Iran-Iraq war

[Menrva]

Well, my main bottleneck is adding rivers and hand tiling the whole terrain with the TFD Tool (TW's Terrain Editor autotile function messed up the whole terrain, so I'm doing it the hard way).  Don't worry, Stratos, I got this anyway; just yesterday I managed to add some rivers in Iran, and I quite enjoyed it seeing the result.  I appreciate the fact that you'd like to help, but as of now I'd like to work on this on my own.  Whenever I need some help, I'll call you with no hesitation, thank you very much.

 

In other news, I'll be busy updating the terrain as stated above, by the end of the next week I'll release some screenshots of the progress that is made.

[Stratos]

Rgr.

[Menrva]

Ok guys, good news and bad news.  The bad news is that next Monday I start my university lessons, and RL and duty come first.  The good news is that whenever I have free time I'll be working on this terrain/project only.  Seeing the results of my hard work and the useful input received by some of you, I'm determined to make sure that this terrain gets completed as we need it.  Enough chit-chat, here's the progress made with the TFD Tool, I'm adding all possible rivers and water bodies (lakes etc.), still many are missing (Mesopotamia is such a fertile area).

 

Some rivers in Iran, north of Ahvaz

 

Euphrates river and Tharthar Lake

 

Euphrates, between the Syrian-Turkish border

 

Euphrates through Nasiriyah

 

No in-game shots because I didn't dare, some areas need to be flattened for the rivers to appear properly, and I'll edit the .HFD only after having completely tiled the terrain. You may notice some transition tiles are not properly placed, those are some remnants of the autotiling done by the Terrain Editor, they'll be fixed. The Tigris river will be the next addition I make, consider that it took me almost a week (full of free time) to properly add the Euphrates. I try to be as accurate as possible in order to reproduce the correct river courses, thanks to satellite imagery by Google Earth. Tomorrow, if I can, I'll take some screenshots at the terrain as it is, I really need to see my work in-game. This is my plan;

 

 

 

 

 

[Menrva]

EDIT: In my post above it seems I ended with "this is my plan".  I was actually planning to say what it was but then I decided not to, forgetting to remove that line, so well now there it is:

 

1) I must tile the terrain completely and add all the eye-candy.

2) After that, the heightmap will get the same treatment (atm rivers look bad in the areas surrounded by mountains).

3) Finally, I'll correct the targets placement (targets in cities with rivers especially), and the runways heading according to RL satellite images.

4) Then the terrain should be complete or in beta state, no ETA for all of this though.

[Menrva]

Here are some in-game screenshots of the Euphrates river:

 

Turkey, Ataturk Dam (although with no 3d model of a dam) and following rivers:

 

Bonus screenshot, new night sky colours (work in progress):

[krfrge]

Wow,

 

That sure looks good.

[Menrva]

I'm still working on the terrain, but due to RL and a mod I'm working on for another game (yes, I mod other games too), I ceased development recently, but I'll continue from where I stopped.  Here some screenshots from TFD Tool, no ingame shots atm, sorry.  The Tigris river is a PITA, but if the hand-tiling worked great for the Euphrates, it will work good for this one too.  Some targets still mis-placed, they'll be reworked when rivers and roads are totally added.  Feel free to compare these shots with the ones posted in my previous posts to see the (slow) progress I made.

 

 

 

 

 

[Crusader]

....

 

 

In other news, does anybody know the exact location of the Mina-al-Bakr Oil Terminal? Today it shoud be known as Al-Basrah Oil Terminal, as the Yanks decided to rename it after 2003. I've been looking all over the internet, still no precise info.

 

yep, i have a map in a book which i'll scan which has the positions of MABOT and KAAOT , the latter is only a couple km away

[Menrva]

yep, i have a map in a book which i'll scan which has the positions of MABOT and KAAOT , the latter is only a couple km away

 

Wow, thanks a lot, Crusader! I really want to be as precise as possible with this terrain. I'm afraid it will be exactly like the stock SF2 terrains, only 63% of RL size, but it's going to be very detailed for sure. Feel free to send me a PM when you can.

[Icarus999]

The terrain looks great. If only it extended a bit further eastward, it would be even more useful. Tehran looks pretty close to the wall. Not complaining... just thinking out loud :)

[Menrva]

The terrain looks great. If only it extended a bit further eastward, it would be even more useful. Tehran looks pretty close to the wall. Not complaining... just thinking out loud :)

 

Don't worry, I know it's not a complain, and I agree with you, but when I started this terrain back then, I wanted to re-make the terrain that is in ODS and Operation Darius mod packages. So this terrain is an overhaul of that one, rebuilt mostly from zero. There is no way to extend the terrain now, that would mean that I have to scrap all the hard work I've done.

 

Regarding Tehran, to the east there is in fact The Wall, but airports are placed well within the flyable area, so the AI has no problems at all, from what I've seen. I'm finishing to add rivers, still a considerable number to do, the whole Kirkuk area is very difficult to get right or as I'd like to.

Edited November 5, 2015 by blaze95

[Wrench]

 

area is very difficult to get right or as I'd like to.

 

where have I heard (said) THAT before???!!!    Testify, brother!!

[Menrva]

where have I heard (said) THAT before???!!!    Testify, brother!!

 

There you go again... Does that mean that I'll give up with the terrain? Hell no. That just means that most likely I'll have to scrap the idea to put all minor rivers that are in the Kirkuk area, just check Google Earth and you'll know what I mean. Thanks.

[Wrench]

shoot, you're talking to the guy that's built 3 maps of the region -- I KNOW exactly what you're saying.

 

for smaller "stream" type water courses, I'd suggest using the IsrealME river tiles, suitably redone to match the tiles you have. Examples can be found in my most recent rebuilt of the Israel 2 and IsrealME maps.

[Menrva]

My apologies if I misunderstood the tone of your post, Wrench.

 

Yep, it seems like that I have to make such new river tiles, they're really needed. I wonder how many though, I'm a little worried that the terrain has 200 tiles (203 to be exactly) already. I'll have to do some clean up first, there's two or more tiles in the data.ini that are just copies of others. Thanks for the advice.

[Wrench]

no apology is necessary! :)

 

you'll need

 

farm (2 - straight and curved)

desert (2 - straight and curved)

city (2 -straight and curved)

(maybe) sea (read: river mouth. quite handy at the Shatt-al-arab and "swamp" regions at the Gulf)

"river fork" (large river to small river)

"river y" (where streams split or join)

 

any road tiles that cross the streams

 

plus all the transitions

 

farm/desert

farm/city

sea/desert (rivermouth again)

 

I don't expect you'll be needing any "mountain" streams, so didn't mention them

 

and TODs to match ALL of them -- that's the really hard part

[Menrva]

Damn, I almost forgot about the TODs. Well, I can always borrow them from some tilesets and change the trees' gfx accordingly. After all, I've made many new transition tiles already for the snowy mountains and the Caspian Sea green-ish regions, borrowing TOD from other tiles and such. Some of our great artists here at CA will surely make a better tileset once the damned terrain gets released, so for now I consider my tileset as something that has to be replaced completely one day or another.

Edited November 8, 2015 by blaze95

[Menrva]

Damned RL made me stop at it for a while.  I managed to complete most of Iraq, now it's time to move the the Iranian coastline and add the missing rivers there, then I'll have to add the road tiles.  Below I included two screenshots with TFD Tool, Mosul is good enough, the Kirkuk area is not close to reality instead (due to the 63% size of TW stock terrains). 

 

 

Two question/requests:

1) Speaking of road tiles, does anyone have a map which contains all main roads that I may need to add to the terrain?

2) Do we have a dam model?  It is needed for Mosul, and somewhere else too I think. 

[Wilches]

Will you add the Oil platforms on Persian Gulf and large Tankers?

[Menrva]

Will you add the Oil platforms on Persian Gulf and large Tankers?

 

Thanks for the question, I forgot to say in my previous post that I added, thanks to Crusader's help/info he gave me, the two Iraqi oil terminals, Al-Bakr and Al-Omayeh, pretty much in their RL location.  However for the time being Al-Omayeh is jus a copy of the Al-Bakr terminal.  In the future I'll make some changes to it.

[SUDNAVY]

Here's my progress on the complete map revamp so far.  I've spent the last days making over 40 or more transition tiles, and hand-tiling the Caspian Sea, the Caspian Sea coast, Lake Urmia, Lake Van and some of the snowy mountain peaks.  Still a lot to do though, don't pay attention to the blue dots inside The Wall, those are placeholders..

 

KuwaitWA_PlanningMap2_000.jpg

 

Zagros Mountains

img00001.JPG

img00002.JPG

 

Tehran

img00003.JPG

img00004.JPG

 

Caspian Sea and inland

img00005.JPG

img00006.JPG

 

Lake Urmia

img00007.JPG

 

Lake Van, Turkey

img00008.JPG

It's a great one,when do you share this one?

[Menrva]

when do you share this one?

 

When it is finished.  Sorry for the short answer, but RL studies obliged me to stop working at it, however only Iran is left to do, Iraq is complete with all rivers, it just needs some eye candy such as more precise targets and bases.

 

 

I'll re-post my previous questions since someone might have missed them;

Do we have a 3d dam model? It is needed for targets such as the Mosul Dam and a few others. 

Does anyone have a reference map which contains all the main roads that I may need to add to the terrain? I re-made the whole set of road tiles, it would be a pity not to use them.

[Stratos]

When it is finished.  Sorry for the short answer, but RL studies obliged me to stop working at it, however only Iran is left to do, Iraq is complete with all rivers, it just needs some eye candy such as more precise targets and bases.

 

 

I'll re-post my previous questions since someone might have missed them;

Do we have a 3d dam model? It is needed for targets such as the Mosul Dam and a few others. 

Does anyone have a reference map which contains all the main roads that I may need to add to the terrain? I re-made the whole set of road tiles, it would be a pity not to use them.

 

 

IIRC theres a dam on Korean terrain. 

[Menrva]

IIRC theres a dam on Korean terrain. 

 

OK I'll take a look at it, I'll need to ask for permission to use it.

Edited December 26, 2015 by blaze95

[Wrench]

no you don't -- go ahead and use it. be advised, it isn't as nice as one would wish