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

[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.

[Lagarto]

IMHO the biggest challenge would be textures themselves - DT won't accept a map with textures made from copyrighted satellite images, which most mod maps use.
Also, any water-logged type of terrain, like marshes or rice paddies, is hard to reproduce. I mean something like this:
http://www.nicolastrudgian.com/uploa...ections/40.jpg
Such textures won't reflect water, hence they will never look 'right'.

By the way, the latest HSFX 7.0 is based on 4.12.

[IceFire]

Hrmmm, yes those type of textures would be hard to make work. IanBoy's Burma map has something kind of like that (especially in the north west corner nearer Imphal) and it sort of works. Worth having a close look at that one.

Mod makers can go for whatever they want with textures but seeing as TD has to play by retail rules... yes the textures can't be based on copyrighted satellite imagery. So there has to be more artwork type efforts involved.

I haven't made any progress on Kuriles yet. I've got to go back over some of the process again now that I have a bit more of a clue on what I'm doing. Then the real fun will begin.

Not an easy thing this map building.

[_1SMV_Gitano]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

Also, any water-logged type of terrain, like marshes or rice paddies, is hard to reproduce. I mean something like this:
http://www.nicolastrudgian.com/uploa...ections/40.jpg
Such textures won't reflect water, hence they will never look 'right'.

True, but rice cultivation does not require it to be submerged all the year, just some months. Thus modelling the rice paddy as a dry surface would not be incorrect.