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Author
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Topic: Questions/comments about terrains
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PV
Cadet
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posted 08-23- 04:30 AM
  
Hi all. I have a few puzzlements about the appearance of terrains.
I ran into a note somewhere in the game docs that the stock terrains are 40mi on
a side - even though the dover terrain shows an area of england (shrunken) that
is really about 120mi sq. So I wonder, is this a hard maximum size in the code,
or can terrains be made larger?
Second, I'm beginning to be bothered by the dark brown & black colour of the
ocean in the dover terrain. It makes sense for overcast skies and dim lighting,
but it just looks horribly wrong with bright sunny afternoon skies. Would it be
possible to tweak the sea colour to key off the colour of the sky, so for clear
blue skies and puffy white clouds, the sea is a cheerful blue? I think it might help
with spotting planes better as well. Anyone who noticed my earlier post will
remember that as yet I only fly offline; I also don't use any of the targeting
displays, as I like the view to be more like the real thing, where spotting the
enemy plane was not a trivial matter. I would love to have the ground terrains
"busier", rather like the sat photo
tile that Rendsberger posted, as I think the
green wash is too easy to spot planes against, and too hard to judge height from, but the dark ocean is too hard to
see planes against. OK, so I sound picky,
but really I'm quite happy with
this game, just thinking how it could be better. IP: Logged |
Sunray
Pilot
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posted 08-23- 08:37 AM
Terrain size is one the everybody complains about. That's why there are more than one. As I recall it's hard coded and either can't be changed or it'd take a whole bunch of people a very long time to do. I suspect the sea colours are the same thing. You can perk things up a bit by adjusting the light factors in SDOE 2000.IP: Logged |
Nat
JAG
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posted 08-23- 08:41 AM
We took onboard our own bug bears with the textures, thats why Diego did such a great job with Bavaria, and the other tarrain textures he's done, they have alot more feel of depth to them and the seas are a great improvement, but terrain work is very very hard and there's only a little known about it, and then only known by a small group of us, each with our own part but none with "the whole picture". It's a long hard slog that I'm not sure will ever be done fully given the age of SDOE, but Bavaria Terrain atleast is a testiment to all that worked on it, and something I think we should all be proud of all things considered.IP: Logged |
Werner Molders
JAG
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posted 08-23- 09:09 AM
I think there is a file floating around somewhere that lightens the sea colour for Dover. Maybe check simfiles, but I haven't see it mentionned in a while.Werner ------------------
Abbeville Field: Dedicated to the SDOE Experience. IP: Logged |
3dp
Pilot
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posted 08-23- 09:57 AM
Idiot that I am, I undertook a massive "blueing" of the English Channel tile by tile. When I posted about it, I was told that it could have been done much easier by putting them all together, and then breaking them back down again with something called Dicer (which I never did get) after coloring the water.That said, if you want my bluer English Channel (I missed the occasional little inlet), you're welcome to it. The problem is that a ZIP file with the TIFs is 15MB (and that's just the tiles with water in them!) and I can't put it on my site for this reason. If I can upload it somewhere that people can pick it up, let me know where and how. You'd also be welcome to the original PhotoShop files so you could make it even bluer by increasing the opacity of the blue "water" layers and then saving them as TIFs. But a ZIP for them would be even larger. The only way to really use them is to have two ZIPs, one with the original water and one with the bluer water and unzip the one you want to use in the current session into the appropriate directory. ------------------
Be seeing you,
3dp
Visit RAF Harkness! IP: Logged |
Diego Lozano
Pilot
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posted 08-23- 10:15 AM
3DP,
Dicer is a part of the Parfile tools along with Bigmunger etc.If you need it, I can send just the Dicer prog to you. Even then, you should still get Infranview to shrink down those tiles to nothing. If someone can post links to both of those programs, I'd be very thankful. PV,
The terrains are SLOWLY being worked on...believe me! If you're bothered by the brownish water like I am, please change it. A repaint of just water is not hard at all if you use Photoshop or PaintshopPro. As an aside to the project that is currently being worked on, I am still planning on doing a repaint for the Dover map. Maybe you'd like to help? We are always looking for more cooks in this kitchen  IP: Logged |
Sturm Spieler
Pilot
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posted 08-23- 11:02 AM
Hey guys, I spent along time yesterday doing research on Airfields and a comparison of the area as it actually was to what we have as the Dover terrain. I wanted to do some historically accurate offline missions for me and a friend. We plan on conducting a real war, where you can destroy supplies, men, pilots, airfields, etc. Big question...and I'm sure you guys have talked about this. Why is the SDOE Calais really where Dunkirk would be, (approximately), and where Calais should be, (approximately) there is nothing. The closest SDOE town is Eau Claire. I know the names of the towns can be changed, that was done for the very cool pacific terrain, so why not change some of the names? Also, someone, (forgive me I have terrible memory), made that africa modification right? I'm thinkin make a mod package for Dover, that might include a few more fighter strips that are historically accurate (real small ones, with plane netting, and tents, no towers), more towns like Boulogne and Dieppe, (which could be at the very bottom of the SDOE French coast), coastal defense things, (machine gun nests, barbed wire, anti-tank obstacles,etc.), and more eye candy along the coast. These changes could be implemented with hardly any framerate loss, would be easy to download, and so much fun!!!!
Am I alone in this Idea??
Sturm IP: Logged |
Sturm Spieler
Pilot
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posted 08-23- 11:22 AM
One more thing, I see that someone is experimenting in filling in the ocean in the africa terrain, so it will be one large desert, that is so cool!!! Given that we can land on the water now, I wonder if someone can re-do th pacific terrain and make some swamps, rice paties, rivers, and land where the ocean is, Southeast asia baby!!!Sturm IP: Logged |
Nat
JAG
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posted 08-23- 11:56 AM
swmap material value is cool did some tests with this just to see what it will do, I haven't tried it on a whole terrin yet, but if you change the wheels to swamp instead of rubber the gear struts sink into them lolIP: Logged |
PV
Cadet
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posted 08-24- 03:12 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Diego Lozano:
PV,
The terrains are SLOWLY being worked on...believe me! If you're bothered by the brownish water like I am, please change it. A repaint of just water is not hard at all if you use Photoshop or PaintshopPro. As an aside to the project that is currently being worked on, I am still planning on doing a repaint for the Dover map. Maybe you'd like to help? We are always looking for more cooks in this kitchen
Wow, thanks for the invite, but I'm not sure I have the skills. I've looked at the open plane spec, but I'm afraid it's all greek to me. Although the first job I had after graduating was a programming gig, that was in the days when you carried the punch cards across the campus to the central card reader, and the last time I was up to my elbows in bits, a 1MHz 8 bit machine was state of the art. I did think that finding a sat photo of the dover region and grafting it onto the terrain was a nifty idea until I realized the map was about 30% of the airplane scale. The features would look absurd beside the planes. If a one-to-one 40sqmi dover terrain could be built, it could include two or three real RAF airbase locations - Ramsgate, Hawkinge, maybe Kenley, but it would barely reach Calais, and it would be mostly water. I don't know, perhaps something could be cooked up. Maybe just a brute force cut and paste of some real sat terrain onto the dover map at the scale of the planes... I don't have a clue how to get under the hood to change the water colour myself. There seems to be some help for creating planes at various sites, but is there a primer anywhere for the complete idiot on how to get at the terrains? IP: Logged |
Diego Lozano
Pilot
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posted 08-24- 10:08 AM
I think I may be giving something away here. Rendsberger and I are creating a new coastline for Tobruk. Nothing real fancy but its effective in presentation. The same can be done for the Dover map...of course if that someone would like to do the backbreaking work. I'm sure Rendsberger or Nat would love to explain how this is done.IP: Logged |
Werner Molders
JAG
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posted 08-24- 10:25 AM
Is there a tutorial to terrain making available, a la SV? I'd be very interested in reading one. Werner ------------------
Abbeville Field: Dedicated to the SDOE Experience. IP: Logged | |
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