Road Painter tool (development thread)

[Homer Johnston]

Summary:
-This tool is intended to aid the process of road creation in Visitor. It allows you to easily "paint" long sections of road in between key-parts from within the ArmA mission editor. You can then generate a text file to import into a Visitor road-network.
-The tool is not intended to export/import key-parts (yet). Key-parts must be placed using Visitor, importing road sections as you go.

Current version:
0.1 - BETA

Download:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4621600/HOMJ...inter_v0-1.zip (Added April 29th 2010) You are welcome to host this file on your own site!

ArmaHolic Mirror:
DOWNLOAD - Road Painter tool (v0.1beta) from ArmaHolic
ArmedAssault.info Mirror:
DOWNLOAD - Road Painter tool (v0.1beta) - [131 KB] from ArmedAssault.info

Usage instructions:
Please read the Readme.txt and watch this video. Higher-resolution is available if you watch it at Youtube instead of embedded:




Things I need assistance with:
- A way to inject road sections and key parts into a PEW file using this information. I am not a coder, and this level of hex editing/binary editing is currently beyond my understanding.

[Beton]

Homer that looks really promising.

If someone could tell me what exactly the numbers in the curves stand for i would try to modify some of the roads..for testing

[IceBreakr]

I think the last numbers are meters? 25,50,75,100?

[Homer Johnston]

if a road has one number it is straight, with the "approximate length". If it has two numbers it is a curve with angle + radius.

asf 6 = straight 6.25m
asf 12 = straight 12.5m
asf 25 = straight 25m

asf 10 25 = 10 deg. turn with 25m radius
asf 10 50 = 10 deg. turn with 50m radius
asf 0 1000 = 0.5 deg. turn with 1000m radius (unusable?)

Currently I believe the only curves we can use in visitor are 25, 50, 75, and 100m radius (since these are the only options in the dialog), and these all turn 10 degrees. Visitor does not specify degrees. I am expecting that 10-degree turns will be a hardcoded feature of Visitor 3 and not read from the road model, but it might be worth checking to find out anyway. If Visitor would use other degree turns, it would make this tool 10x more awesome sometimes it's difficult to match a SatMap with 10 degrees as your minimum turn amount...

It's interesting to note that ArmA2 uses some odd curve shapes: 0.? degrees with 2000m radius, 1 degree with 1000m radius, 7 degree with 100m radius, 60 degree with 10m radius ... BIS gave us the MLODs to use these roads, but not a tool capable of placing them

If you want to try this, you'll need some basic knowledge of O2. Maybe edit asf_1 10 100 ... delete half of its faces (on the "far" side, not the ones near XYZ origin), and then somehow move the memory points for the corners of the road back to the new corners... then save as asf_1 5 100, and try using it in visitor. Place some of the 10 100 curves and 5 100 curves in a row and see if there's any difference between them. I'm hoping that Visitor uses the Memory points to snap roads together. I'd REALLY appreciate it if you (or anyone) tried this for me...

[EDIT] Don't bother trying the model mod ... I tried loading the 15-deg 75 meter curve in and it treated it like it was 10-degrees

[MemphisBelle]

I think the last numbers are meters? 25,50,75,100?

compared to the different length of the road pieces....you are right. The numbers indeed are describing the length of respective roadpieces.

[Homer Johnston]

Memphis, please note that my post above correctly describes what the numbers mean for curved pieces, the 25/50/75/100 is not the "length" of the curve. It is the radius.

I managed to get mouse-movement working using camera/buldozer controls. It still needs keyboard buttons for commands - I am not sure yet if I will be able to use mouse movement and mouse buttons together... if anyone has seen anything which does this, please let me know so I can learn from it!

[Homer Johnston]

I added a video to the first post which sort of shows how the whole system works right now... Some random thoughts on how I think I will eventually set this up:

- it will have a basic dialog on-screen (like 3DE did, but many less options)
- moving your mouse will move the camera
- your mouse pointer will be visible and 'locked' somewheres on screen, probably near the bottom edge in the middle (this is an unfortunate side effect of dialogs, and displaying a dialog is the only way I can detect mouse-clicks)
- holding spacebar (?) will unlock mouse and allow you to use the GUI

Tentative controls:

Mouse:
motion: move brush
left click: place all pieces
shift + left click: place one piece
right click: erase one piece
wheel forwards: increase turn radius
wheel back: decrease turn radius
middle click: ???

Keyboard:
spacebar (hold): interact with GUI instead of brush
A/D: camera rotation around brush
W/S: camera distance from brush
Q/Z: camera elevation above brush
Tab: copy road info to clipboard

GUI buttons:
... still thinking about this

[prowler.wolf]

Excellent I'll give this a try later tonight

[Homer Johnston]

No download yet; (well, there's a half-working concept version in the other thread) I'm hoping to advance this to a "beta-release" within a couple of weeks Cheers.

[ZeroG]

Looking awesomely easy!

One question: Have u pressed the "test direction" button for the road yet? I experienced some RED dots on a 20km road I once placed, because of some slope angles or sth..THAT was annoying, cause replacing the not working parts on a 20km road is...ARGH.

Wonder if your road tool does correct slope angles automatically? would certainly be great!!!

Regards