to break the basetile-image into the baseTiles directory of your map. Then you break the relieftile-image into the reliefTiles directory.
Do you know this document:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/master/docs/map-making/map-and-map-skin-making.md ?It gives a good overview about the TripleA-tasks when creating a map and the dependencies.
Creating the relief-image is more a task of image editing - but the dependencies with regards to the base-image are becoming obvious.
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Thank you, that makes sense; I'll give that a try! It wasn't clear from the github document, but your explanation is a good one. I only ever made the one image with one layer, so that explains why I'm getting an opaque cover-up. I'll go and make a separate, transparent image with the canal dots and then break that image up into relief tiles. I wonder what the heck is going on with the Persian tile, but I guess I can create that manually, since it's just the one.
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'NullPointerException' could be coming from the map.properties file. Check the spelling of the 'Players' for color setting of territory ownership. My problem came from 'Impassable' being spelled 'Impassible'.
Cheers...
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OK, relief images are now working properly. Thank you!
The NullPointerException went away on its own. Don't know why, but I'll take it! I checked my map.properties and there's no impassable color definition that I can see.
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@Jason-Green-Lowe said
The NullPointerException went away on its own. Don't know why, but I'll take it!
I like it when things fix themselves
