My way to create a Terrain Lesson 4

[+Gepard 10,266]

LESSON 4: improving the Terrain (The City List)

 

With the end of Lesson 3 we were able to fly the first time over the

new terrain. Now we will make a better looking terrain.

 

I dont know wheter you like the allocation of the terrain types. I, for

my case, think there is to much snow in this terrain. This i want to

change now:

 

Step 1:

- Open TE, open Kashmir terrain, open texturelist

 

Step 2:

- click Texture List, click Edit Texture Type List

A dialog box is opening. It shows the types or classes of the texture

tiles. You see, we have classes for Sea, Grass, Field, Forest, Snow,

City and two markers.

 

Step 3:

- double click on one of this classes, lets say Snow

you see, that the allocation of the texturetiles is defined by Altitude.

The Snow tiles starts at 1200 meters. I change this enty into 2500

meters. Click OK.

 

Step 4:

-Then i open the Forest class and change the max Altitude from 1200

to 2500. Click OK.

If i would not do this step there would be a gap in tilesetting that the

TE would fill with strange tiling.

-Then i close the dialog box

 

Step 5:

-click on Edit

-click on Autotexture

-check out wheter you like the result. If not go back to step 3 and

readjust the values.

Play a little bit with the values till you find a allocation of the tiles you

that fit your taste

- If you has found such a allocation, then save the Texturelist

 

 

After that we can start to work the City List.

The City List is a very powerfull tool of the TE. With the CityList you

can define where to place cities and airfields. With this list TE will

create a new prototype _target.ini. With this list TE will be able to

flatten areas for runways. With this list TE will place automatically city

tiles on the map while autotexturing the terrain.

 

Lets go!

 

Step 1:

- click City List

- Click New City List

- choose a name and save it. In my case i save it as Kashmir_Cities.ini

 

Step 2:

- click Edit City List

A Dialog Box is opening

-click New

next Dialog is opening

-i insert following entries:

City Name: Karachi

Terrain type: C City

Position x 226

Position y 305

Randomess 0

Width : 8

Lenght: 7

-click OK

Now City of Karachi is done.

 

You will ask from where i get the values for the entries.

Now this is easy.

To get it you need a sheet of paper, a pencil and a map.

Change the view of the TE from "View Texture Tile" to "View Height

Field"

Then you must look on the map choose a town then look on the heigh

field of the TE and try to locate it with the cursor. I know it is difficult

and often more a guess, but with the help of Coastlines, mountains and

rivers it is possible to place the cursor more or less on the correct

place. Now look in the left below corner of TE. You see the position

of the cursor in values of a coordinate system. The values are given in

meters. For the position of Karachi i had 226000 and 305000. The

dialog box need entries in kilometers, what means i enter only 226 and

305. If you has to enter values like 226755 meters, so write in dialog

box 226.755.

The Width and Length of a city are only guesses. But make this values

not to small.

The best way to handle this step is to write down all values and if you

have all on the paper, then enter them into the dialog box.

 

- After doing Karachi i enter the values for the next two pakistani

 

cities and 3 indian cities.

Hydrabad x 282 y 333 W 6 L 5

Mirpakhas x 294 y 329 W 4 L 5

Ahmadbad x 478 y 325 W 8 L 7

Rajkost x 406 y 169 W 4 L 5

Goa x 411 y 93 W 4 L 5

 

On this Step you should include all cities you want to see on the map,

as more, as better. For this tutorial i place only 3 cities for each side.

But you can place some hundreds of cities here.

 

Step 3

- Then i save the Citylist

 

Step 4

- Then i will Autotexture the terrain again and look wheter the cities

are on the place i intended. If not i go back to Step 2 and edit the

entries.

 

 

When we have placed all cities we should place the runways

 

Step 1:

-Look on the map for airfield positions, then look into TE and find out

the x and y coordinates. write it down on your sheet of paper.

 

Step 2:

-Click Citylist, click Edit City List

- Click New

- Enter the values but now make sure to set a hook into "Has Airfield"

the values i use are:

P1 airfield x 224 y 295 w 6 L 6

P2 airfield x 268 y 333 w 6 L 6

P3 airfiled x 258 y 302 w 6 L 6

I 1 airbase x 339 y 174 w 6 L 6

I 2 airbase x 303 y 178 w 6 L 6

I 3 airbase x 390 y 209 w 6 L 6

As terrain tiles type i use in this case Grass.

 

(W and L define the size of the airfield. with the value 6 the TE will

create a flatten area in form of a circle with 6km. You can experiment

with this value, but make it not to small.)

 

Step 3:

- save City List

 

Step 4:

-Click Edit

- Click Autotexture the terrain

You will find now at the places of the airfields grassland, and of course

the cities at the places where they have to be.

 

Step 5:

-Click Edit

-Click Transistion textures

Now you can see the change of the terrain. The tiles now fit. Between

the tileclasses are now placed transistion tiles.

 

Step 6:

-Click Edit

-click Level airfield

Look on the Heighfield map. Around the airfield placed the area is

flaten.

 

Step 7

- Click file

- click Save all

 

 

Now the work with TE is done. (For the first time, we will need the

TE later again.)

You can close the TE.

 

Now it is time to make backups. Move the hfd and the tfd file into

your backup folder. The best is to give this files calling names. For

instance Kashmir_leveled_airfields.hfd. The reason is, that TE has no

undo function. If you make a mistake in further development, you has

now a original file to start your work again.

 

(BY THE WAY: If you fly a test mission over water, you will see, that something looks strange. The water is white. The reason is that the TE had overwritten the Kashmir_DATA.ini file with an old (incompatible) version. Thatswhy i told you in LESSON 1 to put your Kashmir_DATA.ini into your backup folder. Now its time to fetch it back to get back the blue water of the rivers and the sea. And this you must do every single time when you has saved something with the TE.)

 

 

The next step is to creating the target areas. But this will be the task

for the Lesson 5.

Edited March 13, 2008 by Gepard