|
 To
begin, you need to see some placement diagrams on what I did to generate
the overlay walls. From the above picture, the 716 & 717 represent the
brick walls, (of which, there's actually 4 different walls involved there,
more in a bit), and the 600 series are the overlay effects. As you can see
in the picture to the right, the 716's are on the NE side of the tile, and
the 717's are on the NW side of the tile. However, while the EVEN (NE)
overlays exist on the same tile space as the wall which they are going to
overlay, the ODD's (NW) walls will have to be one tile to the SE of the
wall which they are going to cover. This evilness is a result of the
drawing order of the editor & client and is something to pay attention
to when using walls for any type of overlay effect. |
  Now
for the crazy twisted placement of the images, the EVEN walls get pushed
over to the left to get to the right area to cover the NW walls, and the
ODD walls get pushed up to cover the NE walls. The thing to bear in mind
is that the facing directions are flip flopped in the patch file, instead
of \/\/ you are putting the walls in /\/\. You'll see what I mean if you
download the sample patch file. Which is not
filled completely, there's only 8 sides to this patch, the 9th, (which
would be the "first" two walls in the patch), still contain the
numbered walls, 616 & 617, you can delete the shapes, or fill them as
desired with something else, just remember to keep the count right. |
 Once
you get your placements right, this is the end result of the patch, same
map as above, and you can see the overlays of one wall on another. Because
these walls DO stick out from the regular walls, you DO need to make every
one of them walkable, otherwise it's a catching wall, people will walk
into the wall area and not be able to travel along the wall, most peculiar
behavior for a wall. Also, avatars will get partially covered when walking
alongside these walls because of the drawing behavior of the client. And
there is one more unobvious behavior which won't become apparent until you
start using the overlay, the NW wall of an inside corner cannot be
overlaid, because the position which the wall has to occupy is already
occupied by the NE wall! Bummer. But, I had a means to solve that. Yep, a
pre-mossed wall. |
 Back
to the numbers! As you can see in this image, I then set the overlay walls
into the map where I wanted them, and that part's almost fairly easy.
Seeing as I had 8 shapes to chose from for each direction, it was just a
lot of work. Okies, I lied, I'm also a programmer, remember? So I coded a
quick and dirty program, which needs to be modified for each mass change I
want to execute, so it will probably never be easy to modify for the
public, maybe, we'll see. I then put one wall down, specifically the 616
& 617 walls, where I wanted the overlays to go. Then the program
randomized them.
CHEATER! |
 Switching
back to the regular patch folder, (yes, I maintain two patch folders for
dreams I work on, one is the numbers, the other is the regular patch), and
without the surrounding shrubbery, you can see the effect looks pretty
good. The extra greenery in the scene is because in the bricks patch, I
used 3 sets of walls to pre-moss some walls, it allows me to make
inconsistencies in the look to keep it from looking too repetitive. |
 Overall,
yes, I'm happy with this patch, and hope you will think of other ways to
use walls to add extra scenery to dreams you're making, you're not limited
to just walls for walls, in Lazy River, I used a wall patch file to add
trees around the log cabins because a good chunk of the cabin structure
was wobjects, and the only way to get a tree up against the wall, which
was an object, was to put the tree into a wall file!
In the bricks, the doors and windows required me to pre-moss pattern them, but the standard flat walls, (716 & 717), were left bare. Right ahead of me in the shot to the left is one of the pre-mossed walls, because it's a NW wall, I couldn't get an overlay on it. Happy dreaming! |
Using
Wall Overlays