Aces High Default Tile sets.

[bustr]

Shoe horning in the train tracks and convoy roads is time consuming, especially with almost 90 locations that has a road or train track laid down when you hit the populate all button. And they all get laid down in a straight line running over mountains and canyons if that is the surrounding features. So you have to visit each one and shoe horn it through the canyons or creatively around the limited flat area near feilds.


Here are some choo choo tracks to strats I shoe horned in.

[bustr]

I swear, those little Hitech road builders don't let anything stand in their way. This is why I get to visit every single field and strat once I press that create all button.

[bustr]

I swear, I didn't place a nudist colony with an all you can drink for $14.95 in that next valley over.

[bustr]

Weather testing.

[bustr]

More weather testing.

[CptTrips]

More weather testing.

[bustr]

Now I'm doing the last part I really hate.....

I'm visiting every single field, port, strat to check "everything". I have to drive each GV spawn, each PT spawn, each shore battery. Check the GV micro terrain for that "something" effect for "those very picky eaters"....   Then CMEye the whole derned place once over to make sure the trucks are running or the trains. Just the feel and look from the air perspective at each field. And remind myself, when these guys run into the sides of the mountains hiding in the clouds, it's Hitech's fault. I decided this time around I will go with his default alt values for that realism effect, 3000-6660.

[bustr]

Finished inspecting Country 1 and fixing issues. Now I'm in Country 2 and sometimes things blurr together. There is always some tiny thing like the arc of a shore battery just touches something 21k away that it shouldn't. Or you spawn into a big fat boo boo you fat fingered with the raise hill tool. Or the run on a slope into a valley is just off....


Things I've seen today looking for boo boos.

[bustr]

Finished inspecting Country 2, now first spawn in Country 3.

[bustr]

I'm probably over thinking this and a little paranoid. I'm going to beat this up just a bit longer, then see if Hitech has room in the queue for a new AH3 MA terrain.

[bustr]

Five days later and I've only launched a plane from each field in Country 1 and 2. And all the tiny things that didn't look right visually or actual boo boo's with object placements or blending them into uneven elevations. Flying a plane over a field area is different than CMeye mode. I catch fewer of those tiny boo boo's in CMeye than from a fighter 1000 to 3000 feet over the area. I really thought I caught all of it during my CMeye review of the whole terrain a few weeks back...nope. And a big one was making sure on the medium feilds the end of the long runway Waffle blocked with trees is not facing into the optimal take off direction.  That is a fat finger for the ages...   And that I had cut down all the trees to a mile out with grass. B29's are a pita to get off the ground...

So I still have to fly a plane off all the blue country feilds and fix boo boo's.

[bustr]

Over the last 5 days one thing that ate up 16 hours was the final adjustments to the central tank pit. Once I started driving a corkscrew pattern from the top rim down to visit all of the hamlets while checking the slopes. I found small elevation issues that I spent much of the time in wire frame mode to tweak elevations by a few feet over a mile at a time. I wanted to make sure each hamlet's face to the pit had down slope from the back of the houses so you could use them as cover in your tank. The tops of the high hills with hamlets are about 400ft above the village in the pit center. If I left the hamlet polygons level, you had to expose your tank over the edge to aim down. The buildings on the village tile are set so too steep of a slope, they do not generate but, the trees will. So in wire frame I had to locate the key polygon points that effected the houses and tweak them by a foot or so one step at a time to find the angle they disappeared at, then raise it back up by a foot. Time consuming as heck....Then as I was driving around, I had to rethink tree density for the players who won't just spawn in, find a hamlet and wait to long range people. Those active hunters needed just a bit of help while not making the trees so dense all I'll hear is the usual complaints about Hitech and his trees......


So here is the result of the final two days of tweaking.














Oh! And why is there a spawn behind each vbase? It's from an uncapturable airfield in that vbase's country. That way when the 3am field sneak gremlins decide to screw all of you and take away your fun. That spawn is 500ft above the vbase on the side of a slope. Just spawn in and shut down the field, then take it back and resume your fun in the pit.

[bustr]

Well gents, I submitted this to Hitech, hope it's something that he can use and meets his requirements.

[The Fugitive]

Well gents, I submitted this to Hitech, hope it's something that he can use and meets his requirements.

Good Luck!

[bustr]

Hitech was kind enough to let me know how swamped he is with some current work and can't look at my new terrain. I have not looked at the terrain in the last two weeks and a few things became evident after taking that long of a break. In a way Hitech is doing me a favor since I can fix several things. I'm not sure when he will be finished with his current tasks, I'll have to wait a while before sending him a PM.

The most important problem for me was the ocean on my clipboard map file. Now I understand why Waffle put so much green in the ocean on my last three terrains. I used an ocean wave photo this time instead of a wave pattern function and converted it for the map. Nice blue shades and highlights all over. Then I discovered if there is any red content in the blues, AH3 throws purple metallic highlights when you incorporate the map file into the build. Then all the PT purple spawn lines disappear and you have a contrast visual mess against the reddish purple.

Once I removed the red and added some green, the map turned out fine. Here is what I had to do....