Merry Christmas from North Pole

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Depends if you can match up tile types. And I'm still not finished....more tile types coming, but without too many transition tiles. I went a long way to minimize 3-ways, yet still ended up at 205 tiles.

 

Airbases: keep it simple. There should be at least -- guessing -- 30 SAC and RAF bases, probably more, and well over a hundred PVO bases....given the timeframe from 1947 to 1971, and given assumed Soviet dispersion -- think FW-190s flying off the autobahn to hide from 8th Air force. Everything is to be sacrificed on the altar of size. One or two of your fave air bases you could dress up nice. You have the whole world to choose from...well half the world. Thule is really, really, interesting, and tiled out nicely with barren brown "M" and summer ice even with tile blanks...maybe could use some Thule specific 16 pixel HM bmps.

 

Did it work for you? I downloaded it, unzipped it, and ran it here.

 

Thunder and lightning is starting up again outside, raining off and on all day. Gotta go.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Lena River, in Siberia, flowing from near Lake Baikal to the Arctic.

 

This was hand drawn on the false height bmp, by following the river bed in the bmp, with minimum size brush -- 3 or 4 pixels, depending on direction, which is a little "feature" of TE tiling -- to get as narrow a river as possible. 1 pixel = 1 kilometer. Its still too wide for my liking. I try to draw the river so that 50% transition tiles line up against each other, with no "full" water tile...just two transitions butting up.

 

I hope to do dozens of these kind of rivers. They work impeccably for flat terrain, but for hilly terrain, it doesn't look so good, because the tiles are too large, they overpower the small river beds and climb the hill sides. But if I can get 50,000km worth of river, in mostly flat Russia, to auto tile, its a fair trade. Sold to me!

 

 

To get as narrow rivers as possible, in the future that is, I went with half size transition areas....ie...where one terrain type dominates the other. If water is the less dominant terrain, rivers become more narrow. Another benefit is exotic looking tiling for, say, mountain vs desert. The downside is occasional mis-matched tiles. That's a trade off. If I went with "equal" transitions, rivers would be near double the width I have now.

Edited August 21, 2012 by Lexx_Luthor

[+Julhelm 266]

Looks cool. Stary should make a tileset for it.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Thanks, but does it work?

 

205 tiles ... ... so far

Stary probably vanished about the time I uploaded this. Can't blame him.

 

 

Here's two shots of part of the Lena river, branching off into something else (?). In the left picture are seen "narrow" or "unequal" 50% transition tiles (green > blue). In the right picture is normal 50% transitions (green = blue). The two rivers are wider in the right picture. After this test, I went with unequal transitions.

 

 

 

My transition tiles don't have the border, so they don't contribute to the grid. That's a way to identify what is transition and what is not in game testing. In reality, there are so many more transition tiles that I didn't want to border them, and they are not really needed for development.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Found something interesting over the summer. I got shiny water working, but I normally don't use it during development, and the upload has none. However, over the summer, on a hunch I tried setting up two (2) shiny terrain types: water and snow capped mountains -- just to test if it would work. It seemed to work.

 

Below is water tga shining in the sun, and mountain tga shining in the sun (no transition tiles). Note how the hilly mountain terrain interferes with the shine however. These are completely different terrain classes. I'd like to eventually have shiny (and near flat) sea ice/frozen waterways, along with shiny water, with the ice not as shiny as water.

 

I noticed TK's shiny water tga has no selection, while Baltika's Kamchakta's water tga has many very tiny selections, and so is "dimmer" than TK tga (I think). That may be a way of differentiating the two shiny terrain types. Is this Correct Thinking?

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

haha ... I stripped down to 120 basic defining and tranny tiles, mainly, by avoiding a number of 3-way collisions, but that will take some manual work later to ensure, not much though. Also, cut out some fluff.

 

I panicked today, cos I just realized 3dem has an OPTION to turn off shadow lighting. I didn't know that, cos I never asked. I like the HFD better with no shadow, you can't tell a difference much directly, but comparing the two methods the shadow-off seems a bit better for mountains and valleys. However, that would not only require starting from scratch, but starting from seed. Its good enough I think.

 

I'll never get this campaign finished, but doing it I learn so much about the geography of this hemisphere.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Wow, I finally learned to change the 8 bit color table, and made it R=G yellow. Man this is powerful stuff. I can now easily see small differences in altitude anywhere from sea level to tibetan lake level -- above that, its not so important. They don't call Tibet the roof of the world for nothing. The yellow color is easier on the eyes, and (I looked this up) the yellow allows finer distinction between slight brightness levels especially at the lower, dimmer, altitudes. I wish I did this at the beginning, would have made things so much easier.

 

 

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

poasted::

 

 

Its good enough I think.

 

I was afraid of this -- Modder = Artist = good enough is not good enough.

 

Starting from seed....from the very beginning with 3dem. But, I am learning new methods in Photoshop Elements, and with the new colour table, things are going much eastier pasting together a seamless terrain. This is today's good news.

 

 

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Well, spent a few hours pasting the western half, and its alot better than before, and so much easier, a day instead of weeks, working 24bits but I'll convert to 8bit when done, the new tools require 24bit bmps.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Done! Took about 8 hours, using the new tools, for a seamless terrain, and preserving all the river valleys...butt...there's a problem. 3dem produces those large sinusoidal gaps for a reason  -- correct distances between any two points, which is something I have been proud of in this huge hemisphere map. I just threw that away. More to come about this.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Well the new version is too good, maybe. Seamless yes, and it took only that one day to paste up, but since then, I've found some oddness that is just ... odd. The new version from unshaded 3dem can't be "enhanced" with brightness and contrast the same way I can do the older, shaded 3dem version.

I've found that I can adjust brightness and contrast to give exact height results for Lake Baikal and the peak of the island/peninsula at the center of the lake, with Tibetan lakes only being pushed up about 500m. With the new version, the Tibetan lakes get lofted well over a kilometer. The color table behaves differently between the two 3dem options -- shaded vs unshaded.

 

So I'll stick with the shaded. Anyways, the really large mountains look blocky, but the lesser mountains have personality. I guess, the new shaded method mountains look better in a uniform way, but they all look the same, while the older method mountains have more variabilty it seems.

 

Anyways the map so far, new colour table much easier to work with.

 

110kb ~~> http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d178/Lexx_Luthor/9000Tj2.jpg

 

 

[+Menrva 4,200]

That's great, I'm really looking forward to seeing where your project manages to arrive. If only Strike Fighters had air refueling...

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

 

Well, its not going anywhere fast, or slow for that matter. But its unbelievably interesting to research to make it....believable.

 

Just found this tonight, you know those hex concrete plates on red airbases, well here's a 2007 article from FAA site.

 

PDF ~> SOVIET PRECAST PRESTRESSED CONSTRUCTION FOR AIRFIELDS

 

 

..

 

Here's the site ~~> http://www.airporttech.tc.faa.gov/