Finally the Topography is finished.

[bustr]

I dunno, these things change as you spend weeks staring at them while putting in all the infrastructure. You guys who try to zing me with comments, have never built a terrain for the MA, and really have no clue about this whole process and how it evolves by all of your way off the mark observations of 2D screen captures and not building the terrain in question real time. That is why I create the master blue print document in layers with one specifically for the spawn paths. I just finished laying in all bases and strats about an hour ago. Started this morning around 7am. I had to look at the master document to follow the numbering and location of each base and type. I'm still not satisfied with the spawn flow since I just spent the day building the destinations and using CM mode to hover over every single location and look at it in offline mode. Whole lotta work just to build a kiddy play ground for adults to try and zing me.....

I post this stuff so you guys can see how it's done. You guys are determined to use it as an exercise in zinging me over what?? I'm building a terrain, what are you doing lunatic for our game? BowlMA and Oceania both had several iterations of full spawn paths before I published those terrains. It goes with the creating these beasts.

Why don't you build a terrain? You seem to feel you are an expert at what is wrong with my work, and what a waste for the community that you don't produce something better.

[bustr]

I swear, I must really hate GVers and tanks in this game. Why else did I design this terrain with so many river valleys and put most of feilds down in them? I mean look at some of those views from potential places I'm forcing tanks to look at those feilds with their optics before having to drive all that way down hill through those sparse trees.......














Just look at all the valleys on this terrain and all those poor feilds at the bottom of them. Yeppers, I hate GVers sooo much.... And don't get me started on strategic bomber guys too..........

[Devil 505]

I swear, I must really hate GVers and tanks in this game. Why else did I design this terrain with so many river valleys and put most of feilds down in them? I mean look at some of those views from potential places I'm forcing tanks to look at those feilds with their optics before having to drive all that way down hill through those sparse trees.......


(Image removed from quote.)


(Image removed from quote.)


(Image removed from quote.)


(Image removed from quote.)


Just look at all the valleys on this terrain and all those poor feilds at the bottom of them. Yeppers, I hate GVers sooo much.... And don't get me started on strategic bomber guys too..........


(Image removed from quote.)

They have no idea how well they have it. It it was my map, all the GV spawns would lead to the center of the lake. 

[bustr]

Already did that on my last two terrains. My left big toe decided to put an island in each time for them to chase each other around on when I wasn't looking. I've been very good to them becasue they are Hitech's paying customers. Villages to hide in, long viewing and shooting lanes. Good hiding places with easy traverse through the evil trees. I would remove trees using grass tiles to cut down on getting tangled up in them. Or villages with a spawn in the center to stop the suicide spawn camps.

This terrain I decided to scale everything like a real world. And let the chips land where they will with most of the fields at the bottom of river valleys. In a land like that dominated by river valleys those are the levelest places to put airfields and other outposts. The vast majority of ridges over those river valleys are between 800-2000 ft much like the rest of the world where people chose to live becasue the topography makes it attractive. So those slopes I took the screen shots from are 80-1000ft above the feilds at about 3 miles out where the center of the spawn circles will be. And I used tree tiles that give them those long range clear view lanes like in AH2. I also have cosmetic roads now so I can put in orchards and agrarian farm feilds and the roads have a function that will remove all the trees I lay the road over. Long viewing lanes or fast roads to run through orchards to get at a field.

Why would I spend do much time testing tank combat terrain and roads through it on a test terrain?? Go figure......

[bustr]

Waffle's orchard tiles in the Mediterranean tile set have been laid out in a perfect grid work for creating a grid of 20-40ft tall hills with grass avenues between them. Most of the orchards end up on top of the little hills making great ambush spots.


This is the first field on riftval that I'm working out using the orchard tiles as micro hill guides. All the feilds, towns, map rooms, ports, task groups and strats are in now. I just have to lay in the spawns and micro terrain all the spawn endpoints around fields like I did with this field today. I'm not adjusting the terrain to keep long range sniping from happening on this terrain, I'm leaving it as is and just fitting the feilds to the topography. If someone wants invest the time to drive up into the higher orchards to the left of that panther and snipe, you gents will just have to get good at taking care of snipers. Or get really good at hitting the runway from three miles to stop bomb trucks....

 These micro hill grids are actually really fast to produce. Now I'm not sure about putting in cosmetic roads becasue of the grid work paths of grass I've used between the hills. Aside from the required convoy road, cosmetic roads will either help the defenders to pinpoint locations by using the roads as common references to hunt tanks. Or the attackers to get to the town at full speed with no getting lost in the trees but, with the grass at the bottoms of all the paths through the hill grid, you have unobstructed runs and shooting lanes as you can see in the screen shots. The land the town and airfield are on is 500ft, the grid is created by cutting the grass paths to 450ft then raising up the hill tops to 550ft. Then a tool I run quickly over the whole grid rounds the tops and pulls up the bottoms a bit. Then the low areas are about 485-490ft while the high are about 510-520. You end up being able to see a ways in front to look for ambushes or navigate. It ain't berms but it ain't a pool table either. I know, they's Waffle Bumps.....


A panther somewhere in the spawn circle and one from the town looking out to the spawn.

[bustr]

I set the spawns three miles out from the town after stop watching how long it takes a panzer to go three miles when I built my first terrain. I'm getting the feel for these micro hill grids with orchards on them and should start speeding up creating them around all the feilds. This panther is on the highest elevation(350ft) in the orchards about 3 miles out from the vHanger near the spawn. While you are ranging the vHanger in the optics screen capture, you are giving yourself away for a response with a bomb. This is field A1 with a medium airfield.

[Mister Fork]

Looks awesome Bustr! Clever spawn points!

So, when are we gonna get to test this bad boy out?

[bustr]

I have 28 river paths to put in, 25 left to go as I write this becasue I want to place spawn points on the other side of bridges. I have 69 feilds with spawn points at them with all the micro texturing like in the the screen shots to create. And then I have drive all of them to look at my work close up in a tank versus the terrain editor. I'm always surprising myself with how wrong something looks in a tank on the terrain versus the terrain editor. I may have found a bug with the resupply roads\tracks or I fat fingered something in a test setup. I've submitted a dump file and I'm waiting for Hitech to give me some feed back. I still have to put in convoy roads for each feild and train tracks for all the strats. I was testing my strat complex on a test terrain with supply trains and got a CDT out of the testing. The trains refused to run......

So I have no clue when this one will go into the queue, I'll keep doing all the infrastructure work until I have to setup the resupply. Either Hitech will have looked at my DMP file from my CTD or I'll have to submit a new Bug POST about it.


I place the spawn 3 miles from the field or town. These two have the map room on the field and the white ring is two miles from the map room to set the bridges. In the river bottoms I run the river along a path set to 1ft since it's an object on top of the ground. The banks gradually rise up to 20-25ft in most cases where the fields are located. I use an elevation brush set 5ft and cut in a grid to define the bottoms of micro hills. A tank will disappear from view behind a 15ft tall hill even without a lot of trees to hide in.







Like with my previous two terrains, the vBases support feilds so I won't put spawn paths between vBases. Do that and you won't see your GVers all night. The paths allow them to get at combat initiatives or start their own which will attract everyone. Just like on BowlMA and Oceania. The feilds with black rings have a town and no spawns. White rings have a town and spawns. Red rings have the map room on the field and spawns. Blue rings are vBase or port. I think the big river at the boarder of each country I'll finish it old school since there are no feilds next to it and not too many small curves. There is a simple way to make shores without having to resort to the make beaches tool.