Terrain Gurus Look Here Plz (Adriatic Map)

[column5 62]

Below is shot showing the Balkans/Adriatic Sea map that I am working on. I've been following gepard's tutorials which have made things fairly easy to this point. I have all of the Italian cities placed, and all of the cities in southern Greece.

 

The purpose is to make a Southern front for NATO Fighters, with the Soviet/WP invasion of Greece and Italy through Yugoslavia. Finally some carrier ops in NF!

 

Anyway, I could use some advice on exactly how to proceed. Assuming I get all of my cities placed while remaining sane, what is the best way to tackle the following issues?

 

1. As you can see, this map is a nightmare of little islands and coastline that quickly transitions to relatively steep slopes and high elevations. How do I handle this?

 

2. I have not yet adjusted sea level. What exactly does this function do and exactly when in the process should I execute it?

 

3. Transition tiles have not been added yet, but when I test the function I get some strange results especially around the many coastal cities. Is there a way to tune the TE to perform this function better, or is it just going to require a lot of manual tile tuning after applying the transition tiles?

 

Thanks!

 

[krfrge 742]

While I am not a terrain guru I will offer my observations regarding adjusting sea levels.

 

I have attempted to use that function but causes a lot of problems.

 

From the looks of your map the TE will only be able to do so much. I think when it comes time to adjusting tiles around the small islands some of your work will probably have to be completed by hand.

 

I am sure others may be able to provide additional insight.

 

Kindest regards and best of luck with this project.

 

KRFRGE

[+Brain32 265]

Well I got stuck with exactly the same map/terrain so I can share some thoughts...

 

1. As you can see, this map is a nightmare of little islands and coastline that quickly transitions to relatively steep slopes and high elevations. How do I handle this?

Yes the coast of my country is made of 1185 islands and as you describe often very steep elevation transition, my plan was to edit the hfd after tiling...

 

 

2. I have not yet adjusted sea level. What exactly does this function do and exactly when in the process should I execute it?

Some say before tiling some after tiling, this feature will cut out the coast and clearly define it. It basically removes "sea mountains"...

This is exactly why I prefer to do it after tiling as if you do it that way you preserve the original coast shapes but you still nicely avoid "sea mountains" :)

 

3. Transition tiles have not been added yet, but when I test the function I get some strange results especially around the many coastal cities. Is there a way to tune the TE to perform this function better, or is it just going to require a lot of manual tile tuning after applying the transition tiles?

 

Well if it's really F'ed up then there's no cure but manual :(

 

 

Anyway man I have loads of materials for that terrain, finished city/airfields list, and a buttload of new custom high res(even 1024 available) photorealistic tiles.

The reason I gave up on it was me making it too ambitious, I have separate tiles for mainland, mainland forrest,mountains, another mainland for variety, then greece, greece mountains, Italy, Italy forrest/mountains etc...

I realized I can never finish that monster alone even without the targets and trees/objects...

All in all, if you need anything or want to use something just say ;-)

[column5 62]

Thanks for the info, Brain32. If you are interested, perhaps we could collaborate? If we were to find one or two more people interested in the project, we could divide the work up into more manageable chunks.

[Wrench 9,426]

so far, nice looking map!

 

I had ALL kinds of problem with the 'adjust sea level' on the Marianas and Hawaii maps ... finally 'got it close' by exporting the height map as bmp', repainting some sections to 0 height, and going from there. It ain't perfect (on my stuff anyway), but it did bring the beachs back down to sea level.

 

Unfortunately, expect to do a LOT of hand tiling, expecially on the transtions. Don't forget all the city tiles (and THEIR) transitions have to be hand placed as well as any 'clear zones' around airports and such. And don't even get me started on rivers ..... going bat s**t crazy tring to add a many as possible on the India-Pakistan map.

 

fun fun fun! welcome to MY world!!! Actually, I kinda enjoy it!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[column5 62]

I had ALL kinds of problem with the 'adjust sea level' on the Marianas and Hawaii maps ... finally 'got it close' by exporting the height map as bmp', repainting some sections to 0 height, and going from there. It ain't perfect (on my stuff anyway), but it did bring the beachs back down to sea level.

 

Can this be done after I've placed all my cities? Please say yes because I'm making good progress--got Greece and Albania done, working on the former Yugoslavia now.

[+76.IAP-Blackbird 3,545]

Oh yeah a nice Falcon terrain! looks great, together with CA starys tree mod this will look great!

[+Brain32 265]

Thanks for the info, Brain32. If you are interested, perhaps we could collaborate? If we were to find one or two more people interested in the project, we could divide the work up into more manageable chunks.

 

Yeah that would be cool...

[column5 62]

Yeah that would be cool...

 

When I get these cities places, I'll send the map over to you to take a look. You can see if its worth continuing with. ;)

[Wrench 9,426]

Can this be done after I've placed all my cities?

 

that's how I did it (of course, I don't KNOW of any other way!!). Everything was all tiled and such. In fact, on the Hawaii map, an entire airfield was already placed and targetized (Kaneohe) Seemed to work ok for me!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[column5 62]

Whew. Got cities for Yugoslavia and Hungary done.

[+Dave 2,318]

Don

 

Save often, I have had that thing kill all my work in a blink of an eye, that is why I quit making terrains. I wanted to kill kittens after I used it and it would crash on me.

[column5 62]

I'm saving and backing up like a mofo.

 

On a positive note, with a little tinkering the TE can do a pretty nice transition from ocean to high elevation. These cliffs on the Yugoslav side of the Adriatic are pretty impressive.

 

[+Dave 2,318]

Looking good Don.

[column5 62]

Looking good Don.

 

This is nuts. Now I understand why it takes a couple of years to develop a new sim. Its 23 months of terrain building and 1 month for everything else.

[+Spectre_USA 7]

Don

 

Save often, I have had that thing kill all my work in a blink of an eye, that is why I quit making terrains. I wanted to kill kittens after I used it and it would crash on me.

 

DON'T DO IT MAN!

 

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

3. Transition tiles have not been added yet, but when I test the function I get some strange results especially around the many coastal cities. Is there a way to tune the TE to perform this function better, or is it just going to require a lot of manual tile tuning after applying the transition tiles?

That could be the problem.

 

If I recall, my tiling never went right until I got ALL the required transition tiles defined and setup to go. Often, when I thought I could get away with "enough" transition tiles, I would get a creeping line of terrain tiles where they shouldn't be, until I added another set of transition tiles.

[Guest ansons2]

Hi Column5,

 

As I have got a bit experience with the TE, let me share with you some hints :

 

When working with the TE

1) As already said, save your file very often (Ctrl S) as there is no rollback function

2) Make regular backups of the most important files :

- xxx.hfd

- xxx.tfd

- xxx texture set .ini

- xxx_data.ini

 

creating a small command file is useful for that. you have one example in my latest india terrain

 

2) Use autotexturing as most as possible before moving to manual tiling. I have found that the order of the texture types

has a strong impact on the way the TE will distribute them on the Map. It is not only the altitude range defined per type

and the priority that have an impact but also the order of the types. For each terrain I had to make trials to find the good order. Once you have found the good order, create the transition tiles.

 

3) Use the city list to create the cities and airfield locations, that way each time you use the autotexturing you will have

your cities created on the map. Final adjustments and transition tiles can be worked out manually later.

Once you have started to put manually tiles (along the line coast for example) do not use autotexturing otherwise you

will loose all your manual work !

 

4) Put the rivers on the map . I have created new river tiles for my Maps . the river color should be the same as the sea.

I use photoshop to create the alpha layer on the river before saving the picture as a .tga file.

All texture tiles having water (river, larkes, sea) should be declared as sea type in the TE. Use Height Map and put

0 in the height Map scale. When setting a scale > 0, I have got trees and objects sinked into the ground.

 

5) Once rivers tiles have been put on the Map, if you use the Sea Level Adjustment feature, it will level down the sea level

all the sea areas (rivers too). I have found that instead of having rivers going up and down on the hills, the TE wil create

valleys with the river at the bottom. Using the smooth feature will round a bit the peaks of the maps and thus the valleys edges. For some maps (Germany for example) I could not use the Sea Level feature, I have got a CTD each time but for

the India map it has worked.

 

6) To put alpha objects (trees) and solid objects (buildings) on a tile, first create a small .ini file for that tile with Notepad.

The .ini file must have the name of the texture . Ex: river_farm.ini . In that .ini file type as first row, the name of

the texture (with .bmp as extension) between brackets : ex: [river_farm.bmp]

 

To put alpha or solid objects on a tile you will have to declare the different object types associated with the object texture

(ex: paddy_new.tga or jungle.tga for India) in the TE.

Each object must be declared using its coordinates. An object is located by its top left and bottom right corners.

for a tree you have only 4 coordinates. For a building the first 4 sets of coordinates define the sides of the building

and the 5th one the texture to be used for the roof. A shape is associated with an object. Use the X for trees, that way

you will see it from any direction you are coming in the game. use fence as shape for cows and fences.

 

In the object texture (ex: paddy_new.tga or jungle.tga) the Y axis is oriented top-down, the X axis left-right thus

the origin is the top left corner of the texture. The texture is assumed to be a square with 1 as edge size.

That is the reason the object's coordinates are between 0 and 1.

Once you have declared the object types you can edit the .bmp textures and put new objects on them.

 

To put easily objects :

First select new object, type its X,Y coordinates and click save. with the mouse, click on the small square representing the object on the map, then you can move it elsewhere, each time you click you will add new objects.

Thus putting a lot of trees and objects is just a matter of clicks. After saving your changes, do not forget to

save your texture, map and texturelist (very important). The TE will write in the small texture.ini file the types and coordinates of each object you have put on it. Sometimes you will have to save the texturelist several times to have all objects saved. if the nb of objects shown in the counter at the top of the .ini file does not match the object N° at the

bottom of the .ini file just reset the counter with the right value and save the texturelist again. I had to do that 2 or

times when putting more then 700 objects on a single tile.

 

Islands coast tiles have to be put manually to avoid having sea climbing the hills... I had to do that many times

when creating my Greece Map. Thus patience is required when creating a map but it is worth the work.

 

Best Regards

 

ansons2

[column5 62]

That is great ansons2 thanks very much!

 

Right now I've got all of my cities placed, and all of my Italian airfields. I have discovered a problem though, and I now have to see if I can adjust my map layout in such as way that I can keep my cities and airfields and just adjust their coordinates.

 

I need increase the size of my map from 900 to 1000 kilometers and move the view about 1 degree to the West. I'm hoping that I figure out mathematically an amount to adjust each city and airfield's coordinates.

 

[column5 62]

Whew, got lucky on that.

 

It looks like the TE assumes that 1 degree is equal to 40 kilometers. So, I was able to move my initial map coordinates North 1 degree and West 3 degrees. I then adjusted the x,y coordinates for all cities by +120 and +40 respectively and they are exactly where they are supposed to be.

[+Dave 2,318]

I just noticed that you has the BeEg SEX PlanE in that screen shot.

[column5 62]

SI TEH SEX PLAN TEH ONLY BIGGAR SEXPLANE SI TEH F14s TOMCATS FLEW BY UNITAD STATS NAVEL AVIATOR PETE MITCHALL IN TEH FAMOUS ENGANGEMENTS WIT TEH MIGS 28

[+Deuces 0]

This is nuts. Now I understand why it takes a couple of years to develop a new sim. Its 23 months of terrain building and 1 month for everything else.

 

Really...I'm trying not to laugh.

This is exactly why there are so few topsoil modders. We revert to a life of alcohol and talking to dead relatives.

[column5 62]

Really...I'm trying not to laugh.

This is exactly why there are so few topsoil modders. We revert to a life of alcohol and talking to dead relatives.

 

I sh*t you not I have been drinking more since I started this.

 

Still, I managed to resize my map without losing all my city placement, and had a good trial run at river placement tonight. WE GONNA DO THIS THING!!!!!!

[+Deuces 0]

I sh*t you not I have been drinking more since I started this.

 

Still, I managed to resize my map without losing all my city placement, and had a good trial run at river placement tonight. WE GONNA DO THIS THING!!!!!!

 

Glad to hear it Don.

 

Now what size straight jacket should I reserve for ya?