GV cover and more tiles

[NUTTZ]

heres a sample.

The tiles i used are water,forest and grass.
Then placed the remade lake1,lava and snowcap.
I placed them over the water so you can see the changes.
Lava is placed anywhere from 40 to 60 feet above the tile for GV cover. The lava tile has to be inverted and flipped and waffered onto itself, so the GV's will know if they are under cover or not. I haven't checked to see if the GV's can fire threw the openings or not. It may act one way like the GV netting over the spawn.



NUTTZ

[Tilt]

Originally posted by NUTTZ
heres a sample.

The tiles i used are water,forest and grass.


NUTTZ

Neat!

I have  an example of this on the Niemen terrain......

Inverting the lava is a neat idea......... when I tried using (non inverted)it at various altitudes the "spiky bits" were way too high and unrealistic and very translucent..........where as inverting it would mean you could use the flat bits and the spikes now become clearings.................

The pizza was just out of scale and I didn't know there was a snow cap object set..........so using the lake I have set up a forest canopy.............. again I did not think to flip  a reversed copy of it...so the GV's can not see it. However the mask lake_a.bmp is cut to make gaps between the trees........

I have flown it over our home network and can confirm that gv's and their icons appear in and out of eye shot as the viewing plane circles and as the gv travels from masked to unmasked  areas of the canopy......... further the gv can shoot out from under the canopy at any time....... and the plane can shoot/bomb thru the canopy at any time.

I have also hidden a garrison  (protecting the HQ at Rastenberg) under such a canopy...to give the effect of a facility built in a forested area.......... this also seems to work well with barrack objects only viewable if the angle of approach does not cause the canopy to hide them............    tall objects do not work well this way tho..... if they are higher than the canopy then the whole object will dissappear depending on the approach angle which is somewhat magical.


I have only used this canopy around one field (Gusev)as an experiment (its a scenario terrain and I do not want to bugger up game play for une bonne idie) and never at the spawn point....... always between spawn and objective............. and only over one garrison........... it sort of forces the use of flat terrain under it.


Hopefully it will be in the SEA this week.

[pokie]

Looking good!

As for being able to fire through the layers, you will need to make sure that the CanCollideBox is not checked when placing them.  

The see through sections will just act like windows, there is material still there, not like the doorway of a fighter hanger.


POkie

[BenDover]

hmm, nice,  let me know if you test it in h2h

[NHawk]

Nuttz..

I've read this message a hundred times and didn't "see" the extra tiles until now.

Thanks for pointing me here.

[NUTTZ]

Thats why I also added them over water so you could see the difference.

this way you don't have to waste a tile for "farm" but can make farmland areas whithout wasting a tile. I also got an idea from this. One of my main pet peeves with AH was/is the water to land transition. HiTech created the water to land tiles and BOY WAS I HAPPY!!! but the sterility of using just grass and water really got to me. I as a few others tested a shallow water tile. I even never use 1 tile to transition with water.

 I make 2 tiles with the same edges so I always can transition 2 land tiles with water. I was happy with this result but still not totally satified. so last night i did some experimenting ( 90% of my time in the TE is experimenting) And I found a way to add a void to butt up with the land just at the waters edge, This added another demention to the water/land transition and took away the "scalloped" edges the water has now. I really like it and am taking this to another level with the -a.bmp I'm making the alpha have the look of the waves lapping and rolling up on the shore. Of course i'm using the shineyness and the transarency of the alpha combined with a moire pattern you get with crossing lines on an angle.

NUTTZ
P.S. I'll post some screenie later

Originally posted by NHawk
Nuttz..

I've read this message a hundred times and didn't "see" the extra tiles until now.

Thanks for pointing me here.

[NHawk]

OK, I've experimented with the snowcap and lava tiles with little success. I can't seem to get rid of the border that seems to be built into the tile.

I've tried using a 256 x 256 alpha with the entire bmp set to white. That didn't let the tiles meet the way they should.

Also, just recently I've had a problem with a thin gray line (1 pixel wide) appearing between some tiles in AH. When I check the tiles outside of AH (in Photshop or Paintshop), to my dismay there is no gray line! The tiles match perfectly. This isn't major problem since these are all experimental tiles (I have a full set of good tiles being used for a terrain) at this point. But, sure would like to find the cause for future reference.

[BenDover]

checked the dimentions?


maybe a graphics card error?

[NUTTZ]

Your right, the snowcap is alittle smaller than a 256x256 tile in the map. Although it is 256x256 It gets scaled down alittle to fit within the tile.

About the Line in the tile, YES i have noticed this sometimes shows up in some of my tiles. What causes this i have no clue. I have noticed this really shows up alot when i use the snow tile against the water tile. I do know you can eliminate this line in the snowcap by putting a 2 pixel wide BLACK border in the alpha .bmp.

NUTTZ

Originally posted by NHawk
OK, I've experimented with the snowcap and lava tiles with little success. I can't seem to get rid of the border that seems to be built into the tile.

I've tried using a 256 x 256 alpha with the entire bmp set to white. That didn't let the tiles meet the way they should.

Also, just recently I've had a problem with a thin gray line (1 pixel wide) appearing between some tiles in AH. When I check the tiles outside of AH (in Photshop or Paintshop), to my dismay there is no gray line! The tiles match perfectly. This isn't major problem since these are all experimental tiles (I have a full set of good tiles being used for a terrain) at this point. But, sure would like to find the cause for future reference.

[pokie]

I can tell you that the SNOWCAP is  5000 ft X 5000 ft square if that's helpful .   ( 1 mile = 5280 ft )

If your snapbox is checked and spacing is at 2640 when you place the SNOWCAP all you need to do is then is set the spacing to 140 and move the SNOWCAP one movement to get it to butt up against the gridline.
5280ft ( 1mile ) - 5000ft (snowcap) = 280ft since the snow cap is in the centre, it has a gap completely around it, from its outer edge to the gridline.  Since we only want the distance of 1 of the gaps then 280ft / 2 = 140ft.

Pokie

[NHawk]

Thanks guys, that info helped a lot

Just for future reference, here's the gray line I'm talking about zoomed in real close in the TE. This is between the farm and forest tiles...



And here's what the same tiles in the same area look like in Photoshop, no gray line...

[MwDOODY]

Originally posted by NHawk
Thanks guys, that info helped a lot

Just for future reference, here's the gray line I'm talking about zoomed in real close in the TE. This is between the farm and forest tiles...

I get that too.. I thought I clipped it in editing.

[NHawk]

The gray line is either a bug or one of those undocumented features in AH

AH and the TE flip the outer pixels of the bitmap.

See my post here...

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80208