New MA terrain: CraterMA

[mrmidi]

It's a little more complex than that Ranger.
In order for them to completely fix them to be used in MA terrains,
the Deltas, all 16 beach objects and ter0100.til, ter0200.til, and ter0300.tils
all have to be re-done, and the rivers as well, mine will work fine in a
SEA, or AvA terrain but thats all at this point.

But who knows maybe Skuzzy has been keeping up with this find of mine
and has already got these issues fixed for the next TE release in 2 weeks:rolleyes:

midi

[Saxman]

Is anyone else reminded of Trinity?

[NHawk]

Originally posted by Saxman
Is anyone else reminded of Trinity?

I wasn't going to say anything. But yes. MiniTrin?

[Greebo]

I suppose it does looks a bit like Trinity. But there are only a limited numbers of ways you can do a symmetrical layout.

When designing this I originally wanted a fighter town and also to keep the front lines seperate in the centre, so that's where the crater came from. I thought about putting the bulk of the terrain around the edge of the map and having an ocean around the crater, but it looked a bit unnatural. The field layout was then largely dictated by the one field per sector and airfield distance rules.

[Major Biggles]

really cool greebo, it's really amazing, can't wait to fly on it!

[NHawk]

Originally posted by Greebo
.....But there are only a limited numbers of ways you can do a symmetrical layout......

Tell me about it. It can be a pain.

What I've been considering is making what I'll call pockets of bases. In other words areas that contain bases from all countries separated from the mainlands. I really haven't thought it through all the way yet, but it's an idea. And I have a feeling that it would only work well on a large map.

[Greebo]

That would be an interesting arena tactically. The original Pizza map had something like that. It should work OK on a small map as well, maybe make a "Y" shaped central landmass and put the islands in the gaps.

I did have an idea for "AmericMA" based on the North American continent and with bases where the RL cities are. I haven't researched it yet though so it might not be practical.

[Greebo]

I've done some more work on this terrain recently and got it pretty much ready to submit. Basically I've removed the still buggy rivers, remodelled the arena map, fixed some bugs and added the clouds.

If anyone wants to take a look the files can be found in the following link, just extract them to your ahiiterr folder. I'd be interested in any constrctive feedback you can offer.
http://www.gfg06.dial.pipex.com/files/ahiiterr.zip

Note most of the cloud systems have a lifetime of 45 minutes and their start times are staggered. If you want to get the full effect you need to leave the terrain running for an hour or so. There is some low cloud cover over the tank town bases and near the islands for CVs to hide under, otherwise most of the clouds are in the border mountains. There are 121 cloud fronts but the whole thing never exceeds 832 clouds at any one time.

[Easyscor]

I gave it the 5 minute whirl, it's late here.

The most noticeable change you can make is to create a new CBM using Photoshop, the elevation file and the type file, see any recent SEA terrain. Dux and mrmidi are experts at it, but with your skinning experience you should be able to figure it out.

I think you need to walk the track waypoints, looking for waypoints that double back. The train for the north ammo factory was acting wonky on my FE. btw, it's best if the road convoys are only ~8 miles long making the trucks run at 45mph instead of 60mph, but it's your call.

Are you sure you want the ammo factories in the center. They look pretty vulnerable and I don't think you want a side with no ordanance for hours at a time. You could exchange the refineries for the ammo factories since they're normally useless anyway, but htc might object to the game play impact of any factories out in the middle like this.

You might also want to give some thought to shore batteries.

I love the snow, but I don't think htc will accept it in an MA terrain, be great if they did.

I'm not sure about 33 bases per side for the MA but the spacing looks good, I think it'll play well in the MA. Nice job.

[NHawk]

Part of the reason the trains may be acting funny is because it looks like you're using CT objects for the train tracks. I didn't dive into this too far but the train bridges don't look like standard MA bridges. If you laid your tracks manually, I'd delete them all and use the editor's create all function. Then adjust what the editor creates as needed.

The CBM is minor. That can be changed when submitted if you want.

The snow textures are nice and I don't think they'll be a problem since it looks like you only changed one set of textures. There's nothing that would require a complete re-skin of planes or objects because of the snow texture. Just remember to include them in the source for the terrain when you submit it.

SBs are a good idea. But, that's something that's up to the author. I'd at least put them at the bases you consider "key bases" along the shores.

Base count isn't a problem for a small map. There are plenty of maps with fewer bases on them that are being used in the MA. They just generally reset faster.

[Easyscor]

Those are the default tracks NHawk, I wouldn't redo all that work. I think he was trying to make sure the trucks didn't cross the fields by moving the end points. As a result, the trucks really zip along their route.

[splitatom]

how tall are the mountains around tt?

[Easyscor]

Those are the default tracks NHawk, I wouldn't redo all that work. I think he was trying to make sure the trucks didn't cross the fields by moving the end points. As a result, the trucks really zip along their route.

What I was trying to say is that he did a lot of good hand work after installing them with the default "Create All".

[NHawk]

What I was trying to say is that he did a lot of good hand work after installing them with the default "Create All".

You're correct. I don't know what I was thinking when I looked at them.

[Greebo]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

IIRC the roads are the same length as the "create all" button originally made them, 10 miles. It just didn't occur to me to alter the length but I'll look at that now. Originally there were rivers all over the place that the roads had to avoid, as well as coastlines etc. As Easyscor said, the last waypoint on each road was moved one square away from the field in order to avoid the flying truck effect, ruins any suspension of disbelief when you see that sort of thing. Also I hate it when a road goes 45 degrees up or down a mountain, it just looks bogus. So I made sure the roads went on reasonably flat terrain since I was having to reposition them all anyway. I will check there aren't any extra waypoints causing the convoys to double back on themselves, I never thought of that.

There are a few shore batteries on the map. The island V bases have two each and the island ports have one each, that's 18 in total. There is a problem with my grey mountain textures in that the shore battery shares one of these textures for the hill it sits on. So for a shore battery to blend in to the terrain it has to sit on one of these grey tiles. I didn't want to create a mountain at every shore base for the SB to sit on, so I just restricted them to the islands. Most of the CV action will take place around the islands anyway.

The crater mountains are 13-15K tall. I wanted to create a terrain with three seperate fronts and the crater seperates the centre point. Also the height ought to deter tank town griefers a bit. The border mountains are about 10K but have passes between the adjacent fields which go no higher than 3.5k IIRC.

I'll consider moving the ammo factories. I put them there with a couple of spawns nearby to give GVs something else to fight over if their TT base got taken.

You are allowed to change textures in MA terrains. The problems are that they increase the size of the res file and also whether HTC think they look good enough. My textures replace the default snow and rock ones. To get the res file size down from about 2500Kb I had to halve the tiles' resolution and reduce the number of colours to around 24. The arena map was reduced to 32 colours for the same reason. The res file is currently 1286Kb, which is about the same as the admittedly larger Trinity map. Most small terrains are 500-700Kb. Although the textures are quite simple in order to keep them small, I think they break up the endless green expanses of the terrain quite well and make a nice change.

33 bases per side is the most any small terrain has. It might possibly be a problem for an early or mid war arena, but not for a late war one.