Baltika

Oh yes, absolutely - I will add it in for the next update Um, yeah, it sure is. . . And Bavaria, and Crete, Albania, Montenegro, Southern Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Serbia, south-western Ukraine, the western coast of Turkey (will just fit an airbase or two there) and nearly all of Romania (especially the Transylvanian Alps - oh yeah, I'm really looking forward to Transylvania ) No worries - it's all on the list Keep those suggestions coming, I'll work it all in there. For now, I want to fire up a flyable alpha, so that Brain32 can take a look and see how his region-specific tiles will fit into the mix. For that purpose, I reckon I'll go with what I've done already and a capital city and airbase for each of the countries I haven't got to yet. That way, we can hopefully finalise a final tile set, for however many regions. Then I can crack on with populating each country properly with major cities and airbases, and take it from there. As usual, I got carried away with the feature-creep. I really should have done a Risk-style map with one airbase and city for each country and left it at that. But hey, it won't go to waste.

OK, just a quick update:- I have imported Stary's Anatolia v1 tileset into TE, so now there are three distinct tilesets available for autotile. The Southern Med nations have been retiled using the Anatolia set, and it does look more suitable. I have made some early experiments with exporting the tilemap, but am not having much success so far in TE or in gerwin's editor. I have also placed several more airbases:- Not much point in doing a lot of hand-tiling, flattening or targeting work until the tile set is fixed, so I will place a few strategic airbases in the unpopulated areas, then the alpha can go up to the modder's repository.

Excellent!

Good suggestion, will check it out. Nothing is finalised, this is a very early wip still, and of course I need to pack this all up for Brain32 to look at - he has made some region-specific tiles which will probably be much more appropriate for the region anyways. I am just trying to work out how to do it. Very interesting suggestion - I have never done hand-editing of the tilemap.bmp, always relying on TE and making lots of extra transition tiles to do the grunt work. But for a map like this, the technique you describe would be perfect. I had to pick a line (just north of Corsica) for the change between one tileset and the other, and I can see there are regions where the IME tiles don't really fit at all - looking to Bulgaria and Southern Romania especially. OK, I will have to do some experimentating. Thanks for the suggestion, cheers

OK, Proof of Concept for multiple tile sets on the same terrain - it does work I have imported Stary's excellent IME repaint tiles into TE to use for the southern nations. Then, a bit of tweaking of the autotexture settings and exclusions zones, and this is how it comes out:- Now we have Malta in much more appropriate tones:- And here are some shots flying around Rome, then into the mountains east of the city:- Like you say, Wrench, there is a fair bit of work to be done on transitions from one tile set to the next, but nothing impossible. More than two tile sets might be an issue for TE - everything is set up now to autotexture properly in TE, but the exclusion zone settings are quite rigid and may prove difficulty to apply where there are tile sets for each nation, or to try to apply more than two tile sets. I am trying to avoid hand tiling if at all possible, at least to get the basic TFD fixed, as the map is so huge hand-tiling everywhere would take forever. But I am sure that can be worked out, once I get this over to Brain32. OK, I will tidy up the tile sets (missing alpha channels etc) and get back to plotting cities. Then at least we will have a proper flyable beta for Brain to take a look at to add in more tile sets if that is feasible. Slainthe! Baltika

Gorgeous

usafphantom2, you still around, dude? I will take you up on this offer if you are still interested. For campaign building, what I try to do is work up full OOBs for all air and ground units, covering unit strength, equipment, bases, engagements and significant personnel - commanders for ground units and aces/named pilots for air units. The campaign engine can handle name, rank, confirmed kills, number of missions flown and assign a specific aircraft to an ace pilot, and then track them through the dynamic campaign, so all of that can go into the mix. With a bit of tweaking of supply levels etc. it is possible to get campaigns to run a historical course, regardless of player success/failure (see my WW2 Burma "Longest Retreat" campaign, or Fall of the Philippines campaign for examples of this) so that's why I like a general overview of engagements and the historical course of the campaign. But, like a say, a good baseline is to establish which units were involved, what they flew/drove, how many machines they had, and where they were stationed (at least at the start). I am a huge fan of the SFP1/WoX/SF2 campaign engine, and when everyone batters on about the lack of a truly dynamic campaign in current sims, I always think SF2 gets short-changed and overlooked for what it does. Air units, strengths and ace pilots are tracked, shoot parked planes on the runway and the resident unit is weakened in later missions, the ground war plays out in a fluid, changing, dare I say dynamic manner (unless the campaign builder deliberately puts his hand on one side of the scales), the player's squadron pilots are tracked - I mean, what's not to like here? Anyhoo, if you are up for it, have a crack at looking into the Balkan conflict and fire up an Air OOB and ground OOB, for each nation involved, and then we'll start campaign building No worries, Kevin, all easily doable. Geneva in the west marks about the realistic limit to the edge of the map, being about 40k from "the wall." All the stuff you mentioned will fit no bother. I hadn't thought of it, but since you ask, Malta is now flyable:- Which is fine and dandy, but it just looks weird with Brain32's Germany tiles. And it gets stranger - this is Naples:- Italy is having a gloriously fertile season, and record levels of precipitation, obviously! Also, it's obvious that I am using a mix of tilesets, my fully-transitioned set was based on Deuces' old, old, Woe repaint, and the stock GCE set, or Brain32's repaint, don't have all the transitions required. So, I think this is where I fire this darn Frankenstein's monster of a terrain up for Brain32 to take a gander. Brain, let me know what you think. I have been having some success with autotile and exclusion zones in TE to get different tilesets for different regions on the same map - my old, old, wip Kuril Islands terrain now has a wip custom tileset to cover Hokkaido and a different wip tileset for Kamchatka and Sakhalsinsk - no pictures yet as I haven't done the transition tiles, but watch this space ;-) So, multi-region tiling can be done. Wrench suggested IME tiles for North Africa and Greece, etc, but I don't want to get too far into tiling until Brain has had a look over it. Brain, you know what tiles you have, and how they might fit. So I will keep on plotting cities and bases, but won't do too much more tiling until we can get a consensus on where we are going to take this. Slainthe! Baltika. P.S. Gratuitous beauty shot, I am most chuffed with my rocky mountain transitions

Thanks Kevin, all references gratefully accepted. Have planted a stack of bases in Northern Italy:- Plus, got the bug to do some tiling so added some rocks to Brain32's WoE repaint tiles, and then work stopped while I goofed around in the Alps:- Have also been trying out gerwin's TFD tool properly for the first time - gerwin, great work, man, let me add my voice to the chorus of thankyous for your great bit of kit So, I think I will work through the rest of the airbases and flatten them out with TFD (so much easier than TE). Then at least this can go up as a flyable beta rather than an alpha development project. Happy holidays everyone

There is this little NZ terrain which is due a refit - I have been quietly messing with some wip hi-res tiles, and I never got round to finishing off targetisation:- http://combatace.com/files/file/11904-baltikas-full-scale-new-zealand-terrain-for-sf2/ Wrench has also sent me some custom tiles, ports and things which I will (probably) eventually get round to incorporating. I had in mind more of a Mordor-backed North Island vs Fellowship-backed South Island sort of thing for the campaign, but that's still just a gleam in my eye ;-) No point duplicating effort on the terrain front, it's just too much work to create something from scratch.

Hmm. . . good point, Snailman. I have based the terrain frontline on a cold war setting, as that works best with the stock Thirdwire planeset. Of course, the frontline can be varied from the campaign.ini for a particular scenario, but it's not so easy to change placement or naming of airfields. I will just fire up what I have got, and then it can be tweaked with input from those who have a particular interest like yourself.

Consider it done - will hand-tile and paint the heightmap if necessary All such suggestions and assistance gratefully accepted - as you will see, Hungary is yet to be done, but it's on the list. I am using google earth and wiki as my main research tool , so if there is stuff you want on there, let me know Thanks Stary, good to hear from you man.

OK, having had a look at my old wip terrain I got the bug to update it. Making good progress:- As promised, once I get the rest of the towns and airfields plotted I will upload this to the Modder's Repository to see what can be done with it re tiles and targets. Is there a way to get gerwin's TFD tool to make planning maps with the names of cities, not just airfields? I have been fiddling with the TFD.ini file but no joy so far. Slainthe! Baltika.

Sure thing Brain, Give me a few days to knock it into shape and I'll upload it to the Modder's Repository, then you and Wrench can take a look if you like. Cheers, Baltika.

Nice one, thanks @Wrench, Cast my eye over my old build, it's a bit rough around the edges, but I can knock it into some kind of shape and zip it up for you. No rush as I see you are busy, may take some time, but let me sort it out.

There's this old wip, which Wrench mentioned, but it's not too much further along:- http://combatace.com/topic/74862-has-anyone-done-a-balkans-campaignnato/?p=595118 Although, Brain, I would really like a look at your tiles, incomplete although the set may be. First thing I usually do with any given tileset is whip up a few additional transition tiles from the core set, makes autotexture in TE a whole lot easier

Sorry to hear about your troubles, but GoG is offering free games for all those furloughed as a result:- http://www.gog.com/news/special_promo_shutdown_promo I just hope it's all sorted out soon.

This tweak should set you up:- http://combatace.com/topic/73755-terrain-tweak/ Slainthe!

Thanks Mig, will check it out! Slainthe!

Hi there, Just working through my old stuff to add in the screenshots. A quick question:- When adding in a number of screenshots is there any way to set which one is used as the "title screen" or does the software just pick one at random - as seems to be the case? Cheers, Baltika

Welcome to the world of FE2 - you won't regret it ;) Once the d/l section here is back up, I thoroughly recommend you install Jan Tuma's terrain update pack. This is described as a d/l for FE1, but with a little bit of tweaking will work fine in FE2. It will unbelievably enhance your terrain experience - Cheers Jan! Slainthe! Baltika

Brilliant work, gentlemen. Much appreciated

Hi guys, Checked in my all-titles-combined May 13 install. This tweak still works as advertised:- http://combatace.com/topic/73755-terrain-tweak/ You have to go into the main options.ini (in your main mod folder for whatever install) and set [GraphicsOptions] ObjectsFade=FALSE Then, go into your Flightengine.ini, and tweak these variables for each detail setting:- HorizonDistance=124000.0 DetailMeshSize=12 Those are my modded values for Unlimited, seem to work pretty well, just as they did before. Maybe you missed the options.ini step?

Can you force AA level in your graphics driver options panel?

Beautiful ;)

Hi there, If you haven't already, go and read gepard's TE tutorials. They are pure gold:- http://combatace.com/forum/191-modding-terrainsenviroments/ Start with, "My way to make terrains" then go to number 2, 3, 4 etc. Slainthe! Baltika