Thread: TreeThing

This program rules. I've been playing with it for hours. The best part was when I realized any stencil could be turned into a forest. I went and grabbed a maze off google and turned it into trees in a few minutes. Very cool, since I had an idea for a d&d adventure that took place in a forest maze, but god forbid I ever have to map it. Now I can just convert any basic maze into trees. So awesome. I keep thinking of other uses for this. If you put some building icons where the trees are you might be able to spawn cities by laying down some black. About the only thing I don't care for are the jungle trees. Ugly things. Other than that it is perfect.

Does anyone know the maximum dimensions in pixels for a template to get loaded?

I remember I had mine set to about 2000x2000 max

capabilities may have been changed since then though.

Originally Posted by Sapiento

Does anyone know the maximum dimensions in pixels for a template to get loaded?

Good question. I cannot remember how much memory I allocated to it in the version I uploaded but in the IDE I was able to do 4k x 4k and a bit larger. I tried to streamline it a little by cutting down the amount of buffered images it uses, for instance it used to have four images for each of the main layers (trees, shades, shadows and masks) and switching them on and off was near instantaneous but buffered images take a massive amount of memory up when they are large so I changed it to use only one image but it needs to rebuild it whenever a layer is switched on or off. Slower but more efficient.

Having said that... I seem to recall that I was having a problem with netbeans actually allocating the memory. I had come the the conclusion that the next time I uploaded a version I would have to wrap it in an exe wrapper in order to get a workaround.

Are you finding that it only works with small templates, Sap?

Originally Posted by Thesslian

This program rules. I've been playing with it for hours. The best part was when I realized any stencil could be turned into a forest. I went and grabbed a maze off google and turned it into trees in a few minutes. Very cool, since I had an idea for a d&d adventure that took place in a forest maze, but god forbid I ever have to map it. Now I can just convert any basic maze into trees. So awesome. I keep thinking of other uses for this. If you put some building icons where the trees are you might be able to spawn cities by laying down some black. About the only thing I don't care for are the jungle trees. Ugly things. Other than that it is perfect.

Glad you like it, Thesslian. The jungle trees are indeed pretty crappy but a decent looking jungle can still be made from them. If you check out my latest WIP thread (unnamed world) I have posted a snapshot of a map I am working on now with, what I think, is a pretty cool jungle and it was done using those brushes.

If you manage to create some better brushes yourself for it I'd be happy to include them in the next update.

Originally Posted by Ramah

Good question. I cannot remember how much memory I allocated to it in the version I uploaded but in the IDE I was able to do 4k x 4k and a bit larger. I tried to streamline it a little by cutting down the amount of buffered images it uses, for instance it used to have four images for each of the main layers (trees, shades, shadows and masks) and switching them on and off was near instantaneous but buffered images take a massive amount of memory up when they are large so I changed it to use only one image but it needs to rebuild it whenever a layer is switched on or off. Slower but more efficient.

Having said that... I seem to recall that I was having a problem with netbeans actually allocating the memory. I had come the the conclusion that the next time I uploaded a version I would have to wrap it in an exe wrapper in order to get a workaround.

Are you finding that it only works with small templates, Sap?

In the contrary, Ramah. I used a template of 8000 x 3000 pixels at 72 dpi and it worked well. I was just curious where the limit is.
It is a fantastic tool!

Ah, cool. Glad to hear it's working ok.

Originally Posted by Ramah

Ah, cool. Glad to hear it's working ok.

It works very well!
Do you think you will implement the 'Hill Thing' in the foreseeable future?

Originally Posted by Sapiento

It works very well!
Do you think you will implement the 'Hill Thing' in the foreseeable future?

Yes. I was planning to really start it a while ago (Ive added some basic stuff to the program already in preparation) but I wanted to get TreeThing out of the way first. I keep on thinking of extra things to add to TreeThing but my list is shrinking and right now I'm on internal version 0.98 - I plan to add one more major feature for .99 and then general bug fixing and UI improvements will take me up to version 1.0 and I feel I'll be able to put it to one side then.
After that I'll start on HillThing. It really shouldn't take anywhere near the time spent on TreeThing to develop as 90% of the code is there for me to reuse with some tweaks. The main problem I can forsee is the algorithm for mountain placement and ensuring there is enough graphical variation in mountains. I have some ideas but until I put them into practice I won't know for sure if they'll be good enough.
Anyway, yes, hopefully it will be started soon.