Falcon 4 Korea Terrain

[+gerwin 458]

@EricJ

It was configured as a compromise like this:

Navalmap=true is combined with the Navy nations being below the first nation in the nations.ini. Like making USN the 2nd or 3rd there.

This allows for automatic fleet generation when the player has a Navy plane with matching carriers, without forcing several mission types to solely be aimed at an enemy fleet.

In general though. I don't know if this strange terrain works for everyone's system. Before my earlier _data.ini adjustments it was funky. The terrain has behaved well on my system since.

 

@Gepard. the tiles are 128x128 but it takes four to cover a stock SF2 tile area, so in that regard it compares to 256x256 tiles. Other then that, it is what it is. I am not claiming this terrain is better then something else, or even good. I don't even know why I converted it. I was actually wanting to try something else but got carried away.

 

Upload no. 3 is up.

- Some lake tiles are now water-alpha prepared.

- More work on avoiding tile repetition in the farm and swamp areas. Now also applied to roads and rivers. (but the 'greener' grass farm areas are still todo...)

[+EricJ 4,346]

1 hour ago, gerwin said:

@EricJ

It was configured as a compromise like this:

Navalmap=true is combined with the Navy nations being below the first nation in the nations.ini. Like making USN the 2nd or 3rd there.

This allows for automatic fleet generation when the player has a Navy plane with matching carriers, without forcing several mission types to solely be aimed at an enemy fleet.

In general though. I don't know if this strange terrain works for everyone's system. Before my earlier _data.ini adjustments it was funky. The terrain has behaved well on my system since.

 

@Gepard. the tiles are 128x128 but it takes four to cover a stock SF2 tile area, so in that regard it compares to 256x256 tiles. Other then that, it is what it is. I am not claiming this terrain is better then something else, or even good. I don't even know why I converted it. I was actually wanting to try something else but got carried away.

 

Upload no. 3 is up.

- Some lake tiles are now water-alpha prepared.

- More work on avoiding tile repetition in the farm and swamp areas. Now also applied to roads and rivers. (but the 'greener' grass farm areas are still todo...)

Okay I see. Well No. 3 is working, I'm able to load on a carrier and fly, just having graphics issues with the planes so far, and object textures. Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't for now, and figure that's a graphics card issue, because I can't select my AMD chip. Anyway I'll see with each addition you make, so things out to settle down once more iterations are available.

EDIT: I managed to switch it to the AMD chip, and it has no problems showing the textures and the like, but I'm unable to record a session to show off the terrain, but I'll find something.

Edited February 25, 2024 by EricJ

[+gerwin 458]

On 25-2-2024 at 1:39 AM, EricJ said:

Okay I see. Well No. 3 is working, I'm able to load on a carrier and fly, just having graphics issues with the planes so far, and object textures. Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't for now, and figure that's a graphics card issue, because I can't select my AMD chip. Anyway I'll see with each addition you make, so things out to settle down once more iterations are available.

EDIT: I managed to switch it to the AMD chip, and it has no problems showing the textures and the like, but I'm unable to record a session to show off the terrain, but I'll find something.

 

Upload no.5 is available since now. Yeah, no.4 was there too, but I did not announce it.

The ReadMe of the package is now proper.

Lots of tiling work again. AFAIK all the most obvious 'Immersion Breakers' of the original terrain tile-mapping are now out of the way..

Adjusted the Nations.ini

Some more targetting work.

I am also using an old AMD Radeon. I did change the _Data today as to render the terrain well on my system, with the minimal amount of changes from the defaults. In the  [terrainmesh] section that is.

[Stratos 3,239]

Not requesting, just asking, do you have plans to add TOD files?

[+gerwin 458]

9 hours ago, Stratos said:

Not requesting, just asking, do you have plans to add TOD files?

There were a few moments that I was tempted, but I just better not start on that. I should give it a rest. Reflect on what to do with this.

Upload no.6 is there now. It has some minor tiling adjustements. One targetarea was moved to a flatter tile. NKorea Such'on MiG-29 airbase was added to the targets.

 

Okay, now for the next teaser. And don't get too excited because this proof of concept is hitting the memory limits of the game engine, and for many configs it will not load up.

1st image is for comparison plain Falcon 4 tiles and tile placement, tweaked by me.

Other five images are the Falcon BMS 4.33 tileset. Which has a crazy amount of 2880 tiles. AFAIK The Falcon engine originally had a loading-tile-subsets-on-demand system, to prevent having to keep all tiles for Korea in memory at once. But the SF2 game has no such system. It is impossible to say how much tiles SF2 can handle because it depends on the host OS and tile resolution and amount of water alpha and maybe even the space required by aircraft skins. I have seen quite few hangs at loading yesterday, went downsizing tiles again until it did load up.

This huge amount of tiles is again cause by Falcon's lack of rotation support for tiles, forcing them to make more tiles instead. I don't know who made this tileset, yet. I am not sure if I should release it. 

I like the set in general, In places it is the best the game has ever looked for me IMHO, but the village tiles with the blue roofs are looking rather 'restless' like a garbage heap. 

 

 

[Wrench 10,098]

In a way, those almost look like the EAW Europe tiles. Very nice looking!

[Stratos 3,239]

Amazing work you're doing, really impressive!

[+gerwin 458]

Back to the classic tileset. Upload No.7 is there.

 -Rewrote TFDtool randomized auto-rotate of certain tiles, to be as smart as I could possibly see it. Then applied it. 

- More manual adjustments of 45 degree road/river tiles.

- Photoshop adjustment of 4 tiles.

- Added 3 blue airbases. The ones which were historically significant.

 

Edit: Upload 8

- Added harbor target area for blue and red.

- More tile mapping adjustments and tile texture adjustments.

- Renamed one airfield.

Edited March 1, 2024 by gerwin

[+gerwin 458]

Upload no.11

The height-map is now upscaled to 4x the tile-map size. The main reason is that the Strike Fighters engine seems to run better with this change, for some reasons I don't know... It gives better frame-rate and has visually better horizon terrain buildup. So the _Data ini settings from the first post do no longer apply. It was not easy to upscale the height-map in a way that retains sharpness in the mountain- and ridge-tops. Had to program a custom upscale in TFDtool, then blend it with some filtered variants. It should be good now.

Added some target-area's in the hills and at the DMZ. This is where the terrain looks best. The DMZ is not quite so demilitarized now. 

There are around 40 .tod terrain objects now. Solely for the full city tiles. Tailor-made to fit these.

Then the usual tile-map and tile-texture adjustments.

 

[+gerwin 458]

It has been a year since. Past december I added 36 new .tod files to the terrain (=buildings and trees), amongst some other small adjustments.  But I never uploaded it, until now.

Also added an unrelated download package to my website: Ropucha Landing Craft. 

[Wrench 10,098]

I've yet to play it, the latest version, but as is my habit, I buzz around with the TAE just to see what's what.

Are there tiles missing?? I've seen several areas with the green squares, instead of actual tiles. Sample image below.

Thought you should know. :)

[+gerwin 458]

Hey Wrench. I see it in the screenshot. But In the game, and in TFDtool as well, there are no missing tiles. 

I would have seen it by now. Since I have been staring at this terrain long enough. 

Maybe TEA has a maximum amount of tiles limitation? I never really use TEA. (I do use Andy's LOD-viewer an TOD-editor)

[Wrench 10,098]

I hadn't thought of an upper limit! That might be it. Flying over it, I didn't see anything missing, tile-wise.

If you plan on doing more with it, I still have all the HIGHLY detailed maps and charts I used for the KAW terrain. If you want them :)

[+gerwin 458]

12 hours ago, Wrench said:

I hadn't thought of an upper limit! That might be it. Flying over it, I didn't see anything missing, tile-wise.

If you plan on doing more with it, I still have all the HIGHLY detailed maps and charts I used for the KAW terrain. If you want them :)

Appreciate that. The aim is to stick to the Falcon 4 world, which depicts the situation in the 1990's. Not the 1950's. The map tiles already define airfield locations. The falcon 4 link gives it a touch of nostalgia.

I found this sometime last year, and used it identify the airfields. https://maps.falcon-bms.com/

( The BMS Korea there is a slightly tweaked version of the original Falcon 4 map, but it is mostly the same. )

I don't know if people actually use this Strike Fighters terrain conversion for something, other then me?...

 

 

Wish I also had a conversion of Falcon BMS "MidEast 128". It looks neat:

https://forum.falcon-bms.com/topic/23905/bms-4-37-theater-list

 

 

[+daddyairplanes 10,938]

2 hours ago, gerwin said:

I don't know if people actually use this Strike Fighters terrain conversion for something, other then me?...

if it helps, nightshadeP/R and I tested ravenclaw's latest (at that time) Weasels in that terrain  it was more a smoke test to make sure the new Weasel didnt break the game, but ran in several terrains including yours

[+Nightshade/PR 8,458]

2 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

if it helps, nightshadeP/R and I tested ravenclaw's latest (at that time) Weasels in that terrain

That is true. And I use it regularly, especially for carrier strike & CAS missions.

[+gerwin 458]

daddyairplanes/Nightshade. Good to hear that.  I will keep that in mind. :)