Is there a new Diagonal Jagged Edges Modd?

[FrankU]

On the Stex we all know how to find the old Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod by Pjot. He/she (?) promised to edit the mod for new terrain modds, apart form the original CP terrain modd. I am not aware of any new DJE-modd that is appropriate for other terrain mods. Dit I overlook them or don't they exist?
Pjot thanked JeroniJ for his information, so maybe you could help me out?

I installed the CPT Meadowshire Terrain this week and I cannot delete this anymore. It is just too beautiful, and the old terrain by Maxis looks really boring now.
The modd, though, is quite essential for sunken highways and raised rail or road, so I can't do without it. But, well, you guess already, with the modd installed my terrain looks boring again.
What can I do?

[M4346]

Can someone please look at this! I've been wondering the same thing and would very much appreciate one for the Olympic Terrain mod by c.p. 

Pretty please! 

[BigSlark]

I agree with M.

[dragonshardz]

huh. i used the Olympic Terrain Mod and the DJEM at the same time and had no problems. if there is no other solution, make the OTM load after the DJEM.

[ebina]

10 days ago I have created a special terrain controller for personal use. It is for C.P's Meadow Shire Terrain, and I have merged Gizmo's DNM and Pjot's DJEM into that. Those 3 Modds change a certain same exemplar. So, if they were installed at same time, can't get fully function of them.

huh. i used the Olympic Terrain Mod and the DJEM at the same time and had no problems. if there is no other solution, make the OTM load after the DJEM.

I think if you take that method, terrain controller will override DJEM. DJEM won't work...

If there's enough demand, I will start a topic for making special terrain controller, after the U-Rail RTMT project is completed.

[dragonshardz]

well i dunno. i used the DJEM and the OTM together and they were fine. btw, what is the DNM?

[ebina]

DNM stands for Day-Night Mod.

[Chrisadams3997]

Pjot's Diagonal edges mod only alters one value in the aforemetioned dat.  If your using a CP terrain, it'll be called 'CP_(name of terrain mod)PlayTerrainParameters'.  The property altered is called 'MaxNormalYforCliff' which pjot set to .85 instead of the default .675(for CP, haven't checked the original Maxis one lately)



All it does is force the game to show cliffs at much lower hieght changes since the diagonal walls display properly on cliffs.  If you've got the reader, all you have to do is open the terrain parameters exemplar you're using and change that one value(and save of course ).

Note that if you have more than one copy of the terrain parameters exemplar in your plugins(e.i. gizmo's water flora comes with one, so does his DNM as stated above) only the very LAST one loaded will have any effect, so make sure the one you want to use is loaded last(placed in a folder named zzz at the root of your plugins for instance), or delete the others.  If you change the value and nothing happens, then another copy of the exemplar is loading after the one you changed .

I can look into what Gizmo has changed in his DNM in this exemplar and give more info on how and what values to merge from that one so it'll work with any other ones you'd like to combine it with, but I'm pretty sure he's just adjusted the day and night water colors in it.  I'll take a look though.

Edit:  Gizmo's Terrain Param exemplar included with the DNM only changes one property, the 'NightWaterColorAdjustment', so it'll only have an impact on how the water looks at night in his mod, but the new values for it are as seen in the screen shot below.

[M4346]

Pjot's Diagonal edges mod only alters one value in the aforemetioned dat.  If your using a CP terrain, it'll be called 'CP_(name of terrain mod)PlayTerrainParameters'.  The property altered is called 'MaxNormalYforCliff' which pjot set to .85 instead of the default .675(for CP, haven't checked the original Maxis one lately)

All it does is force the game to show cliffs at much lower hieght changes since the diagonal walls display properly on cliffs.  If you've got the reader, all you have to do is open the terrain parameters exemplar you're using and change that one value(and save of course ).

Thank you!    I'll try this right away! 

[FrankU]

Chrisadams, thank you very much indeed!
I have the reader, so altering this one value will be no problem.
But your answer raised a new question: how many plugins can there be that alter this value? And do they affect in any way other properties of the terrain? Like the visual quality of the meadows and slopes?
As stated in my first question I see a much less interesting terrain after having added the DJEM. Indeed I see almost all my slopes as cliffs now, so my mountains are almost completely grey rock. But also my flatlands look less saturated and have a more uninteresting look.  
I have installed the waterflora modd (really nice plops). Could this one affect also the terrain? And if it does, do you know in which way?

If I understand you right and don't overlook something, I should alter the MaxNormalYForCliff in the CPT_terrainparameter for the Meadowshire terrain (whatever the excat name is) to a higher number (maybe less than 0.85? I'll experiment), and then, to be sure this one loads last, rename it to ZZZ_etc....
Anyway, I'll try this somewhere this week (not too much time for SC4).

Thanks a lot.

[jeronij]

It seems I am a bit late .... 

Thanks Chris for your clear explanation 

[M4346]

I did it... and it worked!   

Thanks again! 

[Serkanner]

Thank you a lot Chris for this info. I also wondered how it was done exactly, without having a look at the examplar myself. Now I don't need to anymore. 

[FrankU]

So M4346 what did you do? Edit the exemplar?

I have a question though: thinking of renaming. I am still not sure: is it the filename, or is it the foldername in which the file is placed, that makes up the order of loading?

[Chrisadams3997]

FrankU:  First off, the terrain param exemplar Gizmo included with his water flora only changes the 'WaterDepthForMaxAlpha' property, which just makes the water more translucent up to a greater depth(changed it from Maxis standard 30 to 90!).  While I figure he included that so people wouldn't come running to him saying "help!help! I can't see the water flora", it's pretty extreme for that value, unless you just like seeing the sea bed two miles out from shore .

There are a LOT of things controlled from this exemplar.  Most of them will probably never be touched.  Some of them I possibly recall seeing mods for are the max elevation on a map, the elevation of sea level, the way the game imports greyscale bitmaps as a map, and way it deals with auto edge reconcilliations.  Any modds for those things will include this exemplar, but they generally only will change one or two of the properties.

CP only used it(at least for the Columbus terrain) to modify Max elevation(from 2500 to 2383), a slight tweak to map importing(one less iteration for wind erosion), the Max width and hight for beaches, and some tweaking to the water transparency.  As far as I can tell, there is nothing in this exemplar controlling how the terrain textures will show, at least nothing like what you're describing.  CP also included in the same dat an exemplar that impacts how the textures blend with each other, so if that got deleted(it's in the same 'CP_PlayTerrainParameters' file) perhaps it could cause what you described.

Also, the Maxis default 'MaxNormalYforCliff' is .5, CP used .675--so it's already increased some--, and Pjot's uses .85, just for reference.

Also, and someone correct me if I'm wrong here , but it's been my experience that folders load after files in the root plugins folder(top level), the file just being named 'zzz_' might not work, I'd place it in a folder in the root of the plugins folder that starts with 'zzz_' to be sure.

[FrankU]

Chrisadams, thanks for your elaborate answers.
And although I am afraid this discussions will become too technical for me, I still have a question now.
You say that e.g. the waterflora mod changes one value. Ok. I understand that. So this one value overrides the Maxis-value, but the mod contains also all the default values by Maxis. Which means that the game uses all the default values (except one), because the values in the waterflora mod are the same as in the Maxis file.
I have the feeling that the game uses the file that has been loaded as last one. And it uses all the values in this file.
Again; say there are two mod files. First: the game loads the Maxis-values... Then it loads the first mod, let's say the waterflora mod. In this mod we see a different value for water transparency. All the other values are identical, so overwriting doesn't change anything. Then the second modfile is loaded. It contains the default Maxis-value for water transparency, but contains a different value for MaxNormalYforCliff. Then, I think, all the values in this file are being written to memory, which means that the water transparency is set back to maxis-default, but the MaxNormalYforCliff is altered.
This should mean that if I like to change more values in this exemplar, I should use one mod-file with all the changes in it and then make sure it will load last.
Correct or not?

Or is it completely different and does the game only read the altered value(s) form the plugin-files and is it then possible to alter all values by making separate plugins, each for one or more values? So: one for water transparency, one for MaxNormalYforCliff, one for whatever I like.... etc.?

The colors of my landscape:
I did not have time today to experiment, but I surely will one of these days.
But for one I am sure: I did not delete the file. So there must be something in the DJEM file that alters the values. Maybe because of the extreme value for MaxNormalYforCliff that even the flat squares are affected and show a kind of mix of cliff textures and meadow textures, which comes out as less saturated meadows. That's my theory.

Do I understand the loading order:
1. Maxis files (in Program Files/Simcity 4).
2. Files in the root of the plugin directory, in alphabetical order.
3. Folders in alphabetical order, and the files within these folders also in alphabetical order: all files in the AAA_ folder (first file AAA*, second file AAB* etc), then all files in the AAB_ folder etc. untill folder ZZZ_.

[Andreas]

Yes, this is the exact loading order, and yes, only the exemplar file that is loaded last will have an effect on the game. Each exemplar file might only have one property that has been changed, but the exemplar file is still used as a whole - so you have to copy all properties that you want to be changed into the same exemplar file (and delete the other copies, since they aren't used anyway). This is exactly the same situation as with the NAM (or better: the NAM Controller), which holds all transit-related settings, and which has to be updated constantly whenever new puzzle pieces etc. are released.

[FrankU]

Chrisadams3997 and Andreas,
Thanks for your help.

So, yesterday I played around with what you taught me here. Especially thanks for the hint about Gizmo's Waterflora mod, because it was this file that confused my setup. Because of the name it was loaded after my CPT_Meadowshire_terrain mod, so the effects were out of order.

The conclusion after about two hours of moving, removing and renaming: I did not need the DJEM by Pjot anymore (thanks though to him that he made it in the first place), so I deleted it. I put the Waterflora mod in a directory called AAA_Waterflora, so it would be loaded first. Then I edited the CPT_Meadowshire_terrain mod and found out that the jagged edges disappear when the MaxNormalYforCliff is set to 0,73. Problem solved.

In the meantime I discovered something I never heard about before. It concerns the coloring of the terrain.
In an earlier post I alredy mentioned that the saturation of my terrain was much less after installing the DJEM.

Well, in short: the MaxNormalYforCliff does also have an effect on the coloring and saturation of the terrain.
- In my first set up of plugins the waterflora mod was loaded last. It has the MaxNormalYforCliff set to 0,50, and the meadows were very saturated, and there were hardly any cliffs on the mountains.
- Then I installed the DJEM, with the MaxNormalYforCliff to 0,85. The saturation was low, even on flat terrain, and I had a lot of rocky terrain.
- In the end I deleted the DJEM completely and edited only the MaxNormalYforCliff in the CPT_terrain mod. The higher I set it, the less saturated the meadows were and the more rocky terrain there was.

After rethinking this all it is quite obvious: the MaxNormalYforCliff has an effect on the amount of tiles that are considered as cliffs. Higher values give more cliffs. Also, and this is maybe new, I think that all terrain tiles are a mix between several textures and this mix of textures is also affected by the MaxNormalYforCliff.
The higher the MaxNormalYforCliff, the higher the effect of the cliff texture.

Which means that even in the flatter areas the cliff texture has an effect. And if you mix a saturated meadow texture with a grey cliff texture you see a less saturated meadow terrain. Well, I guess I'll have to live with it.

Sorry, but yesterday when I found this out I made a lot of pictures to show the effect, but the computer I am working on now is mixed up and doesn't recognize my USB-stick. Maybe I can show them if you are interested.

Would this maybe be something for a tutorial: "setting up your own Diagonal Jagged Edges Mod"?

[Chrisadams3997]

How, that's definitely an interesting effect I would have never expected.  I would like to see the pictures, and I might do some experimenting myself .  There are situations where people might actually want the cp terrains more or less saturated, though it'd certainly be better if it weren't controlled by another independantly important variable.

As for a tutorial, it wouldn't be hard to do.  Perhaps after I know more about this present discovery I'll write one.

[jeronij]

The terrain textures are appplied depending on the height and moisture of the level. It is defined this way in every terrain controller file. If the terrain elevation change ( this is our case ) the terrain textures are affected.

However, I would not use the JEM intesively in irregular/hilly areas. It will break your landscape. It should be preferably used in flat ( or the more flat possible) areas.