[Guest]

ClockWatcher

Will we see that new discoveries in some new map maybe? That’s looks very good and convincing.

[lowfighter]

Loks nice BADA, possible to post a low altitude screenshot too?

sorry, don't know if this is the good threat for this, but just want to show you my beta desert city texture surrounded by the new desert factory texture (finished), made on the desert texture found in desert_online map.

[6S.Maraz]

sorry, don't know if this is the good threat for this, but just want to show you my beta desert city texture surrounded by the new desert factory texture (finished), made on the desert texture found in desert_online map.

That's very good !!!

Maraz

[Skunkmeister]

Perhaps this will seem like heresy, but I was thinking that perhaps I could go through my FSX installation and have a look at some of the textures in there and convert them for use in some new maps.

There are certain things which may be interesting, particularly grass fields, moutains and such.

[lowfighter]

Heresy or not, I think it's a nice idea!

[ClockWatcher]

Skunkmeister, like the sound of that.

Bit of an update on messing with map making.

Successfully built a map of Scotland, including all the Western Isles, using SRTM data including sea, lochs (lakes) features and various textures using some nifty features in MicroDEM. The map covers an area of 2080 x 2304 pixels = 416 x 460.8km. The whole process, although reasonably rough only took 2 hours. I may try larger maps to find what the limit is in IL2.

This means that a map covering all of the BoB area, 10 and 11 Group (RAF) and northern France can now be made.

I have not seen any mention of this in the forums, but I have figured out how to place roads and rail in the texture map using Gimp and managed to get Gimp to automatically change the RGB values of the road and rail to reflect the texture RGB values of the terrain. If this has not been mentioned in the forums I can post how I did it.

I must be getting sad, but tinkering with these maps is giving me a buzz!

[Guest]

Skunkmeister, like the sound of that.

Bit of an update on messing with map making.

Successfully built a map of Scotland, including all the Western Isles, using SRTM data including sea, lochs (lakes) features and various textures using some nifty features in MicroDEM. The map covers an area of 2080 x 2304 pixels = 416 x 460.8km. The whole process, although reasonably rough only took 2 hours. I may try larger maps to find what the limit is in IL2.

This means that a map covering all of the BoB area, 10 and 11 Group (RAF) and northern France can now be made.

I have not seen any mention of this in the forums, but I have figured out how to place roads and rail in the texture map using Gimp and managed to get Gimp to automatically change the RGB values of the road and rail to reflect the texture RGB values of the terrain. If this has not been mentioned in the forums I can post how I did it.

I must be getting sad, but tinkering with these maps is giving me a buzz!

Great! simply greatn if you manage how to render good quality of roads/rails It give a real unique and good fashion to the map surely!
8)

[Username]

.
This means that a map covering all of the BoB area, 10 and 11 Group (RAF) and northern France can now be made.

That would be nice :wink:
Someone is bound to do this - there's no law saying we all have to wait for SOW. IL2 would probably give a much nicer result than Shockwave's BoB2 can manage.
Wartime aerial photography of Britain is here: http://www.shockymap.com/timemachine/PVA.htm
http://www.shockymap.com/timemachine/1942/1942.htm

[ClockWatcher]

Successfully tested a very rough BoB map of 577.6 x 408 km covering the areas shown in the pictures.

Very very rough, approx 2 hr work. The water in map_c needs further processing. No roads, rail, towns or proper textures. Just a proof of concept map at his stage. This area covers Fighter Command's 11 Group, most of 10 Group and the major German airfields used in the Battle by Luftflotte II and part of III.

False colour SRTM data



map_c



map_h



FW190 over the Thames, even though BoB was too early for them



BoB is definitely possible.

[Trooper117]

Good work.. I'll be waiting for this one! :mrgreen:

[Skunkmeister]

Successfully tested a very rough BoB map of 577.6 x 408 km covering the areas shown in the pictures.

You could even go bigger. My current Slot map is 825.6 x 601.6 km. But the problem with a map that size located in Europe is the enormous amount of detail that has to be achieved with the static objects. Numerous cities, towns, villages and farms. You're talking about a project that will last you a fair bit of 2 years, which is what it took to complete Slovakia.

[ClockWatcher]

Skunkmeister,

Rough texturing, water etc is very quick, maybe only a mornings work. Roads and towns depend on an RGB value on the texture map, map_T, and this can be done reasonably fast by merging atlas and map_T images.

If someone can figure out a way of automatically placing generic Static Actors objects we could have a very rough map quickly. I.e, a generic village set of objects placed on an RGB of 16 if the pixel size is say 1 - 4 pixels, a generic town if the RGB = 16 and the pixel size is 5 - 20 and so on. A bridge if a road or railway meets water and the water is between 1 - 10 pixels wide, that would stop the program from bridging a sea etc.

It would still take final tweaking which is time consuming, but "automating" the basic process will speed it up a lot. We need someone with good java skills and an understanding of how to get the map-T, map_c and the Actors.static file to interact.

Good work on that Slot map

[Skunkmeister]

While all that sounds nice, you will always get people who are sticklers for extreme detail and wont be merely satifisfied by generic towns. Just be prepared for a bit of criticism when your maps hit the downloads section. You cant please every one, and that sucks

I approve your method, and in many ways many things that I have done with the Slot reflect what you propose. Believe me, the law of least effort is something that I adopt wllingly. Many of my villages that I have placed on the islands are generic groupings that I rotate to suit texture orienation and the shape of the land.

[lowfighter]

Skunkmeister,



If someone can figure out a way of automatically placing generic Static Actors objects we could have a very rough map quickly. I.e, a generic village set of objects placed on an RGB of 16 if the pixel size is say 1 - 4 pixels, a generic town if the RGB = 16 and the pixel size is 5 - 20 and so on. A bridge if a road or railway meets water and the water is between 1 - 10 pixels wide, that would stop the program from bridging a sea etc.

It would still take final tweaking which is time consuming, but "automating" the basic process will speed it up a lot. We need someone with good java skills and an understanding of how to get the map-T, map_c and the Actors.static file to interact.

Icompletely agree, such a tool would be nice speeding up map building. I've got a sadness though because on most maps the official map builders STOPPED after using that tool (which they have). Cities like Stalingrad or Sevastopol are just a pile of 2-3 types of buildings, there's no center town, there are no features...lifeless

I thought too lately about such a tool, hehe. I think it's not so hard to write...The principle is the periodicity of the village (town) texture if you place it on the map. Get coordinates for objects positions when the texture is placed starting (0,0) and extended till it repeats. Then if you have any spot on a map with that texture, calculate x,y=(x0+n*period, y0+m*period) (something like this don't take it too seriously, n and m would be the map_T pixel index where th program finds that type of texture). Place object in mission format. Randomise type. Needs to know what specific texture is placed, Dcountry.tga and country.tga will need different placement (diferent x0,y0)for example. You need some templates containing objects positions for each village or town texture...

[FC]

You can make template actors.statics with villages and cities and use paste from file to put that template at different spots. That's not as fast as full automation but much faster than creating every city from scratch.

Community can even make couple of templates that can be used in maps, some sort of libraries with different cities and villages.