SEA Terrain: Adriatic

[ghostdancer]

Oakranger has decided to take a stab at creating a terrain for the Special Events Arena (SEA). So to help facilitate his work on this I am creating a topic here for work on the "Adriatic terrain" for the SEA.

Basically this is how we do things over in the SEA. A topic is started on a terrain then all questions, feedback, research, progress notes, opinions, etc. by all team members are posted in that topic during its production.

That said I also need to point out that every arena has specific requirements for creating a terrain for that arena. The requirements for an AvA or MA terrain are different than those for a SEA terrain.

Not all the requirements for a designing for the SEA terrain are actually terrain requirements. Quite a few deal with the fact that we are building a terrain for others to run events on.  Basically it boils down to some technical things (if you are interested I can fire off a PM with what technical things) and four not so technical main things:

1)   Willing to be to take direction from a team lead (me in this case). You are building the terrain for others to run events on so at times the Team Lead will tell you no, don’t this or that. Or please work on this instead.

2)   Research, research, research. Again we are building terrains for historically based events.

3)   Timely production. A SEA terrain can take from 3 months to 1 year. If it takes longer than 1 year then there is a problem going on.

4)   Creating the terrain as what I call a “Phase I” terrain with no custom or modified objects. There are exceptions to this but we do this for several reasons. The complexity can slow down production, it can introduces quite a few errors and unforeseen problems, and finally a new version of the terrain with custom objects can stop working with the next AH update. HTC keeps an archived version of all built terrains so if the current Luzon terrain stops working we can always put in place the earlier Phase I version and then work on getting the terrain working with custom objects again instead of having they terrain out of circulation.

After the Phase I is built then a designer can go back and tweak as much they want and add in custom objects to the terrain (Phase II).

[ghostdancer]

This conversation was done via PM but I think is worth repeating here. Oakranger proposed two possible areas for a SEA terrain.

From Oakranger

I start doing some research and really learn a lot of new history in the area of Italy.  So here is what I am looking at.  I could make two maps but will work one at the time.  The first map, South France, would consist of southern France, Northern Italy and French island Corsica.  From what I gather, the 12th USAF had 57th air division, 310th BG, 324TH FG, 17TH BG, 319th BG, and 320th BG doing mission to Northern Italy and supporting Operation Dragoon in southern France.  We can get 2 FSO events out of this.



Map two would consist of 15th USAF that ran missions all over northern Italy Southern Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Hungary and Czech.  There is two problems I can see on this.  1) Size of the area.  Can we have a map that covers that area?  2) Most of 15th bases where around Foggia, Italy (way south near the notch of eastern Italy).  I did found two bases up northern Italy but that was late in the war.  With this, we can have….3-5 FSO events and a great scenario event too.

[ghostdancer]

From Ghost Dancer


I would go for the Foggia map. Remember we have 512 sq area to work with. The map I am attaching show 500 sq miles.

Also as for bases we would want to cover 1943 - 1945 and you can fudge a bit here to give the allies more staging bases. Or I should say a designer would. Normally in an FSO event we want to have targets within 4 - 6 sectors (100 to 150 miles). So keep that in mind. Also possibly might include air starts to help simulate major bombing raids up into Austria and such.

[ghostdancer]

From Oakranger

Sounds good.  Here is a list of allied bases in Italy that i found.  Most of them are around Foggia but two of them are far north.

    * Montecorvino
    * Battipaglia
    * Capodichino
    * Lago
    * Tre Cancelli
    * Tarquinia
    * Grosseto
    * Grottaglie
    * Piombino
    * Calvi Corsica
    * Peretola
    * Rimini
    * Ravenna
    * Rivolto
    * Tissano
    * Treviso

[ghostdancer]

Okay now with this done I have told MrMidi and 68falcon to use this topic for further communication, advice, etc.

And as you can see for the SEA the research phase comes first. Once that is done it is time for actual production and MrMidi, msyelf, 68falcon will help with adviced and instructions on the technical aspects such as how to create or get an elevation file, make coastlines, place fields, etc., etc.

[oakranger]

Thanks guys for all the help.  I will do my best.  OK, I looked at MrMidi TE Tutorials and ran a few basics step (cost line, elevation, vegetation coverage ect). So far, looks good. This week I will start the map, so what is the first step would you do?

[ghostdancer]

Well the first step is to get the elevation files. Myself or MrMidi can advise but you need to get the DEMs or the area you want. Then via a program export that elevation file to a grayscale bitmap. The particulars of these steps and what program to use we can go over in a bit (don't have the info off the top of my head here at the office).

One of the other things you need to do before that is try to figure out the highest mountain in the area your are doing. For you simply google what is the highest peak in the Alps. You will use this to set your elevation hight and the TE will then figure out for each color step from white to black what the appropriate distance should be.

After we get this in place we can move on to creating the waterd.bmp map (actual land otherwise you will have tons of elevations points but all in water).

[ghostdancer]

Just call me senile since it just came to me. I use microdem for working with DEM files. MrMidi uses 3DEM and says it much easier.

Oh, and I think you said you had photoshop right? A good photo editing programming like photoshop or GIMP is essential to this type of work.

[jolly22]

So im ASSUMING here..... That the mountains are in the North, there for it will be a hilly terrain, but in the middle and southern portions it will be close to flat?

And do you want a map of the WHOLE adriatic sea? or just a portion? ( black square in the picture )

[oakranger]

So im ASSUMING here..... That the mountains are in the North, there for it will be a hilly terrain, but in the middle and southern portions it will be close to flat?

And do you want a map of the WHOLE adriatic sea? or just a portion? ( black square in the picture )

It will be the gray shade area that Ghostdancer put up.  that is the largest area that can be done (512 sq area)  I wished that i can get more on there but what i will do it cover enough to get great SEC/FSO events.

[oakranger]

So im ASSUMING here..... That the mountains are in the North, there for it will be a hilly terrain, but in the middle and southern portions it will be close to flat?

There will be +4000m mountains in Italy and Austria area. 

[68falcon]

oakranger here is some research Fencer gave me for my Italy terrain. It should be good for portions of your terrain. BTW if you do not have google earth you should download it.

[ghostdancer]

Here is the link to MrMidi's tutorial on working with DEM files to make elevations for the TE.

- http://www.mrmidi.net/AHTE/Working_with_elevations_in_the_TE.pdf

So the next step as I said is download the site programs, get the DEM files, and take a shot at creating the elevation for that area. All of us will be here to answer questions and assist.

[jolly22]

Awesome! Thank guys! I havent really made a REAL map, just kind of messed around with the stuff, this weekend im gooing to start trying to build this map 

Stand by for lots of questions!

[mrmidi]

Also as I posted in the tutorials thread...the USGS site no longer allows anonymous ftp access so you'll have to use the http link to get the dem file for the area you want.

http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/gtopo30/global/

If you don't know which tile covers the area you want, there is a image in the directory called tiles.gif that shows what dem covers what area.

 
midi