Issues with area rendering in-game

[jastey]

I made a custom area with tiz for the area graphics. The area looks alright for original BGII:ToB and it did for BGII:EE v1.3.

Now, for v2.x, if I visit the area in the game the lines of the tilesets show like a grid. It looks horrible. I have no idea about area graphics and how the EE is handling them. What would be the reason for the loss in quality between versions and is there anything I can do about it?

[Roxanne]

I made a custom area with tiz for the area graphics. The area looks alright for original BGII:ToB and it did for BGII:EE v1.3.

Now, for v2.x, if I visit the area in the game the lines of the tilesets show like a grid. It looks horrible. I have no idea about area graphics and how the EE is handling them. What would be the reason for the loss in quality between versions and is there anything I can do about it?

It will help to convert the Tis into the PVRZ format for EE. You get a much smaller Tis file (no need for Tiz compression anymore) and a number of PVRZ files. Put all of that into a subfolder of your mod to copy to override if game-is BGEE etc.

The conversion itself is easily done with Near Infinity.

[jastey]

Would you have a link to a tutorial or somesuch for such a convertion?

[argent77]

I made a custom area with tiz for the area graphics. The area looks alright for original BGII:ToB and it did for BGII:EE v1.3.

Now, for v2.x, if I visit the area in the game the lines of the tilesets show like a grid. It looks horrible. I have no idea about area graphics and how the EE is handling them. What would be the reason for the loss in quality between versions and is there anything I can do about it?

That's another bug in the EE games we have to work around currently. There is a related topic in the EET section.

 

The best way to handle it in the current state is to manually prepare the tilesets in Near Infinity by converting them into the TIS V2 format (as mentioned by Roxanne). That way you can install them directly into EE games. To support the original games you can use tile2ee to convert them on the fly into the original palette-based format. The tool includes a set of WeiDU functions to help you in the process (including a function description and a short example).

[Roxanne]

Would you have a link to a tutorial or somesuch for such a convertion?

 

 

 

I made a custom area with tiz for the area graphics. The area looks alright for original BGII:ToB and it did for BGII:EE v1.3.

Now, for v2.x, if I visit the area in the game the lines of the tilesets show like a grid. It looks horrible. I have no idea about area graphics and how the EE is handling them. What would be the reason for the loss in quality between versions and is there anything I can do about it?

That's another bug in the EE games we have to work around currently. There is a related topic in the EET section.

 

The best way to handle it in the current state is to manually prepare the tilesets in Near Infinity by converting them into the TIS V2 format (as mentioned by Roxanne). That way you can install them directly into EE games. To support the original games you can use tile2ee to convert them on the fly into the original palette-based format. The tool includes a set of WeiDU functions to help you in the process (including a function description and a short example).

 

With Near Infinity

[jastey]

Thank you both!

[Gwendolyne]

Just a little remark: the trick mentioned by Roxanne and Argent77 works pretty fine with basic maps, I mean maps without doors. If your map contains doors, the lines will disappear except those outlining the closed doors (opened, the same doors are displayed well).

 

As Argent77 told me a couple of weeks ago, let's wish Beamdog will fix this bug in the next patch.

[argent77]

The latest NI release (v2.0-20170106) contains some improvements that should make black borders around door and stenciled tiles less likely.

[Gwendolyne]

You are right: it's far much better with the last NI release but... if the lines are thinner, they still appear when the doors are closed... And in an outside map with more than 20 doors, let's say... I regret the vanilla BG2 engine...

[Roxanne]

You are right: it's far much better with the last NI release but... if the lines are thinner, they still appear when the doors are closed... And in an outside map with more than 20 doors, let's say... I regret the vanilla BG2 engine...

Right - it is mot perfect yet. My area of 20 doors (no joke, I have one in my mod) still has that issue. But it fixes most problems, especially for large outdoor areas where those stripes always appeared when you took a look at the area or worldmap.

[Skye]

I'm trying my hand at area creation again and it's going well for the most part, but I seem to be having some issues with the way my area is being rendered in-game. For some bizarre reason, the game puts miscolored, horizontal lines between some of my tiles and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

 

At first I thought it was because my area height wasn't a multiple of 64, but even after cropping it to perfect size, there's no difference. There doesn't seem to be any problem with the way the tileset is created either since both DLTCEP and NI display the area perfectly in their preview.

 

The game is BG:EE v2.3 and I'm working with DLTCEP 7.7.

 

Any ideas? I don't want to give up on it again so soon.

[jastey]

That seem to be a BG(II):EE v2.x. Have a look here: http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=28600&hl=

[Roxanne]

It is a known issue that you may overcome (at least most of it) by converting your Tis file to the Tis + PVRZ format used in EE. There may still be the yet unresolved issue with doors (if your area has many of them). It is worth a try however.

 

To try it, I suggest to use NI.

Go to your tis-file and from the menu bar below the picture select *Export as PVRZ-based Tis*. Export it to a dedicated folder on your PC. This will create a new Tis file and (depending on area size) a couple of associated PVRZ files. Copy all of them into game/override and see the result.

[argent77]

For best results you should also place the associated WED file into the override folder when you convert the TIS into the PVRZ-based format, so that NI can determine the correct aspect ratio (which greatly reduces artifacts).

[Skye]

Thank you, that completely eliminated the problem.

 

How does the new TIS format decide which PVRZ files it has to use? I don't see any file references in the tileset.