ATS mapping manual

[Reinhard]

Had a first look, you are really on to something. That with the dot-command was new to me. Are there really 4 identical pictures or did I just not get it?

"Tunnel" and "Terrain shadows" I don't know, also, it doesn't seem to be something obvious, and in ETS2 (ATS map is terra incognita for me) the first isn't used, the latter always. At least what I remember, and what I checked.

"smooth detail veg." is related to grass on terrain. Seems to have an effect on density, and how diverse it becomes (more flowers?).

Hope you don't mind if I copy and paste a file from the desktop. Use information of it, if you want:

Code: Select all

    F6 drop object(s) to ground
ALT F6 align object(s) to ground vertically 


(only in free cam mode)
UP   lift object(s) 
DOWN lower object(s) 

(only in free cam mode)
END  rotate object(s) around X axis (SHIFT-END  for other way round)
DEL  rotate object(s) around Y axis (SHIFT-DEL  for other way round)
INS  rotate object(s) around Z axis (SHIFT-INS  for other way round)

(only in arial view-mode, omly if more than one objects are selected): 
           r  rotate several selected objects around shared Y axis clockwise 90 degrees
SHIFT      r  rotate several selected objects around shared Y axis counter-clockwise 90 degrees
CTRL       r  rotate several selected objects around shared Y axis clockwise 1 degree
SHIFT-CTRL r  rotate several selected objects around shared Y axis counter-clockwise 1 degree
ALT        r  ramdom model rotation dialog

While moving nodes:
Force connect: ALT
Force disconnect: CTRL

Brush: enter brush mode (b), click on white quad
Brush pick: enter brush mode (b), shift click on brushed (red) quad

[116808apd]

Good list.

I haven't made a chapter about all the hotkeys yet. Maybe not a bad idea to have one chapter that covers them all.

As for the images, they display the different selection states of the . key. I noticed that they are a bit unclear. Will fix that in the next version and create a better example image.

[Cadde]

Excellent work! (so far, still skimming)
As i am just skimming it (not interested in mapping currently) i have encountered one thing (possibly more as i progress) i would like to comment on.

PMD material path lengths

When editing a path in HxD you are not allowed to change the length of the file. So if the old path is 20 characters long the new path must be equally long!

While you are practically (as in, how practical it is) correct. The strings (paths) are null terminated and if the original string was 20 characters then you can have it shorter easily by just leaving null (zero value) bytes after it.
If you want to extend the length of the string then you HAVE to go to the list of material file offsets in the PMD (which in itself exists at an offset and is 4 bytes * material count in size) and alter each offset there AFTER the path whose length you are extending.
The "funny" thing is, as you do this, a lot of other data may be affected too.

However, the point is that they don't HAVE to be 20 characters long if they originally were 20 characters long. They can easily be shorter. And if the user is "one of those guys" that do a lot of file editing (Like the PPD editor that FLD uses) then writing a program to make these changes would be an option. The file format for PMD files is known, thanks to 50Keda and his Blender2SCS implementation. The python scripts are openly readable and can be seen as a "manual to the file formats" for models.

On a side note, since we are planning to go open source with Mods Studio in the future. I could just clean up and publicly post our PMD and PMG file reading/writing code. (It's a direct port from Python to C#)
Then, writing a utility/editor on top of that is easy as pie. May not be user friendly, just like the other application, but it would have the possibility to work with any of the data in a PMD file.
PMG files are possible too but i am pretty sure no-one want's to reimplement blender so it would just be renaming of parts etc.

[MandelSoft]

Had a first look, you are really on to something. That with the dot-command was new to me. Are there really 4 identical pictures or did I just not get it?

"Tunnel" and "Terrain shadows" I don't know, also, it doesn't seem to be something obvious, and in ETS2 (ATS map is terra incognita for me) the first isn't used, the latter always. At least what I remember, and what I checked.

"smooth detail veg." is related to grass on terrain. Seems to have an effect on density, and how diverse it becomes (more flowers?).

Tunnel: Don't know either
Terrain shadows: Though it's turned on by default, it's better to turn it off to boost performance. If you see floating shadows, from e.g. trees, however, turn it back on again
Smooth detal vegetation: this makes the vegetation smoothly transit beween one terrain texture and the other. Will be on by default in the France DLC.

[rcraig42]

I have a few questions I cannot find an answer for:

How does the game know which time/distance scale to use for roads you add? If it is simply the placement of speed limit signs, what is the cutoff speed limit for city vs highway scale?

Is there something in a def file that controls city speed limits?

How does the in game map know what label to put on highways? is it just signs on the Highway again?

I see people talking about looking up or changing the scale in the map editor, but I've found no clue how to do that.

[rcraig42]

Okay found the that the village/city/large city traffic areas set the time/distance scale to city in the game, and the country def file sets default limits.

BUT,

Now I have discovered the problem I was having has nothing to do with that setting. For some reason, every single intersection prefab in the city I'm working on acts like it has a 25 MPH speed limit sign in the middle, and there is no setting I have been able to find that would set a default speed that low. I tried a speed limit traffic area, no effect. I checked the speed limits def file for the country, nothing lower than 30. Nothing in the prefab settings jumps out about how to set that. I tried clicking add signs and that seemed to do nothing. There's gotta be some way other than putting a new speed limit sign on the far side of every single intersection to counteract that. This is Miami in the Coast to Coast Mod, a large city with lots of intersections to have to do that with, and leaving the speed limit at 25 just eats up a little too much city time on a job, not as bad as it was when the time/distance scale wasn't working, but still a bit too slow.

On a more on topic note, it seems that every single guide and tutorial on getting the map editor set up and going, including this one, skip over the step of closing the console before it will actually work. That's not as obvious as people doing the tutorials and guides seem to think.

[TomDooley]

Well, I'd definitely be interested in creating some highways, especially how to assign some terrain/geography to them.
Looking forward to it

Tom

[veso266]

Hi if anyone find a better way of fiding sectors you modify (if editing usa map) please tell me
but I find it easies to just look into usa.bak folder there you will only sectors you modify (just have to remove .0 at the end of the file) instead of manualy writing down each of them

the onlything I don't know is if you can do manual backup (not sure when the editor makes backups) because latest changes are not there

[Blackspots]

No, you don't grab files out of the /usa.bak/, you grab them out of the /usa/ folder. The bak folder is for sectors before your newer modifications.

But basically, you zoom all the way out on the map editor and select the sectors in the /map/usa/ folder and put in your /map/usa/ folder in the where you have your mods before merging that into the map mod you are working with.

Alternatively, you can click on the column above the date in the /map/usa/ folder to organize it where the date is the newest to oldest and grab the ones with the most recent date.

[Reinhard]

I simply put all the sector files into the mod. But I remember that I tried the same approach with the dates when the sector-based system was introduced.

From time to time, you need to do a recompute. At the very beginning of that, all the sectors will be written with a new date/time. Even sectors you never touched. So you can only identify sectors you have touched "since then".

And better don't even try to avoid recomputing. With every major game patch it is part of the conversion process.

If you really insist on to have only changed sectors in your mod, you should notice the sector numbers and copy only those.