Going to town with the TFD tool!

[+quack74 329]

Just when I finished the updated seasonal tiles I discovered the awesome TFD tool. So needless to say I have to paint a few more tiles for each season now. I've been working on the Verdun terrain first. Expanded No-Mans Land a bit and made the edges more jagged. I added a whole lot of new tiles to get the trenches to line up. I'm adding some bigger fields without trees. Here are some pics taken from the TFD tool. I will be populating No-Mans Land with objects and smoke effects.

 

BTW can anyone help me place the Alpha objects, such as trees, for the new tiles? I cant use the Terrain Editor for the life of me!  I'm going to create painted rail road tiles. But I need to manipulate some trees that are in the way. Need some help if anyone is willing.

 

[+quack74 329]

What it looks like in game. Might be too much. But I figured years of digging trenches cant look pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wrench 9,417]

I can add the trees and building, but they' only be the stock WoE style.

I don't think those match Jan Tuma's (but can't remember - haven't played FE2 for a while!

 

If you want, I'll zip up my FE only TE; you'll need to add all the new tiles and such  (and maybe rebuild the texturelist ini)... don't exactly recall WHICH ones I've got sitting in there right now (maybe Gibralter??)

 

looking real there!!

Edited November 27, 2013 by Wrench

[+gterl 1,204]

 just noticed you're still using the old version of the 'forts' tiles.

I've created new ones (different from each other) for Fort Vaux and Douaumont

Have a look at my post about the latest version :-)

[+quack74 329]

I did get them. I started doing new tiles before I installed the updated fort. I'm adding some more forts that were in the area of st. mihiel too. Using your fort .bmp. Might change it around a bit for the smaller forts. Thanks for the fort btw. Very cool addition.

Edited November 27, 2013 by quack74

[+quack74 329]

Here are some more pics of Verdun region with all surrounding forts now in the targets.ini. I'm going to add some more detail to the forts that weren't destroyed.  I used gterl's "Fort" .bmp. I'm just going to do some more work around St. Mehiel. Then I'll start adding all the ground objects such as AAA, balloons, field guns and soldiers.

 

[+gterl 1,204]

looking good! you might want to play around with the heightmap (feasable with the TDF tool), to slightly rise the forts...you know just 2-3 meters, this looks esp good with the sunset light

[+quack74 329]

I tried. The Height adjustment cant get close enough. It distorts the fort too much. Im going to place some wall inside that I took from the Vogesen terrain to match the shape of the fort. This should help with the 3D look. I did use the Height mapping to raise the forts tile as a whole.

[33LIMA 972]

Looking forward to this!

 

All I would suggest is making the shelled area/No Man's Land  look less like a 'river of mud' by blending in some greens with the brown; OFF and now WOFF are good at this and the effect is much more realistic IMHO.

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img34/576/6nuz.jpg

(WOFF - tho the tonal and colour contrast between green and the pale crop fields outside the shelled area is WAY overdone, to my eye, the latter - no-man's land - is extremely convincing)

 

(OFF, spring or summer and winter)

 

IL-2 DBW 1916 maps also manage to avoid the 'river of mud' effect, tho fields of crops amongs the trenches is likely not quite right:

 

 

Tho stock FE also does a reasonable job, by having some greens in the 'transition zone' and the shelled area, putting some green into the latter is better still. You can't keep a good weed down and even with all that shelling, in spring and summer especially, there must have been some greenery in No-Man's Land. Even making the brown a little less grey-brown and a little greener would help, or adding in some greenish blotches.

 

The shelled interior of the fort in screenie #4 looks about perfect for much of no-Man's Land, except for the most heavily-shelled spots.

[+quack74 329]

I'll see what I can do. I finished making and altering 41 new tiles for the Verdun terrain. Now I need to paint each one for each season. So I'll try to add some color to No-Man-Land if I can.

[33LIMA 972]

Sounds great!

 

These things are a matter of taste to an extent and I'm sure there were some spots or stretches so heavily shelled as to leave little greenery, especially outside the growing season. But because WW1 photos are all B&W I think perhaps  we don't see the greenery, even when it is there. In this picture, I think there are some grassy patches visible in the foreground, in what looks to be a very heavily-shelled area:

 

http://www.nam.ac.uk/microsites/war-horse/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/124360.jpg

 

The OFF approach is I think clever and realiistic, not just to have shelled but NOT totally brown patches amongst the muddier areas as per DBW 1916, but also to place those lighter green strips roughly between the trench lines, like weeds or grass are producing a 'meadowland' effect in those areas. RoF on the other hand is firmly a 'river of mud' sim tho it does at least try to create a slightly blotchy effect, just not as well done as OFF:

 

[+quack74 329]

I think I'm done placing tiles. I could go on for ever but I have to stop somewhere! I'll try to add some color to some No-Mans-Land tiles to break up some of that "mud". I have added many, many, more towns. I also connected all the towns, cities, and airfields together with new roads.

BTW this is just for the Verdun terrain. I still need to paint all 42 of the new tiles for each season.

 

[+quack74 329]

We need bigger airfields for the big birds and big hangars. This one will be a at Boulay. Northeast of Metz. Its' runway is set for aircraft with a MinBaseSize=Large. So in single missions if you choose a Gotha or Staaken. They will always have Boulay Aerodrome as their base. Or randomly any base that's set for MinBaseSize=Large.

Just need to populate it more.

 

 

[+quack74 329]

Every time I try to finish the tile work I get some new ground objects to play with. Thanks to Stephen1918 we are going to have a lot more objects to play with.

 

 

[Wrench 9,417]

a mooring mast!! with docked Zep!!

 

how cool is that! (does it blow up and have a destroyed model??)

[+Stephen1918 1,472]

No destroyed model yet. I started making the airship hangars and moored airships back when I did the airships last March, but I got distracted by other things. There are moored versions of some of the others too, and different sized hangars for them.

 

By the way, Edward included a moored zeppelin in the Flanders terrain.

[+quack74 329]

[Wrench 9,417]

for grins and giggles, and just to see if it works, add this line to the _types ini for the moored Zep (that is, if the mast and zep are one piece)

 

TargetType=WINDSOCK

 

and watch what happens

[+quack74 329]

That's a cool trick. But the Zeppelin moves way too fast. It's like a giant baseball bat swinging at the planes!

[+quack74 329]

Deep_Snow WIP. Taking a while to do all the seasons. Time, Time, Time. But getting there. Need to populate a few more areas with objects. Then I need to figure out how to package all this stuff! 

 

[Rends 166]

I'm realy looking forward to this mod.

Looks great!