[lowfighter]

EDIT: you can upload it here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/169461799/l ... ctory1.rar

EDIT1: my dream is that we have a bunch of them, a template library for different textures, coming from community. There's a small number of map makers which already built their templates for their maps, it would be cool to share, and maybe in time we could have a real template library. The template building is not trivial, and maybe we can learn form each other...




Just a screnshot, I have a lot to place still, density of objects will be pretty high maybe a little less then on Slovakia. Used extensively Slovakia, RONE hangar and il2'46 objects...

[fabianfred]

looks good...which texture is that for?

[lowfighter]

Oh yes, I forgot!

land/summer/sk_Factory.tga

looks good...which texture is that for?

[|ZUTI|]

Hm, i could apply it to my map. When is the eta? Looks quite good.

[fly_zo]

... you're seriously scaring my poor NV7600 , m8 :wink:

finally new mod from Lowfighter .... YES !

Z

[lowfighter]

Here's some comments on the concept and bad points.
If you follow the fences you see that it looks like many small factories side by side. Indeed I intend this for small industry mostly, so that on map_T I'll have 4-16 pixels here and there having maybe 1 to 3 factories together at the spot.
Now one problem is that with autopop some objects at the edge of the factory will be missing and the troublesome are the fences, so after autopop work it needs inspecting all factories and doing manual work (adding fences regrouping etc)
The other problem is that map_T works with 200 meter units so if i place say 3 pixels of factory I may have after autopop 1 factory and half hehe. These situations need corrections too. Depends what you want, I'm more towards detail looking like Slovakia (and if you look closely at Slovakia factories you'll see I'm doing something quite similar), but then I have to pay a price...
We've been discussing this on the Romanian forum and Toppy,a M8 there, came with a nice idea to have some object(s) represent the usual debris piles you find (or found :wink: ) near factories... We'll see
This is another way of saying that maybe we'll be able to come in 5-6 years with a Romanian map :lol:

ZUTTI, sure you can have it, I think I'll be some 3-4 more days working on it...Ido this because I need it for the said Romanian project, but anyone can use it..

[Boris The Spider]

lowfighter,

Now THAT is marvelous!

I swear you are perhaps the best set decorator out there. That looks as good or better than the Slovakia industrial areas. Now for the big question.....any way to put some rail spurs into i? Or is there room to add them during the map making process?

Again you show why you have earned the moniker, Saint LoFi. Your work is divinely inspired. (insert bowing icon here)

[lowfighter]

Boris the Beebop, thanks for appreciation, there's a couple of them talented object-placement freaks I'd REALLY like to see doing something in the field... You, JackPoff, Spider etc
About the rails, I don't intend to put any, but it can be added later in the map building, it's a good thing to have some clearly. I'll not put them on the template because when you actually use this template still a lot has to be changed afterwards (see my bad points above about using such a template) so the rails have to be place after you have the "final look" of the factory(s) on the map. If you think of the old il2 way for factories, that had no such problems because it was mostly an incoherent pile of industry objects so nothing was lost at the factory border..
This here is pretty coherent, a factory "module" has besides the main factory also auxiliaries like depots, garages, check points at the gates (not visible in the screenshot, but now I have them). Bu as I said because of the way il2 and AUTOPOP works the borders of the factory complex will need additional work.
Hm, hard to explain but when I'm done with it I'll post some screens showing how it behaves on a map in raw form and how it looks after doing the necesarry corrections (interesting to count how long does it take to do the corrections!). But I still have some more work to do adding smaller stuff...

[Friendly_flyer]

Would it be an idea to not have all the buildings lined up so neatly? Looking at aerial photos, buildings don

[|ZUTI|]

Hey lowfighter. Just one question: how does this behave when you try to populate a map using this template? I mean, when i was doing mine for cities (i didn't do it for factories :\) i had a problem with overlapping buildings. In some cases there were up to three buildings in one spot after i populated the map. That's why i wrote a java application that filtered those out for me but i just couldn't make a template that would avoid this. The template itself was clean but at some point the pattern starts to repeat and that was the main problem, i think. So, you had problems like that? Or haven't tested it yet?

Well, if you'll let me, i'll try to use it on my map and see what it does on the boarders with cities. But then again, i can trim the factory regions by hand later on, since i don't have that many factory place on the map Good luck.

[lowfighter]

ZUTTI, I didn't have overlapping issues with this, but maybe I didn't do that many tests. On the other hand what was tricky and annoying was placing the objects at the edge of the 1600 m X 1600 m area, if you not careful you can end with bad things after autopop...I'll send you the file after I'm done, which can be tomorrow or day after tomorrow.

Friendly one, you're right but I have to lay down the factories according to the textures roads you see in the screenshot. Actually there are some portions on the texture where the roads are assuming a less square shape, and the buildings are set there accordingly.. In short it is the texture which mainly determines the layout of the buildings...When applied on a real map you'll not see so much of this square appearence IF the factory regions are not very large (say about 600 meter or less)

[Friendly_flyer]

I know what you mean LowFighter. The well lined up buildings is a general problem in this game, not just with the industrial areas. Whan building missions, I often end up spending a lot of time camuflaging the nearby town to look more natural. Even the otherwise beautiful Slovakian map suffers from overly orderly villages. Here's a village which I feel better represent traditional buildings layout:



Even within a square frame, a bit of hapzard angles can be fitted (here a "Medieval village fort"):

[fly_zo]

i had to agree with Friendly Flayer here .... it does look more natural

Z

[lowfighter]

Hey I like the discussion!
About introducing some disorder within each factory module, I don't know really how to do it such that I preserve factory appearance (there's always some :wink: logic in a factory layout and I think the less "square" ones were those which developed in stages) but I'll think about (maybe I can do that for one factory, but doing it for the whole template area that's a much harder thing I think..Friendly, if you wish to have a go at it, PM me your email so that I can send you the working map on which you can build it. What do you think?
Something interesting about villages to you:
Never been to Slovakia but I can bet that: real Slovakian villages are like real Romanian villages and that's because the Slovakia team village model (texture +buildings) simulates very very well the appearance of many REAL Romanian villages.
But here I come to your village shot: not sure I'm talking about the same thing but if we move now westwards, France, Germany etc, the Slovakia village model is not good anymore, not an expert in villages but I think many villages have here the piling effect you showed in your screen, and maybe in the middle of the pile there is a little square with the church, the school, the pubs, the grocery etc Been living in such a village for a while in Switzerland, even had a castle to stare at from my window, very cute little village...

PS: maybe we could start a general discussion about how to build villages, towns, industry, maybe also how to create new ground textures for them villages etc. Like obviouslly it would be cool to have a new texture representing western Europe vilage layout etctect...

[Friendly_flyer]

I'll happily give placing objects a go, Lowfighter!

I think the less "square" ones were those which developed in stages

I've been looking out the window of the tram all the way home from work today, to see if I could discover anything interesting. I think you are absolutely right about the most untidy ones being the result of building in stages. Where I'm from (very hilly Oslo), terrain also play an important part, as successive buildings are lain out along rivers and steep inclines. However, even the ones occupying flat ground are often less than orderly.

Most of the industrial buildings around where I live span the last 60 years or so, starting from post-war restoration to modern software glass-cubes. If we assume the same to be the case during the 2nd World War, industrial complexes would hold buildings from late Victorian period and onward. In a big industrial field like you are designing, there would be small "cottage industry", metal workshops big and small and brand new big industrial halls.

After I found out how FMB works, I've spent the few times I've flown looking out the window of the plane to see how the world looks from above. Even in modern, well planed industrial areas, you'll find unevenness and buildings that don't quite line up:




As for villages, we are obviously coloured by our cultural background. In Norway we don't really have villages, what I have made is really a close collection of farms. The idea though is that in villages (and old industrial areas) you will ha open spaces, small alleyways, twisting roads etc. What we see in the Slovakian map is way, way better than what we find in most IL2 maps, but the hoses are still lined up better than even old Roman forts (and the Romans where obsessed with lining things up).

For a nice example of how houses actually are lined up, I suggest looking at Compans very nice city tiles. They are taken from actual aerial photos I believe, and very well show how houses are lined up.