Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Terrain Editor => Topic started by: Greebo on March 01, 2018, 10:12:48 AM
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The patch notes for 3.03 patch 5 state that road length no longer affects convoy speed. Previously a new convoy would set off IIRC every 10 minutes just as the previous one exited at the end of the road. If the road was made longer the convoy just went faster to get there in 10 minutes. So if this is no longer the case how does road length affect the system? If there is still one convoy per road at any one time then at a given speed a longer road would mean less supplies/time. Does this mean there are now multiple convoys evenly spaced on the road or do less frequent convoys each get proportionally more supplies to make up for that? If there are multiple convoys I guess a longer road would mean more supply convoys to hit at any one time than a shorter road.
Also what is going to be the effect of destroying these new convoys on field rebuild times?
Are there any rules or guidelines for roads etc on an MA terrain? Can we cross two roads, run them near to each other or other fields? Is it OK to place non-strat roads or rivers on an MA terrain just for visual effect? Is there likely to be an FPS issue with overdoing the number of non-strat roads in an area?
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Just answered my own question. Rivers are supply paths and will generate tugs with barges. There is no property box to check saying a river is now a generic terrain object. Unless Hitech says you can manually lay rivers anyway and use them as terrain features, I'm still on the hook for hand building the rivers I will place bridges over for GV combat.
Still with create all, only roads and tracks are created. Wonder what happens then if I run a river past multiple fields and lay down roads by hand at each of those feilds? Wonder if that will cause the TE to CTD. I suppose I could lay down a river track lined up end to end, one for each airfield the river runs past to generate supply barges for each field. At that point what is the farthest distance the river can be from the field and the barges still supply the field? And what happens if I run a road to those same feilds with the supply river running past them?
When I ran create all for roads, it deleted the river I was testing near one of my test airfields. Yeah this is a lot of test terrain gymnastics..... :huh
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While testing is always good I'd like to know what the official HTC MA rules/guidelines are for roads, rivers and rail before editing the things into my terrain 160 times. I have in the past spent many hours creating stuff for an MA terrain that worked fine offline only to be told "no, you can't do that because....". It is kind of off-putting when that happens.
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Here is one answer from Hitech to how you set a road or river as static and not resupply.
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There is a check box visual only, then they will not effect strat in any way. And nothing will automatically travel down them.
HiTech
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Maybe we need to post his answers to our PM's here to collect all of his instructions in one place.
Here are answers so far to my questions.
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1. It is a simple as create all roads.
2. Then check for errors occasionally one will travel over a square object and you just have to make it go around by moving a few points.
3. Build the clutter mask, this removes treas and grass from all roads/rivers/trains .
4. Build terrain and you are finished.
Any thing else you do is simply esthetic, I.E. you may not wish them to go straight up a mountain.
HiTech
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The create all button will wipe out the rivers, but if you Create Roads only then only all roads are wiped out, and similarly with Create Trains.
HiTech
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Btw you also can delete a road and then simply create it by hand, look at an existing road that was auto created to see the setting in the properties dialog to make it a field supply or a strat stupply.
HiTech
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Here is how to use the spline from setting a road segment to enhance the capabilities of the bulldozer tool. Delete the road after you click on plow terrain. He wrote bulldozer, he meant the plow terrain button.
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You all ready can do that, simply create the spline road, set the alt of the terrain at the beginging and end of the path, press bull doze.
HiTech
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Before and after setting a road then plowing the terrain. Inland I raised a small hill above 500ft as the end of the spline path.
(https://s20.postimg.org/6lbnrqme5/medtst537.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/ahoznqf3h/medtst538.jpg)
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I don't know if I convoluted several functions and just needed to move a GV spawn object away from a road object then bring it back closer after running a build. I've run into that a few times with other objects.
I placed a spawn next to a road I was experimenting with about 100yds away. When I opened the test terrain offline the spawn did not show on the CBM. When I moved the spawn's circle edge 1\2 mile away from the road, the spawn showed in the CBM. Then I was able to increment the spawn circle edge back in to about 1000ft away.
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You cannot use it as a chain saw to remove trees from a tile by laying down a path, running the mask, then deleting the path. The trees will be gone but, when you try to exit the arena your game will CTD.
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I played around with a river this morning. To create it I just changed the property of one of my roads to river and positioned it so it ended in the sea next to its base. The button to randomise its width worked well. Then I tried to eliminate the highly visible seam where the river joined the sea. In the time I had the best solution seemed to be to create a narrow inlet with the coast spline tool and place the end of the river into the centre of this inlet. Then use shift-scroll wheel to adjust the width of the end of the river to match the coastline on either side. I also played around with the colour and alpha settings for the river to get it to match better to the ocean. It wasn't perfect as the wave and blended coastline effect ends where the river starts but it looks a lot less jarring than just butting the river up to a straight coastline.
I also placed a couple of bridges across the river, I'm curious as to what will happen when the barges run under them.
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Convoys spawn every 10 mins, and there can be multiple convoys running on the road. This was one of the changes that was made to the 3.0 engine so that the host can create objects dynamically.
HiTech
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This is looking like get everything finished on the terrain down to all the fields and spawns. Then run create all roads\track. Then add any none supply paths for cosmetics. Fix where you need bridges, elevation changes, and route changes. Then run the mask. Or after any futsing you do even if it's not related to paths, just touching up clutter or moving a spawn, rerun the mask then run build. I lost a convoy road I built over a bridge becasue I didn't run the mask after I finished it even though I had run the mask previously and there was no trees anywhere on that road or in the river under the bridge. It doesn't seem to affect the train tracks unless running a path road\track over a bridge makes that path susceptible to being removed if the mask is not run after that and for anything anywhere on terrain you make any changes of any kind.
So once we lay down resupply paths to keep them in place do we have to run mask before running build whatever we change or update?
Greebo even with a flat topped bridge, you add many splits into the a segment to get the path level with the road bed on the bridge. I just tested that.
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Convoys spawn every 10 mins, and there can be multiple convoys running on the road. This was one of the changes that was made to the 3.0 engine so that the host can create objects dynamically.
OK so the only issue with making paths different lengths in an MA terrain would be that a longer road might contain two convoys to hit at any one time but a shorter one might only have one. So as long as all three countries' paths have roughly the same length as each other it should not matter how long they are.
Are there likely to be any issues with paths crossing one another, even if its a non-strat path?
Would it be possible to have a "Show Paths" option for the make map utility? Might be nice to see all the roads, railways and rivers on the clipboard map.
Shame its so fiddly to get a convoy to run across the bridge bustr. Personally I don't think I'll use bridges for that though. My main use for the rivers will be to place them between spawn points and fields so I can use bridges as choke points.
I played around some more with the river I made. First I checked that the barges would run below a bridge and they do. They just ignore the object, even passing through the piers if the bridge arch is not centrally placed. Next I stopped a jeep on the bridge above the barges as they passed below and this was fine too. The only issue I got was when I drove the Jeep through one of the bridge arches. As it passed below the bridge it teleported onto the top of the bridge before teleporting back onto the ground on the other side. I think I'll just make sure there are no land-locked arches on my bridges.
I also played around some more with blending the end of the river into the sea by placing a bridge on the join, it takes your eye away from the mismatch fairly well. I was going to post a screenshot but this forum does not allow uploading of HTC server screenshots. A sky blue river colour with about 50% alpha and a featureless green terrain colour seems to give a reasonable match to the sea.
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Are there likely to be any issues with paths crossing one another, even if its a non-strat path?
The only thing I can think of would be performance issues, I havn't tested to see how far the system can be pushed. The one point that could be if you have lots of long roads is the number of simultaneous convoys/trains/barges in the entire arena. I believe the limit is around 10k objects so with 255 fields that would be about 40 each.
Would it be possible to have a "Show Paths" option for the make map utility? Might be nice to see all the roads, railways and rivers on the clipboard map.
I assume you would just wish a line like spawn points?
Shame its so fiddly to get a convoy to run across the bridge bustr. Personally I don't think I'll use bridges for that though. My main use for the rivers will be to place them between spawn points and fields so I can use bridges as choke points.
I might be able to make a tool to do that.
uploading of HTC server screenshots.
The next time you need to do that, upload it in the screen shot forum, and link to the image here.
HiTech
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Also a few versions back we added some lake objects. These are just flat water polys of different sizes that you can then use with portions under the terrain to create lakes.
HiTech
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I wasn't planning on very long paths, but it would help to know how fast the trains, trucks and barges travel. That way I could work out the distance between convoys for each and so how many will be running at any one time.
Maybe have a grey line on the map for railways, brown for roads and blue for rivers, or just make the colours settable. It would add a bit more interest to the clipboard maps and might encourage players to go after the convoys.
So can these lakes can be included on an MA terrain? It is just that they are not in the TE's cut down object list when "Show all Shapes" is unchecked and I thought that only objects in the reduced list could be put into an MA terrain.
BTW I notice that the "bas0" AA gun and "revetment0" shapes are in the cut down object list, so can these go into an MA terrain now?
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The water objects don't visually play nice with the terrain. At least the mask clears out trees even under the water object. For the sake of transitions, it would be easier if you had a add segment that the edges were closed loop splines you can pull the boarder out into random lake shapes so the lake is the same object as the river running into our out of it. And or another segment that in the center of a river run you could tag that segment then pull it's boarders out into a lake fed and emptied by the remaining two ends.
Here is a quicky test of the water object and a river path together.
Kind of ugly how the higher you are you see the base 1x1 object and not the finished lake shape.
(https://s20.postimg.org/c1w7f5vql/medtst550.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/5bfq5q0v1/medtst551.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.org/ogizfh7t9/medtst552.jpg)
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Here's my screenshot showing the river to sea transition:
(http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=392033.0;attach=29316)
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It's beautiful but, there has to be a better way to do this. On my current terrain I have many rivers to transition into large lakes set to the SL water and a large feeder river from the lake into the central sea. You can see there is no logical reason to place bridges at the mouth of every feeder river. I can see using a lot of supply barges. Those would be interesting diversions for tank attackers working in from the spawns across the bridges. I hope the error checker will tell me if there are any problems between the AI objects and the target field. I know better than to run these paths across objects other than bridges on top of rivers and road beds on top of bridges. I'm guessing from observation of the how the convoy road was set down next to a field that there is a separation of about 100ft or so the end of a path can't go near an object. So I can't use a visual only road to continue one of the field roads seamlessly to the town and touch a town road.
Still need to exactly when the mask has to be run. When I did that lake test I ran the mask after I finished adjusting the river path and lake shores, then ran build. I didn't have a CTD on exit from offline. Also I noticed trying to move objects with existing paths on the terrain near them, the "move" function would keep letting go of the object every couple of miles. And after that I would get a CTD on exit during offline testing. The mask takes a considerable amount of time to finish running.
You can see I still have a considerable amount of terrain creation left to go before I can add paths. Hitech, are Greebo and I doing the equivalent of beta testing the path function and just have to keep on playing with it to find issues versus anything specific you can direct us to try out?
(https://s20.postimg.org/s69ucijkd/medtst525.jpg)
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Interesting CPU problem when I'm on my test terrain with two feilds, two rivers, one 1x1 water object and the City\strats\HQ. I ran the create all for roads and trains.
Here is a screen shot of the City\strat\HQ complex I'm thinking of putting in my new terrain. While I'm over it in the TE like this my mouse is having problems in the terrain editor, in Firefox clicking on links or buttons and clipping and saving screen shots, anything I use the mouse for. It effects pages refreshing in Firefox and the task manager buttons to change tabs. I'm including the performance graph at that time for the CPU which is an I5. I have 16G of ram. Wonder if this is what Ciaphas was referring to.....
So the City does not get a supply track?
(https://s20.postimg.org/4uuijaktp/medtst553.jpg)
This screen clip is screwed up becasue the mouse was not responding as expected. Amount of ram used was 3.37.
(https://s20.postimg.org/ymrkyhfct/medtst554.jpg)
Here is the graph while I'm working on my terrain riftval. It has only a single airfield and no other objects, and no paths. Notice I got a clean full screen clip using the mouse.
(https://s20.postimg.org/mkw74cdu5/medtst555.jpg)
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When I hit "create all" the paths created get laid out in 10 mile straight lines N, S, E or W of their respective fields or strats with each one of these paths consisting of 20 individual half mile segments. For each path the first thing I will do is roughly re-route it usually in some other direction from the field. This might be to accommodate the surrounding topography or to position it in relation to an SP. Currently the only ways to do this are to either move all 20 waypoints to their new positions one at a time or to delete most of them one by one, move the remaining few and then insert as many waypoints as needed to get the required curves. As I have 141 paths and so 2,820 waypoints to reposition this is going to get very tedious.
It would make this job a lot easier if there was some way of selecting a group of waypoints to move or rotate all at once. So I could then select all 20 waypoints on a path, rotate it from say E to SW and then move the whole path SW of the field. Then I could select the last 7 way points and rotate them to the W and so on.
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I began editing the road system on my MA terrain yesterday and got about three dozen routes done. I concentrated on the railways to the strats and the roads to uncapturable fields as they aren't intended to get much GV action so didn't need much thinking about. Then I ran rivers to all the ports with a bridge across each river and a visible-only road running from each SP up to each bridge to show GVs where to go to cross the river.
The plow road function is very useful for getting a gently sloping road, saves a lot of careful elevation editing. One issue the TE is that the "delete road" button could use an "Are you sure you want to do this?" dialogue, it is very easy to delete a road by mistake and there is no undo function to allow you to recover when you do.
This morning I built the terrain and ran it offline to have a look. I hadn't built a clutter mask so of course the vegetation poked through the roads but everything else was where it should be. The rivers look odd with their steep banks raised off the terrain and unless I am missing something this can't be altered as the mouse wheel just alters the rivers' width. Would it be possible to reduce the height of these river banks in some future update?
The reason for this post though is that while running the terrain offline for 15 minutes or so I noticed there were no trucks, trains or barges running on any of the routes. Before leaving for work I had a quick look in the TE to make sure the "vis only" option had not been set by default but it hadn't. When I tested a single river previously the barges were running OK and this river had bridges running across it. Apart from editing a lot more routes the only different thing I have done since then is add some vis-only routes. Could there be a bug related to that or does anyone have any other ideas as to why the trains etc aren't running on time?
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Pre AHIII I vaguely remember that the trains, barges, trucks would only run online but my memory could be playing tricks on me.
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I have had the barges running in the game offline since the new road system was introduced to the TE. I wanted to check to see if there would be a problem when they passed below a bridge placed across the river. I just don't understand why they aren't running now.
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I tested that and they pass under.
I created a test terrain to model the strat complex for my new terrain and test the rail system. I wanted to hit create all, then manually move the tracks around and see if that created any problems. I duplicated everything you see in the properties for one set down auto strait and no moving around the tracks. Ran a mask, then build, got no errors and went offline. The first trains should have spawned and run after 10 minutes arena time. Nothing happened and the first time I waited a few minutes past 10. So I exit the offline mode to check my setup and the game hangs, then CTD and generates a dump file. I went through this 3 times to make sure I was not causing it. On the tired CTD I submitted the DMP file to the bug forum. Here is the link. You can imagine how much I want this fixed now that I'm at the stage I'm putting in visual only rivers and GV spawns. The next step after that will be the active supply roads and tracks.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,392782.0.html
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4zaw64ogt/medtst719.jpg)
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Thanks Bustr, it seems like its a bug rather than something we have done then.
Dallas....we have a problem.
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Would it be possible to reduce the height of these river banks in some future update?
I will take a look how high it is, but it has to be above the terrain for z fighting issues.
And of course look at the bug.
HiTech
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Greebo, those sheets of 1x1 and 2x2 water objects to create lakes and ponds above SL, they look great from about 100ft away, then they Z-fight like crazy past that.
The red outline is the hole I created to define the lake shore.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/njtlwq22l/medtst731.jpg)
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Not sure if this is a bug or if its intentional but the create all button does not create any roads to flak bases. If they are supposed to have roads I'd like to know so that I can add them individually.
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Because this is how my Flak bases are laid out in relation to the strats, and all I want is they act as auto ack. I will disable all rides at each one and barring Hitech changing it, set each one as uncaptruable. At that point if a bomber mission wants to flatten all the auto ack, they regenerate just like on an airfield. So I suspect there is no reason for a convoy road.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/v1nfw38fh/medtst694.jpg)
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My flak bases are already set as uncapturable. The create all button did run roads to the uncapturable airfields on the map so I am not sure whether that's the reason. It may be the lack of flak base roads is intended but I'd like confirmation from HTC.
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I'm in solidarity over that one. :salute