Nice review Tronyn, you rock, sir. 

It takes me a horribly long time to do anything, but eventually it gets done.

Nice map. Now lets see you get back to METAL 

Is czg's curved pipes tutorial uploaded anywhere?

There's one on archive.org but it's not got any pictures unfortunately... 

speeds has one but can't find it.

12-sided circles,the outward and inward slopes in a 90 degree curve coming from down and going to the right are 1:0 (straight up), 1:2, 2:1, 1:0 (straight to the right). The piece interfaces have 1:4 and 1:1 slopes.

If you want to do this for more complex shapes, you have to stretch them a bit wider, then shear vertically and finally horizontally (this shrinks them back).

24-sided works a bit similarly but you need a finer grid.

I made templates some time ago that vis without leaks. I'll upload them some time. 

but I hope you get the idea.
The correction.
y:x
1:0,2:1,1:2,0:1

Ie in degrees
90, 63, 27, 0 

Here it is now on the Shub-Hub, in a zip! Should work fine, just extract it to a unique folder! Or a folder full of junk. Should work either way:

http://www.shub-hub.com/files/misc/Curve_tutorial_files.zip

Thanks czg for a comprehensive tutorial! 

thanks, but I'm trying to remember the actual numbers for the pipe bending, how much to stretch and how much to shear in each direction when the starting section is a certain size... any idea? 

that comes from bottom and goes to the right
stretch a section to the left, then shear it up from the left and shear it right from the top until you're at 1:2 angle.
It's not a huge amount, it's pretty fast to experiment it with a 12 sided curve. Ie if you were left short, do a couple undos and stretch more this time.

Oh, first clip the pipe segment so that that it's a trapezoid from the side, ie the ends have 1:4 slope. 

http://speedy.planetquake.gamespy.com/tut_pipe.htm

czg`s works in wc only 

thanks, but I'm trying to remember the actual numbers for the pipe bending, how much to stretch and how much to shear in each direction when the starting section is a certain size... any idea?

(i'm going to use compass bearings to explain, it seemed the easiest way)

assuming you have your initial segment (with the 1:4 edge) laid out with the angled edge facing north east (as it were) so that you want to curve up to the north & round to the east, your second segment must be vertically (or should i say longitudinally...) stretched so that the outer edge extends beyond that of the end of the first segment by twice the length of the first segment's outer edge (ie. if your first segment has an outer ledge that spans four squares, the second segment's outer edge should extend 8 squares beyond the north corner of the first edge). then you clip downwards so the inner edge ends up twice the length of the first segment's inner edge, and clip off the south-westerly corner.

then for the magic skew, you take the outer ledge of your second segment & stretch it westerly by 9/8ths. so if your segment spans 8 squares horizontally (or latitudinally, heh) then you'd extend it one square to the west. then skew the north edge to the east until it fits together. then clone, rotate by 90 & flip to get the other half.

i think that about covers it.. the 9/8ths is the only real key number to remember; the rest of the measurements largely depend on the size of the radius you're curving around.. it's just a case of each edge being twice as long as the initial segment (once the corner is clipped off) 

i just read that again and jesus christ if that wasn't the least clear explanation ever :|

these should help a bit more:

http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image1.jpg
http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image2.jpg
http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image3.jpg
http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image4.jpg
http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image5.jpg
http:/isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image6.jpg 

http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image1.jpg
http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image2.jpg
http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image3.jpg
http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image4.jpg
http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image5.jpg
http://isoterra.co.uk/images/curves/Image6.jpg 

...curve several rows of whatever it is your trying to curve at the same time, at different radiuses! Then just keep the one you need...

Here are some prefabs I keep handy, nothing much but takes the sting out of doing it from scratch every time...

http://shub-hub.com/files/misc/acurve.zip 

*crawls back into the corner* 

those stretch amounts. I just eyeball it and undo if I was left short and do more. But thanks rj. 

this is one of the reasons why skew/shear for groups is very important in a map editor. 

bah just keep the sides parallel and no need for the additional wanking with scale on the ohther axis 

from what i can make of your tutorial, it doesn't look like it would work in WC. at the part where you "extend it and cut at 45 degree angle", the segment appears to get extended in the direction of the skew, which you can't do in WC without tedious amounts of vertex manipulation. whether you can achieve the same effect by extending first before skewing i don't know, but upscaling by 9/8ths is hardly a cumbersome task to want to work around. 

the problem with upscaling its not universal, while just keeping the sides parallel is - no matter what angle, shape, size or editor

I havent touched wc in 10 years so i cant say which way works better there 

thanks a lot all, expecially RJ, those shots helped me figure it out pretty sharpish. Can you tell I haven't touched an editor for a while? 

You're my hero. 

So the UK approved hybrid embryos. That's pretty neat.

Discuss. 

czg and kinn can have babies now. 

Some hilarious stuff is going on in USA.
http://articles.citypages.com/2008-05-21/news/moles-wanted/ 

I like how much they worry about the Democratic National Convention!