Baltika

Hi there, I've been flying over you guys' SCal terrain tonight (working on a "navalised" version of Operation Mountain Twilight) and I notice that the mountains on this terrain are very, well, mountainous. SCal seems to me to have the biggest visible height differential from sea level to mountain peak, and lots of "jaggy" peaks and troughs in between. Many other maps in SF have plenty of height differential when you look at the height field data (or just an atlas) but without such noticeable mountains in-game. I'm just wondering if there's a setting in TE which limits the top height of a mountain peak - MajorLee's ANW is a case in point, as I would expect many peaks to be higher or lower, but they all seem to to hit an imposed ceiling. Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is there something to this? Cheers, Baltika

In Modern A/C, affects F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18 and MiG-29 sections. In Coldwar A/C, affects A-1H, A-4, A-6, A-7 and B-57 sections. That seems to be all for now. Cheers guys, Baltika

Same here, seems to be random. Odd - I can't access the Mig-29 section, but if I go into the Modern A/C d/l section, and click on the Mig29G link, it pops right up. Weird.

Brilliant, thanks pureblue, that's exactly what I was looking for Although, I am now peeking through crossed fingers to see what happens to Iceland with the new settings - I have already invested a fair bit of time into hand-tiling the existing map, and if I have to start over. . .

Cool, might just be a great place to fly over There is a setting "Height Field Resolution" when you open a "New" file in TE which seems to give greater or lesser definition, but I've yet to work out a pattern to it. If you change it too much from the default, it seems to throw the DEM data input right off, so you get half a world when you're only looking for a little bit of it. I'll keep on messing around with it meantime. Cheers, Baltika

Gepard's series of articles in the KB will take you through it step by step. That's how I got Iceland up & running. Cheers to Gepard Right here:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showforum=191

And, of course, rhugouvi's monumental Charlie's Aces.

MK2's Vietnam 1984 campaign d/l, recently updated. You will need a separate install for that. Basepack:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=1975 Update:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...p;showfile=5289

Thanks for the vote of confidence although it is sadly lacking in Carrier Ops for the fine Navy birds I think an update may be required, although that may require a change of terrain. Fine though it is, MajorLee's ANW has no sea. Any suggestions as to location? I love the Navy stuff too, but it really ought to be launching off a flight deck somewhere :yes: Cheers, Baltika

Hi pfunk, The most significant value in your set-up, as I see it, is the difference in StartGroundOffensive= values for enemy and friendly forces. As I understand it, this figure is the number of airoffensives (i.e. Strike Missions) which must be launched before your ground forces will go on the offensive. And, no ground offensive will be launched unless your overall Force supply value is equal or greater than the SupplyForOffensive= value, again as defined for each force. Looking at your start values, the enemy force has StartGroundOffensive=0, so no strike missions need be launched before the ground forces go on the offensive. And, the enemy force start supply value is 100, while the enemy SupplyForOffensive value is 50. Again, this means the enemy side do not need to wait for their supply levels to build up before launching an offensive. No wonder the bad guys are pounding you mercilessly Compare the position with your Friendly force. StartGroundOffensive=8, so you have to fly 8 strike missions before the ground offensive starts. You get one push, and if that stalls, you have to start the counter again, so you need to fly another 8 strike missions before the ground troops get moving. And you will not get any ground offensive unless your force supply value is 70 or greater. Your friendly force start supply value is 40, so that force has to build up supplies before it can launch a ground attack. The whole issue is complicated by the fact that individual ground units have their own supply and morale values, which make an offensive more or less likely. But the above will hold more or less true. All of these values can be played with to meet specific scenario demands, depending on what conflict you are modelling. I would suggest reducing the friendly side StartGroundOffensive= value to 2 or 3, and see if that helps. That will mean the bad guys attack first, and the friendly side will need time to take stock and prepare to counter, but you shouldn't have to wait ten missions for the friendly ground offensive to start. Bear in mind you have to start a new campaign before any changes will be effective. Oh yeah, if the enemy are battering away each "turn," the friendly side won't have a chance to build up supply, as supply levels are reduced or increased by the "stance" each force is in. These values are fixed by the various SupplyRate= flags under each force. Being continually on the defensive means your friendly side's overall supply level is eaten away by -3 points each turn, so they won't get anywhere near the required 70 points. If you increase the enemy StartGroundOffensive= value to 1, then at least you get a short breather between ground attacks - while they hammer you from the air Hope that helps. Check out those links Stick mentioned, as TK covers the whole shebang in detail on the Thirdwire forums. Cheers, Baltika

Hmm, 2 months at this rate, never mind two weeks Autotiler just won't do it, so I'm reduced to hand tiling a lot of it. That's time-consuming Also, the keen-eyed amongst you may spot certain repeating kaleidoscopic patterns in the landscape - this is entirely the fault of magma bubbling to the surface from Iceland's active volcanic faultlines under the effects of proximity to the magnetic field of the North Pole, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the terrain designer's inability to create properly seamless tiles

Thanks for the encouragement, people toonces, I take your point, GE has a bit of a mish-mash of seasons so they can get a bit mixed up. I'm aiming for something atmospherically Icelandic, and interesting to fly over, so I'll probably go with what looks good. This is one steep learning curve, and getting the whole thing done is going to take a long time, but here's how Heimay looks right now:- Those Fjords are fiddly to tile - obviously some blending and seam work needing done, but it's taking shape:- PR Glacier:- Surf's Up, or The Land of Weird Green Lakes:- Cheers for now, Baltika

I'm sure Kout included one with his USNF Fighters 06 Screens Pack, with templates. One of these has it, I think:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...m=10&st=160

Eastern Front gets my vote, oh yes

Yup, had the disappearing ground unit problem too Seek and ye shall find:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=27549 and this one:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showtopic=17397 Bon chance, mon brave

Check these out:- http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5218 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5089 TK explains how the campaign engine works in detail. Cheers, Baltika

Aha You also have no MissionRate= value defined, so I guess that means the game is having trouble assigning missions to your flight. Add the entry MissionRate=1.0 in the entry you posted and see if that helps.

Is your squadron defined as a flyable in your campaign .ini file (as opposed to the campaign_data.ini)? Also, I see you have a "UnitName=" flag rather than a "Squadron=" flag in the entry you posted. I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but as I understood it, Squadron= defines the flyable units, and must match an entry in your squadronlist.ini. UnitName= is for non-flyable units. Just a suggestion. Cheers, Baltika

Hear Hear Excellent work, RR Cheers, Baltika

To Kesselbrut and all the Falklands team, Thanks for all your hard work in putting this package together Downloading now, and OMG I AM GOING TO EXPLODE Cheers all

Check these out:- http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5218 http://bbs.thirdwire.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5089 TK explains how the campaign engine works in detail. Cheers, Baltika

Just a few early terrain tile WIP shots to let you know what I've been messing around with:- Got my alpha channel sorted, thanks for the tips from our resident terrain gurus Seemed a bit dark, so I've been messing with brightness/contrast levels I wanted the cliffs to look more like, well, rocky cliffs, rather than grassy knolls, so here we go. Needs more variation in tile types, but you get the idea And cresting the hill to see some scattered snow cover. Spring is coming to Iceland As I said, all very early WIPs. It all needs a bit more variation to look less regimented, and the big issue is tile transitions/seams, but I'll just keep plugging away for now. Gets kind of addictive once you start roaming around in GE, when you spot something that you reckon would look great in game, you kind of want to try it out. Don't hold your breath, but maybe someday. . .

Hi there, I know this topic has been covered before, and I have scoured various threads and soaked up the advice from Deuces, Brain32 and others. In particular, the method is spelled out for Photoshop by Brain32 right here:- http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...902&hl=tile The problem I am having is to make a working coastal tile alpha channel using PAINT.NET or Gimp. At the moment, the alpha seems to be an all-or-nothing deal - when I mask the alpha channel, my coastal terrain doesn't show up at all. I have also trawled through the Gimp docs, and it seems that Layer Masks are the way to get it to do what I want, but so far no joy. Anyone round here know how I can control the alpha selectively in these two free apps? Here's the issue:- The alpha channel works fine for the sea part. (OK, I need to tidy it up, but this is a WIP ) Using alpha mask tool plug-in in PAINT.NET, I grey out the buildings near the coast. They still show up, but you can see in close up that the sea extends over them. It's more noticeable in motion, but it's there. When I try to completely mask the alpha channel, as I have done further away from the coast, whoosh, the underlying pixels disappear completely and I get a big black hole. Not nice. Using Layer Mask in GIMP, all I get is the black hole when I blank out the alpha channel. Like I said, I'm stuck with all-or-nothing. Long shot:- Close up. You can just see the waves on the streets:- Here's some eye candy, new city tiles made using GE imagery of Reykjavik. In summertime, obviously. Still working on those transition tiles, oh yes Thanks for any suggestions - other than "Go and buy Photoshop" Cheers, Baltika

Thanks for the tip I'm just figuring this stuff out as I go along, so all advice greatly appreciated. Cheers

Thanks to all who replied. Having spent some more time on this, I think I have it sussed. Here's the drill for Gimp: 1. Open up your newly created coastal tile .bmp file. 2. On the main toolbar, under "Dialogues," open up the "Layers" and "Channels" windows as this makes it easier to keep track of what's going on. 3. From the main toolbar, click on Layer/Transparency/Add Alpha Channel. You will see your alpha channel appear on the Channels dialogue box. 4. By left clicking in the channels dialogue, highlight your new alpha channel and deselect the RGB channels, although leave them visible for now. 5. From the main toolbar, click on Layer/Mask/Add Layer Mask. A new dialogue box will pop up with a number of options. Select "Initialise Layer Mask" to "Layer's Alpha Channel," and click "Add." A completely white box should appear next to your .bmp image on the "Layers" dialogue. That's the layer mask. 6. From the main toolbar, under the Layer/Mask options menu, ensure "Edit Layer Mask" is ticked, and that "Show layer mask" and "Disable Layer Mask" are unticked. Now, when you use any paint tool, you are editing the layer mask and not your image. 7. Select a paintbrush, colour black, and draw on the main screen to blank out the parts of the image which you do not wish water to appear on. The main image will go to grayscale, but in the "Layers" dialogue, you should see that your .bmp image is untouched, while what you are drawing appears on the white box next to your image. You can toggle the "show layer mask" setting to check this, but when it is visible you can't see your image so it's hard to know where to draw. 8. Once you have blacked out the areas you don't want to show up as alpha channel, toggle "show layer mask" to on. You should have an image which is partially black, where you have painted out the alpha channel, and partially white. The white part is your alpha channel. Using bucket fill, change the white to a shade of grey, with white being most reflective and dark grey being least reflective, depending on how much reflection you want from your sea. 9. Once you're happy, on the main toolbar, click on Layer/Mask/Apply layer mask. This is slightly disconcerting as the blacked out part of the image will turn to grayscale on all dialogues, but don't worry. 10. Select "save as," and save the edited image as a .tga file. Make sure you uncheck "RLE Compression" before saving. I don't know if "Origian bottom left makes a difference or not. That's it. Next stage is to check your new sea tile in game, voila:- Waves lapping along the shoreline