Starting a new terrain...TriTone

[Swatch]

Alright, more eye candy...

Redid the basemap using PaintShopPro instead of trusty old Paint.



Interested in any comments as to the new layout.

PS. Interesting Note... if you have a dual core Athelon and you run the terrain editor without setting the CPU affinity, time speeds up.

[Denholm]

Yeah, that bug has been around a while. Use MachNix's tile setter for setting tiles above elevation 0 to a predetermined tile type. I think MrMidi still has it on his website.

[Swatch]

Wow, that is an excellent tool, will make this much easier!

I just checked out its help file and thought of a question regarding its usage and the TE in general...

If I have objects placed, etc. can I then go back through and apply a different height map without re-placing those objects?  If so, then that's great because that means I need to focus a little less on the prep work, if not however, I'll put a lot more into the prepwork.

[MotleyCH]

Looking good, Swatch.

I have a few more tools for ya, check the CHawks Forums later.

 

[Denholm]

No, as far as I'm aware you can't change the elevation through a height-map and expect the objects to come along with it (What was on flat land now resides on a hill....).

[StokesAk]

Yea that looks nice to provide with some furballs. 

[USRanger]

Yep, Tile Setter is a must!

[Swatch]

Sent the basic layout off to HTC, Roy suggested I wait until the new terrain/editor is finished, so I'm going to continue refining the map conceptually and throwing pics up here, but won't be doing any development work within the editor until we see our new tools.

Once again, if anyone has any suggestions for the map or any opinions about its balance, go ahead and throw them out there.

[Denholm]

I do have a suggestion. Once the new editor arrives, play with the river tiles. Currently they're not that great, would be nice to know what they're like after the update.

[Swatch]

That would be nice to have.   I kinda am setting it up to have rivers at the country borders...

[Denholm]

Don't try to make it work right now, as the tiles themselves are buggy. Wait for the update, then give it a shot.

[Swatch]

I took the advice of the wiki...

I was running into spacing and balance problems, so I chose to redo the terrain layout and I think I'm mostly happier with what has come out of it.



Once again, please reply with suggestions, concerns or money...

Also, if somebody could glance and see if I missed any spawns, that'd be great... more eyes = fewer mistakes slip through.

EDIT:  my legend is as follows...

Airbases with White around them are zone bases
Airbases with a red dot in the center are large bases
Airbases with an orange dot in center are medium bases (all others small)
Grey lines are zone division lines.


Some basic design goals:

• Make a 'fun' tank town that isn't easily wiped out.
• Build in border clashes.
• Spawn to strats for resupply (encourage strat utilization)
• Limit 'steamrolling' by limited 2-way spawns.
• Make HQ raids enticing, but difficult (see large amount of puffy ack sources)

[Denholm]

Perhaps, if you want a nice tank-town, you will want some large mountains around it. However, making the vehicle bases appealing to the GVs might entice some GV wars. For example, the Vehicle Bases near tank town all have spawn points to a somewhat important airbase belonging to the country that originally owns those vehicle bases. Therefore, if the Vehicle Base is captured, the captors now have a spawn point direct to an important enemy base. This would make a great setup for co-op. Bombers fly in, wipe out the airbase, vehicles suddenly spawn from nowhere sacking the town, troops roll in, base is captured.

Not only would it make the war, "interesting," it would force defenders to emerge to defend that important airfield. This would create some good fights in or around Tank Town. The only problem, enemy bombers... Thus the mountains.

[Swatch]

Hmmm interesting idea with the V-Base spawn, but I'm going to forgo the mountains...

I figure that much water is something of a deterrant.  Add to that the fact that the strats for the TT bases won't be down for longer than the minimum most of the time(they're tied to the HQ strats) and the medium sized airfields and I think TT should stay fairly vibrant.  I will have to think about that V-Base spawn a bit though... it would make for an interesting gameplay element.  Anyone else have an opinion on it?

[Greebo]

I think tank town is likely to get griefed by bombers flying from the central airbases. Those airbases are too far apart to make a good fighter town, so why not just get rid of them or replace each of them with a vehicle base? Perhaps you could also squeeze two spawn points into tank town from each V base to make spawn camping less effective.