Spain and Seaplanes

[pagsab]

Yes, I noticed the famous forts from the classic siege described in Ernle Bradford's book.  SF2 terrain making is always a balance between the desire for accuracy through bespoke tiles and TOD objects for individual features and the wish to keep tile and TOD variants as few and manageable as possible.  I lean towards the latter priority, to the perhaps ridiculous extent of using just one tree clump model and two building models across my entire tileset!  I keep these small to enhance the sense of speed when flying, since I find that some otherwise beautiful terrains have trees so big that low-flying planes seem to be moving in slow motion.  Realistically sized troops and vehicles are very difficult to see in time to line up for a strafing run, but contrast helps a lot.  One trick that I just discovered is to darken the texture file of vehicles to stop the camouflage working so well that they blend in completely with the ground.   I limit shadows to maintain frame rates and avoid distracting shadow 'popping', so darkening target objects offers a useful substitute.  Conversely, it is important to keep the contrast between TOD terrain objects and the tile background as low as possible so that one notices less when the objects pop into or out of viewing range.