2022-04-12T17:29:00Z New editing day has started. Yesterday spend just attempting to play dedicated server MP which did not lead anywhere and then just read Ukraine war news and my local notes, watched one movie. Day was a colossal waste of time, I just waited for bed time so the day could be over with. But now I have kind of angry energy because of the yesterday and I am motivated to crush shit on taiwan taichung terrain. I just woke up, did the morning computer chores, nothing going on anywhere, havent had the days first meal yet but going to launch global mapper now and export satellite mask so I can continue editing heightmap coastline.
Hows that for opening, boom bitches!
Now I'm off to get some grub.
2022-04-12T18:04:00Z While I ate global mapper finished exporting satellite mask tile images.
Then opened first Satellite.Mask/ sat_??.XCF image in GIMP, selected the RGB 0,0,150 ocean, opened Sat_Mask_??.png equivalent tile and copy-pasted the ocean blue into that, then saved/exported the PNG.
Then had to repeat that for all the XCF satellite mask images to get the full ocean selection tile-set done.
2022-04-12T18:40:00Z In global mapper doing the ocean bottom edits, now its "finding areas" in satellite mask map catalog according to RGB value, this will take approximately 10min or so. My chance to read some Ukraine war news and make a quick visit to the head
Forgot to paint Sat_Mask_A1.png full ocean seed tile and copy it over to all other full ocean tiles.
Updated my ocean bottom coastline tool pipeline text list to fix one step I have now missed three times, no more, now its fixed, wont be making the same mistake ever again. You always need to update the tool pipeline every single time you encounter an issue of some sort.
Got it done.
2022-04-12T19:12:00Z Got the ocean bottom coastline global mapper work done. Hopefully now the next coastline terrain is easy to do as tool pipeline works without issues.
Now I even remember my other failure which happened few times, after being excited of getting heightmap-final.asc done I immediately import it to terrain builder like a horny dog, completely forgetting that I need to level airfield runways in L3DT and terrain processor smooth roads again heh.
I have now updated tool pipeline text list for these two steps, they are fairly important
Then L3DT edited heightmap-final.asc to smooth the airfield runways. Next copied LBT deleting and roads.* file copying bat files into TerrainProcessor/ dir, edited the roads bat and ran it to copy roads here, then edited Smooth_Roads.tpp so it reads roads.shp in the same dir and ran it.
Now our ocean bottom coastline work is final, heightmap is ready to import into terrain builder.
Did the terrain builder heightmap import shuffle, exported WRP, saved project and exited. Ran moveObject re-pathing of WRP, then started pboProject binarization, lets get this baby to arma3.
2022-04-12T19:34:00Z As binarization takes forever, I'm going to start creating taiwan taichung web page php files already.
Hmm earlier terrain builder exported WRP with 7.522 million objects, I quickly browsed through this dev diary and I talk about seventeen million objects previously, hmm hmm, is some of the object layers broken or did I not mention when I cut ten million objects from terrain processor, hmm.
2022-04-12T20:02:00Z Got changelog page done, up until this point of editing, still few entries coming to that page. I would like to move this dev diary text to the actual web page already but we are still far from release and its such a bitch to write dev diary with html code tags, so not going to do it yet. Right now though, dunno what could I do other than wait, hmm well I could do the release news/forum post text template, but that takes whopping 37 seconds about heh.
I hate waiting...
Hmm binarize must have heard me, it finished within a minute after I wrote the above
Hmm felt quite fast too, hmm hopefully terrain working ok.
*** pmc taiwan_taichung Start time: 2022-04-12T1933 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_08 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_07 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_06 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_05 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_04 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_03 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_02 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_01 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers_00 pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data_layers pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_data pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung_cfg pboproject pmc_taiwan_taichung End time: 2022-04-12T2005
Okay time to fire up arma3 and go see whats what
I knew something was wrong, looks like... lets see, that would be Forest_B2.tpp terrain processor vegetation generation failure, meaning bottom right grid tile is completely missing all vegetation, heh how did that happen
But roads.shp is working, airfield runways and class names{} show up OK and most importantly... ocean coastline is cool and no water creeping to land, awesome!
Heightmap is good to go.
But man those missing objects are hilarious.
Is that like a "crew cut" for forest?
2022-04-12T20:34:00Z Started investigating terrain processor project files, hmm I could find at least one object count wasting problem right away, trees are created first and way too many bushes and rocks next, for example rock hectare density is 20 whoah what was I thinking heh.
Got four TPP files done after shuffling rocks task first, trees second and bushes third. Then ran them and here are the generated objects in k thousands and m millions.
A1: 37.5k A2: 3.452m B1: 226k B2: 4.694m
Pretty decent vegetation coverage. Now just have to import all that shit to terrain builder
2022-04-12T20:45:00Z Terrain builder object import strated. Hopefully this finishes in less than an hour...
Updated mod.cpp for latest layout, accurate google/maps and homepage links.
Importin' ...
Terrain builder finished importing, then exported WRP and it was total of 8,410,261 objects, hmm wonder if I squeezed the TPP settings too tight, that sounds like a low number of objects but well, it will do for now.
2022-04-12T21:17:00Z Once again, binarization begun. I'm pretty sure this is now the final time before release.
Started release procedures by opening that text list, first thing was adding pmc_taiwan_taichung to PMC "worldSize" mission pack compile bat terrains list.
2022-04-12T21:49:00Z Binarize done, in-game arma3 check, moment of truth ...
Looking A-OK!
Yeah guess we're done here, next is just starting arma3 with ULTRA settings and taking those mandatory screenshots for pmctactical.org web page.
2022-04-13T02:08:00Z Had to take a what I'd like to call a short break, but looking at the times it was not that short, just finished watching some DW News channel Ukraine documentary part 2 and now its time to continue editing, break is over.
Continuing the release procedure. Created bisign keys and then 7-zip packed addons into a release packet. Next activated arma3 video settings ULTRA for a screenshot taking session.
2022-04-13T02:34:00Z Screenshots taken, sorted, renamed, edited and converted.
Then moved this dev diary text from localhost to the actual web page and started to proof read and add links to it.
2022-04-13T03:28:00Z Finished proof reading task, not my favorite activities to copy-paste those links with fingers sore heh. Then started to create torrent, release is getting closer and closer ...
2022-04-13T03:58:00Z PMC Taiwan Taichung v0.1 has been released
Read previous page 4 or back to Dev Diary PMC Taiwan Taichung root page.
PMC Taiwan Taichung: Changelog, Dev Diary, Screenshots. Back to PMC Terrain's page.