River and bank testing GV micro terrain.

[hitech]

Arlo:

Mouse wheel controls speed.
Also you can simply drag the map to where you wish to be. The red square shows your current view size.

You also can save a position so you can jump right back to it.

HiTEch

[bustr]

Since the center line of this valley places every mountain and canyon running to it on a crappy bias angle for easily creating anything, I just accept it is a problem with no real solution other than the overall visual look of the structures. When you build a terrain you are telling a story about where water goes. It dictates how geological structures exposed to the elements will be shaped. Since the Med terrain tile set only has a single rock tile and it is sand stone, I have to get creative to show 3D structures. So I chose to use a light green tile that I completely paint structures with then come back and build layers with tree tiles and the sand stone to highlight exposed rock. There is a tan tile I use with a thin brush at the bottom of runoff canyons to create an illusion of water courses. The four colors enhance the 3D structures.

I've extended the inside of the rift and applied the light green. After this I paint a 3D mountain range into existence. Now I see a space to raise an orphaned upthrust line and make the valley look more interesting just past the leading edge of the light green.

[bustr]

Split the side of the valley upthrust on the north side, need to extend the south side and looks like I can put more orphans in just up to those first two place holder squares for field locations. Sometimes this goes quickly, 30 minutes per each of these segments I cut in today. Once you know your look and have a handle on the polymesh in the direction you are building, it's 3D finger painting in clay. I think I can get one more segment in before my brain shuts down for the day.

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Last segment in, probably should look at painting this.

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Painted yesterday's work. 10 screen shots.

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last 5 of 10 set.

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Cracks are fun to make. Base color is on, still have to paint this work.

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Little bit of paint and I can move on to another topo feature.

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Sometimes your day's work is tying up a loose end you have been avoiding like how I was going to merge the two sides of this mountain range. The cap rock seems to do the trick.

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There are times I look at real world pictures of what I'm trying to create and realize I have to be more chaotic. The real world is not a neat well shaped place. Most our game terrains are neat and well shaped.

[bustr]

Mountain range building 101:

In all of the screen shots from building these rift valleys you have seen sand stone colored areas laid in as an elevation block then smoothed down with a smoothing tool to leave a raised bell shaped cross section. Mountains are formed by upthrust then they weather. So I create the foundation slightly smaller or close to the finished mountain range dimensions and use a tool either to cut in runoff canyons or raise up the ridges and peaks above the runoff canyons. Or some combination of both processes depending on how the cardinal lines of the polymesh run to the mountain range run direction.

Prepping an area to lay in the runoff canyons and peaks\ridges. I'll need some kind of logical transition from the edge of that large caldera into the new work I'm doing. When you look at volcanoes in the east africa rift valley area, you see as many lone cinder caldera as one large one and some number of secondary eruptions. I'll take advantage of the secondary to make the transition. Looks like I need to raise the large caldera up about 1000ft. Several smaller caldera down that central line will emulate what I've seen in pictures from east africa.

[bustr]

Now I have something to work with. When you are creating something this huge from scratch, it's best to take it in chunks, your creative ability pushed over long periods will end up as mental fatigue before you realize it. Then your work degenerates, especially attention to details that later on can mean upping from every single field on the terrain offline to just wander around looking for boo boos 3 or 4 times. I still find a few boo boos I missed on my other terrains from time to time and I thought I had found them with 3 waves of upping from every single field to look.


Raised the big caldera up by 1000ft made for a better visual perspective.










Looks like I will have to orphan that field locator square on a mesa with runoff from the calderas cutting that place off. Depending on how I do it, that color band is a 500ft elevation, I can place the GV spawns on the other side of a narrow canyon giving access across by collapsing the sides in a few places. That kind of micro terrain creation won't happen until I create all this macro terrain and then start placing down feilds and GV spawns. As I create the macro terrain it starts giving me ideas for the micro terrain when I build out near the place holder squares that will be field locations.

[bustr]

After beginning the shaping and cutting that has resulted with orphaning that field location square on a 500ft mesa, I started looking at some of the configurations for field\town and spawn locations vs field with map room and spawn locations. It's amazing inside of the terrain editor how close and small things look even though those squares are 1x1mile and the spawn location rings are 3mile radius. Still don't know what I'll do here but, it helps from time to time to drop in a field and look at things from a field sized perspective. I've planned this terrain to have half the airfields with the map room next to the tower. It's kind of an either or scenario, a fast base steal or, a protracted defense with hot air and ground action. Having two spawns to that location helps balance the fight. Placing some kind of a terrain feature between the field and the spawn helps for a good tank fight.

[bustr]

Transitions from cones jutting up out of gables needing sloped faces are maddening if you are keeping to elevation limitations. The polygon size restricts the smallest shape you can form with the polymesh. So getting this to look somewhat plausible was interesting. The clutter tile paint helps by creating contrasts with color.











That 500ft deep cut to the left of the airfield is a good candidate to create a tank combat feature taking advantage of it being a barrier of sorts. I still don't know if I'll attach a town to this field or, cut in a stream at the bottom of that ravine with a bridge or, pick several spots and collapse the sides of the ravine and make tanks drive down in and up to attack the field.

I flew a Yak inside of the 500ft ravine to show how much room is available for creating tank combat micro terrain. While I'm building out the overall terrain I leave things like this for later cleanup near feilds as ideas for tank combat terrain features. Planning the terrain from the spawn point into the field like this helps enhance tank combat. I think if I make that cut 660ft deep, the walls will be vertical instead of angled, something to test.

[bustr]

Testing all the time as you build helps in surprising ways. Since Waffle put only a sand stone tile in the Med tile set, sand stone weathers in very predictable ways. So combining that with testing 660ft for that last mesa elevation, I got a good effect to use up a few miles along a river cut. I spend more time worrying about how what I create will effect tanks and that player's enjoyment than I do anything else on a terrain, go figure.   That is because they will have their noses up close and personal with the features I create around every field.

What really gives me a headache is I can see the completed terrain down to all the micro terrain features for tank combat but, creating it is like having to build a 1 mile pasture wall 5ft high with only field stones I dig from another pasture by myself. It drives me to drink, and I think my local coffee bean supplier should cut me a break for how much I buy.





You will notice I had to run a bead down the ridge line to account for how much I raised the ridge at those cinder cones.