My next terrain project

[+Menrva]

48 minutes ago, mue said:

Correct. Moreover while testing the TODEditor I noticed that after the number of TOD objects (or vertex/triangle count, I'm not sure) on a tile exceeds a limit the shadows stop working anyway.

Very interesting. I wonder if we could trick smaller TOD files into not having shadows, or some other solution to disable their broken shadows on Unlimited settings.

[mue]

17 minutes ago, Menrva said:

Very interesting. I wonder if we could trick smaller TOD files into not having shadows, or some other solution to disable their broken shadows on Unlimited settings.

Isn't the only difference between Unlimited and High shadow setting that TOD objects cast shadows or differ the shadow settings in more stuff?

[+Menrva]

36 minutes ago, mue said:

Isn't the only difference between Unlimited and High shadow setting that TOD objects cast shadows or differ the shadow settings in more stuff?

True, that should be the only difference indeed. Then we should get rid of Unlimited settings just for Shadows; anyone can customize settings, but those end-users who simply select the Unlimited preset would have the issue. I wonder why TK added shadows to TODs. Sure, in his stock terrains there are very few TOD objects, but the engine rendering issues about them remain.

Edited March 19, 2022 by Menrva

[Stratos]

Wouldnt be possible to add flat roads tods in order to make adding roads to a terrain a lot easier??

Run to cover on my little corner... 

[+Gepard]

21 minutes ago, Stratos said:

Wouldnt be possible to add flat roads tods in order to make adding roads a lot easier??

Run to cover on my little corner... 

If the terrain is flat like a mirror, then it is possible, but when the terrain becomes hilly, then parts of the "flat road" are either under the earth or "flying" over the terrain.

[Stratos]

12 minutes ago, Gepard said:

If the terrain is flat like a mirror, then it is possible, but when the terrain becomes hilly, then parts of the "flat road" are either under the earth or "flying" over the terrain.

I see, thanks for clarification.

[+Gepard]

Slowly the terrain looks like it should be. Big thanks to Mue for his great TOD-tool!

[+Gepard]

For the current occasion: Simferopol, a town at Crimean Peninsula.

Very early Alpha of a terrain that covers the Crimean Peninsula, parts of the Black Sea and the southern Ukraine.

I think i will make it as a NavalMap=True, so that the US Navy will have the chance to shooting at the russian bases at the Crimean Peninsula.

 

[EricJ]

Usually when you do NavalMap=TRUE you go up against an enemy CVBG and  the  murderous air cover that's associated with it. I mean an option to have it works but I'd disable that on my end.

[+Gepard]

I mean only NATO Navy carrier operations, no russians.

[EricJ]

Gotcha. Hope it works out. Is the Crimea/South Ukraine/Russian coast going to be a large map? It looks really compressed by the squares and such.

[+Gepard]

The terrain has the size of 1.200 x 1.200 km. It should have nearly real life size. A square on planning map has a size of 120x120 km.

At a first step i will finish the Crimean Peninsula and the naval area. Then i will release it as a Beta.

In the next step i will add the rivers Don and Donez and some towns and villages in the area.

Then in a further step the river Dnepr with the Cherson area, then Mykolajew and Odessa.

[EricJ]

Nice, thanks!

[+Gepard]

SitRep:

 

I created the lakes in the north and east of the Crimean Peninsula all by hand. It was a time consuming job, but neccessary, because the raw data were wrong at this area.

Now i'm laying the tiles for the road network of the Crimean Peninsula. An other boring and time consuming task. But so is terrain making!

Edited May 4, 2022 by Gepard

[Wrench]

Tell me all about it, brothre!

Are you using my '(patent pending) painted road tiles, to make linking easier? (only works in the TE)

[+Gepard]

14 hours ago, Wrench said:

Tell me all about it, brothre!

Are you using my '(patent pending) painted road tiles, to make linking easier? (only works in the TE)

I use the same road tiles which i made for Battle of Britain 2 terrain, like this:

I still have to make the colors fits to the new tileset.

Edited May 5, 2022 by Gepard

[+Gepard]

SitRep:

Sewastopol Harbor

 

A question to the wisdom of our forum:

Is it possible to make a Naval Map with only Blue side naval operations, if a red carrier is in the groundobjects folder?

I made this water map:

And i thought, that only blue ships would appear in game. But the game engine always put a soviet carrier battle group on the map, so that Strike missison are always against the red carrier and not against ground targets. This is not what i want.

Has someone an idea?

 

 

[EricJ]

@Menrva Might have an idea with the ODS  mod, where you can take off from a carrier with single missions and the like and no Red ships. I remember that from playing it once, where I took off from a carrier and performed a carrier launch and recovery and struck a land target.

[+Gepard]

3 hours ago, EricJ said:

@Menrva Might have an idea with the ODS  mod, where you can take off from a carrier with single missions and the like and no Red ships. I remember that from playing it once, where I took off from a carrier and performed a carrier launch and recovery and struck a land target.

In the ODS mod there are no red main combat ships, no carriers, no cruisers. If you add a red carrier to this mod, then the blue force will not fly strike missions against ground targets, but only against the carrier.

[EricJ]

Good point but I don't think it can be done

[+Gepard]

Okay, then it will be no NavalMap.

WIP Screenshot:

Sewastopol seen from high altitudes.

 

[+Menrva]

6 hours ago, EricJ said:

@Menrva Might have an idea with the ODS  mod, where you can take off from a carrier with single missions and the like and no Red ships. I remember that from playing it once, where I took off from a carrier and performed a carrier launch and recovery and struck a land target.

3 hours ago, Gepard said:

In the ODS mod there are no red main combat ships, no carriers, no cruisers. If you add a red carrier to this mod, then the blue force will not fly strike missions against ground targets, but only against the carrier.

Sorry, I'm late to the party, have been in hospital. What Gepard says is right. If the terrain has a big time span, one in which Red Side has no carriers nor cruisers up to a certain date, then it would work as intended. But the moment you fly a single mission in a year when the Red nation has a carrier available, it's back to a naval battle ala SF2 North Atlantic.

Just an opportunity to consider, my Nations Expansion mod adds Soviet/Russian Naval Aviation as a separate service. The terrain could be limited to the Soviet nation only, while all that is navy related is given the SovietNavy service I added with the mod, by editing each object's userlist.ini file. That way, it's problem solved, it would work just fine and you'd get only Blue Side with carriers.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Menrva

[snowburn]

This terrain looks incredible!!

Maybe you can include optional files:

One to disable using empty files all the vanilla red navy aassets, and another to change the _userlist to Menrva's Soviet/Russian Naval Aviation. (just drop it on the groundobjects folder)

Also you can use it to disable some blue side AAA/SAM/Mobile units that shouldn't appear over ukraine (Like Vulcans, Hawk) and add T-62, T-80 and so on to the blue ukranian side.

[EricJ]

I think that has to be set in the vehicle Userlist if I'm not mistaken, or you'd have to make a "blue" T-80 and the like. But it's a cool idea.

[+GKABS]

Nice work Gepard, I am looking forward to this new terrain.