Heaven & Earth: Project discussion thread

[MOS:96B2P]

1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

These tenement buildings: Have, IIRC, 35 individual rooms each. 

+1.  Nice! 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers dude, they were kinda fiddly to make! 

Starting to get the look I was after down on the seafront:

I'm now attempting to extend the urban sprawl up the hill on the other side of the highway.....We'll see how that looks in due course, CM hills & CM houses don't like each other very much. 

Edited September 26, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Lucky_Strike]

6 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

 

All three buildings in this image are fully accessible to pixeltruppen, as are all the peaks (there's another taller one to the right that I'm still tweaking).

Islands are fun.....But it's not so fast to make them! 

@chuckdyke Still blurry?

So the problem with cliffs is that the repeat is very obvious with heavier textures. My standard textures look nice close up ...

but drop back a few hundred meters ...

.. and we get something like those great big wire gabions full of rocks used for sidings.

Playing down the texture helps ...

... and still looks alright close up ...

What can work is a very dark texture - more like basalt cliffs, volcanic etc ...

... this one is nice, even the repeat is not too bad as it looks like strata ...

Basically, the simpler and less contrasty the texture then the less obvious the repeat ... Volcanic colour might suite the SE Asian area. I don't know what colours you might be aiming for but lighter is more problematic unless you reduce the texture/contrast, but then they can end up looking like mud slips or sand dunes or Welsh slag heaps ...

Or you can go all Dame Vera Lynn, Battle of Britain ...

Or this ...

Anyway, that was a fun experiment ...

[chuckdyke]

8 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Have, IIRC, 35 individual rooms each. 

That is great, I hope BF takes note. It would set a new standard. For the grey? I think it process the graphics as BW. The colored buildings have individual rooms too?  

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Dude, BF's designers have been making multi-unit structures from modular buildings (clue in the name) for over a decade.....Who do you think I learned it from? 

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

@Lucky_Strike  Those darker cliffs look surprisingly effective, not sure if they'd work as well in H&E, but they do look good in that game engine. 

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

@Lucky_Strike  Those darker cliffs look surprisingly effective, not sure if they'd work as well in H&E, but they do look good in that game engine. 

I'll stick them in a folder on DropBox, you can give them a go in H&E. The screenshots were all from CMBN with various other mods, trying out some different ground textures as well to see if I can avoid using the stock grass texture which is very over stretched.

All the cliff textures were 2048 x 2048px Can't remember what size the stock texture is but TBH I don't think the resolution makes a huge different to the game render of it.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Lucky_Strike

[MOS:96B2P]

Speaking of cliffs....... is there a way to make Heavy Rocks impassible to infantry besides making it a very steep cliff?  I was wondering if the deep marsh tile (or something else) could be made to look like Heavy Rocks but maintain the ability to be no-go terrain for both vehicles and infantry. 

At the NTC in real life troops are not allowed access to some high ridge tops / mountains for safety reasons.  An attempt to keep overzealous, sleep deprived 18 year old's from rolling vehicles etc.  In game its not practical on a huge map to have cliffs all around the high ground.  But for game design reasons I would like to make some high ground off limits in a NTC like setting. 

I thought this might be useful and re-named the terrain files but could not make it work.        

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Speaking of cliffs....... is there a way to make Heavy Rocks impassible to infantry besides making it a very steep cliff?  I was wondering if the deep marsh tile (or something else) could be made to look like Heavy Rocks but maintain the ability to be no-go terrain for both vehicles and infantry. 

At the NTC in real life troops are not allowed access to some high ridge tops / mountains for safety reasons.  An attempt to keep overzealous, sleep deprived 18 year old's from rolling vehicles etc.  In game its not practical on a huge map to have cliffs all around the high ground.  But for game design reasons I would like to make some high ground off limits in a NTC like setting. 

I thought this might be useful and re-named the terrain files but could not make it work.        

Should be doable, rename ground heavy rocks to ground deep marsh then deploy deep marsh where you want the "heavy rocks" to appear ... he says confidently, teaching his granny to suck some proverbial eggs ...

That's a surprise, I have no idea why this doesn't work as expected, never seen the like of it before ... it seems that the game doesn't allow more than one mod for ground deep marsh in your mod folder. I had another texture mod present which was all that showed up. Removed it and suddenly the ground deep marsh/ground heavy rocks appear. Check your mod folder for other ground deep marsh mods ...

Once it's sorted the rocks appear but have reeds amongst them ... (this is from CMRT but same applies I suspect ...)

Our little convoy wnts to drive along a mountain road in the rain ... notice the reeds can see them on top of the cliff ...

... nope can't go there, not even by foot ...

... won't even try it with a waypoint on the far side, would rather sit in the rain ...

 ... or circle a sink hole for fun ... this is what you want to prevent I guess. The reeds could be got rid of by using an alpha channel to obliterate them, but you'll lose them in your normal marsh as well.

 

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

@Lucky_Strike  Those darker cliffs look surprisingly effective, not sure if they'd work as well in H&E, but they do look good in that game engine. 

Some cliff textures for you to try Sgt. just remove the appended _number from the file name before adding to your z folder.

Here

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Many thanks. 

PS - Decided I didn't like the towers on those tenement buildings:

They're down to just the thirty individual rooms, but I think they look better for it. 

PS - For some reason I'm getting moire effect on these buildings today.....I wasn't getting it yesterday and I haven't changed any settings!  Any ideas?

PPS - Apparently it's caused when I turn Shaders on.....Never noticed this before. 

PPPS - Apologies again for the indecently exposed hill in the background.....The city is going up there too eventually, so there ain't much point in me dressing it yet. 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Sgt.Squarehead]

9 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Speaking of cliffs....... is there a way to make Heavy Rocks impassible to infantry besides making it a very steep cliff?  I was wondering if the deep marsh tile (or something else) could be made to look like Heavy Rocks but maintain the ability to be no-go terrain for both vehicles and infantry. 

At the NTC in real life troops are not allowed access to some high ridge tops / mountains for safety reasons.  An attempt to keep overzealous, sleep deprived 18 year old's from rolling vehicles etc.  In game its not practical on a huge map to have cliffs all around the high ground.  But for game design reasons I would like to make some high ground off limits in a NTC like setting. 

I thought this might be useful and re-named the terrain files but could not make it work.        

If you are not otherwise using fortifications, invisible barbed wire might be an option.

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Many thanks. 

PS - Decided I didn't like the towers on those tenement buildings:

You're welcome Sgt.

Those tenements wouldn't look out of place in many a modern city. Great work!

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers @Lucky_Strike. 

I had a mess around with the various textures you sent me, the finer grained less contrasting styles definitely worked best, but the colder colour palette didn't match the 'Heaven & Earth' look, so I had a mess with the colour balance & contrast of a couple of them in Photoshop and I think we have a winner (17a).....What do you think?

Close up it's visibly rocky and it blends well with the other tiles (Heavy Rocks & both types of Forest tile here):

It still looks reasonably interesting at a more normal viewing distance

Further out the pattern repeat is only really visible if you look for it, certainly no worse than the stock option IMHO:

Problem is, now I need to sort the distant .bmps to match.....Any idea how to do that at all please? 

PS - @37mm I (sorta) made a mod! 

PPS - Just checked it out in some of the other maps.....Not so good in the Mountain environment, think I'm gonna stick the [Delta] Tag on it.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[37mm]

A few of the experienced terrain modders ( @Aristoteles & @SeinfeldRules spring to mind) seem to use dirt tiles for their cliff faces with good effect (Here, for example, are Aris's CMFI cliffs ported into CMA).

I'll look into playing around with cliff faces for the next version (suitably tagged we could have different cliffs for the different areas).

Send us what you have... the simplest way to make mini bitmaps is just to shrink your original down to 64x64 & stick a mini prefix on it.

Edited September 27, 2021 by 37mm

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers dude, done:

I'm well chuffed with that for a first attempt. 

I'll put a link in the message thread.

[37mm]

17 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Speaking of cliffs....... is there a way to make Heavy Rocks impassible to infantry besides making it a very steep cliff?  I was wondering if the deep marsh tile (or something else) could be made to look like Heavy Rocks but maintain the ability to be no-go terrain for both vehicles and infantry. 

At the NTC in real life troops are not allowed access to some high ridge tops / mountains for safety reasons.  An attempt to keep overzealous, sleep deprived 18 year old's from rolling vehicles etc.  In game its not practical on a huge map to have cliffs all around the high ground.  But for game design reasons I would like to make some high ground off limits in a NTC like setting. 

I thought this might be useful and re-named the terrain files but could not make it work.        

Playing around with deep marsh tiles is already part of H&E's [hotlz] tag (our 'helicopter landings' are trapped in their lz's by a 3x3 grid of deep marsh so that nobody else can get to the central exit objective).

It is indeed possible with an alpha'ed out marsh reeds doodad (this will not effect normal marshes as they use the marsh grass doodad*).

Here is an [ntc] version I just rustled up...

This is a region of heavy rocks bordered by a deep marsh...

Up close, you can see that the impassable swamp is missing its rock doodads...

 

 

 

 

*Which we also took advantage of to create our rice paddies.

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Just discovered (a day or so back) that the NTC terrain set has only a couple of bush types for foliage.....Which rather scuppered my map of Dasht-e Emam (Iran). 

Edited September 27, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Lucky_Strike]

5 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Cheers @Lucky_Strike. 

I had a mess around with the various textures you sent me, the finer grained less contrasting styles definitely worked best, but the colder colour palette didn't match the 'Heaven & Earth' look, so I had a mess with the colour balance & contrast of a couple of them in Photoshop and I think we have a winner (17a).....What do you think?

Close up it's visibly rocky and it blends well with the other tiles (Heavy Rocks & both types of Forest tile here):

It still looks reasonably interesting at a more normal viewing distance

Further out the pattern repeat is only really visible if you look for it, certainly no worse than the stock option IMHO:

Problem is, now I need to sort the distant .bmps to match.....Any idea how to do that at all please? 

PS - @37mm I (sorta) made a mod! 

PPS - Just checked it out in some of the other maps.....Not so good in the Mountain environment, think I'm gonna stick the [Delta] Tag on it.

Great stuff, we have another modder!

For the distant tiles you have to make a minimap - I think that's what they're called. In the game's original Data folder there should be a folder somewhere with ground mini tiles, one for each of the equivalent terrain textures. They are basically tiny versions of your ground textures used in place of the large version when you zoom out. You can replace these with the same tile as the large version but that makes extra work for the engine, so it's best to make a scaled down one in PhotoShop. You know what I've never made one in all the mods I've done so am not sure what resolution they are, but you have PhotoShop so you can open the existing one, see what size it is and take it from there.

5 hours ago, 37mm said:

A few of the experienced terrain modders ( @Aristoteles & @SeinfeldRules spring to mind) seem to use dirt tiles for their cliff faces with good effect (Here, for example, are Aris's CMFI cliffs ported into CMA).

I'll look into playing around with cliff faces for the next version (suitably tagged we could have different cliffs for the different areas).

Send us what you have... the simplest way to make mini bitmaps is just to shrink your original down to 64x64 & stick a mini prefix on it.

Hah, that'll teach me to read ahead in the thread, as 37mm points out the mini tiles are 64px squares.

Mud or dirt cliffs would work well for some of your jungle type terrains. The dirt ones work well for desert and dry regions. They do blend in better with other terrain types and don't have such annoying repeat pattern issues. I like the idea of using tags for terrain types.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers dude.....I really appreciate your help. 

I'll definitely be using these tiles (or something very similar to them) for 'Wai-Bong Bay'.....At present I've attached them to our [Delta] tag, but @37mm & I had already discussed creating another tag for the bay itself, as I'd like it to feature brightly painted wooden buildings that wouldn't really be suitable elsewhere.

Using tags for terrain is a winner.....We have a massive variety of terrain options in 'H&E', (there's another novel example in his post above) I suspect but don't know for sure, that we have roughly half as many again as a typical CM game, @37mm has been incredibly creative.

[37mm]

54 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I'd like it to feature brightly painted wooden buildings that wouldn't really be suitable elsewhere.

Now that @dragonwynn has returned we might be able to make some movement on that front... he had been doing some interesting things with buildings for his Korean mod.

Oh, minor update... I've added a new environment tag to the modpack.

[tunnel] is a pretty simple one really...  it uses the work of @simast , combines it with some @patboy textures and a few new sounds to give us a quasi-underground environment to play in...

 

 

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Interesting. 

PS - No pressing hurry on mods for 'Wai-Bong Bay'.....Each island takes a painfully long time to sculpt, every new ditchlocked tile can change things massively.

I initially estimated to @MOS:96B2P that each island would take about a day to do.....Triple it, minimum! 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[MOS:96B2P]

@Lucky_Strike and @37mm thank you both.  I'll give this another try now that I know its possible. 

@Sgt.Squarehead lots of barbwire in the obstacle belts that change location with the AI plans.  I thought of putting exit zones on the out of bounds terrain but then I can't really use destroy unit objectives.  But it seems that this mod of heavy rock/swamp will probably work.     

[Sgt.Squarehead]

@37mm I think I fixed Operation Mardi Gras (assuming you can live with ****ed up radioless Red C2):

Just waiting (28 Minutes!  ) for the Skyraiders to arrive, but that's OK.....We're crawling around tending to the (many) wounded in the lull, hoping the communists don't push forward again (we've fought off two counter-attacks already). 

It's been so long since I scripted this, that I have no idea what happens next.....Imperial reinforcements I hope! 

Edited October 27, 2021 by Sgt.Squarehead

[37mm]

I started this map a couple of years ago, it's basically finished now...

... just need to create a small (but devious) scenario for it.