SC4 Landscape Designers Studio Support Thread

[wouanagaine]

The most possible thing is that Gaston downloaded and run one of the first cleanitol version which removed *.png in the default cleanitol file. My bad

[Gaston]

The most possible thing is that Gaston downloaded and run one of the first cleanitol version which removed *.png in the default cleanitol file. My bad

I'll bet that is it.   I have been using Cleanitol since the very first version.    I keep updating it everytime there is a new version.   Not sure I could even play without it.            I'll bet that early version did it.    LOL          Oh well.  LOL


---Gaston

[MaximePenen]

Hello,

I have a small question. Yesterday, I downloaded the HD rock texture sets of the LEX. Now, I want to install one of them. The read-me indeed mentions terrain mods often come with their own rock textures. ATM I'm using Cycledogg's Italia Terrain Mod. The folder of said terrain mod has the following two files that seem to have to do with rocks:
- CPT_C_ItaliaCliff_Optional_EquivalentToPegRockMod.dat
- CPT_No5_RockTextures_Olympic_EssentialButInterchangableWithOtherNo5.dat

Do both of these have to go? Or only the latter?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Ennedi]

Hello,

I have a small question. Yesterday, I downloaded the HD rock texture sets of the LEX. Now, I want to install one of them. The read-me indeed mentions terrain mods often come with their own rock textures. ATM I'm using Cycledogg's Italia Terrain Mod. The folder of said terrain mod has the following two files that seem to have to do with rocks:
- CPT_C_ItaliaCliff_Optional_EquivalentToPegRockMod.dat
- CPT_No5_RockTextures_Olympic_EssentialButInterchangableWithOtherNo5.dat

Do both of these have to go? Or only the latter?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Good question. The file you should remove before installing any custom rock mod is CPT_C_ItaliaCliff_Optional_EquivalentToPegRockMod.dat.
This is the rock mod file, it contains only one texture which appears at steep slopes. Cycledogg wrote "EquivalentToPegRockMod" in the name, because Peg rock mods were (almost) only one rock mods available when Cycledogg created his terrain mods. In fact this file is equivalent to any custom rock mod.

CPT_No5_RockTextures_Olympic_EssentialButInterchangeableWithOtherNo5.dat is an integral part of the Cycledogg's terrain mod. It contains 12 textures which can be seen on higher elevetions - snow, snow mixed with rock or stones, a few kinds of stones, grass mixed with stones in various proportions. There are two CPT No5 files in various Cycledogg"s terrain mods: Olympic and Missouri Breaks. They can be moved from one terrain mod to another, so they are called "Interchangeable". But you must have one of them in your Cycledogg terrain mod folder, so they are also called "Essential".
The "CPT_ItaliaCliff... has a word "Optional" in it's name, so you can replace it by another rock mod. If you simply remove it from Plugins and don't install any other one, you will see the default Maxis rock.

Look at the picture below. Red arrow - rock mod texture (this one is one of Dogfight's rock mods). Blue arrows - textures from CPT No5 file. Green arrow - texture from the main Cycledogg terrain mod file ie. CPT No6 (we are on high elevation so most textures are from CPT No5, at lower altitudes we would see mostly textures from CPT No6).



Adam

[MaximePenen]

Cheers, thanks for the elaborate answer. 

[nichter85]

Hi Ennedi!
Your sky texture and new rock mod is amazing !!! I definitely want to use it for my mountain region I'm working on.

1st question: Which terrain mod and which of your rock mods is used in this picture? Could you tell me, please ?



I don't want any grass textures in high altitudes because it's not realistic. So I especially like the loose rocks in your picture!! How do you get this result?


2nd question:
I've got a BIG problem: using your HD rock mods crashes the Game to Desktop.

I emptied both of my plugin folders to find out the reason for this problem. I use the Italia Terrain Mod and as soon as any "CPT" terrain mod files are installed the game crashes.

I de-installed all the Rock files within Italia Terrain Mod.
There were no other Rock Mods installed.
My game is in "Hardware Mode"
When the Plugin Folders are completely empty, your Rock Mod works fine with Maxis Standard Terrain.

Now in the readme you say:

"Compatibility
This download is compatible with all SimCity 4 versions.
Rock mods from this set will not be compatible with new generation terrain mods. You will need to use Set 2 and Set 3 (or future updates) if you will still want to use these textures."

Is Italia Rock Mod a "new generation terrain mod" ?
Is there an alternative terrain mod I could use?

I made some changes in CPT_No6_ItaliaTerrainController, i changed the altitude, temperature range and sea level in ilive reader.
Is this maybe the problem?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Ennedi]

@nichter85, thank you very much for your kind words! I'm very glad you like my mods 

1. The rock mod used here is the Sandstone1_1024Grey_020 from my Rock Mod Set 2 HD. But it is used here in the new settings of Terrain Properties, I will explain it below.
Loose rocks you see on that picture are a replacement of the CPT No5 file from Cycledogg's terrain mods. There are 12 rocky-like textures (loose rock, stones, olive grass in various proportions) appearing in Cycledogg's mods on high elevations. These textures will be also a part of my new terrain mod, there will be a few variants of this texture set.
Attention! CPT No5 is not a rock mod! See below.

2. As you informed, your game works properly with my rock mod and Maxis terrain, but crashes when you install Italia Terrain Mod.
Don't worry! Both Italia Terrain Mod and my rock mod are OK. The only thing which can cause CTD is a lack of dependency files containg textures needed for Italia Terrain Mod.
What should you have installed if you want to use Italia Terrain Mod?

- CPT No3 and CPT No4 Terrain Essentials files. These two files contain terrain textures.
- CPT_No5_RockTextures_Olympic_EssentialButInterchangeableWithOtherNo5. This file contains addtional 12 rocky-like textures (see point 1) and it is a necessary dependency. The game will crash if you will delete it. But you can replace it by another CPT No5 file (for example Missouri Breaks, You will find it in the Missouri Breaks Terrain Mod).
If you want to see what textures are a part of CPT No5, look at my answer to MaximePenen a few posts above on this page. CPT No5 textures are marked by arrows.
- CPT No6_Italia_Terrain_Controller. This is an essential file of the Italia Terrain Mod, it contains the Terrain Properties exemplar file (many parameters such as maximum terrain height, an amount of rocks, water transparency, beach height and width and many others). The CPT No6 contains also the Terrain Textyure Map Table. It is a large table (16 columns and 32 rows) which says which texture is assigned to the certain elevation and moisture range. If any texture is present in this table and we haven't a dependency file with this texture in Plugins, the game will crash.
The lack of needed textures is the only possible reson of CTD caused by terrain mods. We often say in readmes that you should have only one terrain, rock or water mods in Plugins at a time. But even if you have two mods of the same kind installed, it will not cause a CTD! But the game reads plugins in alphabetical order and if we will have two plugins of the same kind (for example two CPT No6 files or two rock mods), the game will use the last one in the alphabetical order. So having two mods installed is not dangerous, but without sense.

Conclusion: Please check if you have CPT No3, No4, No5 and No6 files installed. If yes, your game should work, with or without my rock mod.

3. If you will install Italia (or another Cycledogg's terrain mod), you will see another files too:
- CPT_B.... This is a beach mod file. It has "Optional" in its name. You can use it or not.
- CPT_C... This is a rock mod file. It is optional too. If you simply remove it, you will see Maxis rock. If you then install another rock mod, you will see it.

4. What are "new generation" terrain mods?
- All existing terrain mods (including Italia) are "old generation"  . Our new terrain mods will be "new generation". What will be a difference?

One of properties in the Terrain Properties file is called "TerrainTexTilingFactor" (me, Chris and Silvio use a shortcut "TF"). This property says us how large area on the screen will cover the single terrain texture tile. The are covered by single texture tile is approximately the same in all zooms.
How does it work?
Let's say at the picture below. It shows a test texture in Zoom 4 (most players use to call zooms "Zoom 1 - Zoom 5" and the closest Zoom 6, but I called my textures as they are called in the reader ie. Zoom 0 - Zoom 4 and the closest Z5. So you see "Zoom 3" here). As you see the texture covers approx. 4x4 tiles. If we will go closer to zoom 5, the terrain will be 2x bigger but the texture will cove only 2x2 tiles, so it will cover approximately the same part of the screen. If we will go to zoom 3, the terrain tiles will be 2x smaller, but the texture will cover 8x8 tiles and we will see it has again the same size on the screen.



What will happen if we will change the TF value? The TF definition is: "How part of the texture is equal to 100 meters in the farthest zoom?" So lower TF = larger texture and vice versa. Here is the test texture at TF = 0,05



This picture was made in the same zoom as the first one, but now TF is 4 times smaller and the texture side is 4x longer (about 16 tiles instead of 4)

We probably will use TF=0,1 or 0,12 in our "new generation" terrain mods, so our textures will be 2x2 = 4x larger on the screen.
Why to use larger textures? The answer is simple: This is a way to avoid details repetitions. This is the main reason of use HD textures in terain mods.
Of course we can also improve the texture quality making HD textures, but avoiding repetitions (or at least decreasing them) is the most important factor here.

Why did I use 1024x1024 textures in my new rock mods? Maxis terrain textures are 256x256. The default TF value is 0,20. If I will change it to 0,1, I need 512x512 texture to have the same quality (the same amount of pixels per inch). But Rock textures are heavily stretched on steep slopes (up to 2x in many cases), so I made 1024x1024 textures to have them looking good on steep slopes.
Repetitions are clearly visible on the water surface too, so making larger textures for water mods is very reasonable too.

But... wait! There is only one Tiling Factor, and it is located in the terrain mod. I can't chnage the TF only for rock or water texture leaving the rest of textures in their current state. If I will change the TF, I will change sizes of alll terrain-related textures: terrain mod textures, rock, water and beach. It leads us to 3 conclusions:

1. If you downloaded my new HD rock mods and use them now, you see them at TF=0,20 ie they are 2x smaller than intended. They look good because of the good texture quality, but my textures have many details and you can be disappointed because of repetitions. You will be able to fully appreciate these textures when you will look at them ta TF = 0,10 

2. When we will be able to use my rock (and water, will be released soon) textures at TF 0,10? We must release new generation terrain mods with TF=0,10. All textures in these mods will be 2x2 larger of course.

3. What will happen if we will leave current textures (such as Cycledogg's ones) and change the TF to 0,10? Textures will look bad, they will be too small and they will be blurry. This is an answer for your last question - why I said that my SD rock mod will be incompatible with the new generation terrain mods. SD rock mod contains 256x256 textures and it will look bad when they will be enlarged. But you will be able to use one of my HD rock mods instead, they contain the same textures but in HD version.
But of course if you will use HD rock mod with any new terain mod, it will not cause a CTD 

4. An information for those who would like to use new HD rock or water mods, but still like Cycledogg's terrain mods: don't worry! Cycledogg's mods are excellent and they will be popular for a long time. We are going to prepare their new version especially designed for use with new HD rock, beach and water mods. Cycledogg's textures will look exactly the same as now ie they will not be blurry because of changing the Tiling Factor. We will ask Brian (Cycledogg) for the permission to release this version.

5. Any changes you made in your terrain mod shouldn't cause a CTD or any other problems as long as you remember what did you change and why 

Adam

Edit:

I don't want any grass textures in high altitudes because it's not realistic. So I especially like the loose rocks in your picture!! How do you get this result?

I basically use Italia Terrain Mod, but I changed the Terrain Texture Map table. I moved grass textures away from snow and put more rocky-like textures on higher altitudes. My new alpine rock mod will be made in the same manner.

[nichter85]

Dziękuję bardzo, Ennedi !

Your answer was longer than I expected and it helped me solving my problem.
I deleted too much, so CPT No5 was missing. Now it works well  .

The next issue I want to fix is the grass in high altitude.
The area surrounded by the blue circle would certainly look a lot better when it is covered with rocks:



I will take a closer look on the Terrain Textures. The way they are shown can be changed in CPT_No6_ItaliaTerrainController, right?

I hope I can get rid of the brownish stone textures of Italia Terrain:


They don't look well in a grey sandstone environment.

By the way, Ennedi, how do you like this picture? Its your Sky Background and dark granite Rock Mod. I converted it to greyscale by accident but I think it looks really cool .




I hope its not offtopic, it is related to landscape design though:

Has anyone ever thought of creating glaciers in SC4?

I created a huge 8-bit greyscale of the entire Southern Alps in New Zealand, in 1:2 Simcity Scale (1 pixel=32m). I rotated it, took parts of it and created several neighboring SC4 Regions to cover up a large area. There are over 3000 Glaciers in the Southern Alps, the big ones like Fox and Franz Josef won't be shown correctly in the Terrain Mod because they reach far below the snow line.



In the pic above you can see bonar glacier on Mt. Aspiring (Tititea). I have drawn the Glacier Tongue with Raydens Ploppable Snow. Even though I appreciate ploppable snow for drawing skiing slopes, I think it does not look so well when you use it as glacier ice. It's too bright - it should be more like dirty greyish-brown. Just the way lower parts of glaciers look like in summer.

So, are there any suggestions/ experiences / ideas about how to create realistic glaciers in the SC4 World ?

And Ennedi, sorry for asking so many questions , do you know if there is a tutorial on how to create Regions with 16-bit greyscales? Or who I can ask about it? Lots of details and accurate heights are lost when I import terrain with 8-bit greyscales, and it is necessary to re-smoothen it a lot.

[sithlrd98]

Adam, I had no idea of the "science"you've used to create these , and am astonished by your testing techniques and final results! I am a big supporter for these "nextgen" terrain/sky/water mods and am eagerly awaiting the next group!

Jayson

[Ennedi]

@nichter85: wow, you speak Polish!  - thank you!

I suppose you expect a long answer this time  so here is it:

1. Of course you can remove this grass marked by you on the picture. But you can't simply remove the grass from that place. You must replace the grass texture you don't like by another terrain texture - for example loose stones. But you should remember that your new texture will appear in every place covered by the unwanted grass texture now.
There is also another solution: you can create a new texture, give it a different IID and place into the Terrain Texture Map Table. But you must know where to place this texture 

This is the Terrain Texture Map Table:



It contains 32 rows and 16 columns. An upper row marked 00 was designed by Maxis for high mountain textures. It usually covers a large elevation range (how large - it depends on the propert called Temperature Range Factor - you can find it in the Terrain Properties exemplar file. If the TempRangeFactor = 0,3 (this is a default value, the same is in Cycledogg's terrain mods), the high mountain terrain begins at about 40% of the maximum terrain mod altitude and end at 100%. If we change it to 0,75 - 0,8, textures from this row will appear only at highest peaks (last 5-10% of the altitude range). The rest of elevation range (lower 40% at default settings) is divided into 31 identical layers.

Example: Maxis terrain has maximum height 2500 m (it's not the maximum height on your map! Maps can be different. This is maximum height of this terrain mod ie you sholdn't use it with terrain containing higher peaks). High mountain textures begin at 2500x40%=1000 m, other 31 rows cover all area from 250 m (default sea level) to 1000 m. Each row covers an altitude range 750/31=24,2 m. row 31 is the bottom one, it begins at 250 m and ends at 250+24,2 = 274,2 m. BTW these are relatively narrow stripes, it is often wise to move an upper row up (increase the TempRangeFactor) and we have more space to see various textures and more space to manipulate them 

Columns also have their own meaning, they are assigned to various moisture levels. The first (left) column contains textures from dryest places, the last one (16th) - the wettest places. The Moisture depends on the terrain shape (valleys are wet, hilltops are dry), but it is not so easy - other factors are water proximity, wind direction (it is not constant!  ) and the direction (north slopes are wetter than South ones).

As you see, it is not so easy to say where our new texture will appear on our map - but we can provide it after some experiments. We created some secret tools in our studio - we can check altitude layers and moisture layers on various maps, and we also have a nice table created by Silvio (Rayden) to make a visualisation of our terrain mod.
The picture below shows Italia Terrain Mod (the Terrain Texture Map Table is at the left - click at the picture for full size):



So what can you do with your unwanted grass?
a) find the texture and its name in the Excel table, then make your own texture, give it the same IID, make a dat file (it will contain only that texture), give the dat a name with "zz" at its beginning and put into your terrain mod folder. The principle here is that your custom texture (or textures) must be read by the game later than CPT No3, CPT No4 and CPT No5 files. In this case your texture will overwrite the texture from terrain mod.
b) find the texture in the Excel table. It will appear in some positions. Now you should get to know which position is assigned to your small valley marked on your picture  Don't worry, make some trials and errors and have a good play!  You will learn a lot 
This way you will be able to remove grass only in your valley (and maybe in a few other places  ) but other places will look as before.

2. Yes, you can get rid of these brownish stone textures from Italia terrain. You have three ways:

a) These textures are from CPT No5 Rock Textures Olympic(...). Try another CPT No5 file - CPT No5 Missouri Breaks, you will find it in the Missouri Breaks Terrain Mod. They are more grey, less brownish (but not enough for me  )
b) Make your own CPT No5 file ie. make custom textures and give them IIDs from CPT No5, then make a dat. First look at our Excel table and at your terrain, identify texture IIDs and then decide which texture will you replace by which custom one.
c) wait some time (it can be a month or two!) for new CPT No5 files from SC4 Landscape Designers Studio 

3. Your picture is beautiful!  I understand you converted it to grayscale accidentally, but to notice it looks interesting and to put these textures in the game - it was really creative! 

4. Yes, I was thinking about glaciers. But it will not be easy for two reasons:

a) If we will want to have glaciers only at certain places (valleys), we will need to check altitude and moisture conditions for glacier texture very carefully. Of course we can fill all valleys at the certain altitude range by glaciers, but I'm afraid it will not be realistic. It needs some experiments, and it is an easier part.
b) Terrain textures don't rotate when you rotate the view. You can see it immediately at the water surface (if you have a water mod with waves). No matter how you will change the viewing direction, you always see horizontal waves. The top of the texture is always at the top, bottom at the bottom. The only exception are sky backgrounds (so I had to think a lot how to make clouds looking good after rotation  )
Why is it important at glaciers? Look at RL photos, glaciers usually have cracks across the glacier body. If we will make a glacier texture with horizontal cracks, it will look good when we will look along the valley - from the bottom to the top or vice versa. But if you will look at the glacier from the side, we will still see horizontal cracks, and in this case they will lead along the glacier. It wouldn't be realistic.
But maybe... very special texture and some playing with perspective?... Anyway, it would be a real challenge.

I'm very glad you are interested in terrain modding, not much people want to play with it. Your questions are logical and I'm sure you made some experiments yet  so maybe you will create something interesting yourself? I will help you with pleasure.

@sithrld98: Thank you Jayson! I will do my best to don't make you disappointed!  I'm very sad that I have so much RL work now and my SC4 work takes so much time 

Adam

Edit:

And Ennedi, sorry for asking so many questions  , do you know if there is a tutorial on how to create Regions with 16-bit greyscales? Or who I can ask about it? Lots of details and accurate heights are lost when I import terrain with 8-bit greyscales, and it is necessary to re-smoothen it a lot.

I'm not a specialist in this area. You could ask Wouanagaine, but he is busy lately and he doesn't visit us too often. But you can contact with blade2k5, I hope he will be able to help you.

[nichter85]

Hi Adam,
thank you again

yes I speak polish a little bit and sometimes its helpful, for example when I download buildings from simcitypolska.pl 
I am delighted with your answer, no matter if it is long or short

I now understand how these textures work, you explain it very well.
Only I can't find the Terrain Texture Map Table anywhere? Is iLive Reader sufficient or do I need another program?
I'm sorry - I'm a total Newbie in these things.
The only experiments I did so far was creating my own (very radical) slope mod, changing heights, temperature ranges and sea levels.
I don't have Photoshop either and I'm no expert in using picture programs... so I think I'd rather replace textures instead of creating them.


The past months I spent a lot of time with sculpting mountain terrains and now I render some of them, that's the reason for my interest in terrain mods and some custom texture modifications. (And anyway, I'm focusing on building sparsely populated landscapes instead of skyscraper cities.)

I like to encourage you to continue working on your new generation terrain mods - your previews in the Shosaloza thread are really stunning!
For sure i'll watch the further development and wait patiently for the release.

I really like your "snowy" rock texture:

i was always diappointed about the lack of snow in high mountain areas with steep rock formations. I already thought of this solution, and you seem to be the first one who implements it in the game!
I think it would even look better with more contrast, when you use a darker rock texture.
If it's possible, you could create two different versions: a heavily snow-covered version for winter and a rather slightly-covered for the first snow in autumn.

Best regards,
Stefan

[Ennedi]

I hadn't too much time for SC4 last few months. I'm also afraid the situation will not improve in the nearest future. I will spend next few months on the building site over 200 km away from my home, I will come back for weekends but I will also have to spend some time with my family  . Now I'm busy all the day, I'm working with some crazy Germans who work till the late evening and they use to call to me in the most unexpected moments  . I only hope I will not be so busy after 1 or 2 months and I will have some time at evening. It would be good,  staying in the hotel away from the family is a good opportunity to play with sc4 landscapes  .

However I made some work during last few months, now I see a few people are interested in creating terrain mods, so I decided to show some of my findings. Maybe they will save some time of those curageous people who want to play with SC4 terrains  .

Attention: This will be a long post. If you still see this statement, it means that my message isn't finished yet.

If you want to use your own terrain textures, first you must make exemplars for these textures, dats with FSH files (or one dat for all textures) and assign the IID to each texture. Last two digits of the IID are used to identify the texture in the Terrain Texture Map Table located in the Terrain.ini file.
Terrain.ini and Terrain Properties are core files for the terrain mod. Texture data (FSH and exemplars) are dependencies for the Terrain.ini file.

The Terrain Texture Map Table has 32 rows and 16 columns. Filling the table by our texture numbers we create our own terrain mod.

Now there is a basic question: if we will type the texture number in the certain position in the table, where this texture will appear on our terrain?

I will try to give you an answer in this message.

1. Each row in the Terrain Texture Map Table represents an altitude range where we will see textures located in that row.
The table has 32 rows marked by numbers from 0 (top) to 31 (bottom). The row 0 is different than others, its upper border is at the maximum terrain height specified in Terrain Properties, and the bottom border depends on the Temperature Range Factor (specified in Terrain Properties too).

All other rows (from 1 to 31) spread from the sea level (250 m) to the bottom border of row 0. They divide that area by 31 equal horizontal stripes.
All existing terrain mods (including the default Maxis one) have the Temperature Range Factor equal to 0,3. In that case the row 0 starts at about 40% of the MaxTerrainHeight and covers the whole area till the MaxTerrainHeight.
If we have a map where the highest peak is only slightly lower than MaxTerrainHeight, we will see how large part of our terrain is covered by textures from row 0.
To show it I used a special terrain mod which has only one texture in each row and contrasting textures to show rows more clearly. It is showed below on picture 1.01, you can see the same picture in my MD (Ennedi Plays Shosaloza - Update 28).

1.01.


The MaxTerrainHeight on this picture is 1550 m, the highest peak is about 1520 m high and the Temperature Range Factor = 0,3. The bottom border of the row 0 is at 1500 x 40% = 600 m.
All other 31 rows covers an altitude range from 250 m to 600 m, ie. 350 m. An altitude range for every row is the same, so each of them covers 350/31 = 11,29 m. This is very little. It means that on the typical embankment for sunken highway or rail (15 m high) we will see more than one texture. In addition, textures blend one with another, and the blending area is from 2 to 5 tiles depending on specific conditions (it will be discussed later in point 2). It explains why we don't see many textures in their "clear" form. Sometimes they simply haven't enough place to appear. If you will put the texture only in one row, most probably you will not see it on steeper slopes. You must place it in at least two rows to see it clearly. (The same for columns - see point 2).
Look at the picture, you can see maybe 15 - 20 textures in rows, but there are actually 31 of them 

There is also another way to give more place for textures. On the picture 1.02 you can see the same terrain and the same terrain mod, but now the Temperature Range Factor is equal to 0,75. In this case the bottom border of the row 0 is about 90% of the MaxTerrainHeight and lower rows have (1500 x 90%) - 250 = 1100 m, and each row has 1100/31 = 35,48 m. Now you can see textures rom various rows more clearly.

1.02


If you are creating your own terrain mod and you are perfectly familiar with your textures, you can identify these rows on your map. Here is a map of Polish Tatra mountains, I marked bottom border of each  texture row.

1.03


Actually I told it already in my MD, in a few other places and even in this thread (a few posts above), but I want to make a complete information about placing terrain textures.

2. Every column in the Terrain Texture Map Table have a certain moisture range assigned to it.
There are 16 columns in the table, the column 1 contains textures for the dryest terrain, the column 16 contains textures for the wettest terrain.
The moisture of the terrain depends on various parameters:
- The terrain shape (valley, hilltop, the foot of the hill, cavities, flatland);
- Geographic direction (connected with sun direction) - south slopes are dryer than North ones;
- Main wind direction (there is a property for it in Terrain Properties, the wind direction can also vary with time. We can regulate that variation in Terrain Properties, but it isn't wise to make it equal to 0, the terrain will become less interesting in that case - it was found by Brian ie. Cycledogg long time ago);
- The distance from water;
- The time of the year (I removed that effect ie. yearly seasonal changes in my terrain mod to assign textures to terrain formations more precisely).

So we can speak about the Moisture Map assigned to the terrain, unfortunately we can't see it, we don't know which values and which functions are used by the game to create it. It is hardcoded and we only can modify parameters in Terrain Properties exemplar in the time-consuming trials and errors process  .

But we can make another thing: We can take the Terrain Texture Map Table, fill it by the simple test texture (i used clear white one) and then make 16 variants of the terrain mod, every of them has a contrasting texture only in one column. This way we will clearly see where the given column of the table is represented on our terrain.

Here is my test city tile in the region view. I used the white test texture in the HD version (ie. the texture is 512x512 pixels and the Terrain Tiling Factor is 0,1 ie. each side of the texture is 2x longer and the texture tile covers 4x larger area than the default one; I made it because I'm preparing the HD terrain mod, but these parameters doesn't change areas assigned to various moisture levels). My white test texture is called a1.



Then I prepared 16 terrain mods with only one column filled by the contrasting grass texture a2 (as described above) and tested them in the game.

After some experiments on various terrains I found an interesting thing: Textures from columns 1, 2 and 3 (the dryest ones) don't appear in the game. The first texture appearing on dryest places (tops on south slopes) is from column 4. Because of it my presentation begins from the fourth column (C4).
I'll show each column from all directions, in the same order each time: from East, North, West and South. There is a marking showing North on each picture (in the top left corner).
Additional photos are added in some cases to show interesting details.

C4 from East


C4 from North


C4 from West


C4 from South


C4 from South with default moisture parameters (description below)


Some comments:
- there is a scale on the white texture, it shows 100 pixel units. The zero point is in the top left corner. We always see the terrain texture from the same direction, no matter where we are looking from.
- As we see the grass texture a2 appears mainly on convex parts of south slopes, much less on West slopes and in valleys (on small hills). These are the dryest parts of the terrain.
- Looking at the last picture we can see only a few areas covered by dark green grass texture. this is a 'true view of our texture a2. The bright green texture comes from blending texture a1 (white) and a2 (green). Our texture from column 4 will be blended with surrounding ones on these areas. As we see, the blending area is much larger than an area covered by the "clear" texture. Please look carefully at next photos and observe textures from next columns.
- I made my test with slightly modified moisture parameters (located in the Weather exemplar). I changed yearly temperature and moisture variation to 0 (to avoid terrain changes after saving in various times of the year, it was necessary for this experiment) and modified two other parameters:
  - Moisture Hill Factor was changed from 0,35 to 1
  - Valley Moisture Boost was changed from 1 to 0,5.
When I found that texture from frist three columns aren't present in the game, and that some textures aren't seen clearly (too much textures on the same area), I tried to improve these parameters. I wasn't able to force textures from columns 1-3 to appear on my terrain, but after some experiments I got the following results:
  - More texture from columns 4 and 5 on dryest places
  - More texture from columns 15 and 16 on wettest places
  - More diversified terrain on slightly uneven area (small, soft hills and concaves)
I think it gives a possibility to show more textures. But terrain textures aren't moved to another place after these changes, so my experiment can be also useful for those who want to analyse any existing terrain mod. Please look at an area marked by the blue rectangle on last two photos, you will see the texture a2 with modified and default weather settings (temperature and moisture variation is set to zero in both cases).
Of course everybody can repeat my experiment with default settings 

C5 from East


C5 from North


C5 from West


C5 from South


Comments:
- Again you can see how much part of this texture is blended with other ones
- This is not a good idea to use textures without any grain or details. They not only look unrealistic, we can also see a rectangular shadow pattern on steep slopes (look at the C5 from South view - area marked by red arrows).

C6 from East


C6 from North


C6 from West


C6 from South

[Lowkee33]

Great work on this project.  Is there any way we can get out hands on this secret program?

There is a moisture data view that doesn't appear in game.  The quickest way to see this is to change an in-game view to have the "Data Source" point to "0x0000001d".  Land value works well.  I have found that the existing colors are sufficient, but the triggers sound be in iterations of 16 (0x00000000, 0x00000010,...20).  Moisture can be seen to change every week (or whatever you set it to) and terrain textures will change as well.

I will be playing with CP's textures to see if I can get something more fluid happen with moisture.  Your posts have been very informative, and I wish for you the best of luck in RL.

Edit:  I just noticed the development thread, and I should have posted there.  Perhaps there have been other posts there about moisture.  Oh well, rather than commit two thread felonies I will leave this here.