River and bank testing GV micro terrain.

[Ciaphas]

Bustr,

I don't demand anything, I ask questions for my own understanding and to try and see things from the creators perspective, after all, I am on the outside looking in. Sometimes it not about having a more superior idea than what you have, it may be a harmless question to simply get a feel for the direction you are heading in. Many people have no idea what goes in to level/map design, fortunately for us Hitech and crew have created everything for us and we are just assembling the blocks and sculpting the board to get a product released.

As for me I have more than 10 years in level design, 3D asset creation and Texture design. I understand the fundamentals and concepts that go in to large projects like these maps.

I am currently working on a terrain at the moment and as always this thread has been a valuable asset.

Cheers,
Ciaphas

[bustr]

In that case was there a reason why you wanted me to change my micro terrain design if you are already in production with your concept for the Melee arena?

[Ciaphas]

I really like the look of the terrain in post 29.

I’m wondering if you are treating airfields around multiple enemy vehicle bases as priority targets by placing multiple spawns to the airfield from each vehicle base?

Example:

A53 sets in sector 10,5 and two enemy VB sit in 11,5 and 10,6, both VB have multiple spawns to A53. Allowing for 4 avenues of attack.

Not sure if you have covered this, though you might have.

Cheers,
Ciaphas


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Didn’t ask you to change it, just asked if you were going to set bases up like what I quoted above.

And you answered the questions a few posts ago why a set up like that would likely fail in today’s MA.

All is good brother.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bustr]

And as usual, it's all gotta be painted, this time that whole crack that feeds out to the south edge of the mountain range.

[Arlo]

I've discussed terrain editing with Bustr on more than one occasion. Yes, a lot of it involved appreciation and admiration. Some of it involved requests for him to make or edit a terrain (though that's not fair, really), some of it involved questions about how I can design a terrain of a specific type (and although I didn't ask, upfront, I also received advice on how to go about actually having it approved by HT - a pretty important part of terrain design, if you think about it).

As far as I know, Bustr is the only member of the community devoting so much of his time to making terrains for the community to enjoy. When I'm active, again, I plan to do my best to join him, in this (degree chasing takes up most of my time .... and money .... right now).

So, rather than take pot-shots at his character for not responding to requests with super-soft kid gloves, Buckshot, why not join me in learning more about how to build AH terrains and have them approved by HT (which generally entails making sure they will meet the entertainment needs of the entire community).

Just a thought. 

[bustr]

I got curious and did a map in 4096x4096 to get high detail of the terrain so far. I cannot remember what I was doing or thinking with that first rift valley. I can see I left micro terrain cleanup for the field and spawn object stage. Other than that, I'll probably remember what I was thinking as I lay down field objects and have to work the few miles around that for GV combat. There is one clip of the center of the third country border rift valley and it's been so long since I pulled the block elevations for the mountain ranges, I'l be facing a true blanc slate. Oh well, after the first two valleys and all of the mountain building, it will be a breeze. I'm already thinking about the elevation transitions from the deep canyons down to the lakes and how I will make them look.


First rift valley in two parts.








Current rift valley in progress.








What I still have to look forward too.....whole bunch of whatsis to pull outta something.

[bustr]

I'm beginning to see canyons in my sleep.








A collapse of a magma pool under this upthrust section.

[Arlo]

Love the detail.

[bustr]

I'm really beginning to like the Catmul smoothing tool for how it slowly turns a square into a sphere tiny steps at a time. Just does a nice job of weathering by following the terrain gradually smoothing it down.

[bustr]

One of the limitations to the terrain editor work space is how the size of the polygons limit what you create and the cross sections you can expect. Then add insult to injury with how the polygon mesh responds to being formed running along the 4 cardinal lines versus the 8 bias lines running at angles to the cardinal lines. You can get 4 different results pulling or pushing a tool at diagonals across the same 1x1 square of ground because of this. Same for vertical structures working the faces as they are controlled by the same lines. In most cases to create a large object like a ridge running off a mountain you have to look at a boundary area around the final shape as your real work space that you shrink and finish into that structure. Build bigger than you think then refine and keep an eye on how the polymesh responds by morphing and shrinking.

You can go from a masterpiece to a rubble heap in the blink of an eye and no matter how you try, never able to duplicate the moment before the garbage heap in the exact same spot. This is because of how a polygon is shaped and all of the factors at 8 borders in play to reach a shape in any given moment. So you are constantly working in nibbles and not in rapid sweeps of carving and shaping even if you planned ahead in the laying down of a raw block stage. Often building a mountain gets out of had becasue of this as you wonder how it ended up so ginormous and out of scale. Scale then becomes the root cause of this and why you need to set a unified scale for everything in the terrain at the beginning and stick to it knowing the smaller you create features the less ability you have to make them look pretty.


With three colors I extenuate the limits of the polygons with a 3D visual illusion.

[Rodent57]

Have, and will, continue to support BUSTR in his terrain work.  His efforts support us all.

I don't necessarily agree with some of his design decisions, but think it is very important to state that it doesn't matter what I think of his design decisions....he decides, he submits to HTC, they say yes or no.

I can "not" appreciate some design (flaws... in my not so humble opinion), and still be grateful for his work. (I am).

I expect that he'd return the favor if I could figure out how to do what he is doing.

Thanks B!

[bustr]

Terrain design is like the free market of ideas and speech. The ideas and speech are the physical terrain itself. If you have a superior idea to communicate, create it and lay it on Hitech. The Players will decide, some are not people who care about anything other than what is in it for them while expressing that in very negative manners as we have witnessed. You may have noticed, Greebo and I say very little about each others design decisions. Partly because we both know how much trouble and time is involved to produce one of these things. The other, as many design concepts as we each believe are the way to go, there are that many fans of all the ideas we could come up with playing in the arena. The forums are full of tiny mice with giant bull horns.

You cannot make all the people happy all the time, and only a fool tries.

[Rodent57]

I'll AMEN that   

...

AMEN!

[bustr]

Passes through mountains and canyons. In the past our canyons were built 5,000ft deep and 3-5 miles wide to funnel combat or something to that essence. In that case you could always map out your three countries fields on top of a 27,000ft land mass, then connect all of them with a 5 mile wide elevation brush. Set the elevation brush to say 2000ft and be done with it. Back when the first giant Pizza map and then the second small pizza maps were constructed, for the first one standards across the industry were eye bleeding realistic terrain graphics as a whole. And the smaller version, we had enough players accustomed to the limitations of our game by then who just wanted new and novel to chase each other around on. Today, we have a generation of game players who grew up on eye bleeding terrain graphics.

There is always the demand for micro terrain like this for tank combat. You cannot in all fairness place the field to be attacked down in that narrow pass unless you make the pass 3-5 miles wide. All the attackers would sit on the tops of the surrounding ridges in safety and close down the field. Gver's won't admit that is a holy grail wish so they don't have to expose themselves. So the logical location is on one of the highlands to each side. Then that pass becomes a place to avoid as an exposed killing ground unless you can engineer a reason to go down there. One of the reasons why I tested the terrain configuration on those clover leaf islands in Oceania for exposed low lands between spawns and attack target.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing.


Mountain passes with side feeder canyons.

[bustr]

Got curious about low elevation and small when it comes to canyons or passes through mountains. Because of how large the basic building block polygon is, you are limited to that as your granular feature. I'm thinking about the strat mega complex I want to build and where they will be placed.

The basic first cuts forming a sinuous pass through a 3000ft mountain line. The center of the pass is 1500ft while the ends are 660ft and the pass descends to each end. The previous sinuous pass was a straight cut theat I them pulled up blobs of ground like interlocking teeth to make the curving shape. This time I cut a curving narrow shape that I will use as the boundaries to stay inside of. You can cut the shape with a preset elevation tool but, then to get the center at 1500 and the ends at 660, that brings to play a tool to cut  pitches through curves which create erosion wall effects that I might want to keep. Canyons, GVDAR, bridges, roads, spawns, mega strats along the road, ambushes......