Hills and Gullys Oh My.

[bustr]

Now I've tweeked and painted it for tank combat. The mask tool is reaaaaalllllyyyy irritating. It's making me be better at creating small scale areas so I don't have to run it very often to be able to drive the area and make sure it's ready. It eats up a lot of time waiting for it to run on the whole terrain.


Once again from inside the terrain editor. At this point that is how you do this small scaled terrain for tanks, inside the AH terrain editor since you are also painting to create hiding places and sight vistas for tanks. I wish the mask tool would remove trees from the mounds on each end of a bridge so I can paint trees covering around the bridge area to give tanks cover. As you can see I have to use a grass dot to remove trees from the bridge ends which is 660ft of death in this game for a tank to be open to snipers.














This one is on the terrain offline at the spawn.

[Shuffler]

I'm just winding up the texans   I'm told it's a national pastime over there.

To wind up you'll have to try a lot harder. 

[Devil 505]

I have to say, I very much dislike the new river overlay. Not your fault bustr, but the uniform width and stark edges of the river really undermines the effort you put into making realistic land features. No doubt you can make better rivers by hand. It may be far easier to lay those down instead of painting your own rivers, but is taking the shortcut worth it when the result is that bad?

[Chilli]

Good to see my old friends and favorite developers are still on the cutting edge!  Devil505 drew my eye to the river bank automated result.  This brought about two questions:

Would it be coad friendly to be able to set automated rivers at constant depth below adjacent terrain?  (Might eliminate the ridge bank illusion that I am seeing).

Would it be coad friendly to paint random collections (representative shapes) of naturally occuring river bank obstacles / clutter along tops of the river banks?  (Something that might warn / prevent vehicles encountering difficult impasses.)

To be clear, I am just wondering if it would be coad friendly for the developers to add such tools to aid in automated river construction with more appealing results.

[bustr]

I have to say, I very much dislike the new river overlay. Not your fault bustr, but the uniform width and stark edges of the river really undermines the effort you put into making realistic land features. No doubt you can make better rivers by hand. It may be far easier to lay those down instead of painting your own rivers, but is taking the shortcut worth it when the result is that bad?

Take a really close look at our competitor's rivers. Their answer is great eye candy all around the river while it looks like ours with larger waves. I think Hitech has either solved the visual anomaly 50ft wall issue at distance looking at the river banks already or, is working on it. I thought you were an air combat guy and wouldn't be crawling on the ground anyway....

If the 50ft visual wall anomaly is not fixed, you can hide at the river bank and not be seen until the enemy tank is 350yd out while shooting him. Then only the very top of your turret is visible at 350. I tested it on my test terrain and gave Hitech the results.

Our large polygons makes the smooth river bank solution with this version of the river path object competitive with the competition. It is a limitation of the polymesh so that hundreds of players can be in the Melee arena at the same time. Chilli if you build a terrain you will learn this and other limitations to having large numbers of players in a 625,000sq mile arena at the same time 24x7. AH is about the only company that does this in our genera. WWIIOnline has one single map\arena slightly smaller than our 10x10 and half our 20x20 maps and they are only just putting out an update to bring their graphics into the 21st century about the level of AH3 graphics. And they can do hundreds of players 24x7 with what looks like all of our limitations in mostly ground combat. But, they scale the micro terrain for that perspective which we never have. I am honestly pushing the limits of the terrain editor with this terrain on purpose to create the most realistic results I can scaled from a tanker perspective to air combat perspective with what Hitech provides me. Most of you have no clue how must trouble this is to get these results. And it will be the same trouble if I started with L3DT or Artik's program becasue of the polygons and needing a 6 mile diameter area of micro terrain at every GV spawn for the GV game perspective.

Our competition does this quite well with terrain builders on staff from what I can tell. I've watched now 18 months of their videos to see what they are doing for their tank game level perspective for their customers. They have a boat load more objects than we have for all the neat eye candy but, their terrains are tiny little things so they don't get the FPS issues we would with so many extra eye candy objects laying around. So I have limitations I have to work with.

[Devil 505]

I thought you were an air combat guy and wouldn't be crawling on the ground anyway....

It looks bad from the air.

[Devil 505]

Here is a shot of a river in the Rhineland terrain. It was made using Artik's program, but notice how the terrain dips down towards the river, indicating a natural low laying area for the river to flow occupy. Also notice how the width of the river is variable. The river looks like a natural feature. It belongs there.

The new river overlay makes rivers which look like irrigation canals.

[bustr]

Here is a problem I run into with the tank level terrain. I can put it in and get down a few feet off the ground level and look with and without trees turned on. Hills and gully's between 1ft to 100ft do not show up very well in terms of enough contrast to judge the efficacy for hiding a tank or transiting a tank or aiming and shooting down site lanes.


When I crossed the bridge in the first two screen shots and started driving up to the field, there were not enough gully's and the trees did not hinder racing a tank right onto the field or, getting that tank nailed by a sniper waiting for a racing oblivious tanker. I've got to cut into the high areas on each side of that very minor dip. I can't tell these things from inside of the terrain editor no matter how close I get, I have to be in a tank from that perspective. You cannot believe how many hours of tank driving in this game I've done since my first terrain almost two years ago.

I place three bridges spaced about 1mile acorss rivers that I put a spawn on the opposite side from the field. The next 6 screen shots show trees off and trees on at each bridge looking up to the airfield which is at 85ft.


The first two I talked about that I need to cut the two rises on each side of the shallow gully. Unless you have built a few of these, my audience is asking, what am I looking at, it's apples and oranges. Scale and perspective to that scale is the problem. Only being in a tank driving up what you see here works.









The next bridge a mile down stream.

[bustr]

And the last bridge down stream.

[bustr]

Here is a shot of a river in the Rhineland terrain. It was made using Artik's program, but notice how the terrain dips down towards the river, indicating a natural low laying area for the river to flow occupy. Also notice how the width of the river is variable. The river looks like a natural feature. It belongs there.

The new river overlay makes rivers which look like irrigation canals.

Do you know how that river was created or that the water is at sea level to have it exist on that terrain and it has to be that wide to get smooth shores. Our competition does the same thing as our new rivers while stuffing an enormous amount of objects right up against the river to hide the shores by over loading your eye candy receptors with "stuff". It is all smoke and mirrors to fool your brain into playing along.

Take a look at my terrain Oceania at the hand cut narrow rivers and the canals in the center I put in. That is the best you can get with narrow enough water ways to get the bridge objects across. It is an enormousssss PITA amount of work making narrow rivers in the terrain editor and they look like crap no matter how careful and skilled I work them. And depending on the direction you run a curve against the polygon mesh, it gets reallyyyyy crappier and jagged and cannot be smoothed unless you make the river some ginourmous fat thing like in your screen shot.

That is why I tell you gents to build a terrain or arguing with me is accomplishing "What"? I build with what Hitech gives me to the best it's limitations allow me while researching the competition to try and see how they facilitate their smoke and mirrors. I am limited by polygon size and the amount of seen and unseen objects in any 40 mile direction you look so FPS won't kill your game fun.

I'm hoping Hitech has the issue with the "canal" shores worked out which will remove at least that raised aqueduct look at a distance to the the rivers. Irregularities in the shore, I can create short segments and vary the width a lot. I'm not going to test that until the existing issue of 50ft high shores is resolved. Once it is, you can create lakes with the river tool with a segment of river in a high valley up in the mountains and spawn a PT on it to ride around in. But, it takes testing things like that to come up with alternate uses to entertain your eyecandy receptors. You see anyone doing that these days....


If I don't test it I don't know how to use it and also, I find bugs that I can tell Hitech about. So what did you want to argue about.......


Note to self: Adjust the river color to blend the transition area to water better. Bet no one sees all the micro terrain testing in the first screen shot.......




Yes Mildred that 5ft river shore grew to 50ft ther about a mile away..............

[Devil 505]

Bustr, once again you take a general comment as a personal insult to your efforts. It was not.

My comment was a criticism if HTC for creating a feature which is a poor attempt at rivers. You have beaten the terrain editor into submission making the best looking ground out of what this game can do, but these new rivers look like a joke in comparison to the land next to them. No one is doubting the sheer effort you put in to learning and mastering the terrain editor. I was just using my screenshot to illustrate that this game can have more realistic looking rivers. I have no idea how the Rhineland terrain was made, but I know when a river looks like a river or a drainage canal. Maybe HTC should have created longer span bridges to cross the wide, hand drawn rivers instead of these noodley creeks to fit the existing bridge objects.

And really what purpose do these rivers serve anyway? What good does allowing a PT boat to traverse a river do for the game? All it does is allow players another low risk avenue to grief aircraft. No thanks. 

[bustr]

I'm not taking it personal, you still don't grasp the limitations of terrain building. And you are probably thinking Hitech can just program a solution which is not as simple as saying it in text in this post.

The competition's rivers are built the same way. They have smooth shoulders to keep the 2D river surface object just above the land below to stop z-fighting of two dissimilar flat objects placed in the same space. They load the land right up to the banks with eye candy trees, rocks, objects so your brain agrees that it sees one heck of a nice river. Their's runs with smooth edges with a boarder just like this new one you are looking at. Anything else would require much smaller polygons involved and no one could play the game due to FPS 2 to maybe in the 20's flying near them I will venture.

To have 32 or more players you sacrifice the size of the polygons your topography is built on for frame rates which gives you some strange angular effects at times if you get to close. That means Hitech can't cut a 5ft deep trench to smoothly set the river object down in becasue the smallest polygon unit it 660ft. The trade off is you have a river object that can be run from 1ft at the ocean to it's head waters at the farthest away mountain. That terrain river your picture shows is the land opened down to sea level to that width making an illusion of a river. But, that is a special event river that we fly above 20,000 over most of the time. I'm building micro terrain for tanks and running a river to put bridges over.

So lets talk terrain construction, that is what I thought I've been doing. If you have a complaint for Hitech, tell Hitech directly which is more constructive, not slip it into here as an inference. I have already documented the 50ft shoulder issue with the river for Hitech. As for the shore line, even that honking wide river in your screen shot has a smooth segmented shore line with shore waves exactly like when you build an island and run create all beaches which is probably how those shorelines were created.


In these three screen shots below the remnant sandstone mesa at the confluence of those two rivers is 661ft high becasue the rivers are sitting on a 1ft river valley bottom. Out at the nose you can see 660ft which is the smallest building block in the terrain polygon mesh. Ginormous ain't it? And my ever present ginormous PITA I have to work around or with. So your ginormous river in your screen shot fulfills the size for 660ft and you get smooth river shores. Just try it with a river 50ft wide and make "S" turns, it will be truly stinky.


I'm giving some tank guy a neat present at this location if he can hit anything at 4 miles away. I adjusted the color for those two rivers and they don't stand out so much. I may try pulling them back farther and narrowing the mouth with this color. Lots of tweaking and adjustments just to not offend the eyecandy sense. And that is what a terrain really is, an illusion to get your eyecandy sense to go along with the slight of hand you know is happening.

[Vraciu]

Bustr, once again you take a general comment as a personal insult to your efforts. It was not.

My comment was a criticism if HTC for creating a feature which is a poor attempt at rivers. You have beaten the terrain editor into submission making the best looking ground out of what this game can do, but these new rivers look like a joke in comparison to the land next to them. No one is doubting the sheer effort you put in to learning and mastering the terrain editor. I was just using my screenshot to illustrate that this game can have more realistic looking rivers. I have no idea how the Rhineland terrain was made, but I know when a river looks like a river or a drainage canal. Maybe HTC should have created longer span bridges to cross the wide, hand drawn rivers instead of these noodley creeks to fit the existing bridge objects.

And really what purpose do these rivers serve anyway? What good does allowing a PT boat to traverse a river do for the game? All it does is allow players another low risk avenue to grief aircraft. No thanks.

This.

I'm not taking it personal, you still don't grasp the limitations of terrain building. And you are probably thinking Hitech can just program a solution which is not as simple as saying it in text in this post.

There you go again, incorrectly reading minds.   

That said, Hitech can program just about anything he wants.  He’s already proven this.

[bustr]

Vriacu my wife says use your own leg to sniggle on or grow up. I know your my age but, you keep reminding me of someone skyyr's age.


Finally got all the spawns and micro terrain in place and local painting done for for that. I still have to up a plane at every field for a look from that perspective, then any tweaks of the local terrain. I'm waiting on the next patch for Hitech's fixes of the path function  and objects. Because of the mandatory convoy supply road that will run to all feilds, I'm thinking about cosmetic roads to act as local navigation aids. Got to think about that some more since I want to leverage the supply roads and tag secondary paths off of them.


Did a shooting test from that sandstone mesa, with HE I could get to about center of the airfield with a panther. I only aimed at the bottom of the view port and didn't try elevating the port out of sight above the field. I sat at the vehicle hanger in a TigerII and could lay AP on the spot I took the screen shot of my panther. I don't know how many AP rounds it takes to bring down a hanger or if you have to drop one exactly on an ack gun before it will be destroyed. I arranged things to make it very difficult for a single tank to bring down the vHnager with HE or sniper everything with impunity at the field. Down at the bridges is a different story. That location the panther is at is around 4 miles and change out from the map room.

There is that 50ft tall river bank, sure hope a fix is in the next patch, it's really 5ft tall when you get right up next to it.








From what I can tell, if HE will travel 4 miles and some this sight picture needs a second equal length of the vertical line higher. Naughty me, I put the mesa too far away.   I just needed a logical geological solution to keep the two rivers separated.





Sight picture that drops AP on the spot the panther was parked.

[Vraciu]

Vriacu my wife says use your own leg to sniggle on or grow up. I know your my age but, you keep reminding me of someone skyyr's age.

Your wife says...?     

Well my girlfriend says you already “sniggle” up on your own leg and need to stop this blatant search for public affirmation (because when you don’t get it you lash out at others with a form of paranoid hostility that’s unwarranted).  I know you’re my age but you keep reminding me of someone her students’ age.

And my momma says...

And my sister says...

And... 

Grow thicker skin.  If you don’t want criticism or suggestions then stop posting your stuff here.  Devil505 is my skinning mentor and when it’s deserved he rips my work to shreds with his critiques.  Others on that forum (Custom Skins) do the same.  It’s invaluably good advice and helps one find ways to improve the quality of their final product.  Compared to that he went easy on your map screenshots—and it wasn’t personal.

Take a chill pill.