FATE - a user-friendly alternative to EasyGen

[General_Eisenhower]

That is a great tool! Much easier than heightmaps imo. Can’t wait for the textures to be implanted. Great work!

Also, some sort of smooth tool would be nice. Great work and I cant wait to see more of FATE!

[EterneX]

i cant figure out how to make it raise up, i think that i have tried everywayi can, please help me

Thanks

[kamikazee]

You point to a vertex and the little arrow with a disc under it should pop up on that vertex.

Then make sure your mouse if over the arrow, and drag upwards.

Are there more steps to it?

[Yojo]

just a question on this because i might use this.
can u open .map files with it? or u have to start a map with that program? or?

[kamikazee]

Importing .map files ain’t done yet, CooperHawkes will probably include it in a later release. (Don’t forget this is an alpha)

Now, you need to start in this program to create your terrain and export a .map.
Of course, every time you want to change your terrain, the .map file needs to be exported again.

[DerSaidin]

Thats AWESOME.

[DerSaidin]

I found a bug: If you change the selection radius while the widget is not on the mesh then you get a crash.

[CooperHawkes]

I get an error message when I export the file to map format:
“Error updating shaderlist.txt. Unable to find shaderlist.txt! Please add the following lines manually: fate_alphascale test_fate.”
I wonder if it is a real error.

No, it’s not a real error… more of a warning.
This happens when you do not save the map in etmain\maps or if there is no directory for storing the shaderlist (etmain\scripts). The reason for that behavior is the search for the shaderlist which is done relative to the map file. (or to make it short: FATE tries to write in …\scripts)

Is it possible to also import Easygen files?

nope… and I am not planning to do that… I didn’t have a look at the easygen file format yet, but I fear it might involve some kind of reverse engineering…

[…] “snap everything to grid”.
[…]
Then I tossed in some entities and compiled. There where alot of sparklies in the map.

There should not be a need for snap to grid, because FATE snaps the vertex positions automatically to the nearest “grid 1” position during the map export. However, in some rare occasions I was able to reproduce those sparklies. I tracked that down to Radiant saving the vertices with a small rounding error, e.g. 4.0 becomes 3.99998.
Unfortunately, if you export a very thin mesh, the generated tetrahedral brushes might be very sensitive to such errors. Maybe I will be able to find a workaround for this. I have already something in mind, but this idea might eliminate the possibility of texturing the bottom side of the mesh (something that is not working right now, but I wanted to do).

Technically, I believe it uses Open Source libraries that should be easy obtainable in Linux.
I hope he can fix the portability issues… (Some things like file handling without streams are not directly portable if you use OS calls, or if write code for a not-so-standard compiler like Borland)

FATE makes use of the same libraries GtkRadiant uses… with the only difference that it uses the corresponding C++ libs instead of the crappy C functions.
I am using streams, so file handling is not the main issue (if you don’t take Micro$ofts idea of a slash (’/’ vs. ‘’) into account). Using streams also means that you do not get maximum performance while exporting a map… but… oh well

[…] Then make sure your mouse if over the arrow, and drag upwards.
Are there more steps to it?

Just in case some of you guys have trouble to hit the arrow: you can increase the size of the widget… I just wanted to make sure that you do not miss this feature

can u open .map files with it?

not yet… the next “bigger” release will support static map import, i.e. you cannot change the map geometry and it doesn’t get exported, but you can see it. Maybe - far in the future - I will add the possibility to import the terrain brushes of an existing map for further processing.

I found a bug: If you change the selection radius while the widget is not on the mesh then you get a crash.

Thanks for reporting that. Actually, I already tracked that down to the same error Lanz pointed out earlier

[Loffy]

OK, then I can ignore the “cannot find shader” warning.
About the “snap to grid”: I’ve stopped that some time ago and the problem did go away. No sparklies anymore.
Here’s a screenshot from a test-map:

Terrain works fine. Must work some more on shaders, to get better blending.
(I also get dark spots here and there. Must fix that too, but it’s off topic.)
FATE is really easy to work with once you get into it after a few hours/days!
//Loffy

[EterneX]

i was also wondering may put this on my website as a free download?

Thanks

Eddie

[CooperHawkes]

In this early stage of development I would prefer a link to the web site instead of a direct download… just to make sure that people will get the most recent version. However, thanks for the offer to host a DL mirror

[EterneX]

no problem i willl just put the link then, thats fine with me.

Thanks

Eddie

[SiX]

WOW, this tool is fantastic

I may use this to update the terrain on my nemo map \o\

[flower.Hercules]

I was just wondering if you had a projected release date for Linux? I am really looking forward to it, this looks incredible.

[Jaquboss]

Woot! Terrain making for mapping noobs
Generated terrain looks really nice compared to existing maps , good job!

[DAbell]

Hi, All

Now i’m not sure if i’m being dumb or something isn’t working right i can’t this program to do anything for me at the moment apart from give me a migraine, could some one just briefly explain how it should work. I’m not a thick person but instead of beating my head against a wall trying to figure it out i thought i would just ask the question.

Thanks In Advance

<DJ>

[D3C0Y]

just place your mouse over the arrow or the circle in the grid and drag

[CooperHawkes]

I was just wondering if you had a projected release date for Linux?

Expect the release of 0.13 alpha in the next 2 or 3 days… This release will include a Linux version.
In the meantime you might want to have a look at this screenshot:

If you look carefully you can even see the JPEG artifacts of the imported heightmap

[flower.Hercules]

That is awesome I installed Windows on a spare machine just to use this program and, while it doesn’t make me want to use Windows, I would sacrifice my linux time for Windows time if I had to; thanks for the quick response too :o Is that Openbox you are running?

[KA_nig]

Linux… nice. I’ll just wear the Windows version by now.

I Remember quite well the anal pain while creating the terrain of my map (Bastogne) with "Easy"gen…

I’ve got a Question, CooperHawkes… how about shaders with blendings in the terrain?

How would that be? It’s the most difficult thing I had to do… and finally I drop it and my terrain now only has a single texture, without blendings…