Road Painter tool (development thread)

[[APS]Gnat]

That is one awesome video! and hence an awesome tool.
Great work.

New Challenge for someone else;
Use the XY road points from the export file to "paint" a line of X colour onto a MASK file. Bingo then everything is done for you!

[Beton]

Thank you Homer... willtry asap...

[Homer Johnston]

Gnat, that is a pretty neat idea generating masks based on objects? hmm, maybe that's worth mentioning in the "suggestion box" thread?

Beton, to set it up, basically:
1) extract roadtool.utes folder into missions folder, so you can load it in the editor
2) rename .utes to another island extension, if you wish.
3) extract Leopotam's utility anywhere (I put it in P: with all my ArmA tool stuff)

Then follow the beta video (open Leo's utility, load mission in editor, hit preview & try stuff out)

also, if you turn off "auto radius" then Z & X change radius. I think those are the only relevant keyboard commands for the preview version...

[Bushlurker]

Ooh! A hands-on version!
I've allowed myself to get sidetracked with other aspects of my island and left roads on hold recently, waiting for a chance to try this tool...
I'll give it some extensive exercise this evening and report back...
Thanks Homer!

B

[Homer Johnston]

anyone try the preview yet? I'm not sure you could efficiently use it for island building yet unless you have a lot of long open roads, but certainly just to see what it will "feel" like...

I'm planning on doing a major code rewrite to allow me more freedom, then I should be able to figure out a way to place key-parts and do the "export/import-by-section" idea I mentioned earlier (paint road -> set placeholder for keypart -> paint next road ... import each road separately into Visitor, placing the keypart in Visitor in between road imports). A more usable release is probably 2-3 weeks away at this point.

I will also experiment with integrating Leopotam's Road Generator algorithm too, so that you can draw roads by placing a series of points and moving the points to adjust the output... basically, use ArmA to give his generator a GUI. I'm not sure if it will work good or not, but certainly worth a try

[Bushlurker]

#include extreme_happiness.hpp

Well this works an absolute treat!!!
What a relief!!!
Theres a little juggling of apps and windows to get used to, but once you get into a groove away you go!
I had an hour to try this out last night and I'm already thinking that my remaining roadworks will now take a few weeks at most, instead of a few more months!
Homer mentioned previously he's gonna add the ability to add a "dummy T or X keypoint" - it needs this!!!
That would speed things up tremendously!
At the moment, the procedure I evolved is to...

lay keypoint in visitor - flip to roadtool and enter keypoint details
construct road section till next keypoint
export road section
import road section in visitor
add keypoint to end
add that keypoints details to road tool
construct next road section using road tool

etc, etc...

If you were able to include "dummy" keypoints in the roadtool you could generate a section - allow for a specific type of keypoint (maybe make a note on paper of what type it is), then since the road tool allows precisely the correct gap for that component, you could export that first section as "roadnet01.txt", then stay in the road tool and do the next section - export that as "roadnet02.txt", etc etc
Then later you could return to Visitor and simply import all your "roadnets", one after the other - manually adding the appropriate keypoints between each section...

Less hopping back and forth, in other words...

Homers already mentioned this, so I'm assuming "dummy keypoints" will happen, and that'll be the icing on the tombstone for the old Visitor procedure (although I still did a couple of short 6-section roads the old way - simply to avoid the hopping back and forth which the "dummy keypoints" will soon negate anyway)...

Can't think of any other suggestions right away - I'll have to use the tool a little more... (try and stop me!!! )...
It would be nice to view the roadtool procedure from other angles than vertically downwards whilst roadlaying - to be able to pan around like Visitor would be nice... we're not all following perfectly matching google Map overlays for our road networks guides y'know - mine is a crazed jumble of shapefile layers and bits of satimage cobbled together in ENVI, for example, and since I've reduced scale so much - it's simply not practical to follow every turn of every road... being able to "see where we're going" from a sortof perspective view would be supernice - tho possibly not practical from a coding point of view?

Anyhow... critique??? It's hard to think of any right now - I'm still recovering from the Sheer Relief as I realise I may now finish my island before Xmas!
... There's still a slight tendency to use, say - 4 x 6.25m sections where a single 25 or 2x12's would perhaps have been just as good - and saved on the object count (a constant paranoia with big islands), but that really IS nitpicking...

Homer... you're a genius!


B

*edit

I'm planning on doing a major code rewrite to allow me more freedom, then I should be able to figure out a way to place key-parts and do the "export/import-by-section" idea I mentioned earlier

Post overlap there! hehe...
Exactly what it needs...

[Homer Johnston]

Oh balls, I forgot to mention it only uses 6m straights. If you want to hold off on your road-building for a couple more days, I may be able to "hotfix" that.

Rotatable camera will be implemented at some point, no worries there - it was low on the priority list compared to the actual "placing roads" aspect of the tool

Any other feedback anyone has will be taken into consideration, so don't be shy.

[prowler.wolf]

This is coming along nicely. Been so busy that every time I come to this thread there is a new version to download.

[trezza]

I really need to install the BItools and try out some of this new stuff, went to windows 7 and i can't be bothered putting on half the stuff i used to have.

[Homer Johnston]

very minor update. not really worth posting, but I ate a lot of sugar tonight and this is fun, so whee.