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Malena

"Quick and dirty" Log walls (for now)

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So as we all know, players have been requesting log walls for yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssssssssssss. Here are links to some of those suggestions from the past:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Like everyone else, I'd also like to see these implemented. Especially now that I'm working on the town of Yew in the Ultima Nostalgia project and the whole bloody town is made up of log cabins!!! So for the project, I had to find a solution. At first I was trying the "ausfacades" log cabin mod by Ausimus and the release that ago made, but it wasn't working properly. So I became desperate and decided to just make a texture that somehow mimics the look of a log cabin, using the textures used in our palisades + some color work. It's not perfect, and of course optimally it'd be great if we had proper meshed log walls, but I've heard this can be tricky to implement...

 

I suggest that "for now" until we can get proper 3d log walls, we make a "quick and dirty" temporary solution by making a new wall type called "log wall" etc using the mesh of the stone walls (like we have for all the new wall types) and slapping a log texture on it.

Then, once the proper walls have been created (some time far far into the future I assume), they can replace the temporary set.

 

This is the end result of my experiments in Ultima Nostalgia

 

logwalls.jpg

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See the textures "in action" in my troll fort piccies in the Screenshots forum:

 

 

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so you fixed the problem you were having with the "Missing item" when you spawned the log walls??

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Just now, ozmods said:

so you fixed the problem you were having with the "Missing item" when you spawned the log walls??

 

Nope, was never able to fix that problem.

This is what the mod's log walls are apparently supposed to look like:

 

4da27588cdc98b68761daf566ae37499.jpg

 

But the walls in this suggestion are simply using the mesh of the plain stone walls (which all the new wall types seem to be using) + a new texture I made from bits and pieces of the palisade texture:

 

terxture-comparison_log.png

 

What I am proposing in this suggestion, is that if making proper 3d mesh log walls is a challenge (and I've heard that it is), that "for now", why not just make a new skin like I did for my server.

 

I guess the question for the players is: Let's just assume that we are never ever going to get proper log walls with rounded log shapes. Would you prefer having at least a faux textured wall, or none at all?

 

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I think log cabins would fit very well in wurm, especially for those shack-in-the-woods kind of look. In terms of mesh and texture i think it can happily use the palisade model, just rotate it sideways, trim the pointy top part and something for the corners.

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@Trenixand @Fablecrafter just to be clear that this suggestion is not for log cabin walls generally, but for a "faux" log cabin implementation (in other words, creating the illusion of a log cabin wall with textures only) up till the day that we can get actual 3d log cabin walls. 

 

 

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+100 support, hopefully they add this - great work Malena!

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+1 - I never understood why the developers did not integrate log homes from the beginning.

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+1

Fits the game atmosphere very well.

Edited by griper
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51 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

Looks good, and log walls are on our (extremely long) list...

 

Thanks for responding Retro. Just to be clear, this suggestion is not for "log walls" - something which as we all know, has been suggested a gazillion times.

 

This suggestion is to make a "quick and dirty" version which will:

  • Satiate the players desires "for now" until we get a proper new log wall type
  • Ease the heat from the devs from delivering a fully perfect log wall, with rounded log mesh shapes etc

By "quick and dirty" I mean doing something super fast and copy paste. So for instance the texture swap I did used about an hour of work from the art side, this includes making the LOD distance versions. It's just a texture swap, that's all. No stress about alignments and how the walls meet up, 

 

Since there are probably 999 things in your guys list that comes before log walls, could we not "for now" have this "faux" wall solution to keep the masses happy?

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It looks good Malena.

 

Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd be worried about the mesh.  Would the advantage be that instead of flat, the wall would have the curvature of the logs? 

 

The look of it is important, of course, but kinda seems like for Wurm the materials used is just as important.  Something wonderfully rustic about using plain old logs and maybe a mortar made of mud and mixed grass.  I'd imagine that's part of the reason people are clamoring for this wall type.

 

Have you tried putting a palisade up against one of these log walls to see if it looks really odd having the same texture vertical and horizontal next to each other?  Just curious.

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2 hours ago, Reylaark said:

Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd be worried about the mesh.  Would the advantage be that instead of flat, the wall would have the curvature of the logs? 

 

Yeah, I'm assuming that what everyone wants when they request "log wall types" is fully rounded logs as walls, such as this:

 

maxresdefault.jpg

 

But the problem with this from the development side (from what I remember reading one time) is that with current house structure, getting pieces shaped like this isn't so easy to get working so the pieces will meet up properly. And if this is the case, I totally get while they'll need some time to get it right and figure out a good way to do that. So while we wait for that day to come, it'd be nice to at least have merely textured flat walls if nothing else.

 

2 hours ago, Reylaark said:

The look of it is important, of course, but kinda seems like for Wurm the materials used is just as important.  Something wonderfully rustic about using plain old logs and maybe a mortar made of mud and mixed grass.  I'd imagine that's part of the reason people are clamoring for this wall type.

 

Yeah this is exactly my thinking as well. This ain't no AAA title where every little thing needs to be tip top. We certainly have worse things in the game, so that's why I didn't feel too bad about suggesting this "b-class" solution :-D.

And I'm pretty sure that you're right - that players ain't so picky - as long as we have the possibility for something more rustic. 

 

It could be of course, that the wurm team want to do it right and integrate some further functionality change into those walls. For instance I remember some players suggesting that cabins could be something complete noob players could build easily. (maybe by using a hatchet to cut down some trees, then use some tar to bind the logs together, in general something that doesn't need you to mine for ore and smelt and make nails etc). Who knows, maybe they're planning something a bit more deep than just the visual look. 

 

2 hours ago, Reylaark said:

Have you tried putting a palisade up against one of these log walls to see if it looks really odd having the same texture vertical and horizontal next to each other?  Just curious.

 

Oooohhhh!!!!!!!!! So you didn't see the screenshot post I linked? Well I'll just share them here directly then! I made this troll hut using the palisade and the walls I made in Wurm Unlimited. And the texture for the walls was taken from bits and pieces of the palisade texture, then pimped up a bit with shadows etc.

 

trollfort_01.jpg

 

trollfort_02.jpg

 

trollfort_03.jpg

 

trollfort_04.jpg

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would it be possible to copy say "stone wall.wom and then edit the mappings.txt and add it as a new wall  type maybe??

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8 minutes ago, ozmods said:

would it be possible to copy say "stone wall.wom and then edit the mappings.txt and add it as a new wall  type maybe??

 

That part of the process should be no problem at all. That's exactly the kind of thing I did in the Trinsic video when I really badly needed sandstone parapets and at the time we didn't know they would be coming soon after that. So I used the stone parapet mesh file, saved it as the wooden parapet since I wouldn't be needing it, then edited the code of the wom to use the sandstone wall texture. 

In the above fort, the mesh being used is in indeed the stone walls (used by the pottery brick walls for which I just replaced the texture this time). 

 

 

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What could be tricky though, is the thing when they couldn't add all the stone and fence types along with the new wall types, you might recall wurmians complaining about this. But I guess they solved it somehow after which we finally got those. Was it something about how many "slots" we have for house types or something like that that the code will support. Can't remember. So if that's still an issue, that's probably the trickiest part to solve for log or any other new wall types. I might be completely off the mark though! 

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From what I remember, there was a limitation in the past, but they've come up with some really clever updates to get around the limitations (hence the slow initial start followed by the explosion of content!)

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Good Idea!
In the real world, to build a log house, you need to work with the fit of the log's. It will take for production to handle each log with an hatchet.

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On 2/14/2018 at 0:58 AM, Malena said:

What could be tricky though, is the thing when they couldn't add all the stone and fence types along with the new wall types, you might recall wurmians complaining about this. But I guess they solved it somehow after which we finally got those. Was it something about how many "slots" we have for house types or something like that that the code will support. Can't remember. So if that's still an issue, that's probably the trickiest part to solve for log or any other new wall types. I might be completely off the mark though! 

 

It was a problem for fences, used to be a 7-bit id so they were limited to 127 types, but it was extended to a 15-bit (32768 possible types) value so it's not an issue anymore.

 

I don't think it was ever a problem for house walls since they are stored/transmitted differently.

Edited by bdew
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