Mediterranean Tile Set Testing and Topo Testing.

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I'm posting screen shots of testing the Med Tile set in the terrain editor along with testing some topographical features I'm thinking about "inspired" by East Africa and the Rift Valley. Except for the agrarian tiles in the set which look more like North Africa and the middle east, all the trees are from sub Sahara Africa. I'm trying to develop techniques for creating topo features similar "up to a point" to what can be found in the Rift Valley and Serengeti.

The wire frame polymesh in the project work space has many limitations. After two Melee arena terrains I've learned the hard way that I need to see the completed project in my imagination down to every square mile. Then imagine the topo features and how airfields and tank combat will interact with that topography. And this time instead of creating a basic land mass heightmap file, popping that up in the terrain editor in 5 seconds, and start carving away at it. Which has ended up with me running into road blocks every few miles of carving or setting up combat areas. And then weeks into it discovering the simple way to create the same results, this time I'm testing topo features and how I will have airfields and tank combat interact with them before I start sculpting away.

While doing this topo testing I get the opportunity to learn the tile set, it's blending limitations, and how to adjust it for tank combat. This tile set could really use a reddish brown textured volcanic rock tile.
 

A test terrain and an initial attempt at getting a look at the tile set and blending it.











 

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Working on topo structures and tile blending to look like something from the region in Africa. You can see step erosion faces are not an option due to a limitation in the smallest size of the polygon units for a square face.











A limitation to blending tiles on vertical faces when only a single rock type is available, kind of flat and Meh.

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More erosion effect made a better mountain.

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Testing placing a bridge across a dry gorge. This is a proof of concept mostly, I have more tests of different gorges and water cut ways to look at to test bridges and GV spawns. I need to create a mini area of a 5000ft plateau transitioning down to a flat land with a 25 mile wide rift running through it cut by a river with progressive step downs and meanders. It's doable, that will be another experiment to develop the techniques and test creating a combat area split by the river. So this simple gorge test is like planting an acron to end up with an oak tree......

[bustr]

So now I have a 5000ft escarpment, a space wider than one sector and I can create a rift valley with a river meandering down it as the boarder between two country's. The goal is to use a rift valley as the boarder for each country. I also want to test field placements at 19 miles and side ravines feeding the meandering river that I can use for bridges to block the GV spawns. I won't mind scrubbing work here and starting over as I prototype things for the real terrain. And I'll probably use the bulldozer tool to rapidly cut the main ravine and river run.

When you look at the raw face of the 5000ft chunk of land laid down with the elevation tool set to 5000. Not much more I can do to texture it for an illusion of a vertical rock face. But random things need to be added to the already intense randomness for a sense of weathering. So here I get to develop the right technique for the look I want and not waste weeks on the production terrain.





Here is an example of how you can throw yourself with scale in the terrain editor versus logged in on the ground. That escarpment in the first screen shot just doesn't look 5000ft high. But, the rock behind the tank in the screen shot below might look just right even though it is 10,000ft high. As you try to build topo features lower than 5000ft, the limitations of the polymesh start making you compromise on detail.

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Here is an example of how scale will throw you. I have my 5000ft escarpment, a 500ft valley base and side walls of 1500ft. The side walls are 25 miles apart so I can work into how I'll run a river, cut in some lakes and run feeder streams or something like that. This rift valley will define a boarder between country's and allow me to space feilds at 19 miles.

In these two screen shots, that 1000ft of exposed side wall looks like it just cannot be 1000ft tall even butted up to that 5000ft tall escarpment. This is how scale will get away from you if you try to make things to scale for a 20,000ft giant instead of the perspective from a tank on the ground.

Also these are magic numbers for gray scale elevations so I only need to use three gray scale colors when I create the basic heightmap file that will popup my foundation land masses in 5 seconds as an import. I export a heightmap file and pull those three shades of gray for the master 2048x2048 heightmap RAW file I will build later on. Right now I need to sculpt and try out different ideas across this segment of a rift valley.

Why am I concerned with a 5000ft escarpment, one will ring the terrain with a 10 sector diameter. So I also have to come up with a convincing transition illusion out of the escarpment into the rift valley. Thus the need to experiment for some time. I've found that once I create a look, recreating it subsequent times is much faster, and I can add better embellishments than the very first attempt.

[bustr]

I thought I could get away from having to create a 1:1 blueprint so soon. This is a 2048x2048 8pixel=1mile and even with the 25 mile sector grid and 25mile concentric rings, it looks tiny. That space is 250x250 miles. The brown is 5000ft and the green is 500ft and those country borders in red are 25miles wide. They are where I'm putting the rift valleys. There is enough pond in the center to support three CV task groups, I needed some place logical for the water systems to runoff to. I will add three additional color arcs 3000, 2000, 1000 into one of the country pies, then cut in the core canyon system down to 500ft. Then copy that and duplicate it two more times around the circle. That way when I convert this to grayscale and then into a heightmap, it will import into the terrain editor popping up the elevations with the core canyons in place to a depth of 500ft.

The Catch:22 here is I may need to place the finished positions of all the bases and strats then cut the canyons and water ways. The single sector back into the center of each country extension of the pond is to have a protect-able location for the three ports. As I cut canyons and water runoffs the shape with become more organic. Just like laying out the grid on a wood wall panel to carve in ornamentation.....

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Now I have a basic topo block elevation map I can convert to grayscale and then into a heightmap later. I need to map out feilds\strat\port so I can work in a basic water cut erosion canyon system. The top of the sides of rift valleys tend to have level areas where water runoff cuts canyons into the face of the vertical sides. Then at some distance back from that land will be much lower and in Africa, with large plains.


I've set the elevation blocks by color, 5000, 3000, 2000, 1000, 500. When I make the grayscale map I'll do an export from the terrain editor of a heigtamp with elevations tests I will place on it. I'll get the grayscale color number from those and duplicate the shapes from the blueprint into a 16bit png multi-layer grayscale file. When the layers are merged a clean border between color shades is produced which will give me crisp steps between elevations after the import.


A 1:1 2048 blueprint map basic elevation block. Does not look like much land which is misleading to just how much sculpting you will have to do once you get down to ground level in the terrain editor. And even worse when you lay in a field so you can run around offline to look at things. Offline, suddenly that one slice of the 10sector diameter pie is ginormous.




Cross sectional guide line for the three country that I will be sculpting. As the land rifts by tectonic plates pulling apart, the walls of the valley are heaved up while the land back from that may depress. Also volcano's will form along the walls. I'm still deciding If I want to pull a 500ft green area up the center of the country or, hand cut that depression. This is where I have to map all the bases very early to help me guide the illusion of the rift topography to harmonize with the base layout. It's always compromises to meet the rules for field distance placement. It's not a good idea to be stuck placing an airfield at the bottom of a 1000ft canyon only 2miles wide after you sculpted your masterpiece first, mapping base layouts second.

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Now I have a drainage bowl in each country for all the runoff and a large plain. The drainage system lets me run waterways near feilds and use bridges. Then I can create the illusion of that path is natural for that waterway in the overall scheme of things.

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A minor adjustment to the water area and the land is better balanced.

I just went through two iterations of a heightmap test before I realized why my attempts to create land 500ft above sea level was giving me negative values. With 16bit grayscale I was looking at "0" as sea level so I thought gray value 500 would be +500ft. Hitech's world starts at -1000ft below "0" so everything above sea level begins with 1001. Douh!! Now I can copy and past each of the color elevation layers into a Krita 16bit grayscale PNG file, and produce a RAW heightmap file to popup my basic land mass for my project.

Still have to come up with all of the field and strat placements so I can create the foundation canyons for the runoff system. I probably should throw in a 12,000ft boarder just outside of the 2048x2048 CBM map porthole to give the edges of the terrain a finished look.

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It evolves on, now I need to make two copies of the field layout layer, rotate them into the other countries and merge into one layer for my blueprint file.

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Layers make it possible to make two copies on two different layers of the first country field layout, rotate them into position, then merge all layers down into one layer. Then later you can transfer it to a CBM map and set those as white dot place holders on the terrain. If you want your GVers to not disappear, don't place many vehicle bases on your terrain. Instead give them spawns to follow the action and take part in it. Now I can paint in the primary canyons and stream runoff system so when I convert this to a heightmap file for import into the terrain editor, the import cuts all of that for me. Saves me going nuts by cutting down on micro sculpting. Those three lakes are natural basins for a drainage system and an excuse to run streams past feilds to place bridges across. Gotta entertain the GVers if I'm forcing them to follow the air combat activity and not ignore it battling between two GV bases all night. And upping the ante by making 50% of the airfields with the map room on the field.

Note to self: Hitech likes some bases not capture able by GVs. {I really hate designing the spawn system....that's not for some time though, weeeeee.}

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So how do I get these elevation blocks setup in a 16bit grayscale file so that the are seen in the import as different elevations? The next 5 screen captures are from my 1:1 blueprint, I'm leaving the water layer active for contrast to see the 5 different elevation blocks that will make my terrain. I'm showing this while I think about the drainage system and primary canyons. The biggest problem with carving is if you start by trying to trace everything from a CBM bitmap you have painted all this into. Using an art program to build it allows a faster prototyping. I like carving the world once I get the basic elevation blocks and ocean in place, it will end up randomized as I go along.   

Blue is there to show water and in 16bit grayscale Hitech world is gray value -1000 to 1000. One foot above sea level is gray value 1001.


500ft. gray value 1500.



1000ft. gray value 2000.



2000ft. gray value 3000.



3000ft. gray value 4000.



5000ft. gray value 6000.

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Now I add a drainage system layer to create drainage for the three basins and run 1\2 mile wide waterways past feilds two mile out from the field. On Oceania I ran the water way 2miles out from the center of the airfield, ran 3 bridges across the waterway and the GV spawns were at three mile, one mile past the bridges. Getting all of that cut in by the hieghtmap import saves weeks of work.

Naughty idea, place a town along a waterway a mile back and two of the three bridges closer to the town. Unless you run supplies or troops with an LVT, only two places to watch for eeeviiillll M3's.

[bustr]

With the success of shorter field distances and the down side that people happily flip a terrain faster, while having fun doing it. I'm incorporating the 13 mile distance into this terrain. So how do you control what happens to it? For one all of the feilds in the area don't have GV spawns. And second the two at 13 miles from each other only have map rooms on the field. The other four in this area, since I want to do 50\50 towns and map room on the field, it will have to grow on me as I reach the stage of the blueprint that I map out the GV spawn system. And that is another place to help players create activity or stagnate.

The area boxed in red is duplicated between all three countries. The numbers are the distance in miles between feilds. If this map goes into rotation early in the day, with current norms, the rook country inside of two hours may be down to 60-70% for their feilds before the prime time crew signs in and starts taking them back. If it comes on line in the evening, those will be very active areas of air combat.


I'm building my water ways and runoff streams to get bridges next to fields and towns. I still have to lay in the global crack system that will come out of the higher elvation red-brown area and down for the water feed for the streams. Because there are so few feilds in the three rift valleys, I may wait until I'm building the uplift zones at the sides of the green to add in cracks and feeder canyons. That is one of those create by hand things that takes seeing it in place to come up with the art work.




The area in question that will generate activity due to shorter distances and no GV spawns between these feilds.