Posted By: zerocinco
Building Midway - 01/10/11 11:59 PM
When we first started this stuff, a detractor said that missions were easy to create and that you could make one in a few minutes. In reality, a recreation of a real event takes a very long time to do. There are missions in Yankee Air Pirate that took a month and others that took 6 months.
We are working on Phase Two which will start in Darwin, Australia but will spend most of its time in the Coral Sea, north of Midway and in the Solomons.
I thought a couple of shots of the building of Midway might be interesting.
First, Edward makes the basic scenery from aerial photos from the time, not Google Earth.
You may notice in-game that the longest runway is not lined up the same as the photo. Making runways work and objects appear where you want them is a mathematical equation that is a lot easier if the runways are N-S or E-W.
Then we place the objects from contemporary drawings. The colors? They come from walking around Pacific atolls while my cargo plane was being unloaded and refueled. Coral sand, mangroves and coconut palms are pretty much the same everywhere.
Then Sand Island is laid out according to drawings from the time of the battle.
And, finally, the island is populated correctly.
It takes just a little more than "a few minutes" do to it right. Considering that most of the Battle of Midway will be out at sea, it is tempting to just put something together but we will stage the attack on the island and several missions from it, too.
We are working on Phase Two which will start in Darwin, Australia but will spend most of its time in the Coral Sea, north of Midway and in the Solomons.
I thought a couple of shots of the building of Midway might be interesting.
First, Edward makes the basic scenery from aerial photos from the time, not Google Earth.
You may notice in-game that the longest runway is not lined up the same as the photo. Making runways work and objects appear where you want them is a mathematical equation that is a lot easier if the runways are N-S or E-W.
Then we place the objects from contemporary drawings. The colors? They come from walking around Pacific atolls while my cargo plane was being unloaded and refueled. Coral sand, mangroves and coconut palms are pretty much the same everywhere.
Then Sand Island is laid out according to drawings from the time of the battle.
And, finally, the island is populated correctly.
It takes just a little more than "a few minutes" do to it right. Considering that most of the Battle of Midway will be out at sea, it is tempting to just put something together but we will stage the attack on the island and several missions from it, too.