I was shoveling snow today...

[Motherland]

And I had an idea.... watch out!!

With Ranger's sandblst terrain coming along brilliantly, we will soon have (hopefully) maps representing the Pacific, summer European, and now North African theaters. The obvious hole is in the winter/Russian area, which does kind of suck because... well, beside that there are whitewashed skins in game, and that winter landscapes look awesome, a significant portion of the war took place with snow on the ground!

Now there are three 'periods' that come to mind (for me at least) when you talk about war in the snow; I think the most obvious is the Russian Front, with its miserable, muddy conditions and hard fought ground war; also Germany's final throes in the winter of '44-'45, the Battle of the Bulge,  crossing the Rhine, Bodenplatte, and of course the strategic bombing campaign during this period; and of course the 'Northern' section of this war, Finland's conflicts with the Soviet Union, over and among its hills, lakes and archipelagos.

Sooo... I thought... why not try to represent all of these fights? Especially with the water must be zero thing out the window finally, some of these great landscapes can be replicated...
And all with the same tileset, just with the densities adjusted as per the area. More forests, small lakes, small islands and hills to represent Finland (must admit I'm not familiar with Finland's topography so I don't know how 'mountainous' it is...), Russia (perhaps Ukraine more accurately?) with expansive, miserable, muddy plains, and Germany's Rhineland and cities, with many farms and well... cities (the country's strats would be in the 'Germany' zone).

Green represents the 'Finland' zone, brown the 'Russia' zone, and gray the 'Germany' zone, red would be 'cities', with blue representing water (imagine that!). Of course those are just demarcations, not to say that those zones would be predominately any color other than white

Yellow represents VBases / spawns, purple represents airfields, with their size denoting airfield size.

Now, brace yourself for my beautiful illustration....







Some notes...
I just meant a very rough illustration of the idea... not meant to represent a map that I think would actually 'work'- the proportions of the countries are off and I went 'hog wild' placing small airfields without thinking much of it. I'm also pretty sure the cities are ridiculously out of proportion even for a small map

There are some things to point out, though- there are 3 'tank towns' in the Russia zone, each straddling a river, with GV spawns going into them. This is meant to create a 'Stalingrad' type fight with a lot of fighting in tight streets. Spawns in may not be the best way to create this kind of fight but again... rough idea.
The spawns in general are meant to show where the major fighting 'should' be, how I envision it, not all of the spawns for those bases.

Small airfields litter the front, with increasingly larger ones further back, with large airfield in the 'Germany' zone.


Just a general idea I'm throwing out there, I don't mean to say that it's mine, or that I will make a map like this... I don't have the know how to make maps, and I don't know how easily I could figure it out... I'm a bit dumb when it comes to 'that stuff'

[USRanger]

   I have everything I would ever need to create a winter terrain.  A full collection of winter textures (even icy water), leafless trees, etc.  Sadly, HTC's MA terrain rules kill it.  The textures required would make the final file size too big for their liking, default clutter only (green shrubbery all over a winter texture, and more custom textures required (like the town ground area) which would make the file size bigger.  Otherwise, I'd have done it long ago.  AvA or SEA is the only place it may fly.  That's too bad.  I think there should be a poll for the players asking if they wouldn't mind a one-time larger download for a more customized (like winter) terrain. 10Mb or so is a huge terrain file size to them, but it's hard to put out anything other than the same ol' cookie cutter terrains otherwise.  I have over 30 terrains under my belt and not one has ever used the default terrain tiles.  That just bores the crap outta me.  That's just me though.  Using the same exact stuff everyone else has to use for the exact same look in every terrain is such a waste of the tools we've been given IMO.

[715]

Ranger:

Are those terrains available somewhere for us to fly around in?

I don't understand why HTC is so tight in terrain file size.  Terrains are only downloaded very occasionally and most people have some form of broadband.  For some reason HTC wants the occasional terrain load at game start to be measured in seconds not minutes?  Maybe HTC could assign one arena to "broadband only" and put the interesting terrains there while keeping small file terrains in the other arenas?

Like you I am bored to a coma with the stock terrain textures/clutter files.  (I also wish the terrain elevation grid was much finer so that you guys could design terrains, or import DEMs, that gave mountains that didn't look like pyramids.  I'm sure thats a terrain file size issue too.)

[USRanger]

   The terrain in the pic above is from a terrain that I made before the update to the new terrain engine.  I could whip something together just so you could see what one would look like now.   Gimme a day or two.  As for file size, only HTC could answer that.  I don't know if it has to do with dial-up users or what.  A 25Mb download would be extremely acceptable to me personally, and we could create some stuff that would absolutely knock the socks off AH players & and competing games out there.  That's totally HTC's decision though, and while I think it sucks and limits their game so badly, it's their game, so their rules.  Most sound packs are 150-200Mb & I've never heard of a player complain, so it's hard to rationalize why a 10Mb terrain is too much to ask for an MA terrain.  If I was on dial-up, I still wouldn't care, if it would give us a new type of terrain we had never had before.  I've just always thought it was silly and a waste of HTC's time to create & give us the tools to provide some really cutting edge stuff for their game, but are not allowed to use it.  This is one very strong reason why I miss H2H so much.  I really enjoyed making terrains & hosting them.  

Please HTC!  Raise your file size limit!  Even at maybe a 15Mb limit, we could take your game to a height us players have only dreamed of.

[bravoa8]

  The terrain in the pic above is from a terrain that I made before the update to the new terrain engine.  I could whip something together just so you could see what one would look like now.   Gimme a day or two.  As for file size, only HTC could answer that.  I don't know if it has to do with dial-up users or what.  A 25Mb download would be extremely acceptable to me personally, and we could create some stuff that would absolutely knock the socks off AH players & and competing games out there.  That's totally HTC's decision though, and while I think it sucks and limits their game so badly, it's their game, so their rules.  Most sound packs are 150-200Mb & I've never heard of a player complain, so it's hard to rationalize why a 10Mb terrain is too much to ask for an MA terrain.  If I was on dial-up, I still wouldn't care, if it would give us a new type of terrain we had never had before.  I've just always thought it was silly and a waste of HTC's time to create & give us the tools to provide some really cutting edge stuff for their game, but are not allowed to use it.  This is one very strong reason why I miss H2H so much.  I really enjoyed making terrains & hosting them.  

Please HTC!  Raise your file size limit!  Even at maybe a 15Mb limit, we could take your game to a height us players have only dreamed of.

+1 I want cooler maps.

[USRanger]

Reaching 15Mb without using custom objects would be tough unless you re-textured dang near everything.  10Mb would be a nice standard though to make good use of the new terrain system to its full potential.  Not being able to change out the default clutter with other default AH objects is a real handicap also.

[2ace]

It would be awesome if we could have maps like USRanger's offline maps.

[AKDogg]

Soundpacks are optional.  MA terrains are not which is more then likely the case for the file size limit.  In order to play in the arena, u must download the map to play.  Soundpacks are not required to play, only to enhance.

[Easyscor]

A fully functional winter terrain with all the textures, and custom objects included, is around 7.55MB. htc has done a great job with the new TE. A desert terrain on the other hand, well, that's another matter. I think that Ranger is about right on the final size on that one.

[Spikes]

Raise it up please, more pleasure for us all...15 mbit on dial up? Go make a coffee and grab some toast!

[USRanger]

A fully functional winter terrain with all the textures, and custom objects included, is around 7.55MB. htc has done a great job with the new TE. A desert terrain on the other hand, well, that's another matter. I think that Ranger is about right on the final size on that one.

Luckily we have the Pacific clutter set now, which will work for the desert terrain without looking too out of place with the palms & all.  A winter terrain on the other hand, would look hokey with all the greenery everywhere.  I have leafless trees, but since they are a custom object=no go, at least in the MA.  It's too bad.  I believe Croduh made them and they are beautiful.