Oceania map/terrain tank town

[lunatic1]

when AH3 was in Beta and then was released for play-there was a map/terrain that had the exact same tank town set up, for the 1st time tonight I spent a few hours in tank town, that's when I noticed the center of tank town looked familier, but I had fun there tonight, I seem to remember that being a good map-I can't remember the name of it. when beta was released it had a bug to where you could drive a tank into 1 of the long white buildings. it was one of the 1st 3 or maps that came out when AH3 Beta went live.

[Dundee]

The small Island Map maybe?

[bustr]

NDisles was our first alpha testing terrain and Waffle first introduced that retirement community golf course from somewhere in Texas..... Then it was changed out for CraterMA once it was converted. The trees in the beginning were so thick that you could shut down right next to a road and another tank would drive by and never see you.

[lunatic1]

NDisles never had the same type of TT that oceania has

[bustr]

The 2x2 tank town object on NDisles and on Oceania is the exact same object. I spent two years testing things in it for Hitech along with putting in my gunnery training terrain and then in Oceania. The choice of how the local polygon mesh outside of the 2x2 object called tank town is shaped is up to each terrain builder.

You would know this if you knew the joke: Have you found Roy's yet?

It's in the exact same spot on any map that 2x2 object is placed on.

[lunatic1]

The 2x2 tank town object on NDisles and on Oceania is the exact same object. I spent two years testing things in it for Hitech along with putting in my gunnery training terrain and then in Oceania. The choice of how the local polygon mesh outside of the 2x2 object called tank town is shaped is up to each terrain builder.

You would know this if you knew the joke: Have you found Roy's yet?

It's in the exact same spot on any map that 2x2 object is placed on.

yes sire you are right the NDIsles is the same tank town-I never paid attention to it before, because I like the dogfighting that goes on at that field. now I will be gving there a little more.
but on future maps if we could use that tile that would be great.
Oceania is a great map I like it better than the BowlMA map thankyou.

[bustr]

That tile can be over done and not used. It's in the center of CraterMA and no one uses it and it's the same object, which is a pity, that's a great map. The venue matters to how it is presented and I spent almost a month rebuilding that tiny island to get the result you like. I blew it completely away twice and raised it out of the ocean. Then I filled the canals and started over once. I went through at least 4 variations on painting in the trees and vegetation while driving it and thinking like a tanker.

Tankers in this game are like Goldy Locks and the Bear trees. OH!! to thick, OPH!! too short, OHHHH!!!!! maybe today is just right. Whers my 300ft spawn mound................... 

[8thJinx]

Hey this is something I've been meaning to ask.  Was there any scaling differences - and I mean any - when the AH2 maps were converted over?  It almost seems like the AH3 terrains are a little bigger.  Like if a valley was 5,000 yards across in AH2, now it's 5,700.  Just wondering.  I noticed that on NDisles.  The scale just seems a little off.  Same thing on SFMA2016.  I noticed it at field A50.  I can put up A50 from SFMA in AH2 on my old machine, and SFMA2016 on my new one, and the scale looks noticeably off.

[bustr]

I thought visual distance was shorter in AH3. One day on NDisles a squadmate and I were flying up by A28 and we have both been here since NDisles first came out. We were remarking how the visual distance in the slot between islands looks shorter.

Funny to mention distance. I was watching some WT tank\aircraft videos to try and determine the size of the terrain polygons. I got the impression they are the size used for our fixed objects created in 3DMAX or at least for the terrain polymesh only a bit bigger. Say in a scale as low as 25-50ft. Watching some low level inflight views of the terrain I realized since their arena is 10x10 - 15x15 for aircraft, the land mass is created from a geomap import. And the roads, buildings, farmland and everything else is done from aerial overlay photos where someone sits down and fills in objects to build in the features from the photos. And painting it all, that must be a mind numbing task becasue in a closeup of North Africa, it was not readily observable repeating tile patterns. Instead it looked like it was painted following aerial photos. I hope Gaijin pays their terrain team well for that kind of detail.

The tank arenas are about 6x6 - 10x10 created the same way. But, becasue of the tiny size the place is filled with active objects that can be impacted by driving over, into, shooting at, and whatever else you can imagine becasue there are a fixed number of players on each side and the arena is a limited timed match. And then the terrain building team has libraries of town, city, farm, and other active objects. All becasue by limiting the total number of players in any kind of arena and making the arena easily fit inside of one of our sectors. They solve for the FPS hit from too many objects to render in your visual space. But, they only have 20 people at a time active in any one arena versus our world of 625,000 square miles and over 100 players at a time as long as they want to stay logged in. You have to get really creative with 660ft polygons and the fact if you have 100 fields with GV spawns to them, that is 100 WT size tank arenas in almost every one of our terrains. It's amazing how many destroyed tank hulk static objects their arenas can host laying around to confuse your ability to find the active enemy tanks without GVDAR.

Their open country tank battles are open country line of sight lazer fests compared to our clutter tiles and how invisible our GV's can become by turning off their engine. But, then their GVDAR removes any chance of hiding for very long. And they give you an enemy damage read out to let you know how well you are doing with each shot.....

I think they are allowing Ju87 to attack tanks in the higher skilled realism match arenas now, a player who drivers TigerII was bragging about wing shooting a Ju87 like our guys do from commander mode in one video. Wonder what kind of whines Gaijin gets from their tankers about GVDAR.....

[Dundee]

The 85 spawn point was one of the best tank battle spots of all time, and it was sort of away from any airfields so it was just a GV battle that attracted many players and was time consuming for any bomb****s to get to. One feature was the heights were tanks could set up and pick off tanks below and sufficient tree cover that tanks below had an opportunity to snipe the tanks on the heights. It was a larger map that I do not see coming back soon because of the low number we have. Our map makers might add a similar set up on some up coming designs..... a place were the GV's can battle it our ....and not a bomb**** fest for the flyboy's

[8thJinx]

The 85 spawn is one of a couple of legendary spawn areas.  Sure, there could be a camp going on, but once the camp was broken, the fights were absolutely epic.  I miss that.  And nobody, no where on the internet, has or had that kind of epic free-for-all tank battle like the 85 spawn, the 135/136 spawn, or the Beta2 valley spawns, to name just a few. 

And the only reason we don't have them now in AH3 is because no one has made any... YET. 

They will be back.

[bustr]

I did that in the center of BowlMA and no one wants to get their thucus shot off. It replicates AH2 craterMA, V85 and others. There are so many places to hide, long range from heights and shoot back up at them, and play peeka boo inside multiple villages you spawn into. Very few people bother to fly over to mess with the tanks. I setup that caldera to make it easy for wribles and osti to take care of jabo messing with them. No one uses the place when that terrain is up I think becasue the most dangerous plane is really the storch which you cannot hide from. GVDAR is meaningless in there for a reason...Hitech mentioned in the alpha\beta he would introduce it. The pit is 4 miles across with villages in it, so driving across and hiding is not the problem. Everyone is too busy following the air initiatives around the map becasue all GV spawns are protected by being in the center of villages. And they have at least one other village to pass through and hide in before making the dash to the town. Even with GVDAR tanks are horrible to find becasue of how Waffle setup the agrarian farm village tiles with woods and pastures. So some good tank fights happen with a lot of ambushing along with bringing their own wirbles who you can't see from the air until it's too late.

My BowlMA gets a lot of tank activity becasue of how I crafted the spawns. But, it's only one terrain in a large rotation number and it has not been around long enough for people to remember the spawn villages and how well tanks can be hidden. Then there is Oceania, if guys start spawning into the center tank town the action gets hot, lunatic made a post about how much fun he had. And on Oceania once again I crafted all the tank spawns to protect the tanks from spawn camping and gave them micro terrain to hide in even with GVDAR. And there is a lot of tank combat on that terrain but, it is one terrain in a rotation queue of terrains so the spawns and GV action is not yet really remembered like players remember V85 due to that terrain being played on for years.

Consider how many rotations over years it took for the terrain V85 was on to become remembered for that feature alone by players along with the AH2 CraterMA. And it helped that we had a much larger community to remember together as a collective.

We don't have the collective memory anymore from a large group of players keeping other players apprised of good and bad terrains. And the specific well thought of features on terrains. The best we do now is point out stinkers and make sure everyone hears about it. But a feature they have fun with, it's the old adage that when a customer has a bad experience they immediately make sure at least 10 other people hear about it. A good experience, they enjoy it and then may tell a few friends. This is one of the reasons for Marketing departments.

You guys should have just built terrains to suit yourselves and not lambasted Hitech or me over how I build my terrains.