Roads & Bridges

[bustr]

But if you had that, you'd be limited to just playing with the mesh, and limited to the atlas textures.  You couldn't do anything with diffuse maps, normal maps, and alpha maps like you can with the current method.

So what, as long as it paints the same way as the rest of the larger polymesh, I then have another universe of micro topographical structure options because of the smaller mesh. I'm building  625,000sq miles of MA terrain, not a small terrain for the AvA. Pulling up a 2x2 or 4x4 secondary work space to build the micro terrain at each field would be a universe shift in the eye candy look and ability to blend in a more unique micro combat space for the GVs at every spawn.

A family of 2x2 micro terrain objects that Hitech will sanction for the MA is a viable compromise if the whole object can be painted to blend it into the over all terrain theme. The micro terrain objects will have the limitation that you have to flatten an additional area around the town or field because it won't conform to the underlying terrain if it has a pitch. So once again you limit your design choices because of the requirements imposed by objects built on a tile. Unless Hitech allows adjusting the tile's "pitch" like I did for the static planes I placed on a terrain. Then you still have to mess with blending the boarder which may not work out well. So a secondary work space in a finer mesh could be designed so I outline an existing 2x2\4x4, it pops up with the underlying topo pitch in place.

You still haven't completed an MA terrain yet nor has Esayscor..... 

[Easyscor]

You still haven't completed an MA terrain yet nor has Esayscor.....

And I have no desire to produce one after updating several of the AH2 MA terrains. My plate is full with the AvA, thank you very much.

[bustr]

You should try several MA terrains from scratch. When I checked the converted one you asked me to look at all the GV spawns. It would have been very simple for me to fix all the issues, especially where I'm at building 650,000sq mile terrains. Touching up an existing MA terrain is simple for me now, I often have to redo my whole terrain because I come up with a better paint scheme or technique for creating an existing style of topo feature by the last two or three feilds I lay down. I go back and redo every instance of that topo feature along with re-painting so it makes that 650,000sq mile universe have a quality of consistency while keeping to my theme.

Since you guys don't have something that Hitech has signed off on to not kill FPS in the MA, I have to keep building my current terrain expecting to work the micro combat terrain around each GV spawn business as usual with the existing polygons. The possibilities with bridges have not been fully explored and my current terrain I'm using the Med terrain set so that opens a whole new set of things for me to try. First, I have to finish creating the macro 650,000sq mile world based on it's theme, then I can play with spawns and micro combat terrain for GVs.

I forgot today to put in a short segment of river with the path tool at it's narrowest width and look at the results up close offline, gotta remember to do that. I've been creating the illusion of a 1300ft high rock pile made with sandstone strata all day and testing different ways to paint it. With Oceania since the tops of mountains were bare rock you paint light to dark from the top down through the canyons. It's the reverse when the mountains will be covered in grass and trees with canyons and washes painted sandstone or tan sand and trees. But first the whole area has to be painted with very light green than the darker forest added to the ridge lines. You cannot use the angle or elevation paint tools for all those canyons.......takes forever one square mile at a time with a tiny brush.

Since you will only see this up close from a plane in the MA, the illusion at a distance of the rock strata will make it look like a weathered rock strata pile like you see in some deserts with rotting rock outcrops. I've climbed on them in southern california out around the Antelope Valley area.


 

[8thJinx]

You still haven't completed an MA terrain yet nor has Esayscor.....

I don't see how that matters, frankly.  Seriously.  And I don't know why you're throwing shade at us while we're trying to learn and create something different.

[Spikes]

So what, as long as it paints the same way as the rest of the larger polymesh, I then have another universe of micro topographical structure options because of the smaller mesh. I'm building  625,000sq miles of MA terrain, not a small terrain for the AvA. Pulling up a 2x2 or 4x4 secondary work space to build the micro terrain at each field would be a universe shift in the eye candy look and ability to blend in a more unique micro combat space for the GVs at every spawn.

A family of 2x2 micro terrain objects that Hitech will sanction for the MA is a viable compromise if the whole object can be painted to blend it into the over all terrain theme. The micro terrain objects will have the limitation that you have to flatten an additional area around the town or field because it won't conform to the underlying terrain if it has a pitch. So once again you limit your design choices because of the requirements imposed by objects built on a tile. Unless Hitech allows adjusting the tile's "pitch" like I did for the static planes I placed on a terrain. Then you still have to mess with blending the boarder which may not work out well. So a secondary work space in a finer mesh could be designed so I outline an existing 2x2\4x4, it pops up with the underlying topo pitch in place.

You still haven't completed an MA terrain yet nor has Esayscor..... 

What is your problem? Because they haven't made a MA terrain yet they don't mean anything? Hop off the horse.

[bustr]

No, an MA terrain and the MA is not the AvA and everything you do for the MA will impact the majority of the paying customers at the same time. It's one of the reasons why the MA can be boring to players because so many can be impacted by one object on an MA terrain, so the object options are kind of repetitious. These guys know this already.

That is why Hitech has to review your terrain before he will put it into rotation to not impact his customers. Whatever they create will have to go through this before he takes any chance on driving away customers with weak PCs. For my terrain BowlMA I built a massive weather system that the testing exposed problems with clouds and kept me from running weather on that terrain until recently. Hitech had to rework the cloud system and come out with a new cloud editor. When I tested the cloud blocks in the new one, my weather systems for all the terrains in rotation used only a small portion of the clouds available from the menu because I was impacting my PC's FPS and it's not a low end system.

So I'm working with 650,000sq miles at one time that I have to follow rules to not screw the customers. There are limitations from the polygon mesh that make terrains a bit boring and a challenge to overcome that. It will be nice to have new objects for the MA if Hitech signs off on something but, I have to keep building my new terrain like they don't exist to not screw the customers in the MA. Right now, they don't exist. Both Easyscor and 8thJinx gave me the impression they were working on MA terrains from conversations in the terrain editor forum. Everyone gets to change their mind......

[8thJinx]

It will be nice to have new objects for the MA if Hitech signs off on something but, I have to keep building my new terrain like they don't exist to not screw the customers in the MA. Right now, they don't exist.

That's all fine and good, but dropping a sentence like "You still haven't completed an MA terrain yet nor has Easycor...", sure smells like shade being thrown at folks just because they haven't built MA terrains.  Especially when we're trying to create new versions of objects that already exist in the MA.  You'd have been better off just saying "hey wish you luck."

And they do exist, by the way.  This isn't some radical new idea.  The land object at the center island on Ndisles is exactly the thing we're talking about.  There's no difference between the land object at the center of Ndisles and the family of objects I'm working on, other than how the terrain is pushed around.