Generals ! Generals everywhere !

[Stimovsky]

During one of my opponents tours, all his units bear a general's banner. They revert to standard banners during my turns :

[zakblood]

seems it was a custom battle, and would have to see settings used, but the developer maybe able to understand and give a better reason on it tbh

[rbodleyscott]

This is using TT Mod I think? It may be an issue with the mod - we can't really do anything about that. Thanks for reporting it though, no doubt Paul59 (the mod author) will look into it. The banners don't look right, even for generals' banners.

[Stimovsky]

I confirm I have TT installed.

[zakblood]

thanks for confirming

[rbodleyscott]

I confirm I have TT installed.

TT Mod is not installed into the base game, it remains separate - you either play a custom battle using TT Mod or not. Having TT Mod installed does not change custom battles set up using the default Field of Glory 2 custom battles module. You have to switch to the TT Mod custom battles module when setting up the battle to activate it.

I can tell that the screenshot game was using TT mod because of the Levy Spearman model being used as Chalybes spearmen in the Pontic army. This is not in the vanilla Pontic list.

Obviously if you merely accepted an MP challenge set up by someone else, you might not have noticed that it was set up using TT Mod.

If this bug is specific to the TT Mod, it won't affect games you play using the vanilla game. However, it also means that we cannot debug it, that will need to be done by the mod author.

[Paul59]

I did mention this problem in the design notes for the TT Mod:

"The new Roman banners usually start the scenario "full length", the alpha layer then kicks in, sometimes when you zoom into them, and then it is fine for the rest of the scenario."

Although I did not realise that it affects MP games in this way. I originally designed the TT Mod as a Campaign module only, so never got to see it in Multiplayer.

As Richard says, they are not generals banners. What you are seeing is all the banners, both generals and normal, displayed full length, as the alpha layer, which normally cuts off most of the banner, is not kicking in.

I wonder what your opponent sees?

These new Roman banners seem to work fine in Castulo, and other scenarios that I have added them to. But I have used them in other campaign mods, and the same problem occurs, so it may be something to do with Campaigns and Custom battles that causes this strange graphical effect.

[rbodleyscott]

Paul, maybe you should revert to the vanilla Roman banners for the next iteration of TT mod - unless you can discover what the issue is. Maybe ask Pat.

[Paul59]

Paul, maybe you should revert to the vanilla Roman banners for the next iteration of TT mod - unless you can discover what the issue is. Maybe ask Pat.

I agree.

While it was only a Campaign module, the Roman flags weren't really a problem, as they worked normally once the battle started. But this suggests that at least in some cases the problem is more severe in MP battles. So unless Pat has an idea how to fix this, I think it makes sense to drop the new Roman banners in any new version of the TT Mod.

The only thing I can think of is saving the banner .dds file in a different format. I will try that later to see if it is the answer.

Many thanks to Stimovsky for raising this issue, and sorry if it has spoiled your enjoyment of that scenario.

[Stimovsky]

You're welcome, and it was not such an issue.
In fact, it mostly felt good, to see generals shed their blood instead of the usual peasant.

[Paul59]

I've just spent half an hour or so trying out different file formats to see if I can find the cause of this strange issue.

I have had a bit of success with the DXT4 format. In a TT Mod campaign it prevented the "long" banner issue during the deployment phase.

I then tried it in an MP game, against myself. The long banners appeared during the Roman deployment phase, but then disappeared and never came back. I played through three turns and never saw the long banners again, not even in the replays.

Now it could be that this issue is rather elusive, it does seem that it sometimes appears and sometimes it don't, so I am not convinced that the DXT4 format is the solution, but it is encouraging, and it will certainly need a bit more testing.

I could offer this version of the Roman banners to anyone that wants to try it, if anyone is interested I could put up a Dropbox link. Alternatively, if I update the TT Mod I will just include it then.

[rbodleyscott]

DXT3 (explicit alpha) has been the answer with previous problems - although that was in STUB

[Paul59]

DXT3 (explicit alpha) has been the answer with previous problems - although that was in STUB

Yes, I thought that, so DXT3 was the first one that I tried, but it was no improvement.