Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: bustr on May 07, 2018, 01:19:48 PM
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Waffle created a tree tile for the Med tile set that makes for great sparse tree covered rock slopes and run off ridges. The screen shots below are from the spawn over looking a port from a low mountain side. All tank combat in our game is in an area defined mostly by a half circle including the GV spawns into the target like a town or port. A 3-4 mile radius half circle to one side of the target. The rest of the terrain, no one except for a few ditching pilots will ever see up close. This means you don't have to knock yourself out creating micro texturing on all 625,000sq miles of a terrain. Just the small half circle at every GV spawn. Cut's down immensely on the fine detail work and the micro hills, ridges and gully's are almost an afterthought with a few brush strokes.
These screen shots are inside the terrain editor. First without trees enabled to see the hill and gully structures. Second with trees enabled. You can just about see the 3 mile radius half circle defined by the micro texturing of hills and gully's.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/cy556tlr1/medtst721.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ppjbdc38t/medtst722.jpg)
These are offline in the game from the left hand spawn circle and one down in a gully just off the spawn.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4fvp2i2dp/medtst723.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/8c90yhv31/medtst724.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/e0fbpdjzx/medtst725.jpg)
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Texas Hill Country, baby. :O
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Many of the feilds are at elevations 20-25ft above a river that I placed at 1ft to use the new river path tool. Then with a 1ft elevation brush I started cutting gully's from the river side of the field which is at 20-25ft, down to the river. When I test drive these, sitting at the bottom of a 1-5ft deep low area, I wonder if the defending tanks are screwed. So many low areas and just the right amount of sparse trees to play peekaboo.
Panther sitting on 1ft elevation gully bottom. Some of this micro terrain is so shallow, I can only see it by driving over it with a tank after I brush it in place set to 1ft rise per second. I get to do a lot of tank driving with this terrain. Hitech, the mask is very, very, very irritating.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/57yd1qgvh/medtst726.jpg)
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Another location on the terrain, you got to love Mediterranean style orchards and how they grow so well on hills and slopes.
A spawn into a field somewhere on the terrain in the orchards.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/w8c5qbsbh/medtst727.jpg)
If you are willing to drive a few miles for the view, I climbed up that slope in the back of the previous screen shot.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/5n9murxnx/medtst728.jpg)
Yes Mable, I'm dropping rounds on that tall brown roofed factory building in town.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/72b7jhjbh/medtst729.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/9jmyqqvi5/medtst730.jpg)
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Nice job! :aok
Coogan
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There is a painting brush in the terrain editor that can be set from 660ft-31680ft(6mile) diameter. It can be set from 25-100% fill which when you look close means it's targeting that percentage of the circle area you set the brush to in small spots of paint. If that could be set to the "raise hill tool", a 6 mile diameter is the combat area around a field a tank will ever drive through. Then a single click at say 1ft per second rise would create the whole tank micro terrain for any given location. Some adjustment would be required, but, the whole area would not require becoming a Michelangelo with a magnifying glass and a raise hill brush set to 660ft diameter and 1ft second to hand raise all of those micro features. Yeah I know, use L3Dt....Meh, at this point I can do it all with the free terrain editor that comes with the download. And you still have to paint the end results with our terrain editor while I fast create the coarse land mass in an art program as a hightmap anyway.
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Texas Hill Country, baby. :O
Have chased some monster storms in the hill country V :cheers: there is a strong resemblance.
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Texas Hill Country, baby. :O
Heh, that's just what I was thinking. Looks great!
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Texas Hill Country, baby. :O
LOL that was my first thought.
Hills and gullys for me is....
(http://www.farmlandsrealestate.co.nz/pics1/pic15/PN1081.jpg)
or
(https://www.wellingtonnz.com/assets/Uploads/images/Pauatahanui-Inlet-3.jpg)
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I made some like that thinking how neat then drove them in a tank. The angles are too steep and the bottom of the gully's become tank traps or they cause the tank to roll on it's top. I have to keep things inside of a grade and angle range for the best tank performance to sneak and greet combat. And there will always be someone shut down on a hill top waiting.
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I made some like that thinking how neat then drove them in a tank. The angles are too steep and the bottom of the gully's become tank traps or they cause the tank to roll on it's top. I have to keep things inside of a grade and angle range for the best tank performance to sneak and greet combat. And there will always be someone shut down on a hill top waiting.
I think it was more a comment on texas 'hills', last time I was there the place freaked me out it's so flat. 2nd photo is down the end of my street.
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I think it was more a comment on texas 'hills', last time I was there the place freaked me out it's so flat. 2nd photo is down the end of my street.
Depends on where you go in Texas. We have coastal plains, hill country, mountains, dry desert, wet tropical, high humid areas and low humid areas. Texas is a lot of country.
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Depends on where you go in Texas. We have coastal plains, hill country, mountains, dry desert, wet tropical, high humid areas and low humid areas. Texas is a lot of country.
This. Texas has a bit of everything. The hill country northwest of San Antonio and Austin is absolutely lovely.
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The part of East Africa I used in modeling the topo features for this terrain look like parts of Texas, some of those Texas exotic ranches have nice antelope from Africa. I used to live in San Antonio. Have to admit when I drive these micro features to look for problems each time I finish a field, I keep telling myself this looks like Texas and kind of expected these comments. Guess you can always look at this terrain when it's up as Germany and Japan tried to invade Texas and ran into Texans. Now all I need is Waffle to model a hogzilla or a herd of swine I can put out around the airfields to make the Texans of AH feel at home. What do we do with the sheep then...... :headscratch:
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This. Texas has a bit of everything. The hill country northwest of San Antonio and Austin is absolutely lovely.
We also have the second largest canyon in the United States, Palo Duro.
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The part of East Africa I used in modeling the topo features for this terrain look like parts of Texas, some of those Texas exotic ranches have nice antelope from Africa. I used to live in San Antonio. Have to admit when I drive these micro features to look for problems each time I finish a field, I keep telling myself this looks like Texas and kind of expected these comments. Guess you can always look at this terrain when it's up as Germany and Japan tried to invade Texas and ran into Texans. Now all I need is Waffle to model a hogzilla or a herd of swine I can put out around the airfields to make the Texans of AH feel at home. What do we do with the sheep then...... :headscratch:
Keep it up, bro. It's looks good. Now if you can find a place for ENCHANTED ROCK STATE NATURAL AREA we'll be set. :rofl
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Terrains have an obscene amount of empty space you have to do something with and no one will ever look at it in a game.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/p9ccfx0p9/medtst732.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/pyv4sagod/medtst733.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/6493656lp/medtst734.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4p7ihfd8d/medtst735.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/jxxfv7mcd/medtst736.jpg)
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You could make Pianosa from Catch-22. Sandy beaches are good for sunbathing, too. :rofl
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Why don't you.....I'm busy finishing this terrain for rotation.
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We also have the second largest canyon in the United States, Palo Duro.
How to befuddle a Texan: Ask him if Texas has the world's biggest midgets, or the world's smallest.
- oldman
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Why don't you.....I'm busy finishing this terrain for rotation.
*ROWR* :ahand
I wasn’t suggesting that for my benefit. I was offering an idea for you to fill the vast empty space you said you had to deal with. Those mountains reminded me of Catch-22.
I am done trying to build terrains. It’s a convoluted process I can’t even begin to understand. I can’t get even the smallest map to show on my end. Been there. Done that. Tried it. Until it is like Sim City few people will ever manage to figure it out. I don’t see myself in that few.
Besides, skins take up my spare time as it is. I’m reworking the metal on all of my Mustangs. Gonna take awhile.
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When you create the 1:1 blueprint file you have already identified everything to fill space in your theme. You have seen for 5 months I've known where every field will be placed since the day I imported the heigthmap to create the base block 3D terrain. Stop trying to have some kind of an impact on the outcome of what I'm creating. These posts are not my needing an input about building my terrain. They are to show what is going on. If you cannot or are unwilling to do it yourself, control your need to sling something at people to try and get away with it. You already know I don't need what you are trying to get away with.
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When you create the 1:1 blueprint file you have already identified everything to fill space in your theme. You have seen for 5 months I've known where every field will be placed since the day I imported the heigthmap to create the base block 3D terrain. Stop trying to have some kind of an impact on the outcome of what I'm creating. These posts are not my needing an input about building my terrain. They are to show what is going on. If you cannot or are unwilling to do it yourself, control your need to sling something at people to try and get away with it. You already know I don't need what you are trying to get away with.
:noid
:rofl
I love how you always INACCURATELY evaluate intent. It’s uncanny how wrong you are on a consistent basis in that regard.
Do whatever you want with your terrains. I am neither concerned nor offended with whether or not you like my ideas. I’ll post them as *I* wish regardless and you can take them or leave them as *you* wish. If they manage to spark an idea all the better, but whatevs...
(I have no idea what you’ve done the last five months. This is the first thread of yours I’ve bothered to read in that time, and the quote above is a reminder why.) :aok
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If I was wrong you wouldn't have replied.
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If I was wrong you wouldn't have replied.
Really? Is that how it works?
LOL
:rolleyes:
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How to befuddle a Texan: Ask him if Texas has the world's biggest midgets, or the world's smallest.
- oldman
We are tearing down the Astrodome because it is too small.
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We are tearing down the Astrodome because it is too small.
:rofl :aok
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How to befuddle a Texan: Ask him if Texas has the world's biggest midgets, or the world's smallest.
- oldman
EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas--including our midgets.
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Depends on where you go in Texas. We have coastal plains, hill country, mountains, dry desert, wet tropical, high humid areas and low humid areas. Texas is a lot of country.
It was around Dallas and the HTC offices.
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It was around Dallas and the HTC offices.
Ahhhh, pancake land. It does not get much flatter than that. The mountains and hills, in Texas, are in the western part of the state.
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Ahhhh, pancake land. It does not get much flatter than that. The mountains and hills, in Texas, are in the western part of the state.
You should see the RGV where I grew up. When I came up to DFW/East Texas for college I kept talking about all the "hills" I could coast down on my bicycle. People were like, "What hills?"
:rofl
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Neat area to behold is around a place called Lost Cave. You can take a tram through a man made waterfall and feed exotic animals by hand. After that you can take a tour through Lost Cave, a cave that was made when large boulders (keystones) fell into a fault line that opened up during a quake long ago. You will go deep underground and actually look into the waters of the Edwards Aquifer. At the end you are in a great room where you can see the remains of ancient sea creatures in the ceiling. It was once an ocean bottom. From there, if you are not afraid of heights, you will go by elevator from that deep room up to a tower. When you stand on top of that tower you can look down and see the fault line. Look east and you will see the Coastal Plains. Look west and you will see the Hill Country. That is the dividing line between the two. Lot of caves and caverns in Texas. Many were used for illegal gambling back in the 19th and early 20th century.
History history history.............
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Pancake land is up near Amarillo. You can see for miles and miles and miles.
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Pancake land is up near Amarillo. You can see for miles and miles and miles.
The Valley is the same way. You can see Houston from Harlingen/McAllen/Edinburg.
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This reminds me of a theme in 90's movies. Hero has a freind who is a rapper. Hero needs the rapper and his posse to help him save the day. They catch one of the bad guys who can tell them everything and just as they start to question him. There is always a dufus character who chooses that moment to act out at the bad guy since the bad guy is now a "captive audience". And during the acting out the dufus accidental discharges his gun capping the bad guy ending any chance for an interrogation.
And the dufus always has the same excuse.
Yall knows you gives me a gun I'ez gonna shoot sumpin. Don't give me no gun cuz I'ez jus gonna shoot sumpin....
We don't get to have nice things much around here do weez.............
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Can someone violate Rule #2 in their own thread? :D
:rofl
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This reminds me of a theme in 90's movies. Hero has a freind who is a rapper. Hero needs the rapper and his posse to help him save the day. They catch one of the bad guys who can tell them everything and just as they start to question him. There is always a dufus character who chooses that moment to act out at the bad guy since the bad guy is now a "captive audience". And during the acting out the dufus accidental discharges his gun capping the bad guy ending any chance for an interrogation.
And the dufus always has the same excuse.
Yall knows you gives me a gun I'ez gonna shoot sumpin. Don't give me no gun cuz I'ez jus gonna shoot sumpin....
We don't get to have nice things much around here do weez.............
Sometimes I have no idea what these colonial riff raff are on about. Can someone translate into the Queens English please?
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Get off my lawn
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Get off my lawn
:rofl Great pun.
"Get off my [terrain]!"
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:rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl
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There are no mountains in Texas. :old:
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There are no mountains in Texas. :old:
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh. Sorry, Hans, wrong guess.
West Texas has a large portion of the Guadalupe Mountain range (among others). El Capitan is 8,000+ feet and it's only the #10 highest peak in the state.
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It's nice that you gents are trying to abuse this post to sort of help Vriacu get even with me. Still that is rather petty of all of you.
Sometimes as I work on this terrain it evolves becasue I'm busy creating the micro terrain around airfields and in the river valleys and don't generate a map for awhile. To use a tree tile to help give tanks more cover from the spawns up to the fields, I had to create the illusion of a globally exposed strata along the walls of the river valleys. It is what makes the micro hills look like the Texas hill country in the earlier screen shots. I have one more country to go on the right side of the map for spawns and micro terrain around feilds. I'm getting sick of the micro terrain becasue it's like I'm building 96 tank combat arenas inside of this giant air combat arena. Then, I'm hoping Hitech fixes the resupply convoys and trains not running so I can install all of those and once again revisit all of those tiny combat arenas I just created. The error checker in the terrain editor has been updated so I cannot submit this terrain until the resupply network is in.
I've have been consistent for almost two years now. When you build a terrain like I do and get it accepted into the MA. Then come sit on my grass and we will talk about terrains. You gents are being petty.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/6nqmlqf65/medtst743.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ku6dgyxr1/medtst744.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/70i0rxcvh/medtst745.jpg)
The top of those shelves on each side of the river that the river has cut down through is 660ft. I created a canyon system and eroded the land down in steps. Yes the terrain editor has a handy little tool that does erosion. If you predominately build from the perspective of an air combat fan in the game, you will build "over scale" as a natural tendency to wanting to see topographical structures while in flight. When you fly above canyons, they don't look like they do to you while you are walking in them. Often the ground is pretty monotonous from altitude. This is the quandary of scale I have to work while making the game look like it is scaled for tanks crawling on the ground in those hills and gully's this post started out about.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/z35zz01z1/medtst746.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/z35zz09ot/medtst747.jpg)
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It's nice that you gents are trying to abuse this post to sort of help Vriacu get even with me. Still that is rather petty of all of you.
(https://i.imgur.com/YWbmKnr.png)
Coogan :rock
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It's nice that you gents are trying to abuse this post to sort of help Vriacu get even with me. Still that is rather petty of all of you.
:noid
That map is looking good. Keep it up.
(https://i.imgur.com/YWbmKnr.png)
Coogan :rock
:rofl :aok
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This dead horse is unrecognizable. :headscratch:
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Looks great bustr. There is so much work that goes into creating a terrain. I myself and many others appreciate those who take the time and effort to create new and different terrains. I just wish they would create a tile that had small mounds to hide behind when someone uses a ground vehicle. Maybe mounds where trees are sparse. Anyways, keep up the good work.
Cheers, One-eye
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The micro terrain texturing I'm doing at all feilds will be enough. I realized after taking a few screen shots that seeing the far ground to near ground in game 3D visual relationship between hills and gullys didn't transfer with the 2D screen shot. It's like the real world where you walk up on the top of a hill and see the parking lot your car is in a mile away and you think your hike is over. Then you walk down into the low area between the next hill and can't see anything. The smallest hill I can make is 660ft across the base and I've accomplished that as a micro texture. I'm building 96 6 mile area tank maps to have every spawn area up to it's field textured with hills and gully's scaled to tanks.
I suppose Waffle could have made one tile for each tile set with pimples on the surface. I suspect just like the villages in the Eurotileset that I used for BowlMA, they would have been slope angle dependent. If I painted a village tile on too steep of a slope, the buildings would not be generated, only the trees and streets. And then the question would be how would I see placing pimples down on terrain I'm trying to scale to a theme? Or am I correct that most tank players in this game really want a super mario bros. tank world to play tank carnival after all is said and done?
Mounds where trees are sparse??
When you try to paint a few trees with the smallest brush, 660ft diameter, you are never sure of the outcome due to how the 1x1 mile source tile is oriented in the 1x1 mile grid area that you are trying to place one dot of tile paint on. The grid is oriented North and tiles are oriented North. So when you paint, your tile simply repeats itself oriented North across every 1x1 mile grid box or portion of your brush touches. Painting a 660ft dot is more like putting a cover over a 1x1 tile, then cutting a 660ft dot in that tile to let you see that position under the hole you cut.
By the way, 660ft is a very wide swath of terrain when you actually drive it in a tank. So anything smaller than 660ft, unless Waffle creates a tile that emulates sandpaper so anywhere I place a 660ft dot you have smaller mounds in some pattern I cannot change. Then you are talking tiny objects that have to be built like any other object such as revetments on vBases and made available for me to one at a time place them onto the terrain. Then you are entering into the realm of problems due to adding additional objects to the arena might impact localized FPS of large furballs. Or have issues of terrain functioning properly by placing objects too close to each other.
I have a lot of limitations I have to work with, and around, to get my terrain to the state it is right now. You can see many gully's to duck into on your way to attack that port in these next 4 screen shots. How do tank hiding pimples work here in this geological theme unless like in all the films I've watched of our competitors. They arrange their towns and terrain features to make a real world looking\super mario funlands for tanks. You should read some of the professional blogs about that. Realism is highly over rated versus super mario fun driving around blind siding other vehicles. They all want to shoot each other in the back our push each other off cliffs to drown each other. WW2 is highly overrated when you want super mario hiding spots where they would never be geologically in the real world.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ppjbdc38t/medtst722.jpg)
You can clearly see the 660ft limitation I have to work with in all these hills and gullys and so many places to hide.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4fvp2i2dp/medtst723.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/8c90yhv31/medtst724.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/e0fbpdjzx/medtst725.jpg)
Notice this gully is higher than the land to the left but lower than the land to the right and the airfield in the distance? You are driving 2miles up from a river bottom at 1ft elevation while the airfield is at 25ft. This is about 1mile in and there is a gully past the trees in the far ground and more micro hills. So where do you want the super mario none local theme pimples in this? There is a geological formation left by glaciers called moraines and my micro hill texturing is consistent with what is called a "ground moraine" even though I'm creating run off gull's on a watershed. In the Cascades you can find "mounds" left by a glacier called terminal moraines which are about 200ft long and 50ft tall. You could always ask Waffle to make "erratic's" as objects which are house sized boulders left by glaciers something like 75ft by 50ft.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/57yd1qgvh/medtst726.jpg)
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Psssst..... TEXAS
:neener:
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I've lived all over the world, parts of Pakistan look exactly like parts of Texas. Parts of the US west coast look like Japan. Only thing Texas dosen't have are rift valley's but, it does have some canyon land and looks like parts of Africa and the Mediterranean. Meh, must be a slow day for a bunch of bored curmudgeons.
Views from the spawns into a vBase and from that vBase back out to the spawns. Rolling hill and gully land running from the base of a mountain range down to a river valley. The vBase is on a 200ft area midway down the run. As I've been driving this to inspect the work using a panther, it's obvious the low profile of the turtle tank killers would be easy to miss laid up under some trees on a hill waiting for passing tanks. And that mask tool is getting reaaaallllyyyy irritating and adding time to tweaking the ground between spawns and feilds which takes a boat load of time making micro changes then driving the ground after each change. I have two feilds from this weekend I'm still balancing the hills and gully's to tree density. 660ft of open space is just not fair to a GVer so I have to play with dots of tile painting and gully micro sculpting to make it a bit more fair. Micro moraine pimples would do nothing to make it fair.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ga8jrbnz1/medtst748.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/zfbt13xi5/medtst749.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/o2z7jb1nx/medtst750.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4l4k3dk5p/medtst752.jpg)
CMEye Mode half way between the spawns and the vBase.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/sc3xlhcn1/medtst751.jpg)
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Here in Texas we would have shot bin laden. Then dumped him in the Gulf Stream.
We are nothing like pakis.
That dang map is looking really good.
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Only thing Texas dosen't have are rift valley's but, it does have some canyon land and looks like parts of Africa and the Mediterranean. Meh, must be a slow day for a bunch of bored curmudgeons.
Got any active volcanoes or fiords?
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I am limited to functions Hitech provides me. If he creates that kind of active object then I can put it in.
He could probably create a perpetual giant black regenerating smoke plume like from a burning radar tower. Wonder how badly it would eat FPS for some players 40 miles away without even seeing it? It would probably have similar restrictions that I had in creating weather systems for all the MA terrains. I can see it being some form of a cloud object. And then I have a restriction to setting up clouds in layers stacked above each other. You don't stack layers. It's all for FPS reasons just like I have to keep a 40mile open buffer between cloud formations. Now if our arena was say 20milesx20mile versus 250milesx250miles, sure you can jam all sorts of objects into that for 32, maybe 60 players. Lots of things to balance with 625,000sq miles to not kill FPS and have hundreds of players running around. I just build terrains and leave those things to Hitech to balance. There are reasons for the limitations that start becoming obvious to our Melee arena once you actively produce terrains for it.
This terrain is pushing the limitations of the AH terrain editor to the max because I wanted to see what the maximum realism I could create as an illusion, limited by the 660ft minimum building block and paint brush. It's all an illusion since the only place anyone will see these micro hills and gully's along with other small features is somewhere inside of the 6 mile diameter around a field. While airplanes will always be looking at the macro terrain which is topographically profiled to scale, then medium textured for what a pilot will expect to see from the air. The only time a pilot will see micro texture is low over a field landing, taking off, or fighting on the deck around a field. Elsewhere on the terrain out side of those rings, a pilot will have a lot more to worry about fighting on the deck. Similar macro, medium, and micro for task groups.
These rings at every location have a dual purpose, the three mile radius distance I place vehical spawns and the 6mile diameter area I will micro terrain for tank combat and players on the ground to see that level of detail. Some world of tanks arenas are smaller than those rings with much more detail inside of them. The tools to do micro topography have always been in the terrain editor. And our competitors have always presented their product with that much detail. On this terrain there are about 66 rings with spawns to them while those black rings are airfields with no spawn but they still get some love becasue they can be captured and probably with an NOE.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/n1294y7el/medtst706.jpg)
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Got any active volcanoes or fiords?
How about volvos and fords?
We have a lot of extinct volcanoes and we have canyons.
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We have a lot of extinct volcanoes and we have canyons.
It's not the same you know, dead volcanoes, dry canyons... texas is such a let down - I thought it had everything. It's like picking up a hot girl only to find shes wearing padding in her bra.
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It's not the same you know, dead volcanoes, dry canyons... texas is such a let down - I thought it had everything. It's like picking up a hot girl only to find shes wearing padding in her bra.
You must have been stuck in Laredo.
:rolleyes:
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Vraciu if you ever want to get into the terrains, its really easy if you stick to the default stuff. if I can do it, anyone can. me or easyscor could hook up with you and show you. all you need is arktic's software and anyone can make a terrain. atleast a realistic one. bustrs terrains are designed for the main arena and are designed for a 3 way battles. mine are designed for 2 sided battles. anyway the offer is there. take it or leave it. your choice.
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Vraciu if you ever want to get into the terrains, its really easy if you stick to the default stuff. if I can do it, anyone can. me or easyscor could hook up with you and show you. all you need is arktic's software and anyone can make a terrain. atleast a realistic one. bustrs terrains are designed for the main arena and are designed for a 3 way battles. mine are designed for 2 sided battles. anyway the offer is there. take it or leave it. your choice.
I'd love to learn how to do this stuff. :cheers:
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I keep talking about micro terrain in the 6 mile diameter area around an airfield for tank combat. You don't need L3DT or Artik's program to create it. And all told the example I'm showing here, less than 15 minutes. I'll still have to do localized painting for tank combat even though the whole terrain itself is completely macro painted for airplanes flying over. All the tools have always been in the terrain editor if anyone wanted to even bother about it. I'm doing it becasue half of Hitech's customers play this game to fight in tanks and his competitors do micro terrain for their tanks.
There is a tool called a Smooth Catmul that will take those horrible 100ft deep pot holes and turn them into gullys down that 1500ft slope into this river valley. And those way too tall hills will be reduced by half. Then I randomly added 20ft hills and free formed some shallow gully's to tweak the look. Nature is very random up close at a tank drivers perspective level. I will still have to micro terrain the area around the airfield on the other side of that river since it's there so I can place bridges over it as choke point to get at the airfield.
This stuff is really as simple as using your finger to draw gully's in sand at the beach.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/pq7pqqi4d/medtst753.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/8poti1hxp/medtst754.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/uov858r25/medtst755.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/a4qe6rygd/medtst756.jpg)
Obviously this is way too sparse to not turn into a suicide spawn camp. I'll need to use the smallest brush and "dot spot" random patterns with a tree tile until I can balance hiding trees to seeing clearly around. All of those micro gully's and hills add many places to hide and play peekaboo for something as small as a tank. After I get this location tweaked so I can build it to test offline in a tank, I'll post back another screen shot of the final local area painting.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/3r1b3ilul/medtst757.jpg)
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I am limited to functions Hitech provides me. If he creates that kind of active object then I can put it in.
I'm just winding up the texans :) I'm told it's a national pastime over there.
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Now I've tweeked and painted it for tank combat. The mask tool is reaaaaalllllyyyy irritating. It's making me be better at creating small scale areas so I don't have to run it very often to be able to drive the area and make sure it's ready. It eats up a lot of time waiting for it to run on the whole terrain.
Once again from inside the terrain editor. At this point that is how you do this small scaled terrain for tanks, inside the AH terrain editor since you are also painting to create hiding places and sight vistas for tanks. I wish the mask tool would remove trees from the mounds on each end of a bridge so I can paint trees covering around the bridge area to give tanks cover. As you can see I have to use a grass dot to remove trees from the bridge ends which is 660ft of death in this game for a tank to be open to snipers.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/frrchissd/medtst758.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/fezybci8d/medtst759.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/jbda7caxp/medtst760.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/g4iqnpy7h/medtst761.jpg)
This one is on the terrain offline at the spawn.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/pp2dalv99/medtst762.jpg)
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I'm just winding up the texans :) I'm told it's a national pastime over there.
To wind up you'll have to try a lot harder. :aok
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I have to say, I very much dislike the new river overlay. Not your fault bustr, but the uniform width and stark edges of the river really undermines the effort you put into making realistic land features. No doubt you can make better rivers by hand. It may be far easier to lay those down instead of painting your own rivers, but is taking the shortcut worth it when the result is that bad?
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Good to see my old friends and favorite developers are still on the cutting edge! Devil505 drew my eye to the river bank automated result. This brought about two questions:
Would it be coad friendly to be able to set automated rivers at constant depth below adjacent terrain? (Might eliminate the ridge bank illusion that I am seeing).
Would it be coad friendly to paint random collections (representative shapes) of naturally occuring river bank obstacles / clutter along tops of the river banks? (Something that might warn / prevent vehicles encountering difficult impasses.)
To be clear, I am just wondering if it would be coad friendly for the developers to add such tools to aid in automated river construction with more appealing results.
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I have to say, I very much dislike the new river overlay. Not your fault bustr, but the uniform width and stark edges of the river really undermines the effort you put into making realistic land features. No doubt you can make better rivers by hand. It may be far easier to lay those down instead of painting your own rivers, but is taking the shortcut worth it when the result is that bad?
Take a really close look at our competitor's rivers. Their answer is great eye candy all around the river while it looks like ours with larger waves. I think Hitech has either solved the visual anomaly 50ft wall issue at distance looking at the river banks already or, is working on it. I thought you were an air combat guy and wouldn't be crawling on the ground anyway.... :D
If the 50ft visual wall anomaly is not fixed, you can hide at the river bank and not be seen until the enemy tank is 350yd out while shooting him. Then only the very top of your turret is visible at 350. I tested it on my test terrain and gave Hitech the results.
Our large polygons makes the smooth river bank solution with this version of the river path object competitive with the competition. It is a limitation of the polymesh so that hundreds of players can be in the Melee arena at the same time. Chilli if you build a terrain you will learn this and other limitations to having large numbers of players in a 625,000sq mile arena at the same time 24x7. AH is about the only company that does this in our genera. WWIIOnline has one single map\arena slightly smaller than our 10x10 and half our 20x20 maps and they are only just putting out an update to bring their graphics into the 21st century about the level of AH3 graphics. And they can do hundreds of players 24x7 with what looks like all of our limitations in mostly ground combat. But, they scale the micro terrain for that perspective which we never have. I am honestly pushing the limits of the terrain editor with this terrain on purpose to create the most realistic results I can scaled from a tanker perspective to air combat perspective with what Hitech provides me. Most of you have no clue how must trouble this is to get these results. And it will be the same trouble if I started with L3DT or Artik's program becasue of the polygons and needing a 6 mile diameter area of micro terrain at every GV spawn for the GV game perspective.
Our competition does this quite well with terrain builders on staff from what I can tell. I've watched now 18 months of their videos to see what they are doing for their tank game level perspective for their customers. They have a boat load more objects than we have for all the neat eye candy but, their terrains are tiny little things so they don't get the FPS issues we would with so many extra eye candy objects laying around. So I have limitations I have to work with.
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I thought you were an air combat guy and wouldn't be crawling on the ground anyway.... :D
It looks bad from the air.
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Here is a shot of a river in the Rhineland terrain. It was made using Artik's program, but notice how the terrain dips down towards the river, indicating a natural low laying area for the river to flow occupy. Also notice how the width of the river is variable. The river looks like a natural feature. It belongs there.
The new river overlay makes rivers which look like irrigation canals.
(https://s6.postimg.cc/5pvawywk1/ahss81.png) (https://postimg.cc/image/jjjnm0p59/)
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Here is a problem I run into with the tank level terrain. I can put it in and get down a few feet off the ground level and look with and without trees turned on. Hills and gully's between 1ft to 100ft do not show up very well in terms of enough contrast to judge the efficacy for hiding a tank or transiting a tank or aiming and shooting down site lanes.
When I crossed the bridge in the first two screen shots and started driving up to the field, there were not enough gully's and the trees did not hinder racing a tank right onto the field or, getting that tank nailed by a sniper waiting for a racing oblivious tanker. I've got to cut into the high areas on each side of that very minor dip. I can't tell these things from inside of the terrain editor no matter how close I get, I have to be in a tank from that perspective. You cannot believe how many hours of tank driving in this game I've done since my first terrain almost two years ago.
I place three bridges spaced about 1mile acorss rivers that I put a spawn on the opposite side from the field. The next 6 screen shots show trees off and trees on at each bridge looking up to the airfield which is at 85ft.
The first two I talked about that I need to cut the two rises on each side of the shallow gully. Unless you have built a few of these, my audience is asking, what am I looking at, it's apples and oranges. Scale and perspective to that scale is the problem. Only being in a tank driving up what you see here works.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4q5k4zl19/medtst763.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/3nvdmgx31/medtst768.jpg)
The next bridge a mile down stream.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/t6npzh17h/medtst764.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/5fochd8q5/medtst767.jpg)
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And the last bridge down stream.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/wq9npar2l/medtst765.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4q5k4zsr1/medtst766.jpg)
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Here is a shot of a river in the Rhineland terrain. It was made using Artik's program, but notice how the terrain dips down towards the river, indicating a natural low laying area for the river to flow occupy. Also notice how the width of the river is variable. The river looks like a natural feature. It belongs there.
The new river overlay makes rivers which look like irrigation canals.
(https://s6.postimg.cc/5pvawywk1/ahss81.png) (https://postimg.cc/image/jjjnm0p59/)
Do you know how that river was created or that the water is at sea level to have it exist on that terrain and it has to be that wide to get smooth shores. Our competition does the same thing as our new rivers while stuffing an enormous amount of objects right up against the river to hide the shores by over loading your eye candy receptors with "stuff". It is all smoke and mirrors to fool your brain into playing along.
Take a look at my terrain Oceania at the hand cut narrow rivers and the canals in the center I put in. That is the best you can get with narrow enough water ways to get the bridge objects across. It is an enormousssss PITA amount of work making narrow rivers in the terrain editor and they look like crap no matter how careful and skilled I work them. And depending on the direction you run a curve against the polygon mesh, it gets reallyyyyy crappier and jagged and cannot be smoothed unless you make the river some ginourmous fat thing like in your screen shot.
That is why I tell you gents to build a terrain or arguing with me is accomplishing "What"? I build with what Hitech gives me to the best it's limitations allow me while researching the competition to try and see how they facilitate their smoke and mirrors. I am limited by polygon size and the amount of seen and unseen objects in any 40 mile direction you look so FPS won't kill your game fun.
I'm hoping Hitech has the issue with the "canal" shores worked out which will remove at least that raised aqueduct look at a distance to the the rivers. Irregularities in the shore, I can create short segments and vary the width a lot. I'm not going to test that until the existing issue of 50ft high shores is resolved. Once it is, you can create lakes with the river tool with a segment of river in a high valley up in the mountains and spawn a PT on it to ride around in. But, it takes testing things like that to come up with alternate uses to entertain your eyecandy receptors. You see anyone doing that these days.... :rolleyes:
If I don't test it I don't know how to use it and also, I find bugs that I can tell Hitech about. So what did you want to argue about....... :huh
Note to self: Adjust the river color to blend the transition area to water better. Bet no one sees all the micro terrain testing in the first screen shot.......
(https://s20.postimg.cc/gjwme5b8d/medtst539.jpg)
Yes Mildred that 5ft river shore grew to 50ft ther about a mile away.............. :rolleyes:
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4mixzjgi5/medtst546.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/z3ysr2w59/medtst547.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ogizfh7t9/medtst552.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/3u21c11l9/medtst544.jpg)
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Bustr, once again you take a general comment as a personal insult to your efforts. It was not.
My comment was a criticism if HTC for creating a feature which is a poor attempt at rivers. You have beaten the terrain editor into submission making the best looking ground out of what this game can do, but these new rivers look like a joke in comparison to the land next to them. No one is doubting the sheer effort you put in to learning and mastering the terrain editor. I was just using my screenshot to illustrate that this game can have more realistic looking rivers. I have no idea how the Rhineland terrain was made, but I know when a river looks like a river or a drainage canal. Maybe HTC should have created longer span bridges to cross the wide, hand drawn rivers instead of these noodley creeks to fit the existing bridge objects.
And really what purpose do these rivers serve anyway? What good does allowing a PT boat to traverse a river do for the game? All it does is allow players another low risk avenue to grief aircraft. No thanks.
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I'm not taking it personal, you still don't grasp the limitations of terrain building. And you are probably thinking Hitech can just program a solution which is not as simple as saying it in text in this post.
The competition's rivers are built the same way. They have smooth shoulders to keep the 2D river surface object just above the land below to stop z-fighting of two dissimilar flat objects placed in the same space. They load the land right up to the banks with eye candy trees, rocks, objects so your brain agrees that it sees one heck of a nice river. Their's runs with smooth edges with a boarder just like this new one you are looking at. Anything else would require much smaller polygons involved and no one could play the game due to FPS 2 to maybe in the 20's flying near them I will venture.
To have 32 or more players you sacrifice the size of the polygons your topography is built on for frame rates which gives you some strange angular effects at times if you get to close. That means Hitech can't cut a 5ft deep trench to smoothly set the river object down in becasue the smallest polygon unit it 660ft. The trade off is you have a river object that can be run from 1ft at the ocean to it's head waters at the farthest away mountain. That terrain river your picture shows is the land opened down to sea level to that width making an illusion of a river. But, that is a special event river that we fly above 20,000 over most of the time. I'm building micro terrain for tanks and running a river to put bridges over.
So lets talk terrain construction, that is what I thought I've been doing. If you have a complaint for Hitech, tell Hitech directly which is more constructive, not slip it into here as an inference. I have already documented the 50ft shoulder issue with the river for Hitech. As for the shore line, even that honking wide river in your screen shot has a smooth segmented shore line with shore waves exactly like when you build an island and run create all beaches which is probably how those shorelines were created.
In these three screen shots below the remnant sandstone mesa at the confluence of those two rivers is 661ft high becasue the rivers are sitting on a 1ft river valley bottom. Out at the nose you can see 660ft which is the smallest building block in the terrain polygon mesh. Ginormous ain't it? And my ever present ginormous PITA I have to work around or with. So your ginormous river in your screen shot fulfills the size for 660ft and you get smooth river shores. Just try it with a river 50ft wide and make "S" turns, it will be truly stinky.
I'm giving some tank guy a neat present at this location if he can hit anything at 4 miles away. I adjusted the color for those two rivers and they don't stand out so much. I may try pulling them back farther and narrowing the mouth with this color. Lots of tweaking and adjustments just to not offend the eyecandy sense. And that is what a terrain really is, an illusion to get your eyecandy sense to go along with the slight of hand you know is happening.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/6i7pr3gi5/medtst769.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/fd8k1lpv1/medtst770.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ik33l8i0t/medtst771.jpg)
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Bustr, once again you take a general comment as a personal insult to your efforts. It was not.
My comment was a criticism if HTC for creating a feature which is a poor attempt at rivers. You have beaten the terrain editor into submission making the best looking ground out of what this game can do, but these new rivers look like a joke in comparison to the land next to them. No one is doubting the sheer effort you put in to learning and mastering the terrain editor. I was just using my screenshot to illustrate that this game can have more realistic looking rivers. I have no idea how the Rhineland terrain was made, but I know when a river looks like a river or a drainage canal. Maybe HTC should have created longer span bridges to cross the wide, hand drawn rivers instead of these noodley creeks to fit the existing bridge objects.
And really what purpose do these rivers serve anyway? What good does allowing a PT boat to traverse a river do for the game? All it does is allow players another low risk avenue to grief aircraft. No thanks.
This.
I'm not taking it personal, you still don't grasp the limitations of terrain building. And you are probably thinking Hitech can just program a solution which is not as simple as saying it in text in this post.
There you go again, incorrectly reading minds.
That said, Hitech can program just about anything he wants. He’s already proven this.
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Vriacu my wife says use your own leg to sniggle on or grow up. I know your my age but, you keep reminding me of someone skyyr's age.
Finally got all the spawns and micro terrain in place and local painting done for for that. I still have to up a plane at every field for a look from that perspective, then any tweaks of the local terrain. I'm waiting on the next patch for Hitech's fixes of the path function and objects. Because of the mandatory convoy supply road that will run to all feilds, I'm thinking about cosmetic roads to act as local navigation aids. Got to think about that some more since I want to leverage the supply roads and tag secondary paths off of them.
Did a shooting test from that sandstone mesa, with HE I could get to about center of the airfield with a panther. I only aimed at the bottom of the view port and didn't try elevating the port out of sight above the field. I sat at the vehicle hanger in a TigerII and could lay AP on the spot I took the screen shot of my panther. I don't know how many AP rounds it takes to bring down a hanger or if you have to drop one exactly on an ack gun before it will be destroyed. I arranged things to make it very difficult for a single tank to bring down the vHnager with HE or sniper everything with impunity at the field. Down at the bridges is a different story. That location the panther is at is around 4 miles and change out from the map room.
There is that 50ft tall river bank, sure hope a fix is in the next patch, it's really 5ft tall when you get right up next to it.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/5sz19cq59/medtst772.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/um8la0ol9/medtst773.jpg)
From what I can tell, if HE will travel 4 miles and some this sight picture needs a second equal length of the vertical line higher. Naughty me, I put the mesa too far away. :P I just needed a logical geological solution to keep the two rivers separated.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/gsk8ky14t/medtst774.jpg)
Sight picture that drops AP on the spot the panther was parked.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/qpv9e0ggd/medtst775.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/g31g8lnql/medtst776.jpg)
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Vriacu my wife says use your own leg to sniggle on or grow up. I know your my age but, you keep reminding me of someone skyyr's age.
Your wife says...? :rofl :rolleyes:
Well my girlfriend says you already “sniggle” up on your own leg and need to stop this blatant search for public affirmation (because when you don’t get it you lash out at others with a form of paranoid hostility that’s unwarranted). I know you’re my age but you keep reminding me of someone her students’ age.
And my momma says...
And my sister says...
And... :rofl
Grow thicker skin. If you don’t want criticism or suggestions then stop posting your stuff here. Devil505 is my skinning mentor and when it’s deserved he rips my work to shreds with his critiques. Others on that forum (Custom Skins) do the same. It’s invaluably good advice and helps one find ways to improve the quality of their final product. Compared to that he went easy on your map screenshots—and it wasn’t personal.
Take a chill pill.
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Vriacu your goal is revenge for feeling offended by me. So this what you have always done to people you feel slighted by since you have been a member of these forums. You try to trash their posts and see if you can get them Skuzzy banned by your antics. It sometimes makes me think you are allowing another individual to work with you in creating your attacks. Some of your syntactic constructs reminds me of skyyr but, who knows. That is those moments when the person behind your keyboard does not match up to your age like it does the rest of the time in these forums. Could just be you have issues when you try to transparently trash people to say look at me to this forum audience.
Other than players who have built terrains and especially those who have gotten a Melee arena terrain published into the queue, the majority of players don't know anything about terrains and particularly the behind the scenes of terrains. Players opinions and critiques of my work are meaningless becasue they have no way to see the total picture of what is going on to get any small snap shot of a few miles out of 625,000sq miles into my posts. What they want is to influence my outcomes without having to build a terrain themselves. That is the purpose of all of those "opinions" people are so angry over that I didn't take to heart and change what ever it was they wanted changed to make them happy. Why I tell you all to build your own terrain.
Regardless of all of your antics, I'm posting screen shots and explanations of what it takes to build terrains and how to build them. Even if you use L3DT or Artik's program, you still have to open that work in the AH3 terrain editor and get your hands dirty old school to get the terrain published for the Melee arena. It's not like I'm keeping any secrets about how to do any of this and trying to force players to do it my way. 700 screen shots later with this current terrain and everything is there for the taking if anyone had bothered to read my ongoing documentation posts in the terrain editor forum. The screen shots below are giving away how to create rivers with bridges and supply roads over them, and lakes. If I'm asked by someone working on it themselves, I tell them everything I know from my experimenting and terrains. Like visually raising the land around the lake 20-50 ft makes it easier for the eye to accept the 5ft shoulder that holds the 2D water object off the terrain to stop z-fighting.
Did you know you can create lakes with the river path tool at elevations other than sea level? I've got to post up an issue where spawning a PT boat onto a segment wider than 100ft makes the boat spawn under the 2D water object but, you can drive the boat down hill to the sea from a higher elevation. Big problem is if you miss your turn it fly's out of the river and trashes itself on the land to the side of the river.
The lower lake is at sea level while the upper lake is at 500ft made by expanding segments of a river. The ride down that river through the canyon has some hairy turns for a PT. Down at the lower lake you can just see the resupply convoy road I ran over a bridge to cross the river.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/tvz5pr3a5/medtst777.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/4mixzjgi5/medtst546.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/z3ysr2w59/medtst547.jpg)
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OK, figured out some of it and the rest is a Hitech thing.
When you want a lake at a higher elevation with a river running out of it, place the lake far enough away from the decline so you can run a bit of the river at the same elevation as the lake. That allows you to use part of a river to create your lake. Now the second thing is a Hitech thing.
If you place a PT spawn on the lake, this new one the width at the spawn is 3000ft, the PT spawns in and from an external view looks like a submarine that surfaced. The previous lake the spawn was at a 5000ft width and the PT spawned as a submerged PT. Testing I found that once the PT reaches a width less than 1000ft it begins coming up out of the water to ride normally. While the PT is semi submerged at the 3000ft width spawn point, from the captain's seat the PT looks like it is sitting normally on the water and while it is under way. At the 5000ft spawn it looks like the PT is sitting on the ground and when under way transiting along the ground. That is until it reaches the 3000ft width and starts slowly raising up unto past the 1000ft width and it's on the surface. If I turn the PT around and run back to the 3000ft width area, its slowly submerges the wider the shores get. Other than that the lakes look great and maybe Hitechdosen't want us driving a PT on the rivers and lakes. Who knows....
I did make it down the river into the canyon and ran into a rock in the river killing my engine. That is just some polygon house keeping I would have to to ensure a flat bed for the river path.
The new test lake which is now segments of the original river extended out along the high ground and widened.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/hrt308pq5/medtst779.jpg)
Some house keeping I need to do so I won't have rocks in the river to break my PT on.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/uvyncycn1/medtst780.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/yfkl2qzx9/medtst781.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/879gddnjh/medtst782.jpg)
A PT submarine at the 3000ft width spawn.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/fn8pz5gdp/medtst783.jpg)
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:noid :noid :noid :noid
Once again your attempt to ascribe motive fails SPECTACULARLY.
I'll tell you what you do. You try to skirt the line of a Skuzzy ban, getting a toe or two over it before scurrying back to your victim role. Nobody is buying what you're selling.
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I decided to push this farther to see if the river could be broken. I stretched it to 10,000ft at that wide area and dropped in a town. Then narrowed the lake next to the town down to 200ft. Hitech provided a bridge type for 200ft spans. I ran a cosmetic road around the largest part of the lake starting and ending at the two ends of the bridge. Will any GVer in the game use a road, I doubt it. But, it looks good, and something your brain wants to see since in the real world most of the time bridges and towns have roads associated with them for transportation. On my current terrain I've broken two rivers into branches from a "Y" fork. There is a technique to blending two separate river paths into one at a "Y". I suspect that can be used to fork branches of the lake off like you see with reservoirs that have been damned up to fill canyons. Probably could create the illusion of earthen dams holding back a reservoir and a river at the base as the outflow.
Just had the idea of a canyon land filled with a reservoir while forcing tanks to run on the shores and putting in a few narrows for bridges. Just have to make the bottom of the canyon flat, create your lake to a 2D topo profile passed onto the terrain visa the CBM bitmap. Then raise sheer sides up with enough space buffer on every side of the reservoir edge to keep 660ft as flat ground. Then tweak it a little in the 660ft buffer zone after you pull up the canyon sides. Doing it in reverse, cutting the canyon land down through a monolithic block of terrain leaves you with tweaking the river into a reservoir while fighting the canyon walls like building a ship in a bottle. Any way you do it, you have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with the terrain editor. The land around the lake in the screen shot is raised to 700ft while the lake is at 500ft. Then I smoothed in a slope all around and it has the illusion of a basin. From a tank perspective that 200ft rise in the slope is quite profound while from an airplane perspective 1000ft starts to become visible. Probably why so many older terrains have out sized geo formations. From the air those slopes around the lake are featureless, from a tank on the ground they look like a real world setting. With this third terrain I'm building everything is scaled from a tank perspective the best I can achieve with the 660ft building block limitation and not an airplane perspective which is more realistic.
My test of pulling the river width to 10,000ft to see if it would break. There is a restriction to running the road or tracks onto an object like a town or field. That's why that small road segment stops short of logically running all the way up into that white road junction. The terrain editor even has a new function to test for that condition.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/71xh8de6l/medtst784.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/96hu9gnj1/medtst785.jpg)
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This looks cool........ even from here in Texas.
Working on these can take a lot of time. More so when you are pushing the envelope.
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This looks cool........ even from here in Texas.
Working on these can take a lot of time. More so when you are pushing the envelope.
He does great work. That's evident. No doubt about it. Considering the effort it takes to even learn the most basic aspects of map making, well... :salute
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I'm still trying to break the river path tool and even with it's limitations, you can get some surprising results. There is a bit of visual bleed through from the ground under it as you can see with those green lines. Happens mostly at distance. You have to create the body of water on a flat area that the shore or shoulders of the river lay flat on. If not, where the shoulders are on a slightly higher elevation you will see bleed through or what looks like frozen z-fighting. That's why the reservoir doesn't butt up against the face of the dam. From the air you really won't notice that. But now you can create larger water bodies above sea level in the game.
1200ft earthen dam holding back a reservoir. It can't be bombed into breaking and dumping water but, maybe run a resupply convoy road or train track across the top of one to tempt a GVer or pilot to get down and dirty. Pilot1: what happened????? Pilot:2 the dam got me when I tried to pull up and fling bomb the train to avoid the ack...PERK THE DAMS Hitechhhhh... :furious
(https://s20.postimg.cc/garfh9nt9/medtst789.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/y0t42alyl/medtst787.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/v6pyouri5/medtst788.jpg)
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I couldn't leave well enough alone. Now all I got to do is stretch several river segments to fill up that reservoir and pull a river out of the next reservoir down up into the spillway. By game scale the dam is about a mile wide and 1000ft high. Those 660ft polygons put a lot of restrictions on things. It's a good illusion.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/cvi5aglql/medtst790.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/9d65dmi59/medtst791.jpg)
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Looks pretty cool...
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Dam Bustr !
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Interesting stuff Bustr, it never occurred to me the river would stretch wide enough to make a lake. I have spent the last couple of weeks playing with roads and rivers on my terrain but all my rivers just begin with a narrow section. I'll experiment with that when I get home tonight.
One thing I have noticed with bridges is to be very careful to avoid where the bridge land ends being higher than where it meets the land around it and so having a gap GVs might fall through. It is very hard to see this issue in the TE. So what I have been doing is setting my bridges to terrain height, positioning my viewpoint over the bridge and selecting wire frame mode. Then I rotate the bridge exactly NS or EW and move it into the centre of a square of four vertices on the map. To prevent the gap issue I set the vertices nearest the ends of the bridge land to 120 ft above those in the centre of the bridge. Then I adjust the river to run directly below the bridge.
In many places I am using a bridge across a river to create a choke point between the SP and the town. To help players locate the bridge I have a road running from the SP to the bridge and another from the bridge to the town or base. The bridges also look a lot better with a road running across them although as you said previously its a right fiddle to set this up. I think I am also going to paint the rivers and bridge positions on the clipboard map, otherwise players might start driving along the river away from the bridge trying to find somewhere to cross.
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I couldn't leave well enough alone. Now all I got to do is stretch several river segments to fill up that reservoir and pull a river out of the next reservoir down up into the spillway. By game scale the dam is about a mile wide and 1000ft high. Those 660ft polygons put a lot of restrictions on things. It's a good illusion.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/cvi5aglql/medtst790.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/9d65dmi59/medtst791.jpg)
That is pretty slick.
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At least on my current terrain becasue I scaled it for tanks upwards in profiling all the topography, my rivers are on the bottom of river valley's.
That means at any elevation the river is at where I'm putting in a bridge, the flat area is a minimum of 2x660ft wide. That is how close you can run an elevation brush set for 20-25ft higher next to the center line of an average 50ft wide river to cut micro hills dropping down to the river. Some river bottoms have small rises just back of the river side then a low area back of that due to regular flood periods. Makes for good tank hiding areas. Also, no one in a tank or flying over will be able to tell that the 3 mile segment of river running past a field with bridges over it is a flat section of land to create an illusion for the tank drivers. That is why I leave the Group Master 3mile circle on while I do the micro terrain around a field. I micro texture starting just outside of that because very few if any tank will ever drive outside of that 6mile diameter area. Saves me having to micro texture 625,000sq miles. The medium amd macro texture is all that's needed for the rest of the terrain becasue only planes will see that. Since topo features are scaled to tanks, on the ground the tank driver sees them as mostly distant elevations of land with no detailed features like in real life. It's the 3miles from the spawn that is detailed for them.
Read an interesting forum post from some terrain builders at ARMA. It takes a team of up to a dozen terrain builders to create terrains smaller or almost as large as ours over about 6 months or longer. Some of the terrain is flat and painted to look like a representation of a 3D world from the air that vehicles are not expected to drive around at. With all the 3D objects and functions they have to stuff into their terrains, one team of 9 couldn't complete a terrain about the size of our 1943 Europe terrain. I got the impression they have a toy box of 3D objects and functions that can be picked and choose'd from which have to be assembled into villages and other civilization artifacts. And then a more liberal policy on custom objects which may be due to most of their terrains are smaller than ours with less players. Still, look what we produce while still adding in all the toys Hitech allows us. And their terrain building tools are supposed to be more sophisticated than our old school terrain editor. Something like my lakes and reservoirs, once you know how to produce them, if you prep the space they go into properly, that earthen dam area 30 minutes. The foundation for that big dam area waiting for water, 40 minutes becasue I kept changing my mind on how the polygons looked in the dam itself. Something that small in a mega structure like a canyon reservoir stands out to the eye.
When making lakes with branching arms, just like when "Y" branching a river. You will have to kink a tiny segment of one river then set it to not show so you can blend the end of another segment into it creating the "Y". In my reservoir screenshot, it may not work past something 100ft wide. And to get it to work, I may be running a bunch of short segments and blending them. There is a problem when you bring together two different segments. As they come closer together, one end segment or the other will tend to be the only segment that will respond to your mouse. Means you have to prep the meet face of one segment and prep the other's face a few miles away then pull that up to the other river's meet face. At least I hope I can make that work with segments 5000-10,000ft wide.
I turned in a DMP from a CTD working on this test terrain. We will have to wait for Hitech's results. I'm not unsure pulling river segments wide into lakes is not causing a CTD after say 30-40 minutes while the convoys and trains are running. But it may be more likely the CTD happened in response to while I was letting the trains and convoys run while testing, leaving the game minimized to the desktop was the source of the problem. I was testing that along with the trains and convoys because some number of players always minimize the game to go look at other things. A habit I picked up from the two years of AH3 alpha\beta testing.
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It's not as flexible as I thought but, right as I gave up fighting with the branching to build up the land around what I did create, I have an idea how to make the branching work. Working with interfaces of thousands of feet in width is a PITA. Probably should have created the "Y" at 100ft then expanded all the relevant segments after they were interfaced. This expanding the segments to make a lake works better in spaces with less demanding shapes. In the end I built this on a open area then pulled up those low mountains around it.
Lancaster bombing the Dam.
(https://s20.postimg.cc/ms6npvtul/medtst794.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/z6tfq7t2l/medtst795.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/qbslfpbzx/medtst796.jpg)
(https://s20.postimg.cc/aqb9vq56l/medtst793.jpg)