I hope carrying mods over from 17 to 19 will be easy. I’m sure maps will be harder perhaps because of how the “farms” will have to be setup but I have a lot of vehicles, trailers and tools that I’d love to carry over to 19.
My first thought is that a new shader of sorts might be involved but hopefully the mod.desc and the mod’s xml will stay the same.
Any insights or thoughts?
I took 11/20 to 11/25 off from work and now my wife is checking if there’s some sort of Farmer’s Anonymous group in the area.
BostonJohnny1226 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 20, 2018 10:41 pm
I took 11/20 to 11/25 off from work and now my wife is checking if there’s some sort of Farmer’s Anonymous group in the area.
I have no idea on the modding questions at this point. Respect for the time off, though.
Oh, and if you find a Virtual-farmer’s Anonymous group, let me know...
From what GIANTS have shown us so far any pre 19 models would need to be re-textured in a 3D modelling program at the very least as Fs19 uses a different material based system to how models are textured now, not to mention the new "wear" layer added I believe to the specular texture.
Any straight converts will look quite poor I imagine compared to Fs19 standard mods.
As for maps we still know almost nothing about the changes to mod mapping. We've been shown the greater emphasis on placeables, having buyable areas instead of just buyable fields, also being able to place animal areas.
But as far as actually making a mod map for Fs19 and how different it will be GIANTS have given us practically zero information, nor does it look like we will until Fs19 is released.
I expect the only mod maps to be released early on to be by Modteams who have regular contact or are affliated with GIANTS.
For the rest of us modders we will need to work out all the new aspects and game features ourselves and then implement them properly into our new maps for Fs19.
With the push from GIANTS for more "SimCity" style maps with this new expanded placeable and customizable system, it will make it harder to fully implement those features properly on realistic or real life replica maps as from what we've seen so far the placeable system is still massively limited compared with building your own map in GIANTS Editor.
However players will expect this new feature in any mod maps which puts pressure on mod map makers to either make the map based around that, or have to try and adapt realistic, real world maps.
Either way I'm not feeling particularly positive about mod mapping in Fs19 yet.
Hi bill id just like to say that with the new placeable system giants has in fs 19 i am looking forward to it epsecially for the giants standard maps ect and its gives the player more freedom but at the same time when it comes to maps that you yourself or lets say oxy have made would it not be better to keep them as the kind of realistic maps you guys make now without the placeable systems in place because your maps are so realsistic that they dont need a buildable farm and buyable land ect to be fun and enjoyable.. But i can imagine what im saying will be just as hard to do? Due to giants will probably make the placeable system a must have in every mod map :/
We could just ignore the new system, but then can you imagine the complaining coming from the players if we don't?
Myself and many other modders have had a guts full of the complaining in Fs17. If it was to increase in Fs19 it just wouldn't be worth releasing mods and maps at all.
Ironically modders get more abuse than GIANTS do themselves.
Modding is supposed to be fun, and making them still is. But releasing mods now is just a massive headache and stress.
Yeah i guess your right there pal there would allways be some who complain and as for the complaining i do not agree with people harrassing or complaining with the modders you guys do such an amazing job you domt deserve it no modder does keep up the good work anyway man! I hope you never give up to lose the talent would be. A shame for the community but i guess we will all just have to wait till 19 to see how the map modding community gets on and if giants keep to what they said and make it easy for you guys
The new placeable features basically come for free for map modders. The only "limitation" is that only terrain can be adjusted. So whenever you use static meshes to replicate terrain-like things, you won't be able to place something there. But I guess that was not done quite often anyway.
Also there is no need to paint/create nav-meshes anymore for the animals, since these are now part of the placeables.
For placeables that are pre-placed on the map, it basically is the same as for FS17 (e.g. the pre-placed sheds at the farm). You can load the placeable objects directly in the map like regular objects (so that you have a preview how it is going to look like in the game) and then tag them with an onCreate so that they are replaced with a real placeable when the game is loaded.
The terrain painting is now no longer limited to 4 layers per chunk, so this makes it quite a lot easier and flexible. The tech how the terrain is rendered has changed slightly. Now you can only paint a single layer at any pixel in the world, but we increased the resolution of the weight map so that you actually have more control than before.
With that, we also change the textures of the layers themselves. Each texture is now only 512x512 pixels, but it is repeated much more often than in FS17, so that we actually have about twice as many pixels per meter than before. To avoid seeing repetitions, we now use multiple versions of the same textures (e.g. 4 grass textures that almost look the same) and we randomly select one of the similar textures (changing like every 1m). For this, there's also direct support in the GIANTS Editor. So you just select one of the combine layers (e.g. grass, that consists of 4 different grass textures), and paint as with FS17.
So for the map creation this change is not that major, it only affects moddes that want to create their own layer textures.
Apart from that, nothing major has changed for map modding that would come to my mind just now.
I hope they change the way some vehicle collisions work. I've noticed testing my mod that is the cause of the jerkiness that some ppl have complained about, myself included even on xbox. I thought its a physics issue. the compound child collisions on vehicles try to move around when you get around other collision points and causes a fps drop. maybe it's a limitation with nvidias physics engine I don't know but I hope that part is fixed.
Thanks Stegei for these news about differences about map modding.
Just a question: if i remember well for FS17 coming in late October 2016, Giants granted us with a Giant Editor 7.0.0 at begening of September 2016, almost 2 months before the game.
May we hope to have a GE 8.0.0 before November 2018 for training and understanding new things
BulletBill wrote: ↑Fri Sep 21, 2018 10:50 am
...
With the push from GIANTS for more "SimCity" style maps with this new expanded placeable and customizable system, it will make it harder to fully implement those features properly on realistic or real life replica maps as from what we've seen so far the placeable system is still massively limited compared with building your own map in GIANTS Editor.
However players will expect this new feature in any mod maps which puts pressure on mod map makers to either make the map based around that, or have to try and adapt realistic, real world maps.
Either way I'm not feeling particularly positive about mod mapping in Fs19 yet.
I get what you are saying; I had thought about that angle a little myself.
It know counts for almost nothing (given the rampant lack of gratitude that seems to be everywhere these days), but I think I’d be okay with less of the free-form map flexibility on maps based on real places and farms (like Lone Oak). One of the reasons I like those maps is that the farm layouts tend to make sense to me, probably because they are inspired by real, working farms. For me, that manifests itself as a greatly diminished “need”for placeable structures (since everything tends to be near where I’d put it already). That’s probably my biggest “irritation” about some of the default maps: the facility placement and layout can feel “unnatural” and inefficient.
So, while it may not count for much, there may be a subset of players (like me) that won’t mind a more “rigid” map if it reflects a real place.
By the way, thanks for the hard work. I’ve only dabbled at modifying existing maps, and even that can feel like a job.
I think that if the ungrateful folk would just look at a modded map within GE they might get an idea as what goes into making a map and appreciate modders a bit more
map making is a daunting task. I have been working off and on with one for over a year. started with an edit of goldcrest and then I got the bright idea of starting from a scratch 4x flat mod map. wow there is so much that goes into that. I'm still working on the main farm. and the more stuff I add the slower GE gets. you need a super computer for map making. lol
