The original 1.2 forest TMods were hideous at close range, and some others are almost as bad.
What has been done to improve them?
It is an area that I have never really investigated, hence my question

You can reskin the models with better drawings or create an entirely new 3D model with many more trees then the default models, using the full 256 polygon capabillity of the 3DZ models, simple but effective::





I thought another nice idea was to create an orchyard model that could be placed in rows:



or double treelanes to fly in between:



or you could use the Gunship models, after conversion, to replace them or build what Pobs did based on these models which were several 2D rows with sidepanels sticking out in an irregular manner. Only seen a picture of it in the archives long ago, looked a bit like a crops model ready for harvesting. Last but not least there's always my Supertrees mod based on the idea that Pobs and I had to replace the models with regular treeclumps, an idea that caught on pretty well with most modders. It's probably been used in SAW..

VonBeerhofen

I do not do 3dz work, so are there any links to these much better looking forests?

Nope those belong in The Final Cut addon for EAWPRO, but you can look for the Supertrees mod.

http://www.thatoneplease.co/Tally-Ho/vb.html

But surely with the 128/256 TMOD capabillity of v1.60 why not use 10 more models and place them really close to one another using a TMOD script? That should more or less result into something simmilar,

VonBeerhofen

I was using a 1.26e set-up to test my OAW installer download, and it had the default terrain and TMods.
I saw the dreadful forests and that got me thinking, hence my question.
Thanks anyway- the super trees look really good, and make the default terrain almost acceptable LOL

I have seen semi-random clumping of trees on this sitehttp://web.archive.org/web/20121112135829/http://ww2fighters.org/

Some of these arrangements look pretty natural, considering the typical European terrain. After all, the typical European farmer won't bother to cultivate a rocky outcrop, and no telling what will grow there. That said, most farmers will seldom tolerate trees in the way of their crop fields, as tree shade = reduced sun = reduced crops. I have seen very early aerial photos of my birthplace, Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island, USA. Most of the island, back at the turn of the last century, was devoted to crops, and as bare of trees as possible . The Brits having cut down every single tree, and dismantled all structures outside their lines during the Revolution notwithstanding.

In short, what has become a tree-filled Island nowadays, cultivating few cash crops, bears NO resemblance to the photos of long ago. Farmers hate trees, unless they are cash-generating orchards, or dedicated wood-lots, such being on uncultivatable land. Aside from that, farmers will cut down trees, and for them, good reasons.

While intended for an entirely different game, some of the links posted above should be adaptable to various versions of EAW.

There's a bit of a snag there RiBob. The exact placement of each tree or clump is very timeconsuming because there are 64 terrain tiles which can each have 64 trees models on them at least. The program I use is very cumbersome to use and has a tendency to crash all the time and other available programs I've tried were even worse in use. So you may understand that building an EAW world is not only very boring work but immensely laborious too. Add to this the fact that every terrain tile has it's own layout, within the dozens of tilesets available, only a few people took the time and effort to place them as in your example.

Ofcourse certain terrains allow random placements, anything which doesn't have specific agricultural layouts or is devoid from trees, like rocky terrain or deserts, are a simple task but creating a European style terrain only clashes with the various European terrain sets available. When filemanagers are used by players then even perfectly arranged tiles will no longer work the same when a different European (or other) terrainset is selected, unless a simmilar arangement was made for it.

You can painstakingly line up trees in a city along the roads but in another terrainset the roads will be different. and the loaded data will no longer match. As a result of this anything which was painstakingly placed becomes a very sought after project by those who are not willing to take the time to do such things themselves but can incorporate it into their filemanagers without even blinking an eye, after all someone already did that for them. The work involved can be around 6 months full time to do it all.

When you understand that some people who made better tools to do this work are unwilling to share them, in fear of better creations then they will ever hope to accomplish, then you may get some idea of what's going on and why these dreadfull threads keep popping up, or even why there is so much interest in good working addons which took 15+ years to devellop and were so easily incorporated in other people's filemanagers. For that simple reason alone you will never see what I've done with my addons for EAWPRO, because I don't want anyone to walk away with my work without spending the same ammount of time on it as I did.

I can host anyone's hard work without his permission, but I prefer to be the creator who does the things you want to see. The stuff I make is all original and highly priced in the world of filemanagers because of it's originality. It's never been seen before and therefore the file managers love to get their hands on it, especially if it has what you want. Ofcourse the fille managers came up with all kinds of rules to make it all look fair but it isn't is it? My creations belong to me untill I sign them away, like I signed EAWPRO away to Mark EAW. He's the only person who hosts my work with my conscent but that won't stop the filemanagers. They just take whatever they can't produce themselves. That is why you will see very little of what you want, because I'll die first before I let any file manager use years of my work without my conscent.

To be more precise, I'm not even going to bother building worlds for the file managers or you anymore and place all those trees in preconfigured arrangements, spending months of my time and seeing it result in the demise of my websites and see people laugh about it. You may want to see that stuff but there's only 4 or 5 people who know how to do what you want and may be willing to spend the time on it, but it's not going to be me, sorry. I have websites I've build to attract EAW pilots from all over the world but the file manager has decided it is of no use to him because he wants these pilots to come to his place instead of mine, without doing the same hard work, after all he runs an online competitive website himself and hates to see someone get more attention then he does. I call filemanagers and anything which thrives on other people's work without their conscent parasites and it's time something is done about them, so I can happily keep on doing what I did before and be creative and productive for EAW, which is all I want in my final years. Oh and let's not forget that I want the full benefits of that work as well, meaning that my website can stay up and remain competitive, after all it was me who did all the work and I'm not dead yet.

VonBeerhofen

I probably have one of the "better tools" referred to.

However, when 1.28F was released we switched to Will Gee's "TM2" system, which allows for 1000s of tiles, 256 TMods per tile, up to 1000 different TMods, and uses the "eaw32.tm" and "Geawttd2.dat" files in place of the "eaw.tm" and "eaw_ttd.dat" files.
My editor edits and makes "Geawttd2.dat" files, and cannot be used to edit "eaw_ttd.dat".
People working on theatres that use the "TM2" system are using it. They are invariably members of the code group, so they have access to it and other files on our server.

File Manager, remove your foot from my sand castle and give me back my life!

VonBeerhofen

Didn't you hear me File Manager? I said ''REMOVE YOUR FOOT FROM MY SAND CASTLE AND GIVE ME BACK MY LIFE!''

VonBeerhofen

Excessive and unnecessary - locked.

This is the third post locked by me - now past onto site admin.