EMBX61's New Work in Progress Thread

[embx61]

The roofs have a bend in them and some roofs ridges are not centered on the houses. so one side of the roof is longer then the other side and so the bends are different too.
If A dormer is placed on such a roof the back will be not long enough to reach the roof part where it have to go in.

If I make the dormer longer at the end so it fit the long side roof but if placed on the short side the back will go through the roof and will be seen.
If I make the Dormer longer at the bottom and players place it above an overhang it will get through the roof and will be seen.

If I release it so the player has to be very careful were to place the dormers I will get bombarded with questions and complaints why it not fit on some roofs and will be asked to make more and more dormers so they fit that roof too.
But beside that I rather release mods which work as right as it can be in the scope of what is possible with the Mod Kit so the players not have to be thinking about where something can be placed or not.
I think it will save a lot of frustration from both Modder and Players alike.

For example Most of Red's NMT Houses roofs are all the same in a set. Same angle, same height, and same width.
So just 1 dormer, or 2 if decided to do a double wide one, will fit everywhere without having to worry about protruding on the other side or bottom of the roofs.

This is a case just as Luke has added Modding support later. The Mod Kit is quite limited because it was a after thought and Banished was too far developed to integrate more modding options without doing a lot of work.
The dormers adding to a set what is finished is about the same. It is just too painful and too much work to make it work right.

But in new housing set(s) I plan to do I will incorporate separate dormers from the start.

Good news is that chimneys(Even though if players place those on top of a overhang as they go through the roof a floating chimney is seen where overhangs are), Porches, and Veranda's will work.

But if most players want dormers for the sets and not mind being careful I can add the dormers.

[elemental]

I can understand the difficulties of making dormers fit every roof and I certainly don't mind if they can only be placed on some roofs. I would still use them. 

[embx61]

Worked on a Veranda.
First I made a elbow so it could wrap around a 4x4 house and then it hit me that is not possible unless i ghost it because the footprint only can be square and not a L shape.
Ghosted is out because i need a floor object. They will be road enabled.

So I had to make it in two pieces a 4x1 and a 1x1 corner piece for the corners and fit it all nicely together.
Because my roofs are curved a bit it was a pain in the neck to line it all up but it is very, very close at the moment.
A little bit more tweaking and it should be as it need to be.

If this is all done you guys can co crazy like wrapping all around a house or even use different thatch then on the main roofs.
Still a lot of work to do.

The houses are in 3 wood colors so I want to make the porches too in 3 wood colors.
Then the 5 thatched roofs as F key for each veranda roof part.

I have to find some icons too.

I plan to make also a 1x3 veranda so they fit the 3x4 houses. The corners can luckily be the same.
Made also some 2x1 porches and need to line the wooden boards up with the Veranda ones.

Then need 1x1 porches too.

EDIT: I am not sure how the AO mapping going to be. AO depends on shadows of objects close by the object to be mapped and because the verandas are AO mapped separately from the houses there is no back wall as the wall of the house would be if AO mapped in one. I cannot AO map in one either because the shadows of a house without a veranda would be weird. The walls of the houses would be way darker.
I do a dummy wall just for the AO and see if that can be done that way so at least the program thinks there is a wall object. If AO mapping is done I delete the dummy wall and see if it works in game.

A spoiler

[Tom Sawyer]

Some time ago I played around with the idea of a modular red cottage consisting of a base building and various porches, doors, fences and shutters to be combined by the player. One problem was AO as you describe it. A model can only have a fixed AO texture and it cannot be correct in both cases with and without a porch for example. There are some other issues but it is still an interesting idea.

[embx61]

Yes indeed.

That is why I just make a dummy simple box as wall just for the AO so at least the shadow will be okay and hopefully the snow on the ground too as the back will be closed as it will be in the game if attached to a house.

Snow on the ledges of the houses is a problem because the AO map was generated without the porches in place.
The ledges are only a few pixels wide and because it will be pretty dark under the verandas hopefully it is hard to notice.

[Tom Sawyer]

What I did with the combined herbalist cabin was joining the other parts in Blender only when baking AO (in this case the roof plus details around and vice versa). So the shadows were correctly calculated even without the parts included in the base building. Worked perfectly but for a modular house you have the problem, that it looks wrong if this certain porch is not used (dark patches on the wall etc..)

[elemental]

I like the look of those verandas. And that's not even my favourite texture from your house set. Can't wait to see where this goes to. Thanks for doing this. 

[embx61]

Made some progress on the Wooden Houses Addon Set.

Verandas and the corner pieces are done in three wood colors and 5 F Key thatch variants.

Now back to the 2x1 and 1x1 porches and line them up as good as possible to the verandas if both are placed.
Then do the 3x1 Verandas so they fit the 3x4 houses as well.

[elemental]

I just had an idea with the verandas. You mentioned that you can't make a complete corner piece because the footprint would overlap the house. What if you made the footprint 1 tile only (the tile at the corner) and the rest of it sits off that tile? Same as Red's overlapping multi-storey houses. I don't know if that would be easier or harder than the way you have done it.

[embx61]

The Verandas do work now.

It will be a 4x1, and for the 3x1 houses a 3x1 set and then a matching 1x1 corner piece so with those three pieces it can be wrapped all around the 3x4 and the 4x4 Wooden Houses.
I started with a L shape and then it came to me that it does not work in one mesh because of the L shape and a footprint not allow a L shape.

I read your post again and indeed the overlap could have worked.
But the overlap means they are ghosted so a floor object will not work on the overlap part.

Road enabled is technically ghosted too in a sense that bannies can walk through stuff too because it is road enabled so bannies are allowed to walk there but because road enabled uses a footprint a floor object will work.

[galensgranny]

Those add-on porches are a great thing!   

[elemental]

EB you mentioned in Red's thread that updating your unimod is a lot of work. Please don't feel that you have to update it every single time you release something new. Once every month or once every two weeks should be enough updates. I know sometimes you do bug fix updates too, not just new content, but if updating feels like a chore then you are probably doing it too often. 

[embx61]

Yes, I did it a bit too often the last few weeks.
But it was because of real bugs like the glass what would crash the game and the food trader crash fix bug.

Then the typo bug that the textile trader not brought any flax, cotton, etc.

I felt I had to fix those over all mods which were affected.
That is one of the reasons I asked players to not only write "nice job" but tell me about bugs ASAP, I know you, beside a couple others, do and I thank you for it, so hopefully I can fix them before doing the Unified update as I mostly wait about a week of 3 to 4 or so after new releases to add them to Unified so bugs in new mods can be dealt with before adding them to Unified.

Few days back I wrote that the road enabled parts for the wooden houses had to wait till i have some new content to update the Unified.
The tiles not being road enabled is maybe a bit annoying but not a game breaking bug so the update can wait a bit till there is a good reason to update.

[RedKetchup]

maybe cause that i update like at 6 months - a year LOL

[embx61]

LOL

I am just sometimes in a coding cycle so do mostly updates on Unified at that time.
But it can indeed be frustrating if to have to do it like 3 times in 8 or 9 days or so because of annoying bugs. LOL

Takes a while to compile that stuff too, and then almost at the end a damn little error like a typo or an xxxxxAO.rsc file missing so after fixing that have to recompile the whole damn thing again.