Patch 79

[Easyscor]

I would like to suggest a timer for the Host Message: "Next mission will (be) ready for population in 42 jazillion mins"

If a mission isn't scheduled for a couple of hours or more, then a single instance of the information is all that's needed. Minute by minute updates, imo, are annoying unless the mission will start in the next 30 to 120(?) minutes.

[715]

I decided to use one of the new rivers instead of cutting rivers below zero elevation. Where the river meets the water of the bay, and the lake the river comes out of, the vertical drops at the start/end need to go, same as for the roads imo. I was thinking the start/end point faces could have a similar tapering treatment used for the roadsides and riverbanks. Yeah, I know that's harder than it sounds if the road surface is to continue.

I've also been playing with the new river, trying to trace the Dnieper river in Ukraine.  That splits and recombines downstream of islands and this necessitates using multiple river splines to match.  Where two splines come together the bank of one intrudes into the center of the other.  Obviously we don't know yet how these will render in game, but in the TE it looks like it will be a visual problem.

[bustr]

Easyscor,

In theory I should be able to follow Skuzzy's directions, end up with the funny colored terrain in the TE. Then simply start painting in funny colored terrain. I can't even paint in basic terrain from the default terrain. Something about this is faintly like learning UNIX over the phone.

I suspect there might be keys or ancillary info one needs to know to get off the water into ground painting business here.

[bustr]

Yeppers, just like learning UNIX over the phone. Once I went to the elevations tab and set alt, I could paint landscape including manipulation of the landscape by changing the numbers in the "set Alt 3".

Guess this thing is for the truly motivated like GIMP and Photoshop requires. That is why I created my gunsights in Paint.Net. That PDF Easycore told me to look at didn't give me a clue on how to use this tool for dummies. The old Wiki AH2 instructions set an expectation of what to look for, not what to do. The rest was pushing buttons and clicking on things to either get an exe error or eliminate clicking on something. When you first open the tool and figure out how to start a new map, visually it looks like you can start painting because of the red brush dot sitting in the map editing field with all of those selectable terrain tiles on the right. It is not intuitive you have to use the tabs above those tiles to set the tool's focus.

Is it possible for someone to post the how to paint terrain, set elevations, lay down rivers and roads, and introduce objects for dummies? 

[bustr]

Every time I try to get a small field onto my terrain, clicking OK or Apply to the object properties GUI I get a close this program error from Windows.

[bustr]

By accident I discovered there is a maximum alt above the terrain you cannot exceed or when you try to OK or Apply the object like a Small Airfield to the terrain. In response the editor "Windows errors" out. I was at the maximum distance away from the terrain I could push the view alt slider up. Maybe a popup admonishment instead of a dump to the desktop would be kinder here.

By trial and error, pushing buttons and selections, I got a map built with a single airfield and now testing it offline. Had no clue how the usable terrain was supposed to get constructed. After being religious about saving anytime something worked, I thought the terrain was ready for offline. Only the fact that NDiles had an ndisle.res file in the ah3terr directory and my map didn't, clued me to go back and look for some kind of compiler button or menu choice function.

You really need an "Idiots Guide to the Galaxy" for this thing, otherwise, it's self eliminating on who will ever want to use it. This may be a good thing in the end for Skuzzy's sanity.

[bustr]

OK, is this the results you wanted for alpha 79?

[USRanger]

   Good job bustr.  And nice find on the alt-to-hit-ok-button-bug.  I've always hit the button only a couple thousand feet above an object at the most.  If you want terrain making help, can you come to the AvA on Tuesday night(s) at 9pm EST?  That is when we have our Staff Night and do a lot of talk about terrain making.  We'd be happy to help you with anything you need.  When the final version is finished, I'm sure someone will do a write-up, as this new TE is so different, it will be needed.  In the mean time, verbal communication is working very well for us to learn everything that we can do up to this point.  So consider yourself invited, along with anyone else wanting to learn.

 

[bustr]

Thank you,

Tuesday nights is POTW's squad night.

Who knows, maybe my stumbling around trying to figuratively "find the bathroom door in a 4 sided smooth walled room" was something Hitech wanted to test. I found the bathroom door hatch in the floor by sheer luck while the door into the room is through the ceiling.

Wish the logic for that editor was more straight forward like using Paint.net. I eventually did figure out how to use Photoshop to create a 32bit  alpha controlled gunsight for the closed alpha just before Waffle and Hitech really worked on the gunsight itself. The Historic gunsights in the alpha, I made them with Paint.net after they finished their gunsight work, did them all in 2 days. Where with Photoshop, I struggled for two days figuring out how to save my work as a bitmap, and then get the mask layer and alpha layers to work for a simple ring and dot 32bit gunsight. And an 8bit indexed bitmap ring and dot, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

The Terrain Editor was just like fumbling around in Photoshop getting nowhere fast.

[USRanger]

Yeah, that's my squad night also, same day, same time.  If you miss one squad night so that you might create something that will add to the game for everyone, I'm sure they'd understand.  If not, I'll pick ya up & drop ya off so they don't mess with ya back at the Pigpen.