More Terrain

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More Terrain

Last time we discussed the terrain pipeline, particularly the height and normal map generation.


Well, as a test of the new pipeline we have attempted to upgrade our old Texas prototype map. As I have been doing this I have also been working on documenting the whole process of making a map: http://trains-and-things-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

I have found the pipeline for terrain still inadequate. While if you got the perfect texture straight from the GIS software it would work well, but if you want to run your height map through some image editing software, this was not possible!
The reality is there is no image editing software that really supports a 16-bit pipeline. We found issues in both Gimp and Krita.

As a result we have gone back to using 8-bit textures for the terrain and tried adding some smoothing in the code.

I've also added in some very quick and dirty multi-threading of the terrain to allow it to load quicker. Other improvements are that the terrain quality is now adjustable so we can have nicer terrain on newer computers and lower quality terrain on your old potato.


Slowing down again

We work on Trains & Things as a hobby, as we have no external funding as of yet. As a result I have obtained some free lance working to pay the bills, so development for the next month of so is going to be rather slow.


That's all for this time around.

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