Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: Bizman on January 17, 2012, 03:27:56 AM
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There's been an ongoing discussion for years over the looks of AH compared to other flight sims. IMO HTC has done a good work during all of these 10+ years I've been flying. Certainly the terrains and planes look much better today than in 2001 :aok
There's one thing though that has been bugging and disturbing my immersion during all these years, and that is the illogical placing of terrain tiles. There still are farms on vertical steeps and mountain tops etc. From what I've seen AH has equally good terrain tiles compared to other sims. The main difference is, how landscapes are built. For example, a new flight sim shows alpine airfields surrounded by snow capped mountain tops looking like a Swiss postcard, but the fields, woods and village houses are par to AH.
What I'm asking for is, would it be difficult to have a basic code which automatically would place fields and meadows on flat or almost level surfaces, woods on hillsides angled 30 - 60 deg and rock on steeps. Maybe even snowy rock on highest tops. Just as there's always water on the 0 level.
After such basic automation, if necessary, a strategic placing of copses for hiding purposes near spawn points could be desirable. I'm not asking for landscaping a whole terrain by hand, that would be too tedious for our insignificant $14.95's.
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+1
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+1 it is a bit strange to see a house on a 45 degree slope
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+1
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+1
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I think it might be easier to solve if it could be coded for terrain tile clutter to be tied to terrain types painted on the terrain. Use "rocks" or "snow", and clutter would be empty. Use "farmland" and clutter would include farmhouses/windmills/etc. Use "forest" and clutter would include extra trees. And so on...
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I think it might be easier to solve if it could be coded for terrain tile clutter to be tied to terrain types painted on the terrain. Use "rocks" or "snow", and clutter would be empty. Use "farmland" and clutter would include farmhouses/windmills/etc. Use "forest" and clutter would include extra trees. And so on...
I believe it already does what you ask.
HiTech
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LOL Hitech. I guess it's time for me to play with the terrain editor again. :lol
My guess then, is some of the current maps were "sloppily" painted with terrain types, causing clutter like farmhouses, etc. to be on the sides of steep slopes. Unless of course I read the OP wrong and he was just talking about the terrain-type and not the clutter objects.
Either way, where's the Skuzzy-patented "Boing...another wish granted!" for this? :D
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How about trees on slopes that grow like this: l
Instead of: /
I can't tell if I'm driving up a hill or not.
wrongway
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a strategic placing of copses for hiding purposes near spawn points could be desirable.
I think by corpses you mean burned out Tank / M3 / Plane Crash, hulks ? I REALLY think that would add a LOT to the SIMULATED Reality and Situational Awareness aspects of the game ... and shouldn't (?) impose much of an added load on the processors ... They could appear wherever a vehicle was destroyed or a plane crashed and disappear after a fixed interval.
:salute
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Read again, EVZ. I said copses (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/copse), not corpses. :t :lol
But I like your idea of ruined tanks lying around for a certain time. But: Think about a camped spawn point, where desperate tankers get slaughtered by the dozen. If I remember right, people have landed over 100 vehicle kills. That would build quite a scrap yard, wouldn't it?
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Read again, EVZ. I said copses (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/copse), not corpses.
Whooops, my bad ... copses as in grove of trees ...
But I like your idea of ruined tanks lying around for a certain time. But: Think about a camped spawn point, where desperate tankers get slaughtered by the dozen. If I remember right, people have landed over 100 vehicle kills. That would build quite a scrap yard, wouldn't it?
Yeah ... one word comes to mind ... Kursk ... I suppose it would be fairly simple to limit the # of hulks displayed at one time, so as not to overload processors. ???
:salute
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Or just have some clutter objects as part of the terrain - no different from the little huts we have now. Either throw a few here and there across different tiles, or have a special tile the terrain-builder can put underneath his spawn point.
Trying to keep track of realtime dead GV's and transmit that data for all players in the area is asking too much from the system for such a small bit of eye candy.
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I support this wish, I even brought it forward a couple of years ago myself but the farms and fields are still the same.. It just looks weird.
Trees should stand upright, even in a steep hill. And houses should be standing on level ground only! Or the houses sitting in the hillsides should be modified so that they are level even if the hillside is steep. And it don't look natural to have farmlands and fields in the hillsides either, atleast not in the number we have today. Perhaps one or two hillbilly farmers might be farming up there but not across entire mountains.. :old:
It is just little details, but it sure does alot to the overall looks of the terrains. Fix this and the whole game steps up a level, it just looks sloppy to keep it like this.. Sorry for saying.. :frown:
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The close to vertical hillsides should have some landslides thrown in to get a bit closer to reality.. ;)
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I'm extremely picky, even anal, about placing textures on terrains. I hand paint every square inch so every texture is right where I want it. I don't do MA terrains though, which are much larger. I couldn't imagine doing it all by hand to make it perfect. The farmland on steep hillsides (even almost-sheer cliffs) thing has always drove me crazy though.
My current project:
(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/3493/br1u.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/689/br1u.jpg/)
It's all a matter of how much time the builder wants to spend looking at every sq. mile of his terrain and/or how picky he wants to be.
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I'm extremely picky, even anal, about placing textures on terrains. I hand paint every square inch so every texture is right where I want it. I don't do MA terrains though, which are much larger. I couldn't imagine doing it all by hand to make it perfect. The farmland on steep hillsides (even almost-sheer cliffs) thing has always drove me crazy though.
It's all a matter of how much time the builder wants to spend looking at every sq. mile of his terrain and/or how picky he wants to be.
I haven't been in the TE lately to continue my work on a map for the MA, but you just described me quite well; I hand-tune the elevations so they're shaped the way I want and hand-paint each terrain texture so it looks the way I want.
Here's what little I've done with it, which admittedly was many months ago...
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/ViperDriver/AcesHighII/Terrain%20Samples/HQ2BayLookback.jpg)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/ViperDriver/AcesHighII/Terrain%20Samples/ahss15.jpg)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/ViperDriver/AcesHighII/Terrain%20Samples/ahss18.jpg)
(http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll239/ViperDriver/AcesHighII/Terrain%20Samples/ahss14.jpg)
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Very nice Dot. Now that looks realistic imo.
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Now we are talking.. :O
Very nice USRanger and Dot! :aok I just love the looks of that! :rock
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Very nice USRanger and Dot! :aok I just love the looks of that!
Really ! beautifull work !!! I look forward to flying with that!
:rock
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I'm hoping for a new look in DA also with time, the terrains in there just don't look too great. The high bases should be alot more rocky than they are today, and the canyons should have farms at the bottom only.. To make the canyons perfect they should be rocky in the steepest parts and have a river flowing through the valley also in my opinion.. :aok
Just throwing in ideas in hopes of seeing some changes for the better in future.. :)
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You guys are doing a terrific work with the Terrain Editor. :salute I only hope the same quality could be seen in MA maps, too.