Sage

I use 586.

Hi all, run into an unusual problem and hopefully someone here knows a fix for it. Browedit crashes whenever I try to access newer models or textures in the model/texture windows, or open a map that uses them. By 'newer', I mostly mean Ep 16.x assets, like some of the newer Prontera models, Lasagna, Terra Gloria, etc. This is particularly weird, because I set ro.xml to access the GRF files of my own server, which is very up-to-date, and all of those maps, models and textures work in-game. If it's any help, this is the error message I receive when opening these files in browedit's model/texture window: Does anyone know what can be done to fix this?

That is pretty decent! I would suggest three things to make it even better. First, the ground textures: The buildings and walls you use are all on the warmer side, color-wise, but the ground textures you use a a light blue-gray. I would suggest finding (or making) ground tiles that match the buildings better. Secondly: The lighting looks odd. Generally, you want to have the sun light (The one that casts the shadows) in the south-west quadrant of the map, casting shadows from south-west to north-east. That is how it is done in RO, and it looks best. Thirdly: The edges of the map are a bit plan, especially as the walls get taller. The walkable area is very close to the edge, and a black void at the edge of the map does not look good. I would advise duplicating what to have onto a bigger map (200x200) and decorating the outside edge. Put the city on top of a hill, add details with trees and rocks and cliffs.

Do you have your models and textures organized by broad categories like 'Nature'? This is not a good way to do things. I suggest becoming familiar with the nonsensical ASCII names for the majority of older assets in RO. (No, I'm not joking.) Model and texture assets are, for the most part, grouped together with other assets from the same RO update they came out in. The Amatsu assets should be grouped in the directory I highlighted there. If your texture/model list does not resemble this, you are using brow in a less-efficient manner. (In my opinion.)

Why can't you use terrain edit? If you aren't sure how, you'll want to go to Edit Mode > Detail Terrain Edit > pick a size. You can increase/decrease the size using + or -. Hover over a flat part of the map and copy it with C, and then past it over the room with P. To get rid of the textures, you can just hover over the ground textures and hit backspace to turn them into invisible tiles. (The yellow space.) If you want to re-use this part of the map, you'll probably want to get rid of the walls, too.

Having a better computer helps. I am not a hardware expert, so I can't say which exact component would help the most- My guess would be a greater CPU and GPU to a lesser degree. I upgraded to a much more powerful computer last winter and I seldom get lightmaps taking more than 1-2 hours to calculate, usually less. Chemi's advice is good, though. Lightmaps are usually the last thing I do when making maps after GAT and models and all that shit. Just leave it to run overnight or when you're out in town/at school/at work.

I would recommend deleting those lights and making your own. Calculating the entire map does not take that long, especially since Izlude is not that big. Don't quote me on this, but if generating the lightmap makes the entire map black, then it sounds like the existing lights weren't registering in the first place, so you have no reason to keep them.

Yup! That's how I did it. It's the Lutie snow texture. It took a few tries playing with the map in-game before I could get the elevation just right to mesh with the @clouds2 effect. I considered making a proper 'sky map' through a hex editor, but that's a pain in the ass, and having a thick 'cloud layer' meant I didn't have to model the bottom of the ship's hull. (Which would've been another big pain in the ass.)

Thanks for the nice comments guys. I don't really know what you're asking, so I'll just say something about the tutorials I thought about writing before. I've been pretty busy the past few months, and mostly working on commissioned maps or things not related to RO, which is why I haven't been super active on rA for a while. I'd still like to write tutorials sometime, though the sort I write would be more about mapping from a design/artistic perspective, and showing some of the techniques I use in my mapping, rather than just explaining how Browedit works. I don't really know where to start, though, or what people would find most helpful. If people are interested in me writing any sort of tutorials/guides for mapping, then I suggest posting or sending me a PM about what exactly they'd like a guide on. If a couple people send me some ideas on what they'd like to see, I can probably use that as a starting point and get something written. I'm a pretty busy person, so I don't want to write a guide if it's not something people want or will find helpful. So, yeah. Give me suggestions.

Updates like this really make me wish that RO's story was easier to follow.

In case it's a graphics card problem, try opening the client and then hitting ctrl alt del. My GPU is pretty recent and doing this seems to 'refresh' the associated graphical problems away whenever I'm ingame. You might want to try experimenting with the settings in your GPU's control panel, namely those tied to browedit or RO.

Just a small thing I whipped up for personal use and don't plan to release. It's not that great, I just thought it served as a decent example there.

This is pretty nice. I'm hesitant to give advice, since you said this is from two years ago, so take this with a grain of salt. I don't see any faults in the map itself, only the lighting- The faint, light green tint you've got going on changes the color of the temple's foundation tiles, which makes them not really match the actual models used.

You did a good job of sticking to a color palette and visual consistency, which is something a lot of mappers kinda don't. It's good! If you want to add a bit of variety to the floor, here's a fun tip I use on a lot of my maps. Assuming you've set the ambient light to something darker, like it looks you have, set up light spheres on the floor with a color value of 0/0/0 and make sure they don't cast shadows. Here's a sample image that should show you what that looks like: https://i.gyazo.com/ed3dfcddac286703fc1cebbc39ed0a77.jpg It takes half a second to do, but will make your ground textures a lot more interesting, especially when using repetitive square tile kinda textures.

So... Not sure how this came about. My copy of browedit would always freeze up for about 15 seconds when I opened up the texture select window and I'd get the message 'error: invalid nesting in texturefile', but then it would unfreeze and work just fine. Now it crashes the editor entirely, and this understandably makes it really difficult to work on maps. Does anyone know how to fix this?

This is really pretty good for your first map- Keep it up.

Yea, I've had one or two people bring up that issue to me in the past. Downloading Denny's map pack should fix the problem. In retrospect, I would guess that this problem came from me using some of her slightly modified models/textures in my work, since we're on the same server. There's a tree she used in one of those maps that's identical to one of Gravity's models, and must've accidentally used that one instead. I don't mind if people make their own minimaps, or modify/fix the maps I put out! Go for it.

Layout is on-point. As others said, you didn't just pull models and textures from every city in the game, which is good! That is what separates good mappers from mediocre ones. Here's a quick 'no-brainer' guide for a one-size-fits-all lightmap, which would really help add that finishing touch. You ready for this? First light: Put it up in the middle of the map, high in the air, big enough to cover the whole thing. Intensity should be 127, light falloff should be 0.01. Make sure it doesn't cast shadows. This is the light that makes your map not pitch-black. Second light: If you mentally divide your map into four quadrants, put this light somewhere high up in the bottom-left one, but not right at the corner of the map. Set the intensity to 100, make sure it's big enough to cover the whole map. Light falloff should again be 0.01. Make sure this one casts shadows- That's what it's there for. Now calculate lights, and -bam-, that is literally all you need to do for to get basic shadows on 99% of your maps, ever. Cool, huh? Bonus points: Put down some canopy models right on the floor, and calculate the lights. When the shadows are down, delete these- You'll be left with that cool canopy effect that they have in Payon in-game. (If you ever looked at Payon without shadows, you'd be surprised how much of it is just empty space.)

I did a bit of tinkering around with my graphics card's control panel, and found the 3D settings. With a bit of adjustment, I managed to fix it! Seems changing all the settings to higher quality ones fixed the issue. I can only assume that Windows automatic updates, or a generic update to my video drivers at some point during my break from mapping must've messed with it. The problem's fixed now- Thanks a whole bunch!

I don't think decreasing the water will make a significant difference. It's already pretty shallow as it is: 586 never used to do this- I haven't changed anything, but the problem seems to persist even on old maps I've made and Gravity's maps. I've been using 586 now for a few years, since 620 ran like shit on my machine the first time I tried it out. If nothing better comes up, I guess I'll try 620 out.

So, I recently started mapping again, and Browedit has this strange new graphical problem I haven't seen before. When I zoom out past a certain point in the editor, lines of the water layer appear over the ground, like this. But everything appears fine when I'm zoomed in fairly close, like so: I'm using Browedit 586. It's been on my computer for a year or two now, and I haven't changed any of its files or had any major updates to my PC over the past couple months, during which I took a break from mapping to tackle college. What's up with this? It never did this before. Anyone know how to fix this issue? It's only a visual thing, but it's pretty annoying.

This happens when copying textures or things from other maps via Global Height Edit! Clear the lightmap on the map giving you the error. This should fix the problem.

I like big dragons and I cannot lie.

Could these three off to the right be new mobs, I wonder? I want to say yes, but the color palette looks a little vibrant for RO. Maybe that's just me. Second opinions? I saw a list elsewhere with a bunch of NPC images added in a recent server maintenance, with a whole bunch of Puzzles and Dragons... dragons. Also knights. Like the one mob shown in this video. It'd be very cool if we get all of those creatures as new mobs- I think the dragons in RO are pretty mediocre. Except maybe Nidhoggur and Lost Dragon, those are pretty baller.