Transparent / translucent water

[matiosse]

Ok thanks, there is one weird thing though, when I changed the art.mul with the files in transparent water.zip, the water in the zip file looked exactly like the water I already had in my art file; not transparent at all. Is that normal?

 

[Thorgat]

You're going to have to redraw some of the tiles because:

the red (West) part of the tile ALWAYS overlaps the green (East) and the blue (North) part of the tiles always overlaps yellow (South)... thus getting rid of the squares because that is what is causing them - you have to shave off or rehue (either way works) the tile overlapped tiles at the edges by 1 pixel to a lighter shade to have the seamless effect. Your screenshots weren't seamless Keep in mind though when you are doing this that you wont be able to get rid of the L shaped tiles in the shallow water tile section of the muls so rehue them to match the rest of the water color at a lighter shade to mesh them in.

I get what you are saying after looking on the pictures. Interesting hint, thanks. Is there a chance you can release these border-cleaned tiles to the public?

 

[Sythen]

I had a discussion with a few other people about releasing this and I'm not into stepping on toes or making waves within the community. Nockar was impatient and rather spiteful about gaining acclaim for the ability to add translucent water to a server and thus he gave you guys another way of getting the affect without having to add in new graphics; my suggestion is to use his files because ours has over 500+ graphic replacements and hundreds of new graphics each with their own image flags that add specific affects; ie. animated underwater vents. I don't want to confuse anyone, nor am I going to support Nockar's version of water translucency. Whenever I gain the time I will put together a tutorial to do this right; right doesn't mean Nockar's way is wrong, it just means that our way is a lot more tropical looking, seamless, and clear with varying depths.

On a personal note, I don't blame Nockar for trying to compete with us; it was my fault by releasing our accomplishments too early because it probably fueled the "I want it now" complex so many of you get when someone comes up with cool changes that alter the look and feel of the game. The real credits should go to the Owner and Developers of Arx Obscura (for the idea and model we used by looking at screen shots of their server); my only accomplishment was helping a friend reverse engineer and test out the way EA/Origin/Richard Garriott created UO graphics to work in unison with one another; thereby allowing us to create a seamless translucency without square boxes or L-shapes in the shallows. It also allowed us to create tools we can use in-game to create new graphics right the first time without having to go back and edit bits and pieces. So to just let everyone know the pioneers for translucent water in UO was, in fact, the Arx Obscura Development Team, and not us; we just wanted to perfect it on a larger scale.

If you want a crisper look and feel contact them and maybe they will share with you all; as for me, I've been quite happy taking a break from UO Emulation.

 

[Thorgat]

I'm not sure how anyone is competing here with anyone else. Basically I took a hiatus from UO emulation for ten years (!) and had transparent water back then already at my tinker shard. Never bothered with the grid effect though, too many other things with higher priority.
So what you say is the water tiles need to shaved by 1 pixel, that is quickly done, Photoshop or whatever. Thanks for the hint. I'm just a bit perplexed by that big thing about sharing the water tiles (I talk about the general ones, nothing else if these are so secret/precious) if you have made them already. In my perspective we all benefit from work others have done, I've just released CentrED+ with the English translation and all items including IDs from the uop files, took me weeks to do it - but why on earth sit on it thight huh? But maybe I'm getting too old for understanding these things ...

 

[Sythen]

its more a matter of the files not being readily available. I have them but they aren't catagorized or packaged up yet. like I mentioned, I'm really not into UO Emulation much anymore; I still love the game but I lost interest in it. My time is better spent funding people to create a uo-style isometric game engine/server engine and having it built to, not only, a customized specification but also have it to where it is more stable because the end result is both the game files and server engine are created by the same people and thus compatible with one another in their entirety. Anyway this project is either here nor there, it probably won't even break even given the technology on the market, however it does soothe as a creative outlet and will work quite like runuo and the Ultima Online game engine has worked for us all these years. Getting back on topic though, when I have time I will try and package the water tiles up and release them, but it will be when I am motivated to

 

[m309]

Thorgat, thats literally all you have to do. Shave a pixel off of the one end of the water art files (I forget which side now), add the Translucent flag in Tiledata, and use Centred to mass delete the L shape water tiles and then change the land tiles under the static water. Its just that simple. I've had the translucent water on my server for about 3 years now and it looks great, no issues.

 

[Thorgat]

I know m309, just got itchy when I read how the thread developed ... sometimes I can't help it and call people ...

 

[m309]

Understandable, I love simple myself. No reason to over complicate things!

 

[Miracle99]

Question to anyone using this on their shard.

Are you doing this for the entire Felucca/Trammel Map? Or just doing it around the shorelines? Just seems like a massive undertaking for 100% of the water and then the massive underwater decoration out there on open waters.

Also is your deep water fishing affected by this or no? wasnt sure if it checks by tile id or by how far you are from the shoreline.

 

[Nockar]

Hi there!

Oh my gosh. That would be a lot of work!! What we did was use the water tiles in specific spots and decorates specific areas that the players frequent.

Is deep water affected by this? No its not. Nothing is affected. Everything works exactly as it was before. None a single thing is affected – because all that’s being changed is the images & checking transparent.

 

[adamg6284]

Well, seems like you earned yourself a beer.... so reach into your pockets and buy one ....

On a more interesting note, looks good Nockar, I respect the work you put into this. Your water color is darker than ours, but still very good. My suggestion (since you got this far), is to test boats on your water. Its not enough just to make translucent water, now you need to go into your boat scripts and change the land tile ids... if you did this the way I think you might have, your water tiles are fused statics and not land tiles...

If use land tile water then when you raise and lower it in centrED it will create a hill or a pit/hole in your map... therefore your sea floor needs to be land tile and your water above it needs to be set as static tiles and added manually into the mul files with the correct flags set. How do I know this... well I've done it through trial and error.

What you are checking for with the boats is to make sure that your boats sail without squares underneath it. They should glide across the water seamlessly. That question you asked me earlier this week? Yea thats the issue that would come with the problem you were having. The other thing is that you need to not only change the water hues, but you also need to edit a few other scripts and animations to make this fluid. I'll let you figure that one out on your own. The boxes near the shallow water are put there by the compiler to identify shallow areas... its like the border or something between deepsea and coastal waters. OSI even has them in a lot of locations, you'll remember them if you've played on the commercial shards because they are the blue boxes that appear on your ship on occassion as you approach a shoreline.

In addition please note that this process of converting an entire ocean takes a lot of time and patience. Its not a quick transition like it seems in the description above. If anyone needs additional help with this and you all are truly interested in full oceans that have both sea depth, land elevation and translucent rivers, oceans, and waterways then you can pm me and we'll set you up.

Not trying to discredit the work Nockar put into this, but its of my own observation that this info was released half-descripted and not enough detail... therefore too soon. I'll be interested to see how many people respond with complaints that their boats are moving or the fishing script is messed up and doesn't mesh with the server colorwise. Those who truly care about detail oriented, role playing servers will care about the quality of information not how fast one was able to share it in a half-cocked way. Just my 2 cents.

FYI: I work with a few other people and have done a lot of Ultima artwork and my team has put together hundreds of coral heads and underwater optical illusions which make static fish look like they are swimming. In addition we can show you how to make coral heads and animated sea vents and sea creatures.

Nockar, just thought it was fair I added this notation because people are going to have a lot of issues with this. There are issues with the way tiles are drawn in UO which make the Box problem cause issues with things like boat movement etc. I've found a way around this, but it requires a lot of knowledge as to how tiles are fit together and I'll give you one hint:

Here Is The Difference: Ours:

what i would like to know is how you made your lights look so cool. looks awesome man.