@ jtin, EricJ, et al

[+Baltika 85]

I have been experimenting with this one as well, just a few comments:

 

The elevation of the area covered by Thunder Bay, Salmon River and River of No Return is about 800m in MajorLee's original build. Looking at the general scale of the heightfield, with all the peaks and troughs, and the overall elevation, I think the Major bumped up the height scale percentage in TE somewhat, although I could be wrong about that.

 

Anyway, I know I made a suggestion to paint the water areas blue, but that makes them a height elevation of 0m, obviously. That will give a pretty big coastline drop all the way around - which may or may not be what we are looking for. The rivers will obviously be deep, deep, canyons with thousand-meter walls. Could be fun to fly down, right enough, but may cause tiling problems.

 

An alternative is to paint the water areas a uniform, 800m say, and specify that as the tile type water level in TE. That would give a much more natural look to the coastline, particularly around South Bend - we may want to put a harbour or port in there, and an 800m drop to the water could be tricky.

 

That, however, causes problems over on the West side, as the water there is already at 0m. That can still be tiled as water, but it means Thunder Bay would be 800m above it. A huge inland sea, caught up in the surrounding mountain peaks?

 

Overall, Brain32's suggestion of a transitional sea-to-cliff band may be the way to go, to smooth out that 800m drop, at least for Thunder Bay.

[+Baltika 85]

To avoid duplication of effort, just to let you all know I am working up a set of sea-transition tiles based off Brain32/Deuces' Winter Thaw set.

[+Baltika 85]

Okay, repainted sea level to about 660m, knocked together some sea tiles, and here we go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the down side, there are sea mountains wherever you look. That is going to be a lot of work to straighten out. The simplest way, I suspect, is to go with the transition zone around the mountains, which would enable autotiler to do it rather than having to hand place tiles everywhere. That should also get rid of the "sheer cliff" then "flat rock" effect you are seeing here.

 

OK, have to do some paying work now.

 

Cheerio for now.

 

PS, I will attach the tileset and Texturelist.ini to go with it for whoever wants to play around with this. The tiles are mods of work by Deuces, Doghouse, Brain32 & Thirdwire, bashed together and painted over a bit by yours truly. They are beta beta. Water effects are not enabled on the sea tiles - I don't have time to make .tgas out of them, and they may need editing. The sea to desert transitions are rudimentary and should be viewed as beta testing placeholders only.

 

I have made a new ANW terrain folder called ANW2, with all the inis changed to match. Don't want to mess up my main install

 

ANW2_TILESET.rar

Edited November 12, 2008 by Baltika

[krfrge 742]

Baltika,

 

What if we painted over the area to the west that has water and reset the water level to 650m like you mentioned. Do you think that might work?

[+Baltika 85]

What if we painted over the area to the west that has water and reset the water level to 650m like you mentioned. Do you think that might work?

 

Hi there,

 

Yes I think that's the way to go. Looking at jtin's modded heightmap again, all the water meets up, so unless we want a tsunami, all the water has to be the same height.

 

There is an alter sealevel function on TE, but I've never worked out how to do anything useful with it. perhaps we can specifiy a height for sealevel and then TE can autolevel for us. At least, then, sea level would be 0m rather than 650 metres.

 

Just a thought.

[jtin 0]

hmm it would be interesting to have some water flowing down the mountians... I'm not sure how that'll work especially now that the water is animated, but it's not that unrealistic to have a river or two flowing down the side of a mountian (with potential for a waterfall :) )... although I suppose that could be hand placed with river tiles.

 

I myself have no idea how the alter sealevel function works in TE... there's no dialogue box and whenever I try to use it, it crashes. Any ideas?

 

I've attached my height map (same one as the .jpg in the previous page) if you want to play around with it:

 

HM_AmericaNWrivers.zip

 

Whenever I import it into TE, it brings the elevation down on the terrain as a whole a couple hundred meters, so probably leaving the west and south sides where they are and then using the method you specified above on the other areas is probably the way to go. :yes:

 

Although if anyone knows the DEMs that MajorLee used for the origional terrain (if he did use any) a total rebuild of a 1000x1000 map might be better in the long run (of course that means much more work).

[+EricJ 4,244]

It's hard to produce, especially here in Afghanistan, where obviously there may be small streams, but nothing as significant as that. My only suggestion is add more of a riverbank... it just looks too tropical...

[+EricJ 4,244]

Got a question Wrench, how can you get trees on this map? I tried moving the .tod files from the winter terrain to the Thaw version I prefer better. I saw in the winter one there were trees.. but me see no trees...

[Wrench 9,846]

The tods are all in the main /ANW folder. Each of the seasonal folders should have their own terobject_trees.tga (or forest or whatever it's called!), based on if it's snowing or not.

 

I never had problems with getting the trees to show up; I did however (as stated in the "notes'' section) have the odd issue of the Winter tileset disappearing! Hence, the inclusion of an 'extra' set.

 

 

(slaps head) duh moment: Eric, are you using the newest 4 Seasons version?? It's full of trees. Mind you, post patch only!

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[+EricJ 4,244]

Yeah... I am using the Oct patch, so... not sure what the issue is. I'm going to reinstall it as I may have jacked it up..... Thanks!

[jtin 0]

After a bit of more experimentation, probably hand placing the tiles and flattening some parts to make way would look the best. Maybe a bit tedious, but the elevation variations on the map don't go well with other methods.

 

Good thing its such a small map :)