Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[WxTech]

Some pics of progress on my new forest covered version. I like it MUCH better! For one thing, it gives a better sense of the scale; the bare terrain textures suggesting forest cover make for an impression of a smaller landscape. And for another, the former ability to unrealistically belly land a plane anywhere on land is now nixed.

The texture underlying the layered forest has an appearance fairly similar to the forest overlying it. This is by design, so that the illusion of a full canopy of trees extending to the shoreline is maintained. The forest edge cannot be made to follow the beach at all exactly, and so the unavoidable 'gaps' along the shore are effectively 'camouflaged.'


Barakoma, looking north. The overall effect is of the quite uniform tropical forest covering nearly every square inch of these islands.



Vila, looking NNW. I've added a bunch of my palm plantation objects, as this airfield was built in the middle of the Vila coconut palm plantation. I've not given the plantation its full extent, in order to not have too many objects. The lower extent of the Vila river has been added, and the field moved a bit SW of the position I gave it in my previous iteration of this map (otherwise it would have cut across the river.) I'm contemplating giving at least the runway the light hued texturing, to suggest the crushed coral this strip was purportedly covered with.



On the ground at Seghi, looking NW. Here the forest comes close to the airstrip. To overcome the awful invisibility of the layered forest when seen from edge on, I've added a row of tropical forest side textures along the very edge. These forest side objects have a color and tone pretty close to that of the layered forest, in order that they do not stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.



Again at Seghi, as would be seen on a landing approach coming in from the west. Roughly midway between the observer and the near end of the airstrip can be seen the row of forest side textures, at least partially visible through gaps in the layered forest cover. These are handy in ascertaining where the edge of the dangerous forest lies, whichever is the direction of travel. In other words, a good aid during both take-off and landing, to ensure not hitting the forest cover and blowing up. 

[Kelso]

I love reading your progress reports! This alone whets the appetite. Not to mention the beautiful screenshots. I look forward to the next version of the map.

[genXgamer]

Hi WxTech

This is looking great so far.

Too many maps using jungle or slot forest have a poor choice of underlying texture, often being able to see the ground through the forest.

Good to see your palm plantation mod being used, one map that could do with a similar treatment is the Solomons map which also had airfields cut from Lever Brother's palm plantations.

[WxTech]

I'm going to try to find pics for Munda and Barakoma showing what kinds of revetments were in use. The older stock ones currently on this map might warrant a change. If anyone already knows anything.....? Or should I leave them off, leaving it to the mission designer to choose what he prefers?

It can be pretty constraining to fix such things in the actors.static, leaving little or no room to be creative. Unless a definite state of things is known, and suitable objects can be reliably put in place.

[genXgamer]

In the case of airfields that were occupied both by the Japanese and Allies I would leave it up to the mission builder, as the airfield in 1942 would look quite different to 1943.
There are some fantastic templates available at M4T to help mission builders create great looking airfields.

This isn't going to please everyone, but it's far easier to add objects in the mission builder than to strip them back in the map builder.

[Kopfdorfer]

My preference as a Mission Builder ( and I build at least a couple a week ; sometimes several in a day on the weekend )
is to have no non-generic facilities on a Map.
Mission Builders do not always wish to have an historical recreation , and you can always add
to a map in the FMB , you can not ( without modding , of course ) remove static actors.

That is just my opinion.

Kopfdorfer

[WxTech]

I could try to please everyone  by offering a couple of actor.static files; one with some facilities in place and the other stripped down...

[c87]

Looking superb, Glenn!

[WxTech]

I just tackled another longstanding bug bear. Until now there were numerous areas where the shallows failed to draw, with deep water going right up to the shore. These areas are obvious in most instances because one or more sides are dead straight lines, these edges being blocked out regions presumably corresponding to the 32x32 pixel sections into which map_c is constructed.

The reason for the failure to draw the shallows I these areas derives from the Water3 RGB pixels in map_t failing to run up to the shore in map_c. This can happen when the land texture must extend partially into the water, in order that there be no blending between the land tile and the Water3 tile.

I got around this by making the Water3 texture the same as the forest underlying texture, which is the same as the texture used to fill in between the forest and shoreline. I can do this because I'm keeping all shallows under water, with no partially exposed reefs. (If I did want to make some 'dry' reefs, I would have been unable to fix the missing shallows blocks.)

So now the entire map has not a single missing shallow reef. I consider that a worthwhile trade in lieu of having some 'dry' reefs.

[gunny0134]

Wonderful Map...!!!
The more I see it, the more beautiful it is...!
Hi, Mr.Glenn..!
Now I'm in Recce on your beautiful map by sea-airplane.

[WxTech]

A snapshot from my Zero cockpit while parked at Vila field (on Kolombangara Island) during a thunderstorm. The runway has received its crushed coral surfacing. Note again that this strip was hacked out of the coconut palm plantation, hence the plethora of palm trees all about.

[vonofterdingen]

Great shot. Is that your lightening mod too? The strike looks more realistic than I remember in game.