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

[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.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by _1SMV_Gitano

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.

Also, some of the year there's actually rice growing in the paddies, so you get an aerial view that looks like this:

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__...Rice_Paddy.jpg

As for wet Spring rice paddies, I wonder if it would be possible to model them as very shallow lakes and model the network of retaining walls as either objects or elevated land areas, like causeways.

The main problem I see with modeling intensely cultivated hilly territory, like in Central China and elsewhere in Asia is getting the terraced hills to look right. Again, this might require "hills" that are actually objects, like the Mt. Suribachi object on the Iwo Jima map.

Were terraced hills to be modeled as objects, you'd need 3-4 different variations so that they wouldn't look too repetitive.

[Marabekm]

I for one would like to see a few more maps that would allow range to come into play. Just to add the challenge of fuel management and navigation. And besides not everything was 5 minutes apart. Personally would like a Philippines map, a map of entire New Guinea, including northern end of Australia, and anything in the Mediterranean and Western Europe. I realize that map making is hard work and would like to thank all of you guys with the patience and technological know how that can make them.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Marabekm

I for one would like to see a few more maps that would allow range to come into play. Just to add the challenge of fuel management and navigation. And besides not everything was 5 minutes apart. Personally would like a Philippines map, a map of entire New Guinea, including northern end of Australia, and anything in the Mediterranean and Western Europe. I realize that map making is hard work and would like to thank all of you guys with the patience and technological know how that can make them.

Difficult to say the least. I'm not sure what the limit is but the Solomons Map currently in the game I believe is the largest possible size and that benefits from being a chain of islands with mostly open ocean.

I investigated a Philippines map but in order to make that work I'd have to pick a smaller battle space. Part of Luzon or Leyte plus Leyte gulf but that has limited use outside of the first few days of the battle and then you have a map with a large US base on it and nothing else.

A map containing the whole of the Philippines battle area just isn't possible. Unfortunately.