Iceland 2015 Terrain WIP

[+Baltika]

Jumping on the bandwagon of the current EF2000 vogue. . .

 

 

There are still quite a few target areas/airfields to place, I haven't even started on target placement, and there are a few tiling issues, not least the summery look given by the stock WoE tiles. Just blame global warming

 

I'll try to get a flyable preview up and running soon.

 

Thanks to Gepard for his excellent terrain tutorials, without which this mod, etc etc

 

Cheers all

[mppd]

Excellent! When the F-102A appears on the scene for the TW series, I'll be able to run intercepts with the 57th FIS from Keflavik on Soviet birds. Is there a TU-95 available yet?

 

Thanks for the efforts,

Mike D.

[+Stary]

Me likes!

 

Seriously good to see some less popular, but strategically important places being created for SF

[+Wrench]

Just blame global warming

 

I was gonna say...will there BE any ice left by 2015??

 

BTW, will the mountain be there, that we may descend to the "center of the earth"? (sorry, the movie was on TCM last week, so I had to watch it -again!)

 

If you need an Icelandic flag, (or is it still Danish-owned?) let me know. It's about 3.5 minutes of work

 

If I may suggest, for the ports/harbors, if the land/sea transition be a flat as possible; >1 meter. Makes it a pain to have docked ships, wharfs/docks and other harbor facilities when the ground slope is too extreme, and the water shoals so oddly.

 

Can't wait for it!!

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Longestpants]

Whether it's the one with Kenneth More or the one with Pat Boone, they were both terrible movies.

Good book though.

[+Baltika]

Sorry chaps, haven't seen either movie, so can't promise a mountain that will lead to the centre of the earth.

 

Embarrassingly enough though, I have built up the volcano Eldfell on the island of Heimaey into a suitably impressive peak, only to discover that it is an ash-cone volcano with a rather lower ceiling than one might expect. Isn't google earth great

 

Anyway, let's just assume that by 2015 it's been blowing its top enough to grow considerably in stature.

 

Now awaiting clearance in the Terrain d/l section (never thought I'd get to say that, cheers Gepard for your tutorials )

 

 

There are issues, oh yes, but all feedback is welcome.

 

Wrench, thanks for the offer of an Icelandic flag, that would be great. Not sure what the political set-up is there, independence seems likely these days, but who knows?

 

I hear what you say on harbour/sea level transitions, no problem. Funnily enough, I've been trying to work out how to get cliff faces to rear up out of the sea vertically, and been having a laugh trying to draw rock face/sea transition tiles. Sadly, I'm no artist, but I'll keep plugging away.

 

Enjoy

Edited May 12, 2008 by Baltika

[Gunrunner]

Iceland has been independent since late in WW2, and even before it was mostly a symbolical part of the Danish crown I think, Commonwealth style...

The move toward independance was gradual and started in late 19th, early 20th, WW2 only accelerated things as Iceland ended up isolated and then invaded.

 

Baltika, as everyone I look forward to test your work...

[+Baltika]

Thanks for the info Gunrunner.

 

Now you've really piqued my interest - looks like I'm going to have to work on a WW2 campaign for this terrain as well as one for Eurofighter

[Gunrunner]

Baltika, you also could read Red Storm Rising from Tom Clancy, as a large part centers around Iceland, but I guess you'd need a larger map to permit some long range carrier operations (IIRC in the book Iceland was one of the first to fall to the Soviets as they used it to take control of the GIUK Gap and station bombers to interdict the zone to Allied convoys and carrier groups).

Oh, BTW, during WW2 it was invaded by the Allies (can't remember if they were neutral at the time or not) in order, already at the time, to secure the Atlantic North for convoys; that would limit the potential for campaign, unless you decide that the Germans moved first, sub hunting from a plane in WW2 being far from fascinating with the SF series (or any other).

Edited May 12, 2008 by Gunrunner

[+Baltika]

Good suggestion, Gunrunner.

 

I certainly have carrier ops in mind for when I get a campaign built for this terrain, but I must confess, as if it wasn't obvious, that my inspiration for building this was DID's last flawed masterpiece, rather than Tom Clancy, or indeed any awareness of the strategic significance of Iceland as sitting on the supply lanes from USA to UK.

 

As to resizing the terrain, well, I had to jump through a few hoops to get the HFD data coming out right, as at these latitudes the DRM data tends to come out very scrunched up in the north-south plane. Also, whilst this is not quite a full-size terrain, it is much larger than the standard WoE/WoV/SFP1 67% size terrain, and that took a bit of effort to get right (or something close). So I don't really think I will be resizing my basic build.

 

There will be carrier stations in later builds, but placed with a view to the tactical goal of launching and supporting an invasion of the Icelandic mainland, rather than maintaining a strategic overwatch on a blockade frontier. And, of course, opposing such an invasion. The "big picture" of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe will happen offstage, as in the campaign from Eurofighter Typhoon.

 

Anyway, build v0.1 beta is now available for d/l, so time to stop talking and get flying

Edited May 12, 2008 by Baltika

[Gunrunner]

I was the first to download it.

 

Nice first beta, smoothing some relief, adding objectives and eye candy (some geysers maybe... one reaching up to 200ft) and you have one very nice map to play with.

It also would be the perfect candidate for using seasons with the new engine (meaning twice or even more work as you'd have to duplicate tiles for each season) as Iceland in Summer and in Winter are very different places.

[+Baltika]

Hi Gunrunner,

 

Fast moving there

 

Thanks for the feedback. I have deliberately not used the smooth terrain function as I want to get all the airfields placed and levelled first, as there seems to be no "undo" function on TE But I agree, the relief needs some work in places. On that subject, I'd really like to see the coastline much more rugged and rocky, particularly along the eastern and northwestern seaboard. That would seem to require a bit of "cheating" by hiking the heights of the various coastlines, in much the same way I have done with Heimaey, and of course will require some rock/sea transition tiles

 

And I admit there is a ton of work to be done on adding more towns, ports, targets, bases, etc etc. That will come in time, as I keep picking away it it.

 

On the issue of eyecandy, as I said in the read me, the Icelandic terrain is wonderfully varied and gorgeous, and surprisingly colourful. I have been messing with lifting imagery from google earth and trying to build Icelandic terrain tiles, but there's a looong way to go with that, if ever. Good suggestion about seasonal changes, but that's a while down the line, I suspect.

 

Well, hope you're having fun with it meantime. Updates as and when I get the time.

 

Cheers,

 

Baltika

[+PureBlue]

Good start Baltika, I like the variable landscape and hope you can cook up some tiles for it.

The thing I want to ask is, (also messing around with terrain building here), the peaks.txt and sectorheight.txt.

Are these used with TE? or perhaps sfmap, which i'm still trying to figure out how to use.

Similar to Iceland, Anatolian landscape is very mountainous at places and the DEMs didnt give me specific peaks. so a bitmap export/import, modification phase will be a must.

 

keep up the good work

[+Baltika]

Good start Baltika, I like the variable landscape and hope you can cook up some tiles for it.

The thing I want to ask is, (also messing around with terrain building here), the peaks.txt and sectorheight.txt.

Are these used with TE? or perhaps sfmap, which i'm still trying to figure out how to use.

Similar to Iceland, Anatolian landscape is very mountainous at places and the DEMs didnt give me specific peaks. so a bitmap export/import, modification phase will be a must.

 

keep up the good work

 

 

Hi there pureblue, thanks for the encouragement.

 

Peaks.txt and sectorheight.txt are generated by TE when you hit the "Save All" button. I d/k specifically how they are used, or what editing them would do. I did my height adjustment the manual way, using "Export height Map as Bitmap" then editing the .bmp in Gimp and then "Import Height Map from BitMap" in TE.

 

Terrain tiling is hard work, and I'm not too happy with the result so far, but, hmm, well OK, take a look:-

 

Glacier advancing over lava rock formations:-

 

 

External view

 

 

Long shots

 

 

 

External views from altitude

 

 

 

 

These are pre- pre release alpha, just to give a flavour. Getting rid of those tile intresection lines would try the patience of a saint. And, the more tile types you introduce, the more transition tiles you need. Gets to be a lot of work very quickly, and my lava rock/sea transition tiles won't work, for some reason.

 

Good luck with your Anatolian terrain

Edited May 13, 2008 by Baltika

[+PureBlue]

Hey that glacier-lava rock tiles are not too shabby at all! The whole thing is definetly a patience tester, but hang in there.

Oh and how in the world I missed those txt files TE created Off to try my luck on some manual height bitmap editing.

[+Baltika]

Lava rock tiles are from google earth images.

 

The Glacier is just the stock WoE snow tile, but with snow/lava transition tiles added to give a "flowing" sort of feel. Doesn't look too good close up, though

[+Julhelm]

You can probably improve on the lava tiles a bit by painting over them. Also is it possible to use a specific noisenormal for a given tile? If they could be bumpmapped they'd look ace.

[+Baltika]

You can probably improve on the lava tiles a bit by painting over them. Also is it possible to use a specific noisenormal for a given tile? If they could be bumpmapped they'd look ace.

 

Great suggestions, cheers. I'm still feeling my way with this stuff though, I'm just a jumped-up .ini monkey

[Longestpants]

Baltika, this is looking fabulous!

[+Stary]

Baltika, this is looking fabulous!

 

Definitely! Great paint job!

[+Brain32]

Lava rock tiles are from google earth images.

 

The Glacier is just the stock WoE snow tile, but with snow/lava transition tiles added to give a "flowing" sort of feel. Doesn't look too good close up, though

 

You probably took them from too high altitude, I take my textures from 1000m then edit and merge two of them into one 1024x1024 tile, make it seamless and resize it down to 512x512, that way you can get really nice textures that will both, fit well into general size of things and look really crisp and detailed when flying down low.

 

As for seams(edges) with my new tehnique I need not more than 15mins per tile from GE images to finished tile, but it's a bit too complicated to explain here now.

If you need any kind of help feel free to contact me :)

[+Baltika]

You probably took them from too high altitude, I take my textures from 1000m then edit and merge two of them into one 1024x1024 tile, make it seamless and resize it down to 512x512, that way you can get really nice textures that will both, fit well into general size of things and look really crisp and detailed when flying down low.

 

As for seams(edges) with my new tehnique I need not more than 15mins per tile from GE images to finished tile, but it's a bit too complicated to explain here now.

If you need any kind of help feel free to contact me :)

 

 

Brain, that is excellent advice, I have been taking textures from 30K

 

It is getting late now for me to continue with this, but I will be in touch.

 

Thanks for the offer of help

 

Cheers

 

Baltika

[+Baltika]

Just a few early terrain tile WIP shots to let you know what I've been messing around with:-

 

Got my alpha channel sorted, thanks for the tips from our resident terrain gurus

 

Seemed a bit dark, so I've been messing with brightness/contrast levels

 

I wanted the cliffs to look more like, well, rocky cliffs, rather than grassy knolls, so here we go. Needs more variation in tile types, but you get the idea

 

And cresting the hill to see some scattered snow cover. Spring is coming to Iceland

 

 

As I said, all very early WIPs. It all needs a bit more variation to look less regimented, and the big issue is tile transitions/seams, but I'll just keep plugging away for now. Gets kind of addictive once you start roaming around in GE, when you spot something that you reckon would look great in game, you kind of want to try it out.

 

Don't hold your breath, but maybe someday. . .

[+Stary]

Definitely wants this one! Good work!

[+Brain32]

Great work man