Terrain Editor Merge Lines

[bustr]

Hitech,

Is there any chance you can add a function to the terrain editor that allows you to tell two tiles out of merge sequence to produce a single shared border merge line? Also if this is possible a global converter to address this in all merge lines on the terrain?


Screen shot of out of sync merge lines. The textured white rock and smooth green tree rock are high altitude mountain fascia in perfect merge sync. The tile merging with them is low alt rock fascia. One merge line for the two types from behind the red arrows would blend in better than three looking down from alt. A more subtle merge of this nature would be less eye jarring.

[hitech]

No on the global,

It maybe is possible on a merge brush.

[bustr]

Your suggestion to use the textured dolomite was spot on. It then created the problem that the merge around each rock structure looks like there is a green rip in the terrain. I will gladly hand paint everything one more time if you update the brush for this.

I have not been able to crash the game with the new weather file. To kill time I've been finish sculpting and painting the areas outside of the primary 26,000ft caldera wall. With a new tool, should only take a day's work to re-paint the merge around all of the rock structures.

As of 10:00pm tonight this is where I am doing the cleanup finish work.

[bustr]

I gotta be out of my mind.

I decided the corners looked like crapola compared to the center. Which means some day someone would pester me about that difference.  Touched up and re-cut about 1000 miles of terrain today. Funny how the biliniar smoothing tool acts like a 100,000 year a second weathering agent once you get the feet per second right for a 6 mile diameter brush.


As of 6:20 p.m. today. I started at 11:30a.m.

[bustr]

It's official, I've lost my mind.

Something kept bothering me about about the last clipboard map with the texture blends in the corners. I really wish this tile set had a dark gray or gray brown rock textured tile. To build these terrains this size you got to be slightly OCPD or the whole process will drive you nutz..... 

[bustr]

I'm still trying to crash the terrain since the TE is CTDing with patch24.

If I had a tool that made out of sync tiles merge with a single line, I can create a blend illusion instead of this, which dominates the whole terrain from the air. And the CBM maps I've been posting show just how extensive this bad blend is on the terrain. You can see the base colors are close enough a single line will visually disappear many cases while I'll come up with something for the rest.

[artik]

What I do in makeahmap I run large lowpass filter on the red channel such that I get smooth transition between different atlas types 0-15.

[bustr]

I appreciate that, at this time I'm kind of burnt out on learning another program with everything I've had to do to get to this point. Hitech gave me a solution where I use Atlas1 as a blend intermediary. I use a 25% brush and work the merge line. It's faster for me and I've got several thousand miles of single clicks of merging to go now. I needed to inspect the whole terrain once more anyway before submitting it.

[AAIK]

I like your design bustr, I hope you place the fields appropriately to incite the most action.

[bustr]

It's only after you get the land mass in place that you realize base placement following the rules for "MA distances between bases" limits you. At least with the wheel design you can start with bases in the center 1\3 ring at 19 miles expanding to max distance as you move to the outer ring while filling in odd gaps with the min distances. Before I can do what the forum experts think they would do from my keyboard, I have to follow the rules of base placement instead of their directives. This is more complicated than most players who scream loudly about exactly how terrains should be constructed understand. Hitech imposes limitations most never bother to learn about before ranting or opinions. That's why I invite everyone to produce their own product and show me a better mouse trap instead of telling me what I should do. You spend an "exorbitant amount of time testing" your design  assumptions before you package the thing up for HTC. I started Oct 2016.   

Easyscore, the AvA, and CM terrain teams will help anyone who wants to build a better mouse trap. The terrain editor is a free tool.

Airfields max 25 miles, min 19 miles. Same to ports.
GV bases min 8 miles from airfields and ports. Min 3 miles from another GV base.
Flak base - 8 miles
Strat - minimum 8 from airfields, 3 from GV base.
Clouds - 2000ft min AGL, one layer per any physical area, one stratus layer above normal high alt game play.


Field Layout Zones 5 months ago by creating a clipbaord map and editing it in an art program. It took a month of hand cutting land mass and painting it to get to this point. In the past few weeks Hitech suggested I change out the rock type for the whole terrain. I've now repainted all of the rock and it's boarders three times in the last 5 months. Takes about 24 hours of hand work to accomplish it each time because the large scale area tools would destroy all of the lowland islands. Am I being over sensitive, nope, until I got to this point with my terrain, I never understood how much we as a community take for granted and disrespect the efforts of the players who over the years build these things. No one gets paid for all this work.




End result 4 months later.





And a whole lotta finishing work the forum ranters never see to get it pretty.