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Hey guys. There's an extremely annoying issue with ZE's terrain that I'm sure most map-makers have encountered at least once, and that's the whole "object height in ZE isn't reflected correctly in-game" problem. Does anyone happen to know what causes this and/or how to fix it other than compensating the objects' height in ZE to make it look right in-game? (This might actually be an issue of the terrain's height information being saved incorrectly rather than the object height information being saved incorrectly.)

Another issue I often see is the issue where a texture slot's tilerange, rotation and/or mapping values refuse to save. Does anyone know the cause of this and/or how to fix it? In my case, the tilerange saves just fine, but the rotation does not - it's always back at 0 after I save and reload a map. I encountered this issue once while editing tat2 for MEU and magically fixed it. I think the issue was that the terrain file was read-only somehow, even though it isn't read-only in the shipped assets...

The final issue I feel should be addressed is sort of a terrain UV issue. This is how the path texture should be painted:
Here's how it's actually painted:
I actually first encountered this issue over two years ago with this map (PIO) but I completely forgot how I fixed it. I think it might have just went away on its own or something. Not sure... I encountered it again today after changing the "asphalt" texture and lowering the tilerange, but reverting the changes didn't fix the bug, not even after manual cleano! how??


Anyways, if anyone could shed some light on any of these issues, that'd be great.

Here's the map's ter.option file if it helps. :d

Hi Marth! I'm sorry for you having issues, but I don't think your problems could be really fixed, except by maybe 'fixing itselves'. I mean you're like the best modder active on GT, and if you can't solve it who can? Aside from joking I actually didn't have have the object height bug, but I agree that texture rotation cannot be saved. You have to rotate your tga file. I didn't have the disappearing texture bug either. I guess these could only be fixed by some serious exe tweaking, which I can't help you with. And so this post was completely unnecessary and pointless.
Hope you can find somebody to help you. Meanwhile I'm going to try to find a solution.
EDIT: Mapping carries over, so you can rotate by 90 degrees when setting it to 3 or 9, but that's not musch.

Marth8880 wrote:the whole "object height in ZE isn't reflected correctly in-game" problem

From what I can tell this issue correlates with the distance from height 0.
Whenever I encountered this problem it seemed to be more severe the higher the terrain was risen. I never figured out a solution, though...
The edge-cutoff tends to be pretty annoying as well but I couldn't find a solution for that either.


I've also encountered the issue with the texture being drawn differently ingame. I wasn't been able the fix this by playing around in the editor settings so I kicked all textures, and restarted painting the terrain from scratch. It was fixed for me after that but I'm not sure whether this is very helpful for you.

Sorry I can't be of any more help other than sharing your anger about ZE.

Adding to the input of Locutus, I think the last error might be related to way textures are blended. I've had a similar issue in the past and, as Locutus, resolved it by "blank-slating" and repainting the whole thing.

Not to be a butthead or anything, but did you try moving your path texture up to layer 0 instead of layer 1?

For the issue with the rotated textures in ZeroEditor..I also got this problem on a few other maps. But on my Liberty City map, near the "Battery Park" I did rotate the stone ground texture to 90° CW. Ingame and on a reloaded map in ZeroEditor it worked. It probably only works in 90, 180, 270 and 360° rotations. But the tip with changing that via GIMP or Photoshop and create a second .tga file is actually a good solution.

Btw it is actually possible to convert a .ter file to .msh? I guess it was openable in 3dObjctconverter and maybe exportable as an obj..And the rest is self explained. But is that possible? It were a good way to create more high polyer terrains with fixed textures and a heigh higher than 327.63 meters. It's just only editable in xsi because you could not export it back to .ter.

Maveritchell wrote:Not to be a butthead or anything, but did you try moving your path texture up to layer 0 instead of layer 1?

The terrain is so messed that moving the layer slots doesn't even work. Regardless, after not being able to fix the path texture issue, I decided to just model a more accurate path like I've been meaning to do for years.

Thanks for the input, guys. Even though none of the problems I listed are really "solved," it's always good to have this kind of information available the boards for others to see.

Marth8880 wrote:

Maveritchell wrote:Not to be a butthead or anything, but did you try moving your path texture up to layer 0 instead of layer 1?

The terrain is so messed that moving the layer slots doesn't even work.

Do you mean that it has no effect or that the ZE controls are nonresponsive?

Strange, strange stuff happened. The controls were responsive, but it's like the changes weren't being applied or something. On a similar note, when I reverted the TER file to a backed up copy with the texture layers occupying slots 4, 5 and 6, I cleared the entire terrain of all textures, tried using slots 0, 1 and 2 for my new texture layers, and then attempted to repaint the terrain, but no textures were painted. For some reason, slots 0, 1 and 2 absolutely refused to work. Freakin Pandemic...

That happened to me, too. Once you layed down any texture, you could not get rid of it, and after about 3 layers, then no texture could be deleted, moved, or added.

Also, just checking, when you open ZE, do you check Accurate Object Collision?

Kingpin wrote:Also, just checking, when you open ZE, do you check Accurate Object Collision?

Only when I plan to burn my terrain.

Marth8880 wrote:

Kingpin wrote:Also, just checking, when you open ZE, do you check Accurate Object Collision?

Only when I plan to burn my terrain.

If I don't have it on, then my objects are never accurately placed. Try doing that.