#4411859 - 03/21/18 09:33 AM
Real theatres
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
One of the great strengths of UAW160 is the ability to switch theatres instantly, and we have really enjoyed flying over the terrain in Moggy's Iraq. Yesterday I downloaded "CBI" (China, Burma, India) and the Poland campaign from Sandbaggers, setting them up with OAW to run with 1.26e. Once again the terrains were interesting, but as I expected there was a problem in terms of what I really wanted to do. Remove the "Europe1.pic" so the default is used and you can see that the default 1.2 "eaw.tm" file is being used. This is not a criticism, because there was little available in those days that modders could use to create a tilemap which resembled the geographical area of the campaign. However, it is impossible to build a "convoys.dat" file for ship convoys, or a realistic "EAW_RRD.DAT" for locomotives. So my question is this Which campaigns other than ETO are out there with a genuine "eaw.tm" tilemap? Obviously I am aware of the ones we use in 160, such as DAW, SPAW, FAW, SAW and IRAQ. There is also VBH's PTIII, and the Burma one I got from Pobs which does not have a height map file. I have a China one, but the tilemap is dodgy in places. So are there are some others that you know about? Jel
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4411903 - 03/21/18 02:16 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
VonBeerhofen
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
|
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
Zandvoort, N-H, Netherlands
|
I made a Korea elevation map for Shreck but to fit it on a TM it had to be rotated 90 degrees. I also found an elevationmap for Burma for Shreck and may have used it to start the initial Burma TM. I still have the original map I found which can be fitted to any Burma addon with a bit of extra work, what I've seen from the TM suggests it was made from the same map. I found Neira's New Guinea 2 which has got all of New guinea on it and what surrounds it. I have Japan TM created originally by Stratos I believe and finished by me with an added HM. I have Italy/MedTer TM and HM, build by me from scratch, with a bit of African coastline and Malta as starting base for the Allied invasion of Sicilly and Italy plus all mediterranean countries up to Switzerland and Czechoslovakia.. I think I also created the start of the Phillipines TM and made an elevationmap for Shreck. I may have more but I can't get to my working computer as it has died, the drive is fine though, these I found backed up on this computer and it may be all I have.
Scales of theatres aren't always close to realism, it depends on what map was used and where it was found. These are all prior to Google Earth.
Ooops, nearly forgot I also have a near finished map of Egypt, Suez and Palestine, but it was withdrawn due to the resemblance of Moggy's Iraq, it can still be used for El Alamein or something.
VonBeerhofen
|
|
#4413167 - 03/27/18 06:35 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
I wrote two new utilities today. One checks if any files are missing from a terrain set. I did this because some are incomplete, but OK with the tilemap they were made for because the missing ones are not used. However, they may not work with other tilemaps whiwch reference the missing ones. The other one allows tiles to be switched. The China theatre is dreadful because in some areas the tiles are in appropriate for the heightmap. What the switcher does is to allow a tile to be copied and the copy re-named as a replacement for another tile. With this the China theatre retained costal tiles of similar colours, and land tile which matched the coastal ones. The land ones I used were forest tiles, so there were no glaring discrepancies with the height map. China theatre, same height map, original tiles: ..tiles produced using the two pieces of software I wrote today:
Last edited by MrJelly; 03/27/18 07:38 PM.
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4413173 - 03/27/18 07:57 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
The utilities: The tile switcher Copies of the tile in the box above the lists will be made, and then renamed with the names in each list The lists were made by clicking on the pictures. The tileset checker- I did not tart this one up BNCOAST7.TER is missing from this tileset
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4413178 - 03/27/18 08:22 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
VonBeerhofen
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
|
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
Zandvoort, N-H, Netherlands
|
Mr. Jelly, modern tilemaps may contain 64 tiles, your grid only displays 63. Those Chinese tiles look a bit strange, so you replaced them with the tiles from the original PacTide. which uses copies of the same tile in nearly all slots? Wouldn't it be much more interesting to finish the tiles and the map instead of using a single tile all over the Japanese and Chinese continent, and give it it's own flavour then the strong resemblance with PacTide? Perhaps a bit more like this: I know, I know, it's not what some codegroup members found a good likeness to Japanese fields, some who had actually visited Japan, did you know? Maybe that's why they made such sneering remarks about the creation. I must admit that I've never been there but still, it's not half bad in comparison with what you are showing, Yes, it did take a tremendous amount of work. VonBeerhofen
|
|
#4413237 - 03/28/18 07:43 AM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
modern tilemaps may contain 64 tiles, your grid only displays 63. What we have in UAW160Special is a means to switch between planesets, and a means to switch between theatres. The theatres and planesets are independent of each other, and the system works very well. So I am looking for additional theatres. I am also investigating the possibility of terrain switching. Yesterday's experiments were due to the problems with the China terrain in the download and the "eaw16.hm" file. This prompted the adaption of my tilemap editor to make the tile switcher. It stuck me that with the coastal tiles working properly there was the possibility of further editing the interior tiles to produce a better result However, when I used it there were some strange tiles showing when I flew, and I knew they were not from the tiles in the loaded set. This suggested that the loaded set was incomplete, hence the checker, which found the name of the missing tile. The China theare is much better with your PT III terrain. In a quick test there were no glaring height map anomalies, but there are a few areas where the coastline is incorrect. I will try to edit the tilemap to fix that Made a start One of them fixed with a 57 being replaced by a 44 Since then I have done the lot plus a few more anomalies
Last edited by MrJelly; 03/28/18 11:22 AM. Reason: More pics
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4413271 - 03/28/18 12:29 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
VonBeerhofen
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
|
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
Zandvoort, N-H, Netherlands
|
PTIII uses the full tileset but not in a standard way, it was the first try to get all 64 tiles in, that will definately look much better. But you may have noticed that the China/Japan map is far from finished, in fact all it had was coastlines and a very rudimentary road and city layout. The map I finished has got everything in the right place, rivers were added, cities and villages and forrest, fields and grass. Those are the main things which make for a good and interesting theatre. As is immediately visible from your pictures, the PTIII tiles came out too dark, due to the standard brightness setting of my Dell monitor. Not a big deal if you can control contrast, but it's better to slightly enhance each tile individually, as I have done. Like some of the other tilesets you show, the tiles don't follow standard EAW rules, to get a standard set missing tiles should be created, but that still doesn't fix the .TM. Fixing the TM is a very labour intensive manual operation and there's no algorythm which can do it for you, no matter which tileset you throw in there it won't look as good a what I have and that goes for every unfinished theatre out there, it's not the tiles which makes the terrain , it's the finished TM with every road, river, forrest, city, village, mountain and grass, preferrably build from a real map of the location. Turning grass in to mountains and mountains into grass is an easy operation and can even be accomplished by renaming the consequetive tiles without changing the TM, but the map would immediately become unrealistic and any carefull programming of the EAW_TTD to set houses and treelines in the right locations will also be destroyed. Still the program could be of use when incorporated into the tile editor, in that this terrain I show didn't stop there. Multiple coastlines, riversets, city and village drawings were created for it and it began to take on a life of it's own. Multiple mountainsets, grass sets and over 500 field tiles can now be swapped on the fly. Ofcourse it would help when people see what they're doing when they construct something with a tileset which offers more then 1000 tiles and other sets could be incorporated too. The pictures shown were only the beginning of it all and since then other sets were created, like the Harvest and Benelux sets and the land of Oz, which are a try to cram as much detail onto a 256 tile as possible with the abillity to use 4 tiles to construct UHR sets with ease and great diversity.. I'm sorry to say that I can't see any other use for your program, but just like anything else it's the TM editing which makes it all fit, swapping in bits and pieces by renaming tiles is easy, especially when a set is inside it's own folder. You just throw it in and overwrite the old set and the game changes appeareance. Ofcourse the lack of ricefields in Japan was duely noted, so it became another nature which can replace something else. Sets were made for anything I could think of, a kind of construction database to create new theatres the way they should be created, without any shortcuts. VonBeerhofen
|
|
#4413290 - 03/28/18 02:14 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
VonBeerhofen
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
|
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
Zandvoort, N-H, Netherlands
|
I forgot to mention that I also created a new true elevationmap for DAW, since I found the original not to be very challenging. If you don't have it in it's available here: https://rabartel.home.xs4all.nl/LPDLindexD.htmlElevation data came from a terrain surveying website and was converted to fit the EAW.TM precisely. My excuses if you are already using it. VonBeerhofen
|
|
#4413529 - 03/29/18 05:06 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
I made some new hills with a new heightmap maker/editor This was a quick test using a totally flat terrain originally, but I am very happy with the result. The editor does not yet show target placement, or coastal tiles. I will make it do this to make life easier
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4413590 - 03/29/18 09:51 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
Getting somewhere The top pic is the height map with just my mountains as the rest is flat The bottom one is the tilemap with coasts and river tiles marked The pics are grids containing colours and text. They can be resized to do editing These are small to see the map clearly, size 24.
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4414821 - 04/05/18 08:11 AM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
I have finally got CAW working after fixing the TMod.dat table. It had the old 46 byte structure, and no header. Groundstarts are possible from some fields, including carriers, but more work needs to be done. Jel
Last edited by MrJelly; 04/05/18 08:22 AM.
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
#4415066 - 04/06/18 07:59 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: Moggy]
|
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
VonBeerhofen
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
|
3DZ Master/Campaign Designer
Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 7,554
Zandvoort, N-H, Netherlands
|
This was the new Midway theatre:
What do you mean ''was'', nothing ''was'' or should be when it involved a lot of work, not even if it's not finished. VonBeerhofen
|
|
#4415512 - 04/09/18 06:56 PM
Re: Real theatres
[Re: MrJelly]
|
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
MrJelly
Veteran
|
Veteran
Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 12,497
Montagnac, L'Herault, France
|
I have just added an extra target to CAW. Ray has several named ships in SPAW: 177 USS Boise 178 USS San Diego 179 USS Brooklyn 180 USS Atlanta 181 USS Helena 182 USS St. Louis 183 USS Honolulu 184 USS Nashville 185 USS Trenton 186 USS Detroit 187 USS Raleigh 188 USS Pensacola 189 USS San Francisco 190 USS Minneapolis 191 USS Portland 192 USS New Orleans 193 USS San Juan 194 USS Astoria 195 USS Chicago 196 USS Northampton 197 USS Alabama 198 USS South Dakota 199 USS Washington 200 US Enterprise 201 USS Saratoga 202 USS Long Island 203 HMS Victorious 204 IJN Zuikaku 205 IJN Shokaku 206 IJN Ryujo 207 IJN Kongo 208 IKN Haruna 209 IJN Yamato 210 IJN Jintsu 211 IJN Kuma 212 IJN Kinugasa 213 IJN Tenryu 214 IJN Yubari 215 IJN Yunagi 216 IJN Tama 217 IKN Kiso 218 IJN Kumano 219 IJN Suzuya 220 IJN Nachi 221 IJN Haguro 222 IJN Atago 223 IJN Maya 224 IJN Mogami 225 IJN Myoko 226 IJN Takao 227 IJN Kako 228 IJN Aoba 229 IJN Tatsuta At the extra target I placed every one of them. Now I can fly view them to see what they really look like
Last edited by MrJelly; 04/09/18 07:03 PM.
Fly EAW online at GameRanger: GameRanger SiteFaceBook Pages UAW 160 downloadsEAW ClubMark Twain: I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.I am now of an age at which I no longer need to suffer fools gladly
|
|
|
|