CraterMA revisited

[Easyscor]

Greebo, I feel like you should create a lot of town buildings around the ports just like in RL, take Dover for example.

Creating custom layouts for bases or strat isn't allowed for an MA terrain. See item #5 and #6, http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,176625.msg2030354.html#msg2030354. If you meant add more clutter, that might be accepted.

From the other thread: Craterma is currently about 6000 kb which is at the upper end of the range of current MA terrain sizes.

Sorry Greebo, I didn't see that before. 6MB for that terrain indicates you've left some extraneous files in your project. The safest fix is to create a temporary folder in the project directory and another in the texsrc directory. Then place all unnecessary files inside, especially the waterd and waterc bitmaps, also the .typ and .sys files. That should reduce your footprint to around 3MB. When everything is working, you can delete the two temporary folders.

Next, go back and check/re-level your cs objects, especially in the TT area. At least one tile is blinking out with view-angle tilting indicating a problem of some kind. 10,10,3,4.

[Greebo]

Thanks for the feedback Easyscor. The waterd and waterc files were in the texsrc folder as you said, removing them has dropped the res file size to 3500 kb. I may play around with the water a bit more now to make it look better.

I think Kazaa means adding more of the city tiles in the squares adjacent to the port to give the illusion of a big coastal town.

I flew all round the crater several times circling each town looking for the blinking city tile you mentioned but I could not see it. Maybe its a video driver or card issue? There are no out of level errors when I do an object report in the TE. Just to be sure I checked the levels and the properties of each of the objects in question but could find no problems.

[USRanger]

I know which one Easy is talking about Greebo.  I noticed it last week then forgot to say something.  I still remember which one it is so I'll post screenies when I get time.

[Easyscor]

Look at 10,10,3,4 in CM Eye, it'll flash off to the edge of the screen.

[USRanger]

Look at 10,10,3,4 in CM Eye, it'll flash off to the edge of the screen.

Or you could just do that.

[Easyscor]

You can still post your screenie. 

[USRanger]

No.  The moment is ruined. *Sigh*

[bravoa8]

You can still post your screenie. 

Do it Ranger we're too lazy.

[Greebo]

I wasn't moving the city to the edge of my view, once I did that I spotted the problem tile. I still could not find any problem with it in the the TE though and the same type of city tile is used 5 more times in the terrain with no problem. However deleting and replacing the tile seems to have fixed the problem.

[SlapShot]

Hey Greebo ...

Just checked out your map ... outstanding work as usual (and expected  ).

I do have one suggestion ...

Any map that has CV groups, any "base" that is on the shoreline should be equipped with at least 2 shore batteries, especially ports and vehicle bases. Port and vehicles bases have no other immediate support from a CV attack outside of the vehicles that it can spawn, especially a port seeing that it has only 1 vehicle hanger.

Also, as a general rule, placement of the shore batteries should be checked for proper coverage of the area and shoreline ... I looked at the upper left 1/3rd country and the coverage of your existing shore batteries looks good ... I was just mentioning this to other map designers.

[Greebo]

Thanks Slapshot, glad you like it.

I spent a long time lining up the shore batteries, checking them in the game and then editing their angles and height in the TE and object file. In general they are set up so you can't quite hit the town itself but you can target LVTs that spawn offshore. The island V bases have two SBs each that each have almost complete coverage over 180 degrees, the other island bases and the airfields between the bases have one each. I didn't put SBs further along the coast as I figured CVs would have a hard time surviving buffs launched from the uncapturable fields if they got that far. Thinking about it though, if a side captures an opposition island they will then have a local CV nearby so maybe I'll put a few more SBs in.

On the subject of shore batteries, one thing that annoys the artist in me a bit is that HTC used the rock texture for the SB hill. It looks odd against the predominately green textures used in the game so I have to create little rocky outcrops wherever I put the SB for it to blend in. I'd say the rock/grass texture would be a much better choice for the hill overall.

[Greebo]

I've been busy adding some stuff to the terrain. The latest files can be downloaded here: craterma.zip

Now the TE lets us create water at any alt I decided to add some small lakes in the mountains just for visual effect. I tried including these lakes on the arena map but the compression HTC use on the in-game map made them look crappy. As it also screwed up the map's altitude key I removed them from the map.

I've also added some more towns between the fields just to add some visual interest in featureless areas of the map.

The three central ports now have a big town behind them and most coastal bases now have shore batteries.

I'm going to submit it next week unless anyone can spot something that needs changing.

[Citabria]

id be interested to find out if HT still needs the uncapturable bases with the change back to the 1 zone country wide for strat targets.

would be more fun i think to have nothing uncapturable and make the map easier to reset.
 maps beautiful though looks like fun.

have you considered the combined arms fight potential from more vbases between airfields? ive always been a fan of an ozkansas tank town in a large scale mapwide linear chain of vbases without spawns in between a chain of airfields.

[Lusche]

id be interested to find out if HT still needs the uncapturable bases with the change back to the 1 zone country wide for strat targets.

 A few weeks ago they forgot to designate some bases as uncapturable and quickly corrected that after some players called them

would be more fun i think to have nothing uncapturable and make the map easier to reset.

 But what will happen when one country loses all of it's bases? 

[Greebo]

I have made a few changes to CraterMA since this thread was last active. HTC made me get rid of the town clutter and bridges I had incorporated into the terrain for instance.

Following a discussion in another BBS thread about tank town layouts I also redesigned the tank town in this map to something similar to the one in Ozkansas. So the central crater now contains nine V bases rather than just three. These bases are closely spaced to reduce the need for spawning (and getting camped) and are covered by permanent low cloud cover.

I can see the benefits of adding more closely spaced V bases, but I won't be making any more major changes to this map. At 109 bases its already a bit cramped for a small map. Maybe if I ever do another one.