Merry Christmas from North Pole

[+Major Lee 18]

Quote: "I think SF can only use one (1) terrain type having specular water sun/moon reflection."

 

That is correct... You can make snow tiles glare so bright you gotta wear shades! But not water AND land tiles at the same time for specular reflections...

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Thanks. I needed to be sure. However, for some large lakes, like Baikal, which could be hand tiled (bucket fill mainly hopefully), you think its possible to use a variant of the sea level "water" tile -- you can have many variants of a base tile -- but iced up instead? mmmm

[+Crusader 2,062]

Epic project!

Keep going

[+EricJ 3,969]

Well as per your PM, the only thing I could suggest is adding airfields in Kuwait, Iran, and Afghanistan to get the initial setup, though it would be very nice to have the proper tiling done though...

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Yea, I can add air bases anywhere.

 

Tiling is not my game. I tried to tile. I'm a disaster. I ya'll want a super size map, I'll do the HFD, and can locate air bases on the map.

 

But, any campaign idea has to use the whole map -- 6, 10, 12 thousand kilometers whatever -- or there's no reason to use such a large map, losing detail for nothing.

 

** AGAIN :: the map centered on the north pole may be more interesting than my USSR centric map for SAC vs PVO...(what vs who?) Never mind.

 

More basically, a north pole campaign involving Badgers and Bears can, finally, directly include Canada in a StrikeFighters game.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Merry Christmas *thump*

[ignacioc91 101]

I think that, if possible, the map should not be cropped. The long-time flying adds for realism, that would only allowd for a few minutes flying ove the objective to have enough fuel to get back home. It would also add a need for the refuelling mode available at the .ini edits section. The idea is great!!!! It would be nice to have a finnished and flyable terrain!!!

[+Major Lee 18]

If you make the map any larger, the whole earth really will be flat... Also, which way is North???

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Also, which way is North???

 

hehe

 

 

 

Well, if you were *very* near the pole, which way is North?

 

Generallly, on the USSR+ map, PVO players will never fly too far from the Soviet Union, but SAC players will fly very far from North America. However, SAC players' time of most interest, and most of the targets, will be found on the Soviet side of the globe, hence the choice made here.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

ignacioc::

I think that, if possible, the map should not be cropped. The long-time flying adds for realism, that would only allowd for a few minutes flying ove the objective to have enough fuel to get back home. It would also add a need for the refuelling mode available at the .ini edits section. The idea is great!!!! It would be nice to have a finnished and flyable terrain!!!

 

Thanks!

 

I got sidetracked big time recently, but yea if I can make some kind of basic tile mapping I'd put this up for download and it would be flayable but certainly not "finished" ... well maybe by 2073.

 

It should be possible to use a mission editor or even maybe the game's campaign engine to put action in restricted areas since playing time is too long. For me, my goal is a very basic "simulation" of an air campaign, with the option to play in an airplane or just watch from inside the game world in some camera view, so I don't mind setting the game to run and forget about it for a day, just to see what happens. That's not at all like TK's thinking for the game.

[+Major Lee 18]

I mean "in-game", which way will be north? Not sure SF can make "North" a central point on a map, as opposed to North simply being towards the top of the map. If this is the case, then you would be flying SOUTH from Canada to get to the North Pole...

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Yeap. You take off from Thule in Greenland, and then fly SOUTH from Thule to the north pole, and beyond to your target inside the Soviet Union.

 

Best we can do now. Bear in mind, the actual SAC vs PVO interactions, and targets, in my game, will be on the Soviet side of the globe, so that's where north is north.

 

Now for the proposed true polar map which ya'll may be interested in, which way is north has no meaning on a 2D flat map. From a traditional astro/nav point of view, I suggest the prime meridian in Greenwich England be at the middle of the polar map's lower side. See the first poast of this thread on the first page about that. That gives US/Canada-vs-USSR a left-right face off, and so a neutral face off without either being north or south of the other. The real solution is TK making a 3D spherical planetary terrain engine. And I'm not gonna try to ask him. You feeling lucky?

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

An irrational conundrum, and possibly a new terrain oddity. I tried extending this thing farther .. "north" .. by an extra 1,000km to get in some good continental USA, but got snared by an interesting limitation to either TE, or the game itself, or my settings.

 

To grab some USA, I made this 13,000km map size, with 3km tile size, and it tiled up okay in TE, but the tiles in the newly added area would not show up in game. A day later, they showed up in game, but getting close to the northern new tiles dumped the game, just like how the game dumps if we get too close to the northern/southern border when Horizondistance < Border. But this did not effect the southern border. Strange.

 

Changing to the next integer tile size, 4km, fixed everything. But I think I want smaller tile sizes for more terrain detail -- nicer coastlines, vastly more sea level lakes get auto tiled, etc... so I found that a 12,500 map will use 3km tiles, but not 13,000km. That extra 500km will have to do, enough to get the states of Washington and Montana playable at least.

 

Apparently, as maps grow larger, there are minimum limits to tile size in game, and the game won't display rows of tiles that exceed some number related to map size. For 13,000km maps, the smallest tile size is 4km. I tried doing a 12,000km map with 2km tiles, but it didn't work in game, 3km tiles were the smallest there. I recall once tiling a 12,000km map with 2km tiles, but that was SF-2006, and I don't recall a problem. I'm doing this over SF-2008 now, so something may have changed. Recall that Patch 2008 was when TK hid the map edges from view, causing the game to dump in situations where we could previously see the edge and beyond -- the Great White Abyss -- so this is possibly a result of that change.

 

12,500 kilometers, the largest map we can do with 3km tile sizes over the SF-2008...

 

[FastCargo 412]

See, that's a map the B-70 could actually be comfortable in...

 

FC

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Yep. Not just turn radius, but play time also. B-70 was to cruise at M=3, and without afterburner, I think? It was to get its best range at that high speed, waveriding, while lower speeds would not wave ride, and so cost more fuel for the distance. So any B-70 flight across the map would take just a few hours, counted on one hand, far less time than B-36, B-52, and even a refueled B-58 which cruised subsonic until near the target.

 

Is all this Correct Thinking?

 

One interesting analysis I read about was that the B-58 was intended for use against a tight defense system, a defense that was located near the target, which the plane would sprint for over the defense. But, with the Soviet spacing SAMs widely across the land in the 1960s, far between targets, the B-58 would have to fly over these defenses at slow speeds until the near-target sprint. I've read that this contributed to the short service life of the plane. Not sure if this is true. Any thoughts?

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Done! ... "my big map..." What map? Put up or...

 

I figured do, or get lost. I finally got this tiled up to near what I always hoped to get, with blank colour coded tiles, but not textured. For years I've avoided tiling this since I knew it would be impossible. And it was. But I did it.

 

Its now a prototype map, not just experimental. It works. I have a summer and winter tiling, both preliminary. Should I put them up in two (2) uploads, or both seasons together in one swift stroke?

 

Right now 7zipped its all well over 100MB.

 

That inlcudes not only the HFD and TFD for game, but a number of 12000x12000 pixel bmp files that others can use for TE. I use a number of big bmps since I swap out HFD and TFD files for the finished game map, since I import one (butchered) bmp as a kind of Texturelist code for tile mapping, and another "normal" bmp for height mapping, and then do it again for another season.

 

One can browse The PhotoBucket link here (I think) for some of the bmp files and TE views. Its all "auto textured" in TE. I spent tha last few months getting the thing to auto tile like this, not wanting to depend on manual tiling for any of this yet. There is still much to do however.

 

Public, 144 ------> http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/Lexx_Luthor/144/

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Okay, its 140MB total 7zipped, but dumping winter, I get down to 100MB. I figure two uploads, one for game terrain, and one upload with three TE friendly bmps. The terrain 7zipped up is 35MB. The three bmps are 64MB.

[Icarus999 70]

In game screen shots or it didn't happen .

[FastCargo 412]

Dude, bring on the map! I want to cruise at Mach 3 for a hour....

 

FC

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Okay, I'll do it then. I see ravenclaw's Buccaneer (tried it last nigtht, wow!) is 150MB , so I should be able to upload a summer map with bmps for 100MB.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Okay the deed is done! Screenshots next or it didn't happen. It took like 5 minutes to attach the 7z at 99MB.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Lake Karakul in Tajikistan. Its listed as 3900m elevation, and I get 3901m in game, which includes the one meter free camera height. I got lucky there.

 

This is the lake seen from 19,000 meters. The first pic is the "false" height map. The tiles are correct, but the height map is butchered as a code for Texturelist tiling. We fix that in the second pic, where a "true" height map is swapped in.

 

This is one of the "cool" places on the map I love, but there are hundreds of "cool" places and I'll never be able to detail them all. The nice thing about swapping around HFDs is that I need hundreds of small lakes, and (larger) rivers.

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

These are the high altitude lakes north of the Himalayas.

Heavy picture, click here ~~> http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/Lexx_Luthor/144/Highlakes.jpg

 

Lake Karakul above is seen in the upper left corner. There are dozens of these things, hundreds if we go smaller but that strains the resolution of even this map.

 

---

 

View of a few Tibetan Plateau lakes from 20,000 meters. The first raw pic has the lakes at sea level. The snow covered tiles form a plataeu at 8500 meters altitude -- everywhere on the map. This is fixed later by swapping in a "real" HFD as seen on the right.

 

The long narrow thing on the left side of each pic is the left wing (bare metal) of USAF U-2. These were supposed to be cockpit views, but I didn't get much cockpit.

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

This is Novaya Zemlya seen from Yak-28P, before and after swapping HFD.

 

To get the low altitude Novaya Zemlya summer snow capped hills to auto tile with the same tile type as those of more southern snow capped mountains -- Himalayas with summer snow above 5400m -- I butcher the terrain, but later fix it by swapping the HFD.

 

The problem I have is that my terrain is kinda flat ... or boring. NZ hills are quite rugged, and I take the cause of my flatness (or my bori-ness) to be from larger tile size, large altitude steps as well as losing something in the original 3dem work. But all of those are needed for this map, so I live with it. This is all about raw size, nothing else.

 

This is all still WIP, since I'd like more "brown" barren terrain here, less green tundra, as well as more snow capped "hills," if one can call them that. This will take further butchering of the false height bmp in places.

 

[FastCargo 412]

I'm wondering how long it would take to substitute your placeholder tiles with something from one of the other terrains...then we have to work on airbases...

 

FC