Something for the Pacific Tile Set - 3

[bustr]

When you build a custom terrain by hand, one of the unavoidable things is you might have to scrap something and completely redo it. Many miles of it some times. Not having a scale benchmark to work from another terrain, I made my best estimate of scale on this terrain. Fortunately I had the opportunity to fly an NOE mission through the mountains of New Guinea during a recent FSO. Those mountains in real life are up to 12,000ft with many deep canyons and high hanging valleys. The creation of the terrain was only possible with Artik's program which I need to thank him for making it available. As a result of observing the structure of the mountains and canyons up close, I've had to adjust my perception of scale on Oceania.

The adjustment of my scale perception has made it easier to create mountain ranges in Oceania which is a fantasy terrain themed from the Solomons and New Guinea area. I remade part of a range on the main island for Country-2 this weekend, and so I will have to revisit all of my work in Country-1 and Country-2 to this point. And the Tepui's will have to be changed as a result of this also. My first terrain bowlma, the central tank town island is the 9th iteration of that island. 


Based on flying the mountains of New Guinea in FSO on an Artik application created terrain, my adjusted scale for mountain features.

[ghostdancer]

Looking very good and natural.

[bustr]

I hit that spot one more time because I updated the backside of the left right ridge spine, which introduced a blending of topographical feature issue at the very top center of the wash down. I'm almost finished with this range block while there is a long spine to go to the left out to the tip of the island. "Almost" is dependent on painting this block while balancing the propensity in tropical regions for trees to grow right up vertical faces and along razor spine ridges, to exposing rock at higher elevations. My wife used to teach art history and gets a kick out of listening to me artistically suffer through this.....

The AH3 terrain editor tiles are more akin to special brushes in photo shop than ever before. And understanding the real world terrain similar to your fantasy terrain is important. That immersion effect with the eye candy. That's why the Euroterr set stood out on the New Guinea SEA terrain. Hope your update is coming along OK...

[ghostdancer]

Well I fixed New Guinea and through a quick and dirty cliffs of Dover. Right now I am back and updating Italy (it had the old elevation data and soft hand drawn shores). The new info is better and more accurate but I have to move a bunch of bases about since the old data had them on land and the new data puts them in water. So basically production work .. bleck.

[bustr]

With Patch-31 and the map fix for sector lines, I've discovered early I have a bit of redesign on my main islands for the mountain range layouts.

When you build a custom terrain by hand or even if you were to use Artik's program to give yourself features to mix together into a single heightmap for import and supposed quicker construction of features. I should do that sometime and document the problems working with heightmaps for the 99% of players who have no clue about the inherit problems with the process. You are still on the hook to blend those features and adjust those features to work with bases and have a rational look for the topo features you chose to drop the bases into. If your macro topographical blends or your micro topographical adjustments around a base don't look right, they won't look right to the players who will report it back in the forums not as your fawning freind   .

Flying along comfortably over eyecandy and suddenly your brain goes, EEEEEEhhhfrapsquakTHUNK over something wrong, is a great way to screw your guests enjoyment of your work. Did it to myself on BowlMA numerous times while checking my work up close long before asking Hitech to look it over for the MA.

So here is my problem, red dots are strat, orange dots are airfields, hmm, maybe I should have been counting pixels sooner......


From my 4096x4096 blue print.





From my 4096x4096 CBM map out of the terrain editor. eek!! Now I wonder, should I  leave that giant 25,000ft beaver stump in the terrain as a "Feature"? Oh!! And this is a good reason why you create a 4096x4096 blueprint before you start your terrain. Does wonders for mapping things out in a 1:1 scale.

Red- strats
Orange - feilds

[bustr]

It seems at some point in the last two updates before 3.01patch-2 the Pacterrset stopped showing up in the terrain editor. This caused my terrain editor to error with a DMP file because I was trying to open a terrain that the terrain editor had no terrset for. The end result was posting a bug post that was not a bug. And a full unistall reinstall with 3.01patch-2 and choosing NDisles for offline play to get a Pacterrset download which finally showed up in my terrain editor. Even with that oceania would cause the terrain editor to throw an error. Fortunately I had a backup of the project from just before I started working the Country-2 main island.

Performing backups of your project folders and files is a good thing. 

[bustr]

That old saying about lemons and lemonade....

Before I lost the Pacterrset and ran off down that rabbit hole, I had been waiting for the fix with the map maker so that grid lines could be added. My base and strat object placement is keyed off of the 25x25 sector grid.  In between that I got a close up look at one of Artik's geomap generated New Guinea terrains and discovered a scale error I had introduced into my mountain building where runoff canyons are concerned. So now I have a super tanker full of lemons and some lemonade to make.

At least terrain sculpting doesn't take very long when you have your scale worked out and your techniques. Loosing the work on the Country-2 island may well be a gift in disguise.


I have some redesign of my assumptions to make here that will work out for Country2 and 3 and save me future time. Once you start a terrain and put in your base topography, you are all alone and no one can help you. In most cases asking for opinions will end up with someone or a group of someones telling you your idea is crap and you need to change it to exactly what they think your(their) terrain should be. And they will have no clue how much time and effort they are asking you to flush down the toilet.

I've gotta give Artik a big salute here because he has helped me to see the mistake in my scale perspective.

[bustr]

How do I proceed from here to correct all of those mountains to my airfields, strats and ports on this island? It makes sense that the ports will be at the end of some topo feature that creates a natural port. And I need to create slightly plausible locations for the two large airfields and three strats. Except for the fuel strat the ports, air fields and two other strats are 1x1 mile square objects. I'm making the three strats available to strat runners but, still want a reasonable way to resupply and lauch bombers against task groups near the HQ area. So I'll put them on the top of smaller volcanic mesas after I shift the ridge spine and adjust all of the runoff canyons.

It's easier to shape macro large rock formations if the whole area is one rock color but, I need an exact guide to where I will place my objects on the finished island to guide the changes. So I overlayed on the CBM map by creating a 4096x4096 map, then from the 1x1 10 layer blueprint file, I copied the 1mile diameter dots for the base and strat locations onto the CBM map. Then using the snow tile, I transfered those dots to the terrain by centering the dots and using "W" to zoom down onto the terrain to the 1mile grid square that the object will eventually be placed. I painted that 1x1 square with snow. For the large airfields I painted a square for the airfield object and a town object, then painted a 2x2 mile area for the fuel strat object.


Seems I have some work to do now......





 

[bustr]

Early on while you are creating your topography, take the opportunity to rough in your ports. When you get to the location you assigned a port to and are sculpting the terrain to have a rational for how a port would be built in that location. Actually lay down a port object, orient it, and rough in the surrounding terrain. Then that location is set, you will know exactly where a port goes and when you lay the port object down for real, you have only the finishing work to do.


The island I posted the screen shot in the previous post, the right hand port I marked before beginning the mountain range rebuilding work.


Port in place with rough work. I cut the bay setting the elevation tool to -200 which makes a clean cut.





Port removed, area already notched by the port object being in place and snow outlining the notch.

[bustr]

There is a unique object size which always refuses to be placed on the terrain in the manner your best laid plans need it to. That is objects that are 2x2mile like the super large airfield, tank town object, large vBase, and the fuel strat. Even using my blueprint 1:1 map to transfer object locations, I have to actually lay down a fuel strat and see "if" it will locate into the spot I created for it. Just like ports, I place the fuel strat for each country down when I get to that spot in my terrain creation and see how it fits. It is an opportunity to take a break and play with the terrain editor.

In this case I had to shift that caldera north east 2 miles to center the fuel strat in it. The 2x2 object lines up on the lower left corner and south facing object boarder. When you do a rotate object, it just rotates around that corner. If use move object, it shifts two miles. Checking out the alignment early on will save you later having to kludge the look of the terrain at that spot because you already finished it. Now that it is in place, I just delete it and move on with making lemonade out of my gigantic mountain rebuild lemon. I like to lay in the strats while I'm populating a country with it's base objects. On this terrain the strats will have no resupply GV spawns to them so it will have to be performed with C47. And you will be able to sneak a task group into the channel between the top of this island and the HQ\city at the base of the 25,000ft barrier range. All three countries will have this backfield weakness to give strat attakers more options than just bombers. All of the strats are out side of 16in gun range. 


Fuel strat Country-1.

[bustr]

Finally I've gotten faster creating mountain ranges.

Base green tree tile painting applied, I'll have to touchup with other tile types to get a more organic look of vegetation elevations and response to water runs. I can only apply the green tree tile in a band 2000-4000ft, still it speeds up applying large areas. I've tagged the finished object positions for the large airfeilds, strats and ports. I 'll hand build the beaches on the south side of the island because I have to work the north some more because that mountain range drops into the ocean.

[bustr]

Here is one of the reasons for a 1:1 blueprint file, I will be making the changes in green checker board to the terrain.

1. - Removing terrain to facilitate task groups getting at each other quicker.
2. - Duplication of the center island small airfields of NDisles for fighter furballing and tank furballing. The three small airfields on NDisles are set 12 miles from each other in a triangle. I'll raise the new ground as a 500-1000ft volcanic plateau.





After I do the general finishing of an area like this island, I leave place markers for the all the objects that I will lay down on that terrain for the base object phase of building this terrain.

[bustr]

This will make it easier for task groups to find each other now, each country will have 5-CV and 5-BB task groups.