Micro to Macro For Map Builders?

[DubiousKB]

Hey Bustr and crew,

is it possible for us non-terrain builder software savvy to build smaller elements for you and other terrain builders to use? 

Example: I build a small amount of terrain with high detail for someone else to use as an object? Like here's the area around town with many GV features, just needs a town object dropped in the middle?

I guess I want to help but don't have the time/patience that you have. Can someone like me build smaller elements for someone like you to use in your terrain?
 

[bustr]

You could build them as a custom tile, but then those are not allowed in the MA.

You could not build topographical features for my terrain since you can see I have a visual standard across all of the islands, and that escarpment I just finished. I would have to still spend time massaging your work into mine if an import feature existed. At that point it's faster for me to lay down the bones with the bulldozer tool, then sculpt and paint it. After sleeping on it for a night, I recognized where I saw that type of escarpment and I need a few more large surface cracks and cut slightly deeper runoff channels where the large top seams open to the sides of the escarpment. The second and third ones will almost create themselves after I finish suffering through this first one.

Try talking to the AVA and Special Events terrain team to see if they could use your enthusiasm.

Thank you for the offer.

PS: you can always do a 10x10 MA terrain of your own. I bet you have some ideas the community will benefit from.

[DubiousKB]

Alright cool. I wasn't sure that it could be done and if it would be of any benefit. Sounds like it's an all or nothing approach..

I was just hoping that maybe instead of a tonne of work for one person, we could offload some "small tasks/areas" from the primary "builder".

Wishlist feature? 

[bustr]

You may be wishing upon the terrain builder one of those well meaning things that creates more work than the terrain builder simply putting the micro terrain in as part of the terrain building process. If you just need to build something on a small scale, learn how to create custom objects and see if the AvA guys need any help.

I'm already getting casual observational grief because I decided to use a tepui to solve a space and elevation problem by a player who has no clue what the end game of my terrain's design ultimately is. The island I'm working on has a green jungle cover which fools you into thinking I'm finished with the island looking casually at my screen shot. It's covered in jungle because the RAW file I imported made all land mass 500ft except for the 25,000ft barrier mountain range. When I finished sculpting the barrier mountains and their 30 mile wide foot that ran from 5000ft to the water, I ran a jungle colored tile against all elevations 7000ft to 200ft so I wouldn't have to waste time with a 6 mile diameter brush hand painting my world. This way the mountain ridges and "tepui" I want to pull out of the 500ft jungle colored terrain, I just paint rock defining the base of the mountain or tepui and pull it up out of the ground already rough painted as a mountain.

My casual observer had no real clue just how unfinished everything is and how much I used a global painting tool to lay down the tree tile that I know will constitute 50% of all color and clutter in the arena.

See you should just bite the bullet and build a 10x10 arena. 

[DubiousKB]

  So my lazy, "I only want to help a little" approach isn't really going to help eh? 

Time to get my hands dirty with the software for step one. Hold this thought for potentially a few years...

Let me get back to you on this one.....    

[bustr]

Your words not mine. There is no hair to finely split here, and I'm trying to be polite and give you depth in my answer to help you let go of this.

The AvA uses 64x64 terrains some times. Didn't they run a post in here asking for new terrain builders to make small terrains?

[DubiousKB]

Your words not mine. There is no hair to finely split here, and I'm trying to be polite and give you depth in my answer to help you let go of this.

The AvA uses 64x64 terrains some times. Didn't they run a post in here asking for new terrain builders to make small terrains?

lol no i know i'm lazy. I didn't infer that you implied it. It was me being honest. I do believe there was a call, but i just wasn't ready to "dip my toes" in. And it sounds like that's what needs to be done, just get into the software and get dirty to gain a better understanding of the system.

 

[715]

One way to make a detailed area specialized for tank battles, that terrain designers can paste into their overall terrain, is to make what's called square objects.  These are 1 mi x 1 mi or 2 x 2 or 4 mi x 4 mi objects that get added to terrains.  Examples are city objects, strat objects, towns, etc.  A good example to look at is the hilly vehicle base.  If you export that object to AC3D you will see that parts of it have very high resolution (like the rock face on the hill to the NW).  In fact, the ground surface can have arbitrarily high resolution in a square object.  In addition, you can plant as many or as few trees as you want and you can add all the water features you want and they don't have to be at zero altitude. 

The down side is that it is a whopping amount of work, you have to know how to use AC3D, and as far as I can tell there is basically no documentation on square object creation from scratch whatsoever.

[ghostdancer]

In Special events we did something like you are thinking for some very spefic maps. Midway was a tile also Ford Island in Hawaii was a custom built tile or micro as you call it.