[kapteeni]

I been thinking about my next project. I opened the Default finnsgulf map and changed the winter load.ini to work with those new textures. So now i'm happy with the textures. I need to edit the map_h, so the terrain will have more shapes. Thats easy. Difficult part is populating the map. Because i know that Lowfighter loves small farms and churches, i want to add many of them. . What is the best way to do it? Is it possible to make a template with "normal" FMB and then combine Stuff from .mis file to exctracted actors.static. Or create new empty. actors.static and combine that to huge actors.static?
I hate the way the Cities are build in default maps. Specially I hate default Viipuri. Helsinki is quite good, it just need some polishing.
Just my 2 cents...
kapteeni

[asheshouse]

Yes it is. -- You can make a template with just a few isolated farms to sparsely populate the country textures. But you might want to run Autopop with a modified map_T, removing some of the country textures so that in the final map not all country textures have farms. I used this on BoF Part 1.

[KG64_Ðørvånski]

good idea!

[lowfighter]

That will make me happy yes :!: :!:
Kapteeni, if you place them by hand I don't see any clear advantage of doing it as an actors. static or doing it as a mission template (and then in both cases incorporate in the master actors.static). I think this will take a lot of time?
Asheshouse suggest however to create a "farm" template and then use AUTOPOP, that will make things very fast. However you rather lose control over the precise position of farms (and this sometimes gives funny results which need correcting by hand), also they'll look repetitive ( such a farm template was used for example on original Normandy map, the same "farm" everywhere, you can do a better template than that but you're still limited because you have to place in the autopop template just a limited number of farms over a 1600 m x 1600 m region). Hm, I think it's still worth giving autopop a try, maybe that and then correct manually afterwards?

[Poltava]

Kapteeni!

Excellent idea, and judging from your last efforts, it is bound to be GOOD!

I have a suggestion: you could perhaps have the map western edge of the map start just a bit west of the Karelian Isthmus, and instead prolong it to the north and to the east? That way we could have more "real" terrain around some of the important airfields north of the Isthmus (not like in the stock map, that endless steppe that means that the map has ended). You could even prolong it to reach the northern coastal of Ladoga, so we could use that area as well.

Just humble ideas, easy to shoot off, but a hell of a lot of work for you to implement. :oops:

I am saying this from my experience as a builder of missions for the FAF. That Gulf of Finland map is very big, but when it comes to action in the continuation war, much of the action was either on the Isthmus or in the area north of the Ladoga, down towards Svir and the Onega.

[GerritJ9]

Kronshtadt Harbour would also require some work to accurately resemble the real thing. There are a few glaring errors in it- minor perhaps, but annoying, and I'm surprised 1C made those mistakes and never corrected them. One could perhaps forgive 1C for erors in, say, the Singapore map as info on Singapore may be hard to find in Russia- but Kronshtadt????????

[asheshouse]

The country template is quick to make because you only want to make perhaps one farm in a map_T pixel area.

If you make three versions of the template (Type A, B, C), and you make three versions of the map_T, each with some of the country textures omitted (Type 0) then you will get three different sets of outbuildings.txt to merge.

This introduces a lot of variety.
Each of the final map_T country textures could have combinations of:

No buildings
A
B
C
A+B
A+C
B+C
A+B+C

8 variations possible

You can add other template versions to increase the variations further.

[lowfighter]

Hehe, that's a cunning way of doing things! Cool :!:
I say Asheshouse, why not illustrating it on your own BoF map! Seems you have forgotten us so I profit now and beg you tell me if you have abandoned the BoF project or not. Not here, on your own threads...

[kapteeni]

Holy christus! I started to make new Karelian Isthmus map. I cant use those original cities as bottom. Even my Kt_Finlands Helsinki is better than the original...
I will not include Leningrad to that new map. Maybe i do later a version with CanonUK method.

[kapteeni]

OK here they are. First screenshots from my upcoming Kt_Viipuri map.
Map covers a small area of Bay of Viipuri and Karelian Isthmus. I could not edit the big Finnish Gulf map. It was too huge task. I made small calculations; I been making 4 map (finished) and it took whole year and countless hours of work. I really dont have either time or patient to handle map that big. I want to play too! So i decided to use Big Finnsgulf as a map for big campaigns. Viipuri was so wrongly made that i had to make small map of my own.
This a good map for winterwar and for 1941 summer and 1944 summer scenarios. For playabililty, i moved Immola airfield to top left corner.
Here are the Screenshots:
The area (It is bigger than this):

Scetch for flight map:

Viipuri above:

Countryside:

[Redwulf__32]

I guess this would include Tali/Ihantala as well (just east of Viipuri)?

Nice......

[kapteeni]

I guess this would include Tali/Ihantala as well (just east of Viipuri)?

Nice......

Right!!! As well as some important winterwar places like Summa and others.... The big Finnsgulf map is good for countryside...