Oh yes, sorry. Forgot to mention where the map is.
Actually, Spanish Sahara is right on the nose, Ifni was a bit to the north of what was Rio Oro and Spanish Sahara proper. A small part of (French) Moroccan territory lay between the two. For some reason the old Spanish Territory of Ifni struck my fancy, it being such a remote and almost forgotten bit of colonial grandeur. Well, maybe not grandeur, but certainly of romantic natural beauty and an exotic kind of nostalgia. I was also lucky in finding some very good period maps of the area, with detailed names of villages and location of roads.
Ifni is now part of Morocco proper and lies on the western coast, almost directly opposite Lanzarote of the Canary Islands. Part of the Canaries is on the map too, but just partly, to be able to be used as an airbase.
The map doesn't really cover any areas of military operations in the past, except for a short-lived attempt in the 1950's (I think) to pacify the region. Not much came of it though as Ifni was returned to Moroccan sovereignty in the 1960's.
The map should however be useful as an alternate/what if? type of map. Imagine a conflict between France and Spain over the region, either during Vichy or afterwards or prior. Or else perhaps as a retaliation for a Spanish attempt to take Gibraltar, the UK sends a carrier force to strike targets in Ifni or the Canaries. Or else you could also assume a German base in Ifni during WWII, say for U-boats or aircraft and once again set up Allied operations against the territory. Or perhaps a free French column from somewhere in French West Africa joins a British attempt to take the territory, sort of like at Dakar ...
There are enough possible scenarios to be thought out, one more alternate than the first.
Ufflakke helped out on the templates. Sidi Ifni itself is so limited in size, that we might possibly get it all on the map, with an actual texture of the city itself. That should be fun.
Notice the sort of ring shaped mountain ridges in the southeast of the map. These are very captivating to fly over, at low altitude preferably. We've taken a bit of liberty at converting some of the actual towns that are in that region, those that dominate passes through the mountains, into either small fortified bases or older medieval fortified towns. It's all sort of romantic Beau Geste like, but colorful as can be.
Airfields will be rather rudimentary, Sidi Ifni excepting, but because of the desert terrain and Zuti's wonderful Friction Mod, there will be emergency landing fields enough, scattered around the map.
The map is going well right now with most African mainland villages done, Sidi Ifni excepting. The Canary Islands are a different story right now though. We still have to come up with some decent templates, indeed even find out how the area looked more or less. And because of the limited number of texture slots available, it's possible that the Canaries might look somewhat rudimentary compared to the mainland. All slots are in use now, even using a slight of hand to convert the woods slot into a texture without game generated trees and also using the water RGB31 slot to make intermediary textures for the mountain ridges ... at good idea that, if I say so myself ... ha ha.
But still, more texture slots would be a blessing, especially on maps that have two completely different terrain types.
Here's an FMB view
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Topic: New Map in Preparation - Screenshots (Read 27038 times)
