Brand spanking NEW map in MA!!!!!!

[RELIC]

Really enjoyed the new map last night.  Thanks for your hard work!   

[The Fugitive]

I liked it too. The fields without a town added a new element that made the base takes a different animal.

Great job Bustr!



..... whens the next one going to be ready? 

[nrshida]

Two weeks 

[icepac]

Dang......gonna make me guy a new video card and resubscribe.

[Puma44]

I used it last night.  It was a lot of fun with a lot of terrain masking options not found in other terrains.  Fantastic effort Buster!  Thanks! 

[bustr]

A clutter tile test of the Mediterranean tile set in the terrain editor. It is a gooberdoodle tiel set and has only a single rock type tile. And the agrarian tiles are too thickly populated to make good tank combat areas. So I had to reduce the tree areas with grass and the road system is iffy for any realism. It appears there are no village buildings in this tile set. Farmland that thick in the med or Africa always has a village it supports, yeah the town. Who knows.......

You can see how I had to thin out the agrarian tiles to favor tank combat. I did the same with Oceania and I've heard no complaints about being able to see or hide in cover or getting anywhere fast.


Med test of the landscape tiles in a test terrain. Biggest PITA of this tile set is how poorly the majority of tiles blend because of the color\texture choices other than the two closest in their row. Mountains in the Med and Africa don't erode like the ones in the Pacific and I only have sand stone to work with, WAAAAFFFFLLLLLEEEE. I keep expecting an elephant, some giraffe, a rhino and a zebra herd to walk by. I swear I heard a lion roar in the distance.

Waffle is there any chance you can swap out that strange green tile in the last row before the agrarian tiles for another stone tile like you have two in the Pacific tile set.... Otherwise this reminds me of the Rift valley and the Serengeti. Maybe a reddish brown textured stone so I can do Rift Valley Volcanic canyon walls 1000ft high that blend with the sandstone....Hmmmm, three rift valleys and all the stuff that goes with that. Crocodiles to attack LVT's yeah.......See my brains dribbled out of my ears and still won't get back in after 6 months of Oceania. 

[Randy1]

Bustr no map can save the underdog country.   

Things that might help. Auto Weathering in the strats.  Auto Harden the starts of the underdog.  Auto Limit ack and town down time of the underdog.

Coming into to prime time with ought a big chunk of your country is not bad.   Trying to take it back without ords is.

[Bruv119]

bustr is in the groove now. 

Thing with map making the more you learn the more you want to do again and perfect it.  Streamlining the process Bustr could have this next one done within the month

Are you retired??   

[Kanth]

 

Streamlining the process Bustr could have this next one done within the month

[Puma44]

Buster, is it possible to make some or all of the bridges destructible?

[bustr]

Hitech told me for Oceania "No Destructable Bridges".

I can think of only one place I would want them after watching how Oceania has been utilized over two days about 8 hours each day, then playing on it with the prime time crew. Blocking GV access to strats for resupply runs. Any place else will be used to avoid combat by keeping the bridges down all the time. It won't be fair to everyone's $14.95. It would have to be the kind of thing running M3's gets to the strat ASAP versus c47 taking 2x-3x the time. Then putting in 3-5 bridges to make a jabbo run worth the NOE. I'm not sure about the down time or what object type I would have to assign to a bridge to let it be destroyed. The current bridge object type "barrier" is non-destructable and a bridge shouldn't be destructible with less than a 500lb bomb.

Hitech if you are reading this, will it work for you under this condition?

I need to test if I can make narrow "V" cracks across flat ground that will stop tanks while being narrow enough for bridges. Not all ravines in the rift valley have water running year round. Now I have to plan feild placements at 19 miles so I can set the GV spawns on the other side of a river or a ravine.


I'm looking at images from the rift valley. Waffle as you can see I could really use a reddish brown rock tile.

[AAIK]

Bustr some advice from map making in other games (I don't know if it applies here): Don't try to look realistic, keep it symmetric and simple. Starcraft II and other games have a good philosophy to follow for map making! They have decades worth of technique put into them! Symmetry and functionality!
You will burn yourself out trying to make it look too realistic. 

[zack1234]

I used it last night.  It was a lot of fun with a lot of terrain masking options not found in other terrains.  Fantastic effort Buster!  Thanks! 

Terrain masking option?

[bustr]

I do what I can with the limitations of the 1\8x1\8mile basic unit in the polymesh. The rift valley is an "inspiration", you saw on Oceania I worked within the limitations. AH is not Starcraft and all of the AH2 converted terrains except for CraterMA and Grinder are mostly visually boring because they used the Starcraft philosophy. A 10x10 terrain can only be sculpted so much and it quickly hits the polymesh limits. I'm creating an illusion not a real world, if you start bland with the goal of banging another terrain out for rotation, it will play like a bland terrain. That has been the hallmark of most terrains which makes them become boring and blur together in your memory.

AAIK, build a terrain and help out AH3, I've got this.....

I have a lot of experimentation to do to see how the Med tile set can be used to create the illusion of a real world and how far I can manipulate the limitations of the polymesh to do that. I have bridges now and had to experiment for several weeks to make those work out. I can drop in the Macro land mass for a 10x10 terrain in a day right now. I want to experiment on a mini terrain until I develop some techniques that look good and will speed up my Michelangelo style of AH terrain sculpting.

Some of the limitations of the 1\8x1\8 polymesh and strata stepped erosion walls. This experiment is about 2000ft tall and 2 miles wide. The last screen shot is a 9000ft high wall showing the limitations of not having a second rock textured tile type to blend strata. The tree and grass tile has no dimensional texture to help the rock wall illusion like the Pac tile set and it's two types of rock tile. These strata erosion walled structures lend themselves to being created like piping on layers of decoration on a cake. Just have to experiment with creating the minimum dimension ledges and steps laying down a few layers or after cutting out a canyon by cutting it wider than the finished canyon footprint. Then pulling thin strips up the canyon wall to produce steps. Since the goal is an illusion, I don't have to do miles of the rifts across a whole country. That step mesa from the ground looks like I need to use a slightly faster erosion effect and blend it down some. Then pull trees up a bit higher on the base. It's all about inspiration and the illusion you create from that inspiration. I need a red brown rock tile that will blend with the sand stone rock tile. It will pop the greens in everything else.

[bozon]

Excellent map bustr. Nice work