Anatolian Terrain (WIP)

[+PureBlue 71]

Hello everybody,

This was a project I started last summer, a 1600km map, covering a huge area, Greece, Turkey and eastern Anatolia, Armenia, part of Iran. Being an undertaking way over my head, it stalled and then I lost the files in a stupid disk failure

 

There are some nice maps for the region, some still being developed, Black Sea, Greece and most awaited Adriatic

 

Despite this situation, I couldn't resist the urge to build this vision I've been getting when I go to bed these days, yes the modding bug at work

 

Now it's down to a 1304km (!) map that covers all major airbases of these 2 Nato countries.

For one thing, it's being a hell of learning process. Thanks to Gepard's tutorials and works of other cool modders like Stary, Wrench, Brain & countless others, if I can pull this off, do a decent job, I get to write one of those long arse DontReadMe.txt files.

 

So this is what I got for now, usual two weeks of development time is our target

 

 

Lots of squadrons still waiting for me to build their homes

 

Izmir sea side, somewhere out there is NATO CC-Air HQ AIRSOUTH.

 

Some imagination running loose at the harbour, (hours of offset gathering fun)

 

Larissa Airbase, Mount Olympus in the background

 

btw, I'm using Autumn tiles from 4 seasons by Stary

The geography has a lot of coastal zigzags and islands; impossible to form accuretly with 2x2km tiles.

I had to compromise, removing some small islands and hand building places using the height map, gimp style..

 

More pictures to follow..

Edited June 13, 2009 by pureblue

[Silverbolt 104]

Pureblue, Looking good so far!

[Viggen 644]

Impressive.

[+pato poli 73]

Uuuuaaaaauuuu!!!! Man great work!!!

[+PureBlue 71]

Thanks guys

 

 

[ Oops Attachment size overblown for tonite :D ]

Edited June 13, 2009 by pureblue

[Silverbolt 104]

well, i'd *wish* to see some Army Bases, as we see in Wrench's WoI target Rebuild(i love to bomb the arabs with my scooter in Sinai's Peninsula) ...and also some naval base(?)

[+KnightWolf45 1,147]

looking good man

[Wrench 9,848]

Which city TODs are those?? Those are GREAT!!!

 

There's a new 'army base' layout in the Modern Darwin map ... totally rebuild, it's centered now with the 0,0 point ACTUALLY at the 0,0 point. Feel free to use it's layout.

 

If you need any country flags, iirc, there's a Greece one in Libya, and I can whip out the Turkish one in like 2 minutes... position offsets can be found for the varying airfields in most of my terrain mods. For the Stock ones or just ask .. I've got them plotted in a text file around here somwheres....; for Gepards you'll have to figure those out yourself!

 

EDIT: and don't forget all those funny signs/billboards I keep coming with

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+PureBlue 71]

Silverbolt, couple of naval bases will be there for sure, carefully placed as close to the real thing. Going hiking in Google earth!

There are two Meko200 types already in that harbour shot, I think the Main Med base is at Marmaris, I have to do some research too.

 

Wrench, that base is da bomb, discovered it last nite, perfect for the army bases in the north, where the land battle ought to be I guess..

Got to go crazy w/ the types.ini right? :D Ships and tanks, radar sites. Signs too!

 

I have a few single missions of historical engagements planned (some confirmed, some unconfirmed stuff as is the custom here :)

and perhaps a campaign of the Cyprus events, para dropping and amphibious operations, though this can stir up some stuff I dont intend, this is all for us armchair pilots, no contreversial stuff needed.

Of course the terrain needs to be ready, to develop these.. Focusing on that for a while at least.

 

Edit: Oh yes those tods are Stary's from 4 seasons, lots of variety, 2x trees are greay, but that should be customizable at the end.

Edited June 13, 2009 by pureblue

[+PureBlue 71]

Incirlik AB, Adana, w/ occasional busy NATO traffic.

 

 

Andravida AB, home to Phantom Squadrons Mars and Ajax, among others.

Using Gepards beautiful airbases mod.

 

 

Balikesir AB, 9th Main Jet Base of Turkish AirForce. 2 Squadrons of Vipers, home to Thunderstreak and Starfighter birds in the past.

 

 

View from the roof of the highest hotel in Limnos (Never been there so..) A pier to be built, while testing a new tool ;)

 

 

Merzifon AB near Black Sea coast, Getting my feet wet with 3d studio.

 

 

SF2:E airfield textures have changed a bit, this will need fiddling still.

 

 

Many many target areas yet to be created, Factories, Land/Naval Bases, S-300, Nike, HAWK and Patriot sites; Convoys to spice things up..

 

 

 

Please feel free to comment, any contribution is welcome w/ target areas, special places that you think should be on here, skins you'll whip up :D I'll keep loggin progress and try to get out a beta soon, thanks for reading!

 

[Viggen 644]

special places that you think should be on here

 

 

SPARTAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Vader2 1]

Fantastic work!!!

[+swambast 722]

Great start pureblue, keep up the awesome work! :yes:

[Derk 265]

Makes me want to go there on holiday again.....

 

Hou doe,

 

Derk

[+PureBlue 71]

So it's sort of a tourism advertisement, good deal

 

Here at Nea Anghialos the landing threshold is only a few meters to the beach.

[eankhilous 0]

Great work men I'm working on more realistic TuAF f-16 blk30. It's a mix of mirage factory and some other vipers. Maybe after 2 weeks ı can upload it. I think, ı can make some single mission pack or a campain with this map. Project name is Fight of the Allies or Aegean Chaos.

[Wrench 9,848]

landing threshold is only a few meters to the beach.

 

Be carefull with those too close to the sea!!! I had some issues with some airfields like that in SoCal - runways would dispapear like they hadn't been flattened ... wound up using repainted HM_bmps for all the sea/land transition tiles. Of course, it may be different with a WoE based terrain, built in the late-model TE, as opposed to the early Desert version...

 

I also see the 'grassfield' that I 'borrowed' from Gepard is making a reappearence!! Don't forget the transition tiles .. grassfield25/50/75. I think I repainted them for the Indo-Pak mod, so they fit together better (the 75 was wonky in the upper right, and lower left corners) Of course, a MYRIAD of other grassfeild tend to be needed as well....hate making tiles!!!

 

wrench

kevin stein

[Wrench 9,848]

oopppsss...forgot to attach this to the previous message.

 

Turkish flag for your airbases, army camps, amusement parks, naval bases, shopping malls, etc. Types ini listing included

 

wrench

kevin stein

[+PureBlue 71]

Thanks Kevin,

Got side tracked w/ decalling, it could be worse then tiling I tell ya!

some surprise attractions are being planned, this will come handy.

 

These tiles dont have HM bmps so they're all flat, some places would look a lot better w/ them probably.

The terrain height map is set to a scale of 14 (highest peak possible is 14x256)

So the sea is 0m high and the first level I can go is 14m. That makes it a pain to position these airbases close to the coast. But they are like this in reality, so I try.

 

Here's a technique I use:

get two screenshots of the area I work on, a texture view and a height view, put them on top of each other and play w/ opacity.

Now I can see where I have to fill and how much. 'Adjust sea level' function wouldn't allow me to have a flat threshold here..

 

 

I wish we could merge the exported bmps of the texture tile map and height map, (output by TE)

but they got different colormaps in gimp!

so I put the above picture on one side and edit the height bmp on another window, its kinda pita, any suggestions or photoshop magic you can pull?

Edited June 15, 2009 by pureblue

[Wrench 9,848]

Same color issues in Photoshop too, as the 'export as bmp', comes out in Index, not RGB.

 

The only other suggestion would be to pull the _HM.bmps from ther germanyce cat, and paint them all black, and drop them into (and leave them!) in the Anatolia terrain folder*. That makes them 'flat' and hard, so things don' t tend to sink into the ground. Also setting the HeightMapScale= to 2.0000 helps a lot.

 

We ran into a LOT of these issues with pre-08 maps when the patches came out, and these are some of best fixes we could find.

 

I had to do that for several maps, some using the Desert set, some the Vietnam set. It seems to work fairly well!!

 

All the sea/land tiles SHOULD have a HM listing in the terrain's data ini:

 

[Texture040]

Filename=germanySG25a.TGA

HasWater=1

HeightMap=germanySG25a_hm.BMP <---

HeightMapScale=2.000000 <---

Color=0.169547,0.240876,0.262881

SolidObjectTexture=terobject_buildings1.bmp

AlphaObjectTexture=terobject_trees1.tga

 

I'd start checking the terrain data ini, and your cat pointer line (although THAT shouldn't effect anything!!) I know the TE, when it 'generates' the _data.ini, DOSEN'T use all the data for each of tiles; especially for the Solid & Alpha objects, so I use a 'stock one', freshly extracted, and if I've added custom tiles, stick them at the bottom of the listing -and make sure the Texturelist.ini matches EXACTLY!!! Or weird s**t happens!! (and I DO know my weird s**t!! )

 

wrench

kevin stein

 

*=you'll notice they're in a LOT of my recent map mods/upgrades/fixes and whatnot!

[+Crusader 2,101]

great project!

[+Stary 2,427]

Seems a lot good work done here so far!

[+NGHENGO 14]

Wery good, with the Black Sea Fleet Nightmare too...........Ah, who can remember "Aegian Strike" by VG games and "Turkish Strait" part of the "Third World War" Saga by GDW....those were the days of wargamming......Sweet '80's

 

Go ahead!!!!

 

Mau.

[+Spillone104 553]

Interesting.... Good job Purelue!

[Viggen 644]

Just so you guys know, this map, really is big. I think it even goes as far north as southern Serbia and Bulgaria.

 

Anyone know what a typical Jupiter IRBM site looked like?

 

And the terrain does work in WOE. I'm 06 patched and it still looks great.

Edited June 15, 2009 by JA 37 Viggen