How is work going on 8thJinx's new terrain?

[Mano]

Will we see his new terrain in Melee soon?
Any updates would be appreciated.

 

[8thJinx]

Actually I hardly play anymore.  Very busy with work, and it's not slowing down.  And I haven't touched any sort of content creation since the whole GV Dar adjustment thing this past fall.  I'm waiting to see if any other shoes are going to drop before I pick it back up again. 

[Mano]

Busy at work is a good thing.    I am happiest when we are busy as well.
I hope you have time down the road to implement those much needed berms to AH   
Not having berms for GV'ing is like seeing the ice cream man go by when you don't have your wallet with you.

 

[Spikes]

I miss the old hills in AH that were scattered about, aircraft screaming at you "watch out, they're just behind that hill!". You sit there  waiting as the tank rolls over top of the berm and barrels down upon you.

[8thJinx]

I hope you have time down the road to implement those much needed berms to AH   

There is no difference between adding berms to a terrain tile set, and adding trees and villages to a terrain tile set, which is where the berms in AH2 resided.  I can't do anything about adding berms to AH3 terrain tile sets.  That's something for HTC to determine if they want it or not. 

What I am/was working on, were square land objects with finer terrain details (berms) that you could drop into the terrain mesh, and have way better ground fights.  It seemed like the easiest/quickest thing to get approved for map makers.  It's straight forward, I have a process, and the results are pretty cool.  I just haven't had the time to finish one yet.  I do this as a hobby, but money puts food on the table, and that takes priority.  Plus I have a honey-do list as long as my arm.

Part of me thinks "I could squeeze free an hour or two a week to work on this and finish a couple," but another part of me thinks, "this is going to suck if another rule change - or worse - pulls the rug out from under the time I put in."

The goal remains to get a couple of these land objects done, plop them in an AvA terrain for a Thursday Night Tank Fight, and at least get some feedback.  They are pretty sick.  Then try to get them approved for use in Melee maps.

I'm going to keep paying my sub, but I actually disconnected my gaming PC to make room for a much-needed drafting table in my office.  I might not be in-game much, but I have no plans to unsub or do anything foolish like that.  You will never - ever - see a "why I quit the game" post come from me.  I love the game, have no complaints, and I'm in it for the long haul.  I just don't have time right now.

[Shuffler]

LOL my gaming machine sits on one of my drafting tables. It runs AutoCad too. My other drafting table is for projects and RC planes.

[CptTrips]

What I am/was working on, were square land objects with finer terrain details (berms) that you could drop into the terrain mesh, and have way better ground fights.  It seemed like the easiest/quickest thing to get approved for map makers.  It's straight forward, I have a process, and the results are pretty cool.  I just haven't had the time to finish one yet.

BTW.  I just wanted to say while I was searching past posts I found your posts on creating custom objects and meshes and getting them imported very useful.  I have them as in my reference links.  Thanks for your sleuthing.

,
CptTrips

[8thJinx]

I picked the tanking land objects back up again.

This is a 4 mile square land object.  This will eventually be version 2.0 of the tank spawn area from Ozkansas, between bases 135 and 136, way out on the westernmost island.  Goal is to finish it and put it in a Tank Night map and mess around with it.  And one day hopefully get these things approved for the Melee arenas.  This is about 45 minutes of work, but breaking the polys down into group hierarchy will take a good 4 hours, then another four hours to clean up the text file.  Then map textures to the rocks, etc.  And do the bitmaps.  And try to load it into a map.  And then add the berms.  And then start all over again because I forget the scale of the original valley, because somehow all of the old maps got wiped from my computer.

If anyone has the Ozkansas files, or any of the old maps for that matter, please let me know.

And if anyone remembers how far a shot was from this berm area to the opposite mountain peak, that would help tremendously.  I thought it was 2800 yds, but it might have been 3800.

[CptTrips]

I picked the tanking land objects back up again.

That's cool looking.  How did you sculpt that?  In AC3D or Blender or L3DT?

[8thJinx]

That's cool looking.  How did you sculpt that?  In AC3D or Blender or L3DT?

1. Made a 2048x2048 bitmap with a rough plan of the hills, using Paint.net.  Could also use MS Paint, but Paint.net has layers, which was useful in laying out a grid and main gun range radii.
2. Import that into L3DT, set to 2048x2048 and a scale of 660 meters.
3. Use L3DT to add detail to only the right half of the object.  Left the other half alone.
4. Export Active Map Layer to OBJ format.
5. Import OBJ file to AC3D.
6. Scale it down by 1.5625%, then snap the whole thing to grid.
7. Delete the left half of the object polys.  Change color of the upper half of the right side to red, just for ease of moving it around.
8. Replicate the right half, so you have a balanced mirror image, then connect the two.
9. Center it on the origin.
10. Clean up any gaps or whacky polys.

What you end up with is a 4 mile by 4 mile object, with vertices spaced at 660 feet.  The whole process takes about 45 minutes.

[8thJinx]

6. Scale it down by 1.5625%, then snap the whole thing to grid.

Don't snap the whole thing to grid.  Just snap the perimeter vertices to grid.

[hitech]

1. Made a 2048x2048 bitmap with a rough plan of the hills, using Paint.net.  Could also use MS Paint, but Paint.net has layers, which was useful in laying out a grid and main gun range radii.
2. Import that into L3DT, set to 2048x2048 and a scale of 660 meters.
3. Use L3DT to add detail to only the right half of the object.  Left the other half alone.
4. Export Active Map Layer to OBJ format.
5. Import OBJ file to AC3D.
6. Scale it down by 1.5625%, then snap the whole thing to grid.
7. Delete the left half of the object polys.  Change color of the upper half of the right side to red, just for ease of moving it around.
8. Replicate the right half, so you have a balanced mirror image, then connect the two.
9. Center it on the origin.
10. Clean up any gaps or whacky polys.

What you end up with is a 4 mile by 4 mile object, with vertices spaced at 660 feet.  The whole process takes about 45 minutes.

Thats very close to how we make them but use Multigen to clean up the edge polies and texture mapping . Also remember that you are limited to 65534 vertices and 62000 Polygons. And the the object should be placed under the ground node of the model.

HiTech

[8thJinx]

And the the object should be placed under the ground node of the model.
HiTech

Do you mean in the TE?  Because the actual base and land model vertices currently used in the game are all at or above Y=0 in AC3D. The only object with verts below zero is the town (ponds).

[CptTrips]

Do you mean in the TE?  Because the actual base and land model vertices currently used in the game are all at or above Y=0 in AC3D. The only object with verts below zero is the town (ponds).

I think he meant the object hierarchy.

[8thJinx]

I think he meant the object hierarchy.

Supposed to be:
world
---model
------ground
----------all of your polys

That's kind of obvious, if that's what he meant.