Terrain Editor

[Greebo]

This is the CBM bug I mentioned earlier where occasionally when the map is generated a brown outline appears around some objects.

[Greebo]

I've figured out the problem with the blue tank town. If it is set to an altitude close to 0 feet it will appear blue on the map and at distance in the game. Set it 70 feet or higher and the problem goes away.

[hitech]

btw I forgot to mention about custom square objects.

The verts on the out side of the square must be at exactly 660 positions.In side the square they can be anything you wish.
They no longer need to be flat, but should all be zero or above.

Also there are different shaders you can select when drawing objects, which I have not checked to see if they are functional in AC3D

HiTech

[Greebo]

I noticed something odd with shore batteries both in the game and the TE. The texture displayed on the base of the hill cycles between the correct surrounding ground texture, other textures that look like street paving and runway paving and black. What is displayed depends on the angle the SB is viewed from.

[ebfd11]

I am still having trouble getting my CPM to even show up in the clipboard.... am I doing something wrong???

LawnDart

[Greebo]

Your CBM file needs to be reduced from an 8 bit bmp to a 256 colour bmp, named the same as your terrain (i.e. "craterma.bmp" in my case) and placed in your terrain folder's "texsrc" folder. Once you've done all this, start the TE and you should see your new CBM in the Map window. Hit "File/Make Map" and then you should see it in-game as well.

[Cheyenn]

Here is a link for Bases used by the 8th AAF: http://8thafhs.com/
Not only gives you were the bases are located but also the designs of then, and what Bomber and Fighter Groups that used them. Also for you people who build maps. For those building maps for AVA, when building  the English maps please and try placing the Bomber bases where they should be. Plus as AAF plans the main runway was between 2,000 to 2,600 yards long, other runways are from 1,400 to 1,600 yards.
Enjoy and hope the map makers use this resource to good use.

[bustr]

Looks like Waffle used your site to create the super large airfield at A1 on the current NDisles.

[Greebo]

Patch 72 has introduced a weird graphical glitch to the TE. All the water areas are covered with what looks like miniature images of the splattype texture map. There are images of the complete texture map overlayed by roughly three times smaller images of what looks like just the detailed terrain textures (farms and villages etc). Also the shallow coastlines have a white edging rather than the waves and sand texture they should have. If I move my viewpoint below the land the splattype images continue across the map at 0 feet alt and there shown in shades of grey.

To see if this was a problem specifically with CraterMA I built a test terrain and got the same effect on that.

I had a look at my terrain offline in the Alpha game but this effect did not show there either before or after doing a build with the Patch 72 TE.

Removing the splattype file from the terrain folder and then starting the TE did not help either.

[Easyscor]

Currently, if you install any of the groupmaster grounds, it will crash the TE.

My work-around for now is to install these in the shpfilter.txt file along with other objects I don't need.

aaafac1m
amfct1x1m
rdfct1x1m
refin2x2m
troop1m00
laf1x1m
laf4x4m
maf1x1m
saf1x1m
(I didn't list the hq and possibly others)

[hitech]

Greebo, that looks like a shader/exe mis match. Ill check it out.

Yea the ones with the  X and ending in m in there are only supposed to be used in tiles with the Object editor, I'll see how I can filter these out.

for instance there are 2 shape the one to uses is laf1m00 vs laf1x1m which is only the ground part.

HiTech

[Greebo]

While updating the TE's shpfilter.txt file I noticed that there are four object files that are not affected by it. They are:-

datepalmcluster00
easternwhitepine01
europeanlinden01
koreanstewartia00

I guess this has something to do with these being the longest file names in the list, with 16-18 characters. This is not a big deal to me, but I thought I'd mention it as it could cause some unrelated issues with the game.

[Easyscor]

splattype.bmp Issues

I started playing with the terrain texture-types this afternoon and found some differences between what was detailed for the splattype.bmp in a previous post in this forum.

Included is a jpg of the terrain tab window showing both the splat RGB hex values and decimal values printed on each of the 20 terrain types according to what I've found. If I've missed something and gotten this wrong, please let me know.
P.S. I found this in both patch 72 and 73.




In addition, at the bottom of the jpg is shown a text box that I think will eventually show the terrain type name when one is selected. I'd like to offer a list of potential names to choose from based on my past GIS research. While there are several scholarly choices, the NLCD 1992 for instance, or Anderson, most wouldn't seem appropriate.

Here's my favorite USGS list for ETO descriptions that might help.

Urban and Built-Up Land
Dryland Cropland and Pasture
Irrigated Cropland and Pasture
Mixed Dryland/Irrigated Cropland and Pasture
Cropland/Grassland Mosaic
Cropland/Woodland Mosaic
Grassland
Shrubland
Mixed Shrubland/Grassland
Savanna
Deciduous Broadleaf Forest
Deciduous Needleleaf Forest
Evergreen Broadleaf Forest
Evergreen Needleleaf Forest
Mixed Forest
Water Bodies
Herbaceous Wetland
Wooded Wetland
Barren or Sparsely Vegetated
Herbaceous Tundra
Wooded Tundra
Mixed Tundra
Bare Ground Tundra
Snow or Ice
Undefined

For my sources of ETO and PTO names
http://edc2.usgs.gov/glcc/globdoc2_0.php
Scroll down to the Appendix
For more, Google 4.4 USGS Land Use/Land Cover System Legend (Modified Level 2).

[Easyscor]

fyi. I was called upon to help solve a Clip Board Map issue. It turned out the user had reset his screen resolution at some point after the alpha's TE had built the aheditmap.cfg file. The CBM was off the bottom of his screen.

[Easyscor]

snip...

Currently my CBM is 4096 res which looks great in-game when zoomed-in. However it increases the res file size and I guess may cause players with marginal PCs resource issues. So I'll reduce the size if HTC tells me to.

Hmm, I may have to change the way that texture is stored in the terrain file so that it res is lowered with max texture size.

HiTech

I wonder if it makes sense to allow bump mapping of elevations in the CBM as well.