CHAINSAWS ,GANGSAWS, BEAVERS, .. axes,,,,c4, ash bore beatle, girdling......

[RODBUSTR]

  trees..i.ve worked on and been to quite a few airbases and 1 thing I don't see is trees..  they are in the way of manned guns, my viet vet buddy art was pretty awestruck when he checked out the flight part, but laughed when I got in a  manned gun, first thing he said was ,,frag the co, or get out the c4 and blow these trees down, you can't get a clear  shot at targets, and the enemy can use them for cover....especially ww2 bases trees would be cleared back at least 1/4 mile in an A/O where the posablity on an enemy assault was high......they would be cleared and made into lumber, and used for fuel for the stoves......

[Chris79]

I was thinking, since we have trees at the end of the runway, why not add some 3 phase overhead power lines that cross the field too.

[Becinhu]

I was thinking, since we have trees at the end of the runway, why not add some 3 phase overhead power lines that cross the field too.

I see what you did there......lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bustr]

Most of our terrains were made by players no longer here.

On mine from the screen shot below, the 1\8-1\4 mile grass open area around the field and 1 mile grass area off the end of each runway is standard. Touching every airfield on a terrain just to do what I did as a pre planned standard for painting the terrain is a few days of work in terms of work hours. After I set all of my GV spawns down on the terrain, I ended up having to move every single GV spawn 1\2 mile from their original position. That was about 200 spawns and it took me a day to do it along with the testing needed after making a change that massive. Now because Hitech suggested a better way to paint the rock on my finished terrain, I'm revisiting all of the rock geo features by hand as you can see below. It will take me a few days to finish that massive change across 400sq miles.


Standard grass boarder and runway ends for all airfields on my terrain.

[Beefcake]

Aces High needs to have the game Spintires grafted into it.

[NatCigg]

if we could get a guy to graft or transplant trees.... take them from the airfield and place them around the mountains.  not in a random strange way but something more natural.  the title screen gives a accurate look to the mountains.  if the rock is not sheer cliff or above the tree line then dense forest is around. using the more detailed terrain and all these trees, i think we can set the bar to " make it look real. "

 

[bustr]

That would be Waffle who put the trees on the airfield objects themselves and the terrain builder chooses how to paint the rest of the 1x1mile squares that touch the 1x1 or 2x2 airfield tile. The terrain builder is limited by the 16 clutter tiles he has in the terrain editor. Those are what ever Waffled decided to put together to give the most for the least. And since our world is 512x512 miles, we have to be limited or everyone's FPS will be in the single digits. Other game worlds are usually 10x10 miles so the numbers of trees and their density and destroy ability are not a problem along with how realistic the 3D objects are meshed together.

Why don't you gents try building a terrain for our game and learn how our world works.....not knowing is not an excuse for poking fun at it.

[NatCigg]

I would like to import a topography map and start from there.  Is that possible?

How are elevations created in the editor?  Do you think it would be hard to recreate the state of Washington?  Or Northern California?

 

[715]

I would like to import a topography map and start from there.  Is that possible?

Possible and easy: look for Artik's program in the Terrain Editor forum.*  It not only automatically downloads Digital Elevation Data and converts it for import into the AH3 terrain editor, but it also does land cover (i.e. this spot has dense forest, this spot is farmland, this spot is rock or snow, etc.)  So you not only get accurate topography, but also accurate plant growth (or, at least, as accurate as is possible with mapping satellite data to AH3s 20 stock ground tiles).  His program also imports accurate water and makes it work within the current limitations of the AH3 engine (water can only be at 0 ft altitude except in special objects, like the water in the city, HQ and other objects).  His program makes it easy to create AH3 terrains that accurately reproduce real life locations. 

Even if you aren't trying to match a real location for historical reasons you can pick any place on the globe that you think would make a good general terrain and use that.  This is, in my opinion, superior to trying to make a world yourself as the topography looks more natural with actual geological and erosion processes that shaped the real world.

* http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,384668.0.html

[NatCigg]

thank you 715 and buster

[bustr]

Or if you are not doing a specific location on planet earth, you can use known geological characteristics. I created an 18 sector diameter super volcano with a 26,000ft unbroken caldera wall. Then placed 9 islands in it as the remnants of the primary cooled magma. Then I scarred the islands with secondary and tertiary up upheavals and erosion edifices. Including runoff fjords for a continuous 4000 miles. Just think like water and cut and paint everything from the top of the hill down.

The 16 clutter tiles are very limiting to the granularity at the ground level you are able to really duplicate real world region topo maps. In FSO and special events we fly at nose bleed altitudes with converted topo maps of WW2 historic regions work. If someone wanted to do a custom terrain of Bastogne right down to the buildings and street layout from 1944 photos, they would be screwed.

The AH3 clutter tiles give us the ability to create the illusion of civilization which if you look at photos of England and the continent, airfields were surrounded with farm feilds, cities, towns and villages. And the village tiles make very good GV combat zones and spawns.

Here are some secondary geo features in my super volcano caldera. Hitech suggested I convert all of the exposed rock from a dull green stone tile to that very textured white stone. This is another drawback in the terrain editor for the euroterr set. No brown\gray textured rock. This is a snow covered or dolomite exposed rock tile. Europe has granite and basalt mountains also.

Some of the level landscape painting gets it's random large flows from the fact when I cut the elevations and smoothed them there were 25-100ft elevation irregularities from my mouse swipes. So using the tool that lets you specify painting areas with a tile, based on two elevation points, I got some nice natural flow irregularities that helped later creating all of the civilization. Then the rest was finger painting randomly since nature is a bit random except where water is concerned. The size of the polygons the terrain is created with will limit what you can really do at ground level along with how the tiles visually interface with each other for the sensibility's of the Gvers stuck out in the bushes. Just remember, Hitech's panther can climb forever up a 70 degree cliff face.


   

[715]

If someone wanted to do a custom terrain of Bastogne right down to the buildings and street layout from 1944 photos, they would be screwed.

I was thinking maybe not.  Supposedly you can place square objects adjacent to each other if the altitudes match at every point along all boundaries (which they would if you used DEM data to create them).   If the entire terrain is custom square objects you can match pretty much anything you want.  Of course, it would be an astronomical amount of work to recreate all the roads, plant all the trees and clutter, create all the ponds, lakes, and rivers, and design and place all the custom buildings, bridges and dams, but I would guess it is at least theoretically possible.  For example, I vaguely recall that maybe Easyscor made a huge Paris with adjacent square objects?

Of course, a small map made entirely of custom 4 mile square objects would require and un-doable 256 of them, but you could use custom square objects in the important areas and cover the rest with standard terrain.  Bastogne itself is only about 8 miles x 8 miles, i.e. four 4 mile square objects, and judicious use of other custom square objects could cover the important battlefield areas.  The boundaries between custom objects and standard terrain would look a bit weird as important roads would quit at the edge of the custom object area and water feature continuity would be a problem.

[bustr]

I created a fantasy world based on real world phenomenon then asked myself, self, how can I use the 16 tiles I'm stuck with to make this as semi real world looking as possible. How much farm land will it take to feed all of the people who will need homes and villages to live in that either support the fields or the strat along with the military. I took a look at aerial photos of Europe during ww2 and after. Came to the conclusion the country side from England and all over the continent is one big bread basket spotted with towns and villages with some wild spaces that can't be cultivated or turned into factories. 

[RODBUSTR]

NOT POKING FUN,. BUT HAVING TREES anywhere near a hanger runway or near a gun emplacement is poor planning,,i thought this was a simulator, not a fantacy game

[oakranger]

emerald ash borer, not ash borer beetle.