Finally the Topography is finished.

[Mano]

No joy for the GV's on this map

I agree with you Dundee <S>.  We need to learn how to make maps if we ever want to see the fun GV battles again.

The Crater Map (AH2) was one of the best maps for the tank crowd, but the GV spawns into crater were moved in the conversion to AH3. Now, the GV's never go into the crater, except to sneak a V base. When Crater came up in AH2 every GV'er was in the middle of the map was having fun.
Even many of those who normally fly a fighter were in the crater driving a tank because it was a blast.  There were an incredible amount of tanks in a small area. Allot of perked tanks were used in Crater. It is rare to see perked rides in AH3. GV'ers do not want to spend 15 minutes driving from point A to point B only to get bombed. GV'ers want quick action. Many spawns in AH3 have incredible distances to the target as compared to AH2.

The NDisles map had a tanktown in the middle island with v bases feeding spawns to the center. The V bases are gone in AH3. The proximity of the airfields brings in so many bomb****s the gv's rarely use that part of the map anymore. If you want to have a good GV battle you have to take down the ammo strats and take down all of the ords in the sector or everyone and his grandma is bomb****ing.

I am not putting down Bustr, and I do appreciate his fine efforts, but he is an airplane guy and does not GV. Nothing wrong with that as that is his preference.  Everyone in AH3 has their niche. An example: the Oceana map has very few v bases. It is almost exclusively airfields. It is great for the airplane guys, but for GV's action, there is none.

The terrains in AH3 do have allot more vegetation for GV's to hide in and bomb****ing is not as easy unless there is a storch to help.
The trees really provide good cover for the GV's.

We used to see every GV being used in AH2. Now it is Panzer H's and T-34/85's. Also, the berms made it easy to find cover from other GV's . There are no berms in AH3.

I think Dundee and all the other GV'ers should speak up.

Don't put them down because they have a different view on the development of AH3.

<S>

[mako04]

Just wanted to say Thank you for working on new map.  Looks great  <S>

[The Fugitive]

I agree with you Dundee <S>.  We need to learn how to make maps if we ever want to see the fun GV battles again.

The Crater Map (AH2) was one of the best maps for the tank crowd, but the GV spawns into crater were moved in the conversion to AH3. Now, the GV's never go into the crater, except to sneak a V base. When Crater came up in AH2 every GV'er was in the middle of the map was having fun.
Even many of those who normally fly a fighter were in the crater driving a tank because it was a blast.  There were an incredible amount of tanks in a small area. Allot of perked tanks were used in Crater. It is rare to see perked rides in AH3. GV'ers do not want to spend 15 minutes driving from point A to point B only to get bombed. GV'ers want quick action. Many spawns in AH3 have incredible distances to the target as compared to AH2.

The NDisles map had a tanktown in the middle island with v bases feeding spawns to the center. The V bases are gone in AH3. The proximity of the airfields brings in so many bomb****s the gv's rarely use that part of the map anymore. If you want to have a good GV battle you have to take down the ammo strats and take down all of the ords in the sector or everyone and his grandma is bomb****ing.

I am not putting down Bustr, and I do appreciate his fine efforts, but he is an airplane guy and does not GV. Nothing wrong with that as that is his preference.  Everyone in AH3 has their niche. An example: the Oceana map has very few v bases. It is almost exclusively airfields. It is great for the airplane guys, but for GV's action, there is none.

The terrains in AH3 do have allot more vegetation for GV's to hide in and bomb****ing is not as easy unless there is a storch to help.
The trees really provide good cover for the GV's.

We used to see every GV being used in AH2. Now it is Panzer H's and T-34/85's. Also, the berms made it easy to find cover from other GV's . There are no berms in AH3.

I think Dundee and all the other GV'ers should speak up.

Don't put them down because they have a different view on the development of AH3.

<S>

I dont know why Greebo killed the GV section of his map when he reworked it. It was the only map a poor GVer like myself could get some kills and learn a bit more of the GV side of the game. I understand that when that map rolled in many players complained it sucked the fun out of the "fighter game" because most players were in the crater fighting in GVs, but when the numbers climbed the fighter type fight came back. Its too bad Greebo killed the fights on that map.

I would like to see more maps with that type of game play available

[hgtonyvi]

what will this map be called? Maple leaf map or Irish map?

[bustr]

See Rule #4

[Greebo]

I dont know why Greebo killed the GV section of his map when he reworked it.

AH3 has a smaller gap between terrain vertexes than AH2. Normally this doesn't matter too much when a terrain is ported over but in the case of the old CraterMA TT it did. The cliffs that lined the fighting area no longer worked as their precisely positioned vertexes were now in the wrong places. I could have adjusted some vertex alts and kept the basic format but then I found another problem. In AH2 I had exploited a limitation of the terrain engine which was that if just one tiny area of a 1/2 mile terrain square was water, or if the square even bordered water then all the clutter (trees etc) was automatically deleted from that square. I had used this "feature" to create large clutter-free zones to give uninterrupted fields of fire. In order to prevent players with their graphics options turned right down from running into water that they couldn't see I placed these dots of water at the top of steep cliffs where GVs weren't supposed to go. AH3 does not have this limitation as the clutter can go right up to the water's edge. So as at the time I created the AH3 TT there was no tree-less grass terrain then there was no way to recreate the old tank town layout. Later on a single tree-less grass terrain was added to ETO terrain set so that shore batteries and runway ends could be cleared of trees, but by that time I was busy with other stuff and besides I never much cared for the AH2 map being a TT-fest anyway.

[Mister Fork]

what will this map be called? Maple leaf map or Irish map?

How about Sudz Buster? In honor of Sudz and for Bustr's work?

[bustr]

The project is riftval for Rift Valley which there is one as the boarder between each country. I used the East Africa Great Rift Valley for topography models.


Greebo,

Sorry the resupply roads and tracks that are auto populated are 10 miles long. Kept thinking it was 5miles for some reason, just did a creaet all test. The distance they start away from the edge of a square object is 300ft. I'm still testing placing one down ad-hoc on a different side of a field. I'm guessing no matter how long past 10 miles you make it for cosmetic issues, the start point for the convoy to spawn is 10 miles along that path. Now I need to pull up some topography around a test field similar to what I'm facing on riftval and hope for the best running a 10 mile road. You can see with a number of the field locations there will be river bottom land to make that easy. It's the high lands I've got to find something that fits the theme.

That strat complex I'm using to concentrate the target, I have duplicated it on my test terrain and will need to spend some time ad-hocing roads for the flak bases and rail for the strat to shoe horn them all in to fit the foot print. Glad I decided to just level that 18mile diameter space, I don't need to be wasting time on it with so many fields to shoe horn in these roads.

Oh well, this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into....    

[Mister Fork]

<snip>
Oh well, this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into....    

Nope, some would call it a work of love for the game.  Others, the work of a genius.  And for those who can't see either way, well, they can go fly War Blunder.

[Dundee]

Nope, some would call it a work of love for the game.  Others, the work of a genius.  And for those who can't see either way, well, they can go fly War Blunder.

How about ARMA where the game is molded around the Ground Game.... there are many of us here and are here for the ground game AH 3 offers. And the GV part of the game has drastically changed from AH2 to AH3 unlike the aerial combat portion of this game which little or nothing has changed. We had a night time that lasted 10 or 20 minutes...now it like 1 or 2 minutes, why was that cut back? Why are the clouds not over fields when a furball breaks out, seem the only time the clouds are around is when your in a bomber getting ready to bomb.

[bustr]

Greebo,

Duplicated my strat area on a test terrain and laid in the train tracks for resupply. There appears to be a zone around each path segment as the maximum distance the mouse will target moving a segment around. Then it grabs the next nearest segment even if it is a different track. I suspect if I do this by cutting off the end of the path and adding new path with Ctrl Rmouse, I can bring the paths very close together. As is it's about .5mile separation and I setup three tracks to start together north and south of the city. Like a rail head arrangement and a place to catch all three trains in one go.


I've gotten the paths in place here in the test arrangement, I still have to set the resource type for each path for it's strat type. Run the mask and build. Then CMeye and watch for trains to run. It works out, I'll test laying down roads by hand for each of the flak bases as convoy resupply roads. By hand appears to be how I'll get all this shoe horned into this terrain.


Test terrain with tracks in blue. When I do the roads to the flak bases, I'll try to create a ring road with branches to feed each strat. I'll just combine 6 paths to look like one. Hope it works....





Strat area on riftval in each country.

[The Fugitive]

AH3 has a smaller gap between terrain vertexes than AH2. Normally this doesn't matter too much when a terrain is ported over but in the case of the old CraterMA TT it did. The cliffs that lined the fighting area no longer worked as their precisely positioned vertexes were now in the wrong places. I could have adjusted some vertex alts and kept the basic format but then I found another problem. In AH2 I had exploited a limitation of the terrain engine which was that if just one tiny area of a 1/2 mile terrain square was water, or if the square even bordered water then all the clutter (trees etc) was automatically deleted from that square. I had used this "feature" to create large clutter-free zones to give uninterrupted fields of fire. In order to prevent players with their graphics options turned right down from running into water that they couldn't see I placed these dots of water at the top of steep cliffs where GVs weren't supposed to go. AH3 does not have this limitation as the clutter can go right up to the water's edge. So as at the time I created the AH3 TT there was no tree-less grass terrain then there was no way to recreate the old tank town layout. Later on a single tree-less grass terrain was added to ETO terrain set so that shore batteries and runway ends could be cleared of trees, but by that time I was busy with other stuff and besides I never much cared for the AH2 map being a TT-fest anyway.

The last part is the part I was afraid of. I understand The limitations you had to work with and how much trouble it would have been to re do it for AH3. Along with NOT liking the "TT-fest" I cab see where you didnt want to spend the time. Unfortunately THAT was the biggest reason most people liked your map.

Oh well. 

[bustr]

I rebuilt it for the most part in the center of BowlMA and no one uses it now. It is also a numbers issue creating a critical mass attractor effect for players that ended up with so many players in the AH2 tank crater. We had more players back then. Another factor for AH2 was how far you could see a tank and successfully shoot it. In AH3 our range of clearly seeing other tanks was limited by default for graphics card general play-ability and it had an effect on the willingness of many to make any effort to adjust their graphics to see out to 4 miles which I tested extensively while creating the BowlMA tank crater. That is the diameter of the 500ft high gallery lip that rings the BowlMA tank crater you can spawn out into villages to fight between houses and feilds. Then add to that AH3 clutter and trees has taken everyone time to adjust to with some who refused and left.

You have to admit an overnight transition from being able to shoot for miles through sparse tree lanes in AH2 to the AH3 "virtual reality trees" was a gut stomper for many. It took me two terrains of experimenting to start getting a handle on that problem. But, there is nothing any terrain builder can do about the actual properties of the trees in AH3 and how your GV interacts with them and how your ability to look at them takes place. You have to tweak your graphics settings your self. And I seem to remember AH2 GVers did that to get the best gamey views possible. Other than thin the trees with grass or dirt tiles and a very thin brush width, then drive that ground in a tank between thinning steps until it is more like AH2 or some other standard. I can do nothing else, the trees is what they is. And I do spend a lot of time driving what I create on my terrains becasue of what initially happened to the AH GV community.

It amazed me no one caught on to what this test means for GV combat on riftval. Small rolling hills, sparse trees, places to hide or see for miles and take long clear shots. Kind of what AH2 GVing was like except the ground was either really flat or someone plopped down large hills and small mountains that were kind of like large bread loafs or giant marshmallows. Hmmm, I'm hearing the ghost busters theme.....

[bustr]

Well Greebo, I hate, and procrastinate over the spawn paths but, they are done and now I can put the infrastructure on to this terrain. Along with the micro terrain around spawns and, since Hitech likes having some fields without spawns to them, each country has 8. And they will be the kind with the map room next to the tower. The ones without a ring won't have a town or spawns to them. Four of those ringed ones are vBases connected in that triangle. I decided one CV task group per country is enough in that small pond.

Note to self: NE valley extend the greenery up the full length of the river.

Waystin christened this map the face hugger becasue to him in the early construction phases it looked like that thing from Aliens when it leaped at the camera. Reminds me of the underside of a starfish or a sea urchin.

[lunatic1]

I don't know-but with all the gv spawns looks like a potential for in your face gving or on the other hand a ton of spawn camping.

not that it matters to anyone I will reserve judgment until map is done