Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: bustr on April 22, 2018, 08:24:19 PM
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Just about 5 months to the day and all the topography for 625,000sq miles is finished.
Now I get to put all the feilds, task groups, spawns and strat in. Build all the tank micro combat terrain and shoe horn in Hitech's new AI supply system. It's one 5 mile segment of road or track per base or strat at every single location I have to fit the paths to the topography.
Finished topography.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/vwhagr9zx/medtst685.jpg)
What I get to do next.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/o3qmosbql/medtst686.jpg)
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nice.
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This looks like an old Dark Reign Map.
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Since I don't know what the () you are talking about, it's 100% a bustr map.
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It looks beautiful even as a clipboard map Bustr, thanks for all your hard work.
Is 5 miles per road the minimum length or is that now a fixed distance for an MA terrain?
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Very nice work Buster. :aok
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Woop woop woop.
WTG
DutchVII
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If you want to see why this took 5 months, download the full sized map 2048x2048 in this zip file from my google docs.
The boarder of the terrain is 12,000ft and everything is graded with water runoffs down to the central water pond inside of the scale the terrain editor limits me to. With the full sized file you will better see this and those canyons in the rear canyon land becasue of the shadows. The canyon land was a simple need to fill empty space in a manner that fit the theme. The terrain is called riftval for rift valley and you can see one at the boarder of each country.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w8TbMqnN40-9eVDZG5O8Mfxb49VShz4B
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No joy for the GV's on this map
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Are the older maps going to be updated by htc to support the aupply lines, or the map maker, or not at all?
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No joy for the GV's on this map
How exactly do you know that since I have not published the master blueprint for this terrain? This looks more like you want to get away with insulting me inside the Skuzzy rules. Kind of lame and small of you as usual.
Please illuminate this audience with your vast knowledge of terrain building to the source of your opinion. If you are basing your drive by mud slinging on only looking at the screen shots I posted, I doubt you have anything constructive to share about terrain building in general. Last I remember you never built one to show the community how to make a perfect GV terrain for the MA. You don't need vBases to create GV combat on a terrain. That is a very myopic, balkinised centric, and inexperienced view of how terrains work.
And you promised you had canceled your account and would no longer participate in our game. So this is a personal drive by getting under the Skuzzy rules with me.....small and lame.
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How exactly do you know that since I have not published the master blueprint for this terrain? This looks more like you want to get away with insulting me inside the Skuzzy rules. Kind of lame and small of you as usual.
Please illuminate this audience with your vast knowledge of terrain building to the source of your opinion. If you are basing your drive by mud slinging on only looking at the screen shots I posted, I doubt you have anything constructive to share about terrain building in general. Last I remember you never built one to show the community how to make a perfect GV terrain for the MA. You don't need vBases to create GV combat on a terrain. That is a very myopic, balkinised centric, and inexperienced view of how terrains work.
And you promised you had canceled your account and would no longer participate in our game. So this is a personal drive by getting under the Skuzzy rules with me.....small and lame.
I saw how deep an steep the canyons walls were on the screen shots you published before. Unless you have GV spawns that cross the big lake....yes it is a GV restrictive map Turn that lake into a 25 k mountain and see how the fly boys like it
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It looks beautiful even as a clipboard map Bustr, thanks for all your hard work.
Is 5 miles per road the minimum length or is that now a fixed distance for an MA terrain?
When I tested the create all roads and tracks, they were laid down as 5 miles by the system. You can lay down unlimited length dummy roads, but, I sent Hitech a PM about a test I did with one I setup doing a lot of snake curves. The mask tool didn't remove any of the trees in the road bed.
I need to do another test of dummy roads and make the curves less aggressive to see if that was the problem. Also test it across all of the terrain tiles I'm using in this terrain to see if the mask tool has problems with some of the tiles. I suppose I should do this in a way that it's more like beta testing so I can submit the results in the Bug forum since I'll be needing the paths to work soon for submission to the MA. Remember everything I went through with the last terrain and bridges.....
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I saw how deep an steep the canyons walls were on the screen shots you published before. Unless you have GV spawns that cross the big lake....yes it is a GV restrictive map Turn that lake into a 25 k mountain and see how the fly boys like it
Wow, you have jumped the shark tank and taken the shark with you to pismo beach. You also didn't read anything I posted, like the boarder of the terrain is 12k graded down to the central pond and that the canyon land is just to fill empty space. Hitech didn't like my wall joke and asked me to not to joke like that. Bet you didn't even bother to look at the ongoing 600+ screen capture documentation of all 5 months of this topography construction in the terrain editor forum before my picture host lost their DNS registration. But, the new registration allowed for at least the last month of screen captures which would have been enough for any "reasonable" person.
You really got the lame jonesies to stick it to me if you can get away with it under the SkuzzyDAR. That is so small dude.
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Since I don't know what the () you are talking about, it's 100% a bustr map.
:rofl :aok
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No joy for the GV's on this map
:headscratch:
yikes...
Bustr must have a forehead vein as big as an elephent's trunk to spend time and energy into helping the community to get a response like this.
(http://i.imgur.com/FOynqt3.jpg)
Keep fighting the good fight Bustr! Oink away man, oink away....
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No joy for the GV's on this map
(https://s7.postimg.cc/85th9tt1n/complaint_dept.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/image/3jxd1h7if/)
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Greebo,
There is an order of tasks for laying down cosmetic only roads\rivers or AI resupply. First get all your topography squared away, then lay in all objects like fields\strats\ports and so forth. I'm going to install the GV spawn paths before thinking about roads but, I will have to lay down rivers becasue I need bridges. So I'll have to create some quick local blueprint maps for paths at each field or come up with a standard repeatable arrangement.
When you setup a river or road that is only cosmetic, lay them down, tweak them until they are what you want. Only save them if you have to walk away, don't be tempted to build to look at them offline. When they are tweeked into place, save and run the mask. When it's done check to see that it removed trees and bushes. Then run build to check it out offline.
After that if everything is how you want it, do the create all for roads and tracks to lay in the resupply system. Same thing, tweak them all into place and only save if you have to walk away. Then when you think it's all in place, run mask, then build. Yes Hitech...irritating.... :rolleyes:
Here is a test today from my micro hill test terrain. This area is 6 mile diameter wich is the average for all fields, inside of which I applied a micro hill texture for tank combat. I will be applying things like this around feilds with GV spawns now to make tank combat more interesting.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/3jrcucb65/medtst687.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/hq73pktr1/medtst688.jpg)
Those dark blobs on the ground under the road to the left where it curves to the right across the hill was where trees stuck up through the road before I ran the mask. What tank ace in this game in his right mind is going to drive around out in the open on an exposed road. Buttttt.....waaa we want cosmetic anything and everything...waaaaa..... :bhead
(https://s20.postimg.cc/n1m0aanjh/medtst689.jpg)
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Outstanding.
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The more I stare at this working out the GV spawn paths this zoomed in, the more I'm convinced I'll just put one CV task group per country. Unless Hitech wants to make a cruiser task group modeled on the BB task group. This is just too tight to have BB running around with 22 mile range guns.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/j5d9rtf0d/medtst690.jpg)
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Hey I just stated my opinion........ The subscribers will pass judgment as always
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You got caught with your foot in the shark's mouth on pismo beach.
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No joy for the GV's on this map
Maybe add a GV island in the middle so us flyboys can bomb them =)
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Then feel free to build a terrain if it's as easy as telling me to just throw things into the project. I guess you and dundee are at pismo beach together with the shark. Just don't cross any state lines with that fish. They might get you on something similar to immortal porpoises rap...... ;)
Poor shark..... :huh
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Then feel free to build a terrain if it's as easy as telling me to just throw things into the project. I guess you and dundee are at pismo beach together with the shark. Just don't cross any state lines with that fish. They might get you on something similar to immortal porpoises rap...... ;)
Poor shark..... :huh
:rofl WOW! That brought back some laughs! If memory serves...it included Gulls, an Stayed Lion and Immortal Porpoises? :x Looks GREAT Bustr, :rock
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I've had the basic topography and field and SP placement on my next map pretty much done since the AH3 beta Bustr. I changed the terrain set to Med recently. All I have done since the roads update though is use the create all button to make all the straight roads and play around with the editing tools a bit, been too busy with skinning since then. When I read your post saying 5 mile roads I thought there might have been some HTC MA map edict to that effect, although thinking about it I now recall HT saying that strat road length no longer matters as roads can each have more than one convoy running at a time in AH3. I still have to do all the spawn-to-target terrain editing, having the roads makes that a lot more interesting to do. So I may do a bit more on my map in a week or two after I do a few more skins.
I kind of like the idea of roads creating tree-less areas as it creates good ambush points for defenders. My current thinking is winding non-strat roads laid between SPs and the target objects that are sometimes bisected by a crossing strat road or by a bridge crossing a stream. These would make for some nice choke points and open areas for ambushes. One thing I am a little unsure about is what killing a truck convoy actually does to rebuild times in AH3. If it is a powerful effect I wouldn't route strat roads so close to attacking GVs that the field was permanently down.
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Wow, Bustr!!!
Thank you so much for the time and effort you are pouring into this. One day, when I get another PC, I want to learn this fine art.
Very excited!!!
:rock
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Nice! :aok
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I've had the basic topography and field and SP placement on my next map pretty much done since the AH3 beta Bustr. I changed the terrain set to Med recently. All I have done since the roads update though is use the create all button to make all the straight roads and play around with the editing tools a bit, been too busy with skinning since then. When I read your post saying 5 mile roads I thought there might have been some HTC MA map edict to that effect, although thinking about it I now recall HT saying that strat road length no longer matters as roads can each have more than one convoy running at a time in AH3. I still have to do all the spawn-to-target terrain editing, having the roads makes that a lot more interesting to do. So I may do a bit more on my map in a week or two after I do a few more skins.
I kind of like the idea of roads creating tree-less areas as it creates good ambush points for defenders. My current thinking is winding non-strat roads laid between SPs and the target objects that are sometimes bisected by a crossing strat road or by a bridge crossing a stream. These would make for some nice choke points and open areas for ambushes. One thing I am a little unsure about is what killing a truck convoy actually does to rebuild times in AH3. If it is a powerful effect I wouldn't route strat roads so close to attacking GVs that the field was permanently down.
When you implement create all roads, the road starts on the east edge of the field and runs east in a straight line. Same for tracks. I forgot to ask Hitech if I can skip that and manually lay down a resupply road if I follow the placement rules. I started seeing problems between spawns and tank combat areas with where the supply road would run. Guess I have some testing to do on my terrain I'm testing micro hills for tank combat. There were some AH2 spawn battle areas next to feilds that always seemed counter intuitive to why the supply road ran in curves up the center of the combat area. I watched guys lay up in hiding places and wipe out the convoy all night while a few feilds over the GV spawn was in a bowl with no cover feeding 100 kills a night to players. douH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...... :rolleyes:
I'll let you know since I just had an idea about running a resupply road with none resupply feeders for cosmetic appeal. And how I'm going to stuff my tracks into that 8 mile diameter strat complex in each country. I'm taking the properties GUI for the paths at face value for what condition spawns trucks and trains, and what condition makes it inert eye candy. I'll get up close to one of the default resupply roads and see what the short separation distance is between the road end and the edge of the field object. Knowing Hitech it's critical to know the width of that tiny gap. We do have a new tool to check for paths running across objects......
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I'm amazed you gents never ask questions like how do you go about setting up all the fields and spawn paths. Generally it's, throw in what "I" want so there on you or, it's gonna crash and burn just becausssssss..........
Some of you know the skinners like Greebo build those incredible skins with up to 70+ layers in an art program. I make the terrain editor create a 2048x2048 1:1 map of the workspace and use that as the background layer for a multi layer art file. Then I have a layer for field\strat locations which is how I early on transfer the locations onto the physical terrain as those tan place holder squares. That is how they so perfectly fit into the topography. I pull the universe around the ship, not the ship through space.
Then when the topography is finished I produce a new map, add the field\strat layer to it, and begin adding layers for first the field numbers, then GV spawn arrows. And becasue the map is a 1:1 8pixel = 1mile in the arena. I can draw spawn arrows on the art file to where I will place them on the terrain. And I can spitball topographically a good idea of where I will run my resupply roads and rail tracks to cut down on surprises. With respect to Hitech who has thrown me some last minute surprises for my terrains...... :)
Country-1 numbered and feild types identified. The red rings and lines are two different layers to help me number inside of one country at a time and follow a left-right then back right-left path up to the strats as I number. Now I have to do the spawn path layer, and it's amazing how combat will either flow well thorough a country or grind to a clunker by how you setup vBases and vehicle spawns.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/xer4ypjtp/medtst692.jpg)
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No joy for the GV's on this map
I agree with you Dundee <S>. We need to learn how to make maps if we ever want to see the fun GV battles again.
The Crater Map (AH2) was one of the best maps for the tank crowd, but the GV spawns into crater were moved in the conversion to AH3. Now, the GV's never go into the crater, except to sneak a V base. When Crater came up in AH2 every GV'er was in the middle of the map was having fun.
Even many of those who normally fly a fighter were in the crater driving a tank because it was a blast. There were an incredible amount of tanks in a small area. Allot of perked tanks were used in Crater. It is rare to see perked rides in AH3. GV'ers do not want to spend 15 minutes driving from point A to point B only to get bombed. GV'ers want quick action. Many spawns in AH3 have incredible distances to the target as compared to AH2.
The NDisles map had a tanktown in the middle island with v bases feeding spawns to the center. The V bases are gone in AH3. The proximity of the airfields brings in so many bomb****s the gv's rarely use that part of the map anymore. If you want to have a good GV battle you have to take down the ammo strats and take down all of the ords in the sector or everyone and his grandma is bomb****ing.
I am not putting down Bustr, and I do appreciate his fine efforts, but he is an airplane guy and does not GV. Nothing wrong with that as that is his preference. Everyone in AH3 has their niche. An example: the Oceana map has very few v bases. It is almost exclusively airfields. It is great for the airplane guys, but for GV's action, there is none.
The terrains in AH3 do have allot more vegetation for GV's to hide in and bomb****ing is not as easy unless there is a storch to help.
The trees really provide good cover for the GV's.
We used to see every GV being used in AH2. Now it is Panzer H's and T-34/85's. Also, the berms made it easy to find cover from other GV's . There are no berms in AH3.
I think Dundee and all the other GV'ers should speak up.
Don't put them down because they have a different view on the development of AH3.
<S>
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Just wanted to say Thank you for working on new map. Looks great <S> :rock
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I agree with you Dundee <S>. We need to learn how to make maps if we ever want to see the fun GV battles again.
The Crater Map (AH2) was one of the best maps for the tank crowd, but the GV spawns into crater were moved in the conversion to AH3. Now, the GV's never go into the crater, except to sneak a V base. When Crater came up in AH2 every GV'er was in the middle of the map was having fun.
Even many of those who normally fly a fighter were in the crater driving a tank because it was a blast. There were an incredible amount of tanks in a small area. Allot of perked tanks were used in Crater. It is rare to see perked rides in AH3. GV'ers do not want to spend 15 minutes driving from point A to point B only to get bombed. GV'ers want quick action. Many spawns in AH3 have incredible distances to the target as compared to AH2.
The NDisles map had a tanktown in the middle island with v bases feeding spawns to the center. The V bases are gone in AH3. The proximity of the airfields brings in so many bomb****s the gv's rarely use that part of the map anymore. If you want to have a good GV battle you have to take down the ammo strats and take down all of the ords in the sector or everyone and his grandma is bomb****ing.
I am not putting down Bustr, and I do appreciate his fine efforts, but he is an airplane guy and does not GV. Nothing wrong with that as that is his preference. Everyone in AH3 has their niche. An example: the Oceana map has very few v bases. It is almost exclusively airfields. It is great for the airplane guys, but for GV's action, there is none.
The terrains in AH3 do have allot more vegetation for GV's to hide in and bomb****ing is not as easy unless there is a storch to help.
The trees really provide good cover for the GV's.
We used to see every GV being used in AH2. Now it is Panzer H's and T-34/85's. Also, the berms made it easy to find cover from other GV's . There are no berms in AH3.
I think Dundee and all the other GV'ers should speak up.
Don't put them down because they have a different view on the development of AH3.
<S>
I dont know why Greebo killed the GV section of his map when he reworked it. It was the only map a poor GVer like myself could get some kills and learn a bit more of the GV side of the game. I understand that when that map rolled in many players complained it sucked the fun out of the "fighter game" because most players were in the crater fighting in GVs, but when the numbers climbed the fighter type fight came back. Its too bad Greebo killed the fights on that map.
I would like to see more maps with that type of game play available
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what will this map be called? Maple leaf map or Irish map?
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See Rule #4
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I dont know why Greebo killed the GV section of his map when he reworked it.
AH3 has a smaller gap between terrain vertexes than AH2. Normally this doesn't matter too much when a terrain is ported over but in the case of the old CraterMA TT it did. The cliffs that lined the fighting area no longer worked as their precisely positioned vertexes were now in the wrong places. I could have adjusted some vertex alts and kept the basic format but then I found another problem. In AH2 I had exploited a limitation of the terrain engine which was that if just one tiny area of a 1/2 mile terrain square was water, or if the square even bordered water then all the clutter (trees etc) was automatically deleted from that square. I had used this "feature" to create large clutter-free zones to give uninterrupted fields of fire. In order to prevent players with their graphics options turned right down from running into water that they couldn't see I placed these dots of water at the top of steep cliffs where GVs weren't supposed to go. AH3 does not have this limitation as the clutter can go right up to the water's edge. So as at the time I created the AH3 TT there was no tree-less grass terrain then there was no way to recreate the old tank town layout. Later on a single tree-less grass terrain was added to ETO terrain set so that shore batteries and runway ends could be cleared of trees, but by that time I was busy with other stuff and besides I never much cared for the AH2 map being a TT-fest anyway.
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what will this map be called? Maple leaf map or Irish map?
How about Sudz Buster? In honor of Sudz and for Bustr's work?
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The project is riftval for Rift Valley which there is one as the boarder between each country. I used the East Africa Great Rift Valley for topography models.
Greebo,
Sorry the resupply roads and tracks that are auto populated are 10 miles long. Kept thinking it was 5miles for some reason, just did a creaet all test. The distance they start away from the edge of a square object is 300ft. I'm still testing placing one down ad-hoc on a different side of a field. I'm guessing no matter how long past 10 miles you make it for cosmetic issues, the start point for the convoy to spawn is 10 miles along that path. Now I need to pull up some topography around a test field similar to what I'm facing on riftval and hope for the best running a 10 mile road. You can see with a number of the field locations there will be river bottom land to make that easy. It's the high lands I've got to find something that fits the theme.
That strat complex I'm using to concentrate the target, I have duplicated it on my test terrain and will need to spend some time ad-hocing roads for the flak bases and rail for the strat to shoe horn them all in to fit the foot print. Glad I decided to just level that 18mile diameter space, I don't need to be wasting time on it with so many fields to shoe horn in these roads.
Oh well, this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into.... :O
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<snip>
Oh well, this is another fine mess I've gotten myself into.... :O
Nope, some would call it a work of love for the game. Others, the work of a genius. And for those who can't see either way, well, they can go fly War Blunder.
:salute
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Nope, some would call it a work of love for the game. Others, the work of a genius. And for those who can't see either way, well, they can go fly War Blunder.
:salute
How about ARMA where the game is molded around the Ground Game.... there are many of us here and are here for the ground game AH 3 offers. And the GV part of the game has drastically changed from AH2 to AH3 unlike the aerial combat portion of this game which little or nothing has changed. We had a night time that lasted 10 or 20 minutes...now it like 1 or 2 minutes, why was that cut back? Why are the clouds not over fields when a furball breaks out, seem the only time the clouds are around is when your in a bomber getting ready to bomb.
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Greebo,
Duplicated my strat area on a test terrain and laid in the train tracks for resupply. There appears to be a zone around each path segment as the maximum distance the mouse will target moving a segment around. Then it grabs the next nearest segment even if it is a different track. I suspect if I do this by cutting off the end of the path and adding new path with Ctrl Rmouse, I can bring the paths very close together. As is it's about .5mile separation and I setup three tracks to start together north and south of the city. Like a rail head arrangement and a place to catch all three trains in one go.
I've gotten the paths in place here in the test arrangement, I still have to set the resource type for each path for it's strat type. Run the mask and build. Then CMeye and watch for trains to run. It works out, I'll test laying down roads by hand for each of the flak bases as convoy resupply roads. By hand appears to be how I'll get all this shoe horned into this terrain.
Test terrain with tracks in blue. When I do the roads to the flak bases, I'll try to create a ring road with branches to feed each strat. I'll just combine 6 paths to look like one. Hope it works.... :O
(https://s20.postimg.cc/v1nfw38fh/medtst694.jpg)
Strat area on riftval in each country.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/c9bksijr1/medtst695.jpg)
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AH3 has a smaller gap between terrain vertexes than AH2. Normally this doesn't matter too much when a terrain is ported over but in the case of the old CraterMA TT it did. The cliffs that lined the fighting area no longer worked as their precisely positioned vertexes were now in the wrong places. I could have adjusted some vertex alts and kept the basic format but then I found another problem. In AH2 I had exploited a limitation of the terrain engine which was that if just one tiny area of a 1/2 mile terrain square was water, or if the square even bordered water then all the clutter (trees etc) was automatically deleted from that square. I had used this "feature" to create large clutter-free zones to give uninterrupted fields of fire. In order to prevent players with their graphics options turned right down from running into water that they couldn't see I placed these dots of water at the top of steep cliffs where GVs weren't supposed to go. AH3 does not have this limitation as the clutter can go right up to the water's edge. So as at the time I created the AH3 TT there was no tree-less grass terrain then there was no way to recreate the old tank town layout. Later on a single tree-less grass terrain was added to ETO terrain set so that shore batteries and runway ends could be cleared of trees, but by that time I was busy with other stuff and besides I never much cared for the AH2 map being a TT-fest anyway.
The last part is the part I was afraid of. I understand The limitations you had to work with and how much trouble it would have been to re do it for AH3. Along with NOT liking the "TT-fest" I cab see where you didnt want to spend the time. Unfortunately THAT was the biggest reason most people liked your map.
Oh well. :(
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I rebuilt it for the most part in the center of BowlMA and no one uses it now. It is also a numbers issue creating a critical mass attractor effect for players that ended up with so many players in the AH2 tank crater. We had more players back then. Another factor for AH2 was how far you could see a tank and successfully shoot it. In AH3 our range of clearly seeing other tanks was limited by default for graphics card general play-ability and it had an effect on the willingness of many to make any effort to adjust their graphics to see out to 4 miles which I tested extensively while creating the BowlMA tank crater. That is the diameter of the 500ft high gallery lip that rings the BowlMA tank crater you can spawn out into villages to fight between houses and feilds. Then add to that AH3 clutter and trees has taken everyone time to adjust to with some who refused and left.
You have to admit an overnight transition from being able to shoot for miles through sparse tree lanes in AH2 to the AH3 "virtual reality trees" was a gut stomper for many. It took me two terrains of experimenting to start getting a handle on that problem. But, there is nothing any terrain builder can do about the actual properties of the trees in AH3 and how your GV interacts with them and how your ability to look at them takes place. You have to tweak your graphics settings your self. And I seem to remember AH2 GVers did that to get the best gamey views possible. Other than thin the trees with grass or dirt tiles and a very thin brush width, then drive that ground in a tank between thinning steps until it is more like AH2 or some other standard. I can do nothing else, the trees is what they is. And I do spend a lot of time driving what I create on my terrains becasue of what initially happened to the AH GV community.
It amazed me no one caught on to what this test means for GV combat on riftval. Small rolling hills, sparse trees, places to hide or see for miles and take long clear shots. Kind of what AH2 GVing was like except the ground was either really flat or someone plopped down large hills and small mountains that were kind of like large bread loafs or giant marshmallows. Hmmm, I'm hearing the ghost busters theme.....
(https://s20.postimg.cc/n1m0aanjh/medtst689.jpg)
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Well Greebo, I hate, and procrastinate over the spawn paths but, they are done and now I can put the infrastructure on to this terrain. Along with the micro terrain around spawns and, since Hitech likes having some fields without spawns to them, each country has 8. And they will be the kind with the map room next to the tower. The ones without a ring won't have a town or spawns to them. Four of those ringed ones are vBases connected in that triangle. I decided one CV task group per country is enough in that small pond.
Note to self: NE valley extend the greenery up the full length of the river.
Waystin christened this map the face hugger becasue to him in the early construction phases it looked like that thing from Aliens when it leaped at the camera. Reminds me of the underside of a starfish or a sea urchin.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4jxqk7k1p/medtst699.jpg)
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I don't know-but with all the gv spawns looks like a potential for in your face gving or on the other hand a ton of spawn camping.
not that it matters to anyone I will reserve judgment until map is done
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I dunno, these things change as you spend weeks staring at them while putting in all the infrastructure. You guys who try to zing me with comments, have never built a terrain for the MA, and really have no clue about this whole process and how it evolves by all of your way off the mark observations of 2D screen captures and not building the terrain in question real time. That is why I create the master blue print document in layers with one specifically for the spawn paths. I just finished laying in all bases and strats about an hour ago. Started this morning around 7am. I had to look at the master document to follow the numbering and location of each base and type. I'm still not satisfied with the spawn flow since I just spent the day building the destinations and using CM mode to hover over every single location and look at it in offline mode. Whole lotta work just to build a kiddy play ground for adults to try and zing me.....
I post this stuff so you guys can see how it's done. You guys are determined to use it as an exercise in zinging me over what?? I'm building a terrain, what are you doing lunatic for our game? BowlMA and Oceania both had several iterations of full spawn paths before I published those terrains. It goes with the creating these beasts.
Why don't you build a terrain? You seem to feel you are an expert at what is wrong with my work, and what a waste for the community that you don't produce something better.
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I swear, I must really hate GVers and tanks in this game. Why else did I design this terrain with so many river valleys and put most of feilds down in them? I mean look at some of those views from potential places I'm forcing tanks to look at those feilds with their optics before having to drive all that way down hill through those sparse trees....... :rolleyes:
(https://s20.postimg.cc/i8wko4sz1/medtst702.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/54r0bflhp/medtst703.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/dzrulyhzx/medtst704.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/5hiehmqwt/medtst705.jpg)
Just look at all the valleys on this terrain and all those poor feilds at the bottom of them. Yeppers, I hate GVers sooo much.... :furious And don't get me started on strategic bomber guys too.......... :O
(https://s20.postimg.cc/yve4xg6jx/medtst701.jpg)
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I swear, I must really hate GVers and tanks in this game. Why else did I design this terrain with so many river valleys and put most of feilds down in them? I mean look at some of those views from potential places I'm forcing tanks to look at those feilds with their optics before having to drive all that way down hill through those sparse trees....... :rolleyes:
(https://s20.postimg.cc/i8wko4sz1/medtst702.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/54r0bflhp/medtst703.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/dzrulyhzx/medtst704.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/5hiehmqwt/medtst705.jpg)
Just look at all the valleys on this terrain and all those poor feilds at the bottom of them. Yeppers, I hate GVers sooo much.... :furious And don't get me started on strategic bomber guys too.......... :O
(https://s20.postimg.cc/yve4xg6jx/medtst701.jpg)
They have no idea how well they have it. It it was my map, all the GV spawns would lead to the center of the lake. :devil
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Already did that on my last two terrains. My left big toe decided to put an island in each time for them to chase each other around on when I wasn't looking. I've been very good to them becasue they are Hitech's paying customers. Villages to hide in, long viewing and shooting lanes. Good hiding places with easy traverse through the evil trees. I would remove trees using grass tiles to cut down on getting tangled up in them. Or villages with a spawn in the center to stop the suicide spawn camps.
This terrain I decided to scale everything like a real world. And let the chips land where they will with most of the fields at the bottom of river valleys. In a land like that dominated by river valleys those are the levelest places to put airfields and other outposts. The vast majority of ridges over those river valleys are between 800-2000 ft much like the rest of the world where people chose to live becasue the topography makes it attractive. So those slopes I took the screen shots from are 80-1000ft above the feilds at about 3 miles out where the center of the spawn circles will be. And I used tree tiles that give them those long range clear view lanes like in AH2. I also have cosmetic roads now so I can put in orchards and agrarian farm feilds and the roads have a function that will remove all the trees I lay the road over. Long viewing lanes or fast roads to run through orchards to get at a field.
Why would I spend do much time testing tank combat terrain and roads through it on a test terrain?? Go figure...... :rolleyes:
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Waffle's orchard tiles in the Mediterranean tile set have been laid out in a perfect grid work for creating a grid of 20-40ft tall hills with grass avenues between them. Most of the orchards end up on top of the little hills making great ambush spots.
This is the first field on riftval that I'm working out using the orchard tiles as micro hill guides. All the feilds, towns, map rooms, ports, task groups and strats are in now. I just have to lay in the spawns and micro terrain all the spawn endpoints around fields like I did with this field today. I'm not adjusting the terrain to keep long range sniping from happening on this terrain, I'm leaving it as is and just fitting the feilds to the topography. If someone wants invest the time to drive up into the higher orchards to the left of that panther and snipe, you gents will just have to get good at taking care of snipers. Or get really good at hitting the runway from three miles to stop bomb trucks.... :O
These micro hill grids are actually really fast to produce. Now I'm not sure about putting in cosmetic roads becasue of the grid work paths of grass I've used between the hills. Aside from the required convoy road, cosmetic roads will either help the defenders to pinpoint locations by using the roads as common references to hunt tanks. Or the attackers to get to the town at full speed with no getting lost in the trees but, with the grass at the bottoms of all the paths through the hill grid, you have unobstructed runs and shooting lanes as you can see in the screen shots. The land the town and airfield are on is 500ft, the grid is created by cutting the grass paths to 450ft then raising up the hill tops to 550ft. Then a tool I run quickly over the whole grid rounds the tops and pulls up the bottoms a bit. Then the low areas are about 485-490ft while the high are about 510-520. You end up being able to see a ways in front to look for ambushes or navigate. It ain't berms but it ain't a pool table either. I know, they's Waffle Bumps..... :D
A panther somewhere in the spawn circle and one from the town looking out to the spawn.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/x2ga66u8t/medtst708.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/dxd0wgpvh/medtst709.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/grg69wcm5/medtst710.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/n559d5p7x/medtst711.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/yu99140r1/medtst712.jpg)
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I set the spawns three miles out from the town after stop watching how long it takes a panzer to go three miles when I built my first terrain. I'm getting the feel for these micro hill grids with orchards on them and should start speeding up creating them around all the feilds. This panther is on the highest elevation(350ft) in the orchards about 3 miles out from the vHanger near the spawn. While you are ranging the vHanger in the optics screen capture, you are giving yourself away for a response with a bomb. This is field A1 with a medium airfield.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/gh4iw14xp/medtst713.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/feucdgjjh/medtst714.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/yjxln85x9/medtst715.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/o9v6nznrh/medtst716.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/h6nb8dxrh/medtst717.jpg)
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Looks awesome Bustr! Clever spawn points!
So, when are we gonna get to test this bad boy out? :x
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I have 28 river paths to put in, 25 left to go as I write this becasue I want to place spawn points on the other side of bridges. I have 69 feilds with spawn points at them with all the micro texturing like in the the screen shots to create. And then I have drive all of them to look at my work close up in a tank versus the terrain editor. I'm always surprising myself with how wrong something looks in a tank on the terrain versus the terrain editor. I may have found a bug with the resupply roads\tracks or I fat fingered something in a test setup. I've submitted a dump file and I'm waiting for Hitech to give me some feed back. I still have to put in convoy roads for each feild and train tracks for all the strats. I was testing my strat complex on a test terrain with supply trains and got a CDT out of the testing. The trains refused to run...... :rolleyes:
So I have no clue when this one will go into the queue, I'll keep doing all the infrastructure work until I have to setup the resupply. Either Hitech will have looked at my DMP file from my CTD or I'll have to submit a new Bug POST about it.
I place the spawn 3 miles from the field or town. These two have the map room on the field and the white ring is two miles from the map room to set the bridges. In the river bottoms I run the river along a path set to 1ft since it's an object on top of the ground. The banks gradually rise up to 20-25ft in most cases where the fields are located. I use an elevation brush set 5ft and cut in a grid to define the bottoms of micro hills. A tank will disappear from view behind a 15ft tall hill even without a lot of trees to hide in.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/isz8v6orx/medtst718.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4zaw64ogt/medtst719.jpg)
Like with my previous two terrains, the vBases support feilds so I won't put spawn paths between vBases. Do that and you won't see your GVers all night. The paths allow them to get at combat initiatives or start their own which will attract everyone. Just like on BowlMA and Oceania. The feilds with black rings have a town and no spawns. White rings have a town and spawns. Red rings have the map room on the field and spawns. Blue rings are vBase or port. I think the big river at the boarder of each country I'll finish it old school since there are no feilds next to it and not too many small curves. There is a simple way to make shores without having to resort to the make beaches tool.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/xsrlj634t/medtst720.jpg)