Slaan

Ok so the hub has been converted, theres just a few minor changes need to be fixed. Will most likely have this finished tomorrow, unfortunately the de-sync issue is still there so dedi servers will need to use the work around guide to get it up and running. The glassCTRsheet block seems to be bugging out, possibly when broken by Z's or collapsing, im not sure, but when it does it is causing a massive frames drop in the bank/large office building when you have it visable on screen.

Lowfdog showed me something interesting regarding the SI, steel I believe should support around 16 blocks but the 10th will always collapse when walked on, I'm sure the 11th block will collapse the whole lot when placed too. Im not sure if this was true for all blocks that extend their support past 10 blocks, I seem to remember him say there was some kind of bug involved. I'd never even thought of checking things like how many blocks the different things will support before I start building until I started talking to lowfdog, which is quite funny when u consider how far I've come with building stuff lol I might actually fully understand it all by the time the gold release comes along >.<

There's quite a few areas that will collapse, the bridge struts are among a 'few' unstable parts of the hub... try climbing across the toppled skyscraper... that can be fun I shrug this stuff off as wear and tear, there's been an apocalypse after all. If there's any serious collapsing, enable DM and check beneath the surface, some seeds will generate gaps beneath the hub since i removed some of the stone base layers and they will most certainly interfere with structural integrity.

Admittedly I've not done much exploring into the surrounding world with compo pack 17, but I was very impressed with what I saw in CP 16 and I'm not sure much has changed with regards to the spawn settings/probabilities etc between the two. I honestly think luck is your biggest deciding factor, when you consider the size of the world, the sheer amount of possibilities and combinations is always gonna be hard to nail down, but then again thats why it's called 'random'. I think some kind of seed tracker thread may already exist?, if not then maybe people could get into the habit of sharing some of their better finds but I do feel your pain when it comes to flipping seeds, the last time I purged my saves folder I sent around 640 folders to the recycle bin

The size of the hub may have a knock on effect with what else can spawn within the cell alongside it, however the rest of the cells should spawn stuff as usual. Maybe try the compo pack mixer that's included, Magoli has done an amazing job with the wilderness spawns in the last couple versions. Im sure that stallions megacity mod pack uses some other form of wilderness spawning via biome decorations, but I'm not familiar with that method at all. Maybe you have just rolled a 'bad' seed and need to sacrifice some more zombies to the RNG gods. I'd like to work more on the rest of the mixer, but other community members are already doing a much better job than I could pull off, so for the time being I'll stick with maintaining the hub.

Well Im blindly hoping when it comes to converting to A14 that everything is gonna be just fine (I tell this to myself at least three times a day), it was so much fun making the transition from 12 to 13 that I just can't wait... As for learning the 'prefab grid', the of that series is just finished rendering, hope that is of some use to you, there's very little actual building, but the method behind adding stuff to the hub layout code is in there. There is a third approach where people can just build crazy big things and not worry about the grid system at all, in this instance, like I said to menace earlier in the thread leaves you with something that will spawn as it's own little hub and/or could be used as a district within the larger project. I'd only use one or the other, but some builds end up being decent little things that sit nice out in the wilderness with their own cells (pikero slum/indy hub).

I did look at some of the re-skinned skyscrapers, I used a similar technique to put together the toppled skyscraper that's already in there. The interior of peppinos' skyscraper is easily recyclable as it is, however I'm not a massive fan of simply replacing the concrete, I think with a little more effort some quite unique patterns could be created over one or two that would make them look like a totally new building. Checkout some of lowfdogs video's, he inspired the 'pattern' i skinned over the crappy vanilla brick buildings to make the toppled skyscraper and imho a single unique looking building (even with a repeated interior) far surpasses a huge amount of similar looking stuff. I have a little something planned as a thankyou for the subscribes on the youtube channel which should be out *soon* then I'm gonna start work on the school area in downtown and hopefully shoot some vids that cover all the stages I use in adding a 'new' area to the hub itself, however feel free to bombard me with questions, If you have the building itch I most certainly will help you scratch it if I can

Ok new version is available along with a new, short video tour. There are now two mixers available within the project folder itself, vanilla and a modified CP 17 mixer. As usual, any feedback/questions/suggestions are appriciated.

ok everything goes ok, should have the next version out tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll tidy up the OP with everything when i push it out. Setting up the hub on a dedicated server tutorial Any troubles/problems/questions fire away and I'll do my best (to not be clever enough to answer them!).

Testing on a dedi server has been interesting to say the least. So far setting the server seed name (config xml) and loading into the world to generate the savegame folder, teleporting to 0,0 (almost guarantees the de-sync glitch) and explore small part of the hub until the error pops up. At this point I can re-start the client, re-connect and carry on discovering the rest of the hub until the next error, then rinse/repeat until the whole area is set down in the region files. Then removing the hub code from the mixer seems to stop the errors all together. It's a seriously tedious and ♥♥♥♥ty method and even tho dedi server owners *should* only have to do this once, it's still too much of a hassle. So what I'm doing now, is generating the world as in the first step and porting over to 0,0 once in until I get the error. Re-start the client then copy the seed name into a SP/MP game on my local machine and fully exploring the hub on my own world. Once the hub is discovered and the road connections are located, simpely shut down the dedi, go into the savegame folder for the world and copy over the region files, overwriting anything that pops up. (I also delete the map folder). This seems to prevent the errors also, while not requiring the mixer to be modified at all and while it still takes around 20-30 mins to setup, it's not too terrible of a process to go thru to get a good slice of custom going on in your world.

Sounds good, I'm just testing the 0.3 version and playing with psyborgs' work around so nothing 'new' will make it into the next release. Once you feel you have an area that is substantial enough to start being converted (if it exceeds 117 x 117 blocks then it will need chopping into more than 1 piece) into the prefab grid system, I will work with you in a similar way I did to lowfdog and we can thrash out any other ideas or features particular to the area you would be allocated. Once you have your own mini prefab grid hub, adding it to the main hub is as simple as adding your prefab lots to the mixer. http://northern-lan.co.uk/project-slaanhatten-part-1-from-concept-to-crazy/ Towards the bottom of the blog you will see some diagrams on how lowfdogs (rather large) city area was converted to a prefab grid system and also how it looks added to the project itself.

I've done feck all for about 5 days lol, but now the editor is updated Im gonna crack on with whats left to do for this version. No ETA yet, but I think I'm gonna skip the downtown addition I mentioned earlier and use it as the basis for a couple tutorials on how to add new area's to the project. Northern highway needs it's access ramps put in, but they are already pre-built and just need inserted/tidied up, all of the highway prefabs (5 roads, 4 ramps) make up a tidy little set that will be there with the mini-fabs should anyone want to use them for anything. Once the highway is complete I'll look at any other little touch ups I can do, then crack on with the dedi server setup/testing.

Sounds interesting, good thing with having to wait for the dll's is it's given me a ton of time to go over every city section in the editor to correct all sorts of crap, I fear rotations are not fully eliminated... forgot the brownstone houses had pipes in the basement >.< but it's looking a lot tidier now.

People are welcome at any stage to do as little or as much as they like, or just ping back feedback/suggestions here and I'll add the good ones to the 'to do' list. It's the prefabbers who have crazy big builds that will feel most at home as instead of filling all our cell's with tiny custom hubs we can collect them all together in one place and leave our random gen a bit more 'random'. On a sidenote, I've not been able to track down the cause of the error's we've been saying, I will speculate some things regarding it tho. Firstly, initial testing started on a dedi server went perfectly fine, up until the hub was around 4 x 4 prefab lots. As it gets to this kind of size, the hub itself if too big to fit into terrain and we start to see hill's etc be removed when the hub is placed into the world. This is the start of the triangle fails, some seeds are terrible, a handful are not so bad, but the ground level of the hub sitting over the terrain as opposed to cutting thru it defo see's much better results. How this is tied to the de-sync error is beyond me, I'm a self confessed simpleton and I've tried rebuilding piece by piece, there's nothing that stands out as the obvious issue when I first hit seeds that produced the error. I'm still to test Psyborgs' work around, but once the last parts of the hub are re-added (taking longer than expected, but a lot of cleaning up has been done) I'll take a look at it in more detail and include instructions (and probably a video) on how to set it up on a dedicated server. All in all, it's looking much better and I can't wait to get the rest of the highway ramps set in and get the last couple of concept area's finished off.

They layout will stay the same, the major changes will be the additions like the south side of the river, highway + bridge with the access ramps. I think downtown is gonna extend another block so I can squeeze in a school and wrap that area up as its own 'little' district. As I'm still not sure whats causing the initial problem I'm expecting the addition of a section will break something at some point, but when it does I'll be in a better position to diagnose what I done wrong re-building it piece by piece. There's floaty islands all over atm too, but I'll work on them once the hub is whole again.

I've broken the hub apart for the time being, slowly re-doing the roads and putting it back together piece by piece. More importantly BigC has let me use the northern lan test server and the downtown area is loading up fine, not been kicked or de-synced at all so far. It's gonna take a couple of days to get it all back together, testing each area on the dedi server before moving on to the next parts. I should be putting out the next version during the week if all goes well, the access ramp prefabs I made for the highway really start to bring the two halfs of the hub together now they are joined by the bridge, lowfdogs arena has had it's foundations set and will be the main show off on the south side in the next release.

All info is appreciated m8 and you have given me a workaround to test. Obviously I'd like to know what is causing the problems, but a solid workaround means people can still enjoy at least!

Ok so after a few tries, managed to capture the error (as the host of local MP), any idea's or suggestions would be appriciated as although there does seem to be a way to work around this for the dedi server, the offset + count thing seems to be quite specific and is not an error im used to seeing. The steam ID at the top is the player who connected, he received the keynotfound error seconds before this one popped up at my end, and from that point on terrain refuses to generate for him, both our cursors are gone and the game requires a full restart to fix. Below is the error log from his end. The keynotfound thing, I have seen before but as I'm certain the mixer itself is not at fault, I had thought it could have been a density thing but have ruled this out now as I have reset all densities to 0 (except air, that was changed back to 127) and while there are less glitches in some seeds, the hub is loading fine for me. It's almost like there's a null block hiding somewhere, but that would surely cause me issues long before any others connected.

Cheers dude!, On a side note, my master copy has ported over to the 13.7 mixer and the de-sync problem still persists. Got most of the upcoming concept areas almost done but gonna put the rest on hold for now and start trying to track down the cause of this issue. Theres quite clearly particular trouble spots, I had tried resetting all densities back to 0 for the hub and was getting a crash to desktop (no error, just client closing instantly)when trying to generate some parts so gonna do some more controlled testing with smaller areas and see what that brings.

Well it's not the first time you come in and take a crap somewhere, i doubt it's gonna be the last...

I've noticed this de-sync when i've had people connecting, one thing that springs to mind is some of the older prefab sections may need pulled thru the editor to fix any bugs/wierd air/density stuff and some of the freaky roads I've laid down with the mixer need tidied up. After that I'll back track thru the change log and see if I notice anything as this was not an issue in earlier version so I have a feeling it can be fixed as Im sure I've seen this before. cheers for the heads up, before I wrap up the next version I'll make sure to test this some more. After removing the code, the server can continue on fine with the generated hub?

Yeah different seeds can have different results, basically if the prefab clips above or below the world (below bedrock/above sky limit) then they won't load up. I think I can probably trim of some of the stone base and maybe adjust the offset to something more agreeable, around -25(ish) to make generating the hub in the very low biomes a little less troublesome. and yeah, i need more lemsips before i record more video ;p

Done a showing how to add the relevant code into another rwgmixer, I used the compo pack 16 mixer as an example and there is also a link to download it in the description. Hope this helps.

Hate to say it bud, but thats exactly the purpose. The reasoning behind it is with all these custom prefabs we generally have a lot more loot containers than you would typically get in the same kind of area within the vanilla game and as the game is balanced for the content the pimps created, modders have a certain responsibility imo to maintain that balance within their creations. I can't speak for the compo pack, but one idea Im planning at a later date is to create some custom loot containers that look the same as their counterparts but would have a much smaller chance of items in them, this would not be until the hub has had its foundations set in properly so that I can look at the area as a whole and adjust the loot accordingly. Also remember my personal use for this hub is for a pvp dedi server, so loot will be more abundant than typically expected as we hope to have permanent residents moving into the city and taking over sections to hold as their territory. - - - Updated - - - I will work on adding the hub as a custom cell within the latest compo pack mixer, it's not as bad as it seems, theres just a lot more to the hub layout code and it's prefab rule than some might expect.

Some more using hals' prefab editor.