Adding new maps: Which one would be the most useful?

[daidalos.team]

Originally Posted by Sita

Btw ... about any Help to MapMakers ...

i think need do and show some tutorial for those Guys wand do some simple 3d models ... like buildings and some small stuff ...

IL-2 Modeling bible:
http://www.smsp.org/il2/3d_modeling_...ceobjects.html

Reference models:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...object_ref.rar

[Sita]

Good one) Thx)

but one more .... need some tutorial about how to create building for Il2 ... when i try to do some i found only one on Sas

[Juri_JS]

I haven't looked at it, but there is a tutorial for making 3d buildings by Kevinp:
http://allaircraftsimulations.com/fo...p?f=82&t=32219

There are numerous other tutorials at AAS that might be useful too:
http://allaircraftsimulations.com/fo...p?f=82&start=0
http://allaircraftsimulations.com/fo...forum.php?f=70

[IceFire]

Made a little progress on this project. I was having trouble with the mapping tool running out of memory. I ended up finding a beta version of their 64bit executable which doesn't have the same problem. So I now have the underlying map.

I actually need to go back over it and redo some of the process to trim a bit of the northern section. But there is progress.

Apparently fixing up the coastline is going to be a nightmare... Hrm

[_1SMV_Gitano]

speaking about possible maps of China, I've made some reasearch on air operations including Sino-Japanese war. This is what I think:


1) AREA OF OPERATIONS. Zones of intense air action could be roughly divided as follows (with additional sub-divisions possible):
- North China/Yellow river area from Xian to Peking;
- Central China/Yangtze River from Chengtu to Hankow (~1000 km E-W), down to the region south of Tungting lake (Hengyang, Ling Ling);
- South China from Kunming to Hong Kong/Canton area (~1200 km E-W);
- Salween front from Kunming to Lashio (~500+ km E-W);

2) MAP SCALE. Considering heavy bomber operations, either for China/US air forces and the JAAF/JNAF, any 1:1 scale map would be as large as the Solomons map to say least, with lots of rivers and populated areas. Even cutting many large portions of terrain, distances would be huge, e.g. Chungking to Hankow is ~800 km, same Kunming to Hainan Island. Thus reduced map scale would be a prerequisite.

3) LEVEL OF DETAIL. The current library of stock textures and buildings does not allow a good representation of the Chinese landscape. So, unless a team is formed for perform such a task, a likely map of China would have to be rather generic and in any case it should be heavily underpopulated as well to maintain playability. The situation regarding the airfields is I think a bit better. So far I have recovered positional info on all the most inportant airfields in the region. Moreover, for some of them I also found aerial photographs and charts. Still, if someone has the possibility to search for material through the NARA archives, that would be a plus!

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by _1SMV_Gitano

2) MAP SCALE. Considering heavy bomber operations, either for China/US air forces and the JAAF/JNAF, any 1:1 scale map would be as large as the Solomons map to say least, with lots of rivers and populated areas. Even cutting many large portions of terrain, distances would be huge, e.g. Chungking to Hankow is ~800 km, same Kunming to Hainan Island. Thus reduced map scale would be a prerequisite.

Reduced scale maps of China (possibly including Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong) might work, but such maps always seem "wrong". While I can understand why they exist, I don't like them myself.

I'd prefer a number of smaller 1:1 scale maps. To realistically map Chinese map textures, this might also be necessary. In the 1930s and 40s, China had five basic terrain textures - hills/mountain, forest/scrub, tea plantation, rice paddy and village/city. As I understand it, IL2 currently only allows 3 different terrain textures.

Originally Posted by _1SMV_Gitano

3) LEVEL OF DETAIL. The current library of stock textures and buildings does not allow a good representation of the Chinese landscape. So, unless a team is formed for perform such a task, a likely map of China would have to be rather generic and in any case it should be heavily underpopulated as well to maintain playability. The situation regarding the airfields is I think a bit better.

Some Japanese and Russian objects can be repurposed for a Chinese map, but some would need to be created. In particular, there need to be several versions of Chinese farmhouse/barn, mud-brick walls for walled villages, rice paddy walls (or entire rice paddy enclosures) and new Chinese temples and pagodas. Unique buildings for maps such as Hankow or Hong Kong might also be necessary. Having a Chinese junk as a new ship would also be welcome. New trees unique to China would also be a nice touch.

As for airfields, the USAAF did a good job photographing and mapping China during the war and immediately afterwards, so it shouldn't be too much trouble finding pictures of them, at least for 1943-47.

[Lagarto]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

As I understand it, IL2 currently only allows 3 different terrain textures.

Hmm, not sure what you mean, but for all I know (I retextured quite a few maps), IL2 maps use at least 28 different terrain textures, namely:

LowLand0, LowLand1, LowLand2, LowLand3
MidLand0, MidLand1, MidLand2, MidLand3
Mount0, Mount1, Mount2, Mount3
Country0, Country1, Country2, Country3
City0, City1, City2, City3
AirField0, AirField1, AirField2, AirField3
Wood0, Wood2
Water2, Water3 (for shallows, river banks and the like)

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Hmm, not sure what you mean, but for all I know (I retextured quite a few maps), IL2 maps use at least 28 different terrain textures

I was wrong then. I recall discussion on a mod forum where a map-maker was having trouble with maps of China due to the limited number of available ground textures. I think that his problem might have been the very diverse number of LowLand or MidLand textures, or multiple types of wood textures.

[Lagarto]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I recall discussion on a mod forum where a map-maker was having trouble with maps of China due to the limited number of available ground textures. I think that his problem might have been the very diverse number of LowLand or MidLand textures, or multiple types of wood textures.

The above-listed texture positions are interchangeable - that is to say, you don't have to have four different textures for airfields or cities/towns (esp. if your map has few of them); instead you can use these 'slots' for other textures.
It would be impossible to have landscapes like these, which barely show any repetition pattern, with only 3 terrain textures:
http://imageshack.com/a/img30/395/a5v5.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img203/3733/rz8d.jpg

I presume you don't use any mods, like HSFX. If so, perhaps you should at least download a modded map just to see how it's built internally, esp. the load.ini file.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

The above-listed texture positions are interchangeable - that is to say, you don't have to have four different textures for airfields or cities/towns (esp. if your map has few of them); instead you can use these 'slots' for other textures.

That makes things easier. As I said, I was remembering wrong. I recall that agracier had problems making his Hankow map look right and was generally running into problems making realistic-looking Chinese maps. In part that was due to a shortage of Chinese objects, but also because parts of central China have very different terrain types very close together - very steep rocky "buttes" - some wooded, some bare, wooded hills, intensively terraced rice and tea plantations on hills, networks of rice paddies in bottomlands, and so forth.

I'm also not sure how IL2 would handle terrain like this:

http://www.chinaexpeditiontours.com/...E6%98%A5-1.jpg

That's not just a Chinese map problem. It would also bite anyone trying to do a realistic map of Bali, or parts of India, Vietnam or Korea.

Originally Posted by Lagarto

I presume you don't use any mods, like HSFX. If so, perhaps you should at least download a modded map just to see how it's built internally, esp. the load.ini file.

Just running 4.12m at the moment due to a computer failure. In the past, I've run very heavily modded versions of the game based off of HSFX or DBW, but since I'm an off-liner and I mostly love the new AI in 4.12, I don't want to go back to mod-packs based on 4.11.