[agracier]

CT,
1 idea I am thinking of for my Army Group Centre map is to have a half-dozen alternative templates for "hamlets" - i.e. small villages of 6 or 8 houses - and to use these to give the map a "populated" feel outside the larger, named rural towns.
Have you tried that idea yourself?

I use that method also on maps and it works quite well - and it's relatively quick as well, especially if you do some group rotating after placing them, to get some variation in their appearance from the air.

But half a dozen different templates isn't usually enough for variation. 2 dozen templates would be more like it. Luckily a template for a hamlet needn't be very complicated at all.

[CzechTexan]

There are a few small villages with about a dozen buildings. I guess I could add some more of these. There are several small hamlets (on the real-life map) that I didn't add because I thought they were too small.... but these would be just right for hamlet sized populating.

Last night I was trying to redo to the look of the 2D edmap. it's not something I'm very good at. I can't seem to adjust the colors the way I want them. I like the look of the Slovenia and Alpen edmaps so I'd like to have mine look similar. If there's anyone who'd like to do that for me then let me know. I still need to do a little more correcting of rivers and the coastline before the edmap can be totally redone though.

[CzechTexan]

Did more work on Georgia. Finished airfields and populated the major cities there. I will not make the smaller towns or do as much with texturing fields here. Poti is the largest city on the map (Grozny and Tbilisi are just off the map border). Poti was a major task to complete but it turned out pretty good. It's by far the biggest task I've ever had to do as far as populating.

For Poti I had to re-do the map_c coastline and harbor areas and rivers. They are not as realistic as I'd like it to be but that was a hard task for me as well. some screenies:

Poti, Georgia


Poti harbors


Poti airfield

[CzechTexan]

Kobuleti city, south of Poti on the coast.


Kobuleti airfield. It's just at the edge of the map so you can see the map boundary to the right. I copied the airfield from the Murmansk map but added another runway so two planes can takeoff. This will be a good field for heavy bombers or Black Sea patrol planes.


Airfield near Gori. I inteded this to be a staging airfield for new VVS planes built in Tbilisi and lend-lease planes moving through the area. I have another similar airfield to the southeast but will probably delete it because you cannot make a/i landings there. I'll ask for other opinions to keep it or not when it's available to download.

[mandrill7]

Lovely! Lots of great ideas there!

[lowfighter]

Very nice!

[CzechTexan]

I've recruited one of our more famous eastern front mission builders to make a campaign for when the map gets released to the public. I think most people like to see a campaign already made for new maps so they can test it out.
This will also give me a chance to get good advice from a fellow mission-builder. There are certain things we mission-builders look for in a map that could make it better.

I should have the map's initial stage ready by sometime next week by private eyes only. Improvements will need to be made before uploading to the public as a beta.

Things are progressing nicely. I took a break from populating and paved some roads and railroads in Georgia. Used some MOD BRIDGES as well as placed some stock IL2 bridges. Towns with railways also have railroad stations and extra tracks. Some with train cars on tracks but with room for mission builders to add more if they please.

I think I'll populate some of my hand-made airfields with more small buildings, trees, etc. but will not add too many hangar buildings. I'll leave that to mission builders' choice.

[mandrill7]

I second your idea re restricting the # of hangars. I don't think that there was a lot of building on wartime Soviet airfields. Indeed, my understanding is that the aircrew would be housed in bunkers and not above ground.

I missed out on the "mod bridges". Can you tell me where I can find them. I would love a little variety.

[CzechTexan]

Mandrill7, mod bridges are just objects that you can place with the unlocked FMB and they should be found in your list of objects there. (unless you have a different list). They look just like the stock bridges but these can be placed over rivers that are above 0 elevation.
I think I have them on my Mediafire page ready to download for anyone who needs them.

[mandrill7]

Oh, okay. I thought they were bridges that functioned like the ones I finally figured out how to use and that they would look a little different and give some variety. Thanks.

[CzechTexan]

I knew that's what you were thinking. It would be nice to have different looking stock bridges. I'd like to see some that are lower to the water level and not so high off the ground.

On a different subject, I got to looking at my textures because not long ago there was a discussion somewhere about texture sizes, 512x512 vs. 1024x1024.

1024's use more memory and some people say that's bad and we should use 512 which is what the game is made for.

I looked at mine, changed some to 512, and I didn't notice any difference so I guess it's OK to alter them to 512.
Anyone else have an opinion?

Also, When I alter textures using PaintShopPRo, they change to 24/16 million colors instead of 8/256 colors.
I use the "decrease color depth" for 256 colors but I get the message that it can't be done, only with 16 million.
Is there a trick that I don't know about?
Does it make a difference if it's 16 million or 256? It seems to work OK on my computer.

[agracier]

Also, When I alter textures using PaintShopPRo, they change to 24/16 million colors instead of 8/256 colors.
I use the "decrease color depth" for 256 colors but I get the message that it can't be done, only with 16 million.
Is there a trick that I don't know about?
Does it make a difference if it's 16 million or 256? It seems to work OK on my computer.

I don't know if it makes a difference, 256 or 16 mil, but I just checked and many if not most of my textures are 256.

Maybe you should check the options you have as settings for saving tga files. Mine are 8bit and uncompressed ... changing them from 16 mil to 256 worked fine for me in PSP

[mandrill7]

It makes no difference to how the tile appears. Howver, the tile is 1/3 the size if it is 256 colours.

To achieve this, you have to "index" the colours of the tile. I do not know how to do this on my ancient PSP7 program. I suspect that my ld PSP program cannot perform this task.

I d/l-ed Gimp for free from the net and I can index on that program. You load the tile. You go to image - mode and then change the tile to "indexed".

Go to "save as" and re save.

IMPORTANT - DO NOT JUST "SAVE". YOU MUST "SAVE AS... ". THE ISSUE IS THAT THE "SAVE" COMMAND AUTOMATICALLY COMPRESSES THE IMAGE AND MAKES IT UNUSABLE FOR IL-2.

WHEN YOU "SAVE AS", PAY ATTENTION TO THE DIALOGUE BOXES AND MAKE SURE YOU UNCHECK THE "COMPRESS FILE" OPTION TOWARDS THE END OF THE PROCESS.

[CzechTexan]

It makes no difference to how the tile appears. Howver, the tile is 1/3 the size if it is 256 colours..[/color]

Are you sure it's 1/3 the size? I changed a city texture from 1024 to 512 and it still looks the same size. All the streets were the same as before.

I've been using PSP7 as well. Haven't tried it with GIMP but I do have it so I'll try that.

[mandrill7]

No, you misunderstand. I am responding to Agracier's post about the colour depth being reduced to 256 colours. The tile physically remains the same size as before, but the size of the computer file is reduced to 1/3 because of the new formatting.