WW2 Malaysia/Singapore terrain

[Alexander51 3]

Oh yeah! Looking good

[+comrpnt 16]

Looks great.

 

That will be ideal for the small war between Britain/Malaysia and Indonesia during the early 1960's.

Yes, I'd like to consider using this terrain as the basis for missions from that conflict involving these guys ;-)

 

 

Thanks in advance, regards, comrpnt

[kct 5]

Place all of them in Butterworth? It's a busy base during that period (bring in Aussie Mirage IIIOs and others into the party...).

[+Baltika 85]

Hi everyone,

 

Just to let you all know, thanks to recent interest I am actively taking this one forward again.

 

I know I have promised much but delivered little on the terrain mod front. I started a lot of projects in the early flush of enthusiasm following Gepard's TE tutorials. And, looking at some of my early posts, I am astonished as to where the months have gone. But I have been making advances on many fronts in terms of getting to grips with TE, including getting sidelined into the realms of creating custom tile textures (that really is time comsuming), so hopefully some stuff should be coming to fruition in the not-too-distant future.

 

Of course, as you know - "two weeks" :yes:

[+Baltika 85]

Update.

 

TE is a continual learning curve, so sometimes the early WIPS just don't cut it. I have gone back to the drawing board with this one, but the delays will be worth it in the end, I think. . .

 

[+PureBlue 71]

My goodness, look at the crazy zigzagged coasts and itty bitty islands!!

I'm curious what new tricks you learned of TE, please do tell :yes:

[+Baltika 85]

My goodness, look at the crazy zigzagged coasts and itty bitty islands!!

I'm curious what new tricks you learned of TE, please do tell :yes:

 

Yes, it's a wild area for terrain building.

 

As for new tricks, general familiarisation with the idiosyncracies of TE means that the more you use it, the better a "feel" you get for it.

The stock texturelists are baseline building blocks, but for rugged coastlines there are not enough transition tiles to cover every eventuality. So the coastline gets a bit funny, transition textures don't cover it properly, and you get frustrated.

 

Germany_CE is a worse offender than Vietnam_SEA for that. The Germany texturelist has the bare minimum of city/coast transition tiles to make the germany map work. For my UK map I added new transition tiles to that list. There will be even more when I release NZ map.

 

The Malaysia rebuild became necessary because I had been exporting/importing the .bmp file without a full understanding of how TE translated the different colours into heights, so I was getting chopped off mountain peaks. Also, I hadn't used the heightfield % setting to best effect to get a fun, playable map. It was all rather flat. So that had to be fixed. Finally, I realised I wanted to open the theatre up a bit, after reading Volume One of "Bloody Shambles." Hence the inclusion of the Philippines in the new build.

 

So no real new insights, just getting better at working with TE.

 

Cheers,

 

Baltika

 

 

Oh yeah, there are a couple of typos in the stock TW texturelists which mean some land tiles are treated as water tiles. That means the engine looks for a .tga for that tile, can't find one and you get randomly switching tile textures appearing in game. Wrench, that may be the problem you had with SoCal map having the odd strange flashing texture tile.

Edited July 11, 2009 by Baltika

[Wrench 9,846]

prolly LOTS of sea-to-jungle 75s!! (or whatever that damn tile is called! bet some of those islands are only 4 tiles ... sea/jungle 75 butted against each other (did that with the marianas)

 

wrench

kevin stein

[Guest Eject]

Thanks very much, I have my hands full with Malaya right now but I will be in touch :yes:

 

Cheers,

 

Baltika

 

Here's the new guy from Indonesia (NOT Indoneshia -- not with the "h" -- written in Texture of Su-27 TNI-AU/Indonesian AF). Kalidjati (oldie spelling) or Kalijati is quite far from Jakarta, approc. 80Km or more to the East nearby Garut in West Java -- Google Earth. My late dad, 1967, flew SOLO with a Chapoong (dragon fly) the single-engine aircraft/trainer from YOGYA(karta) our hometown. Never heard that one airbase u mention in Bandung, West Java some 200Km from Jakarta (towards eleven o'clock high). There are some SEVENTEEN THOUSAND big-small islands in Indonesia! From a small town in Sabang North of ACEH (rings a bell? Dec. 24, 2007 TSUNAMI) in North Sumatera to the farthest point in West Papua or IRIAN Jaya it is equal with LA to NY when the two maps is superimposed. Well, just Google Earth Indonesia....

 

Btw, Kalijati - Yogyakarta (Adisoetjipto/Adisucipto) is some 430Km. How could that tiny Chapoong could fly Yogya-Kalijati without refueling???

Edited December 8, 2009 by Eject

[+EricJ 4,241]

The map covers the area shown in the screenshot, it is a full-scale map created using Gepard's TE guide from the KB. So it is pretty huge already. There are Philippines, Darwin, New Guinea and Burma maps (all by Edward ) which essentially cover the surrounding regions in every direction. Like I said, this is by way of "plugging a gap"

 

v1.0 will feature a target- and airfield-rich environment on the Malay Peninsula, from say, Singora (as it then was) down to Singapore - just ideal for that "Defence of Singapore" 1941-42 campaign I have in mind :yes: (or should that be, Surrender of Singapore campaign )

 

I'm not sure how much of an air war there actually was over Borneo, Celebes and Java, but I extended the map out there anyway to cover all eventualities. That will give the NEI somewhere to fly, I reckon, like The Wrench says, so I ought to read up on their air battles vs the Japanese. Also good for the Battle of the Java Sea. Additional target areas, bases etc can be added for more modern scenarios, eg the 60s conflict The_Editor mentioned.

 

Cheers all,

 

Baltika

 

Actually was going to ask since this topic came back on the radar... but you answered about modern runways... but since this topic is pretty old, is it still among the WIP list?

[Derk 265]

Actually was going to ask since this topic came back on the radar... but you answered about modern runways... but since this topic is pretty old, is it still among the WIP list?

 

Same here...... My offer from last year concerning the NEI air war of course still stands.

And we do have nice Buffaloes and Hawks available !!!

 

Hou doe,

 

Derk

[+Baltika 85]

Hi there, yes, still on WIP list,although pretty far down I have to say. My fault for starting up too many terrain projects. Thanks for the continued offer of help.

 

We really need terrain targetisation tools, doing it by hand is slow, slow work.

 

Compared to writing campaign files, terrain building is a monster.

 

I have no ETA for this one just now. There are a couple of terrains which are well ahead of this on the production line, so it won't arrive anytime soon. Look for something from the Kuril region first, then NZ. After that I'm not too sure, but I have an Iceland tileset I really want to finish up and release.

 

A little bird tells me that vol 2 of "Bloody Shambles" will be in my Xmas stocking, so that will certainly re-kindle my interest in this region/timeframe

[Wrench 9,846]

More to answer EricJ question, as long as there's enough "space" on the airfield tiles (ie: using the standard 4 J-AB1 or G-AB1), you can fit just about any runway set up in them. There's even a single tile in the Okinawa mod that fits the small airbase (runway 3). Fits perfectly. (btw, runway 2 don't fit on that one --to long)

 

the only one that causes problems is Runway 4, the Large, 2-crossing runway airbase, but that can be made to fit by rotating the heading -/+ 30 (??) deg off of true north.

 

If using the WW2 type "dirt" textured runways, one would just need to remove the bmps and tgas from the terrain folder, and it'll revert back to the stock paved variety that's in every terrain cat file. Even switching them over (meaning: if the targets ini contains the WW2 era static parked planes), it's a simple copy/paste of the targets listing from one of the more modern terrains to change all the airfield objects. Or a text edit to simply remove the statics.

 

We really need terrain targetisation tools, doing it by hand is slow, slow work.

 

Compared to writing campaign files, terrain building is a monster.

 

Yeah, I feel the pain, brother!!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+EricJ 4,241]

Thanks as always Wrench, and Baltika... I do agree, though I never made a map to save my life. I've wanted to, but it would be very nice to have a more powerful (and user friendly) map making tool. Then knuckleheads like me wouldn't be bugging people to make maps, I'd probably make a few...

[Wilches 1,172]

Any progress so far? A must terrain for my Hornets F.3!!