Welcome to PMC TFW

[Guest]

Welcome to PMC TFW Terrain Addon web pages (and this forum), we will hope to provide the F4 community some nice terrain addons in the future.

If you guys have any special terrains you want us to produce, you might drop us a message.

Also I hope you learn and like the terrain tutorial, its kind of tricky business

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

Hi Snakeman,
Nice site
Wondering if we can chat or something
Im having a few problems with terrain
and figure you may be able to help. I
really hate bothering Julian as that
takes away from the time he gives that
helps everyone. My ICQ 9165219 or we can
meet at the terrain forum and use their chat.
Im on from 9am to 11pm EST USA time daily.
Crossup

[Guest]

I dont have ICQ and never used "forum" chats. If its okay to use this forum here, just shoot and ask away I try to answer to best of my ability... its just that I'm quite new to this terrain business myself, at least I know the beginning steps by now

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

Permit me to point out a small ommision in your tutorial.
You neglect to mention during L2 building to continue with build the other levels by changing the resolution switch.
Oh and also I think you might want to mention about load texture.bin and the pcx pallet prior to tiling(including auto) otherwise autotile wont work.
Also you might want to inform people about campmap.rsc and the little map too.
Great job though, very clear.

[Guest]

ok first question is
do you have any idea why when flying terrain
made with our tools, I have yet to have one
render in the game properly. From what I see
I suspect the fartile.raw is not right or some mapping resource is not. Basically
I saw the wrong type of tiles- swamp on water
snow on low altitude and such yet in terrain
view all is fine in segment views. Another clue is that the tiles seem to change too
like I would see snow infront and by the time
I get there , snow is behind me to the horizon. BTW, the snow tiles look VERY cool
on lower elevations.
Crossup - going home now but Ill be back in
10 mins(3 miles to home!!)

[Guest]

I used the Balkans terrain builder for the job, no need to make extra resolutions with the perl script, the L2 is enough.

Wrong type of tiles appearing when flying, but TerrainView showing correct tiles is for my understanding in the result of wrong texture.bin file. Meaning there is modified tiles used. I'm not sure tho, need to look into this.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

OK Snakeman, I finally got Germany to work
right. Auto tiling is a bit dissappointing
but it sure beat having to do it all by hand.
FYI it looks like procXX.pl wont work with
negative longitudes, Ive tried different
input format but so far no luck. Also I figured out the prob running them in windows
LOL- I just killed the error message and it
works. Do you have the RSC scripts Julian
made? how about .map file production ?
Crossup

[Guest]

Do you need any help generating TDF files?

Dont have RSC or theater.map scripts, those would be nice. I'm actually looking into the theater.map issue now, so we could go for the whole Vietnam map and not just the beta1 screenshot size.

If anyone has more theater.map details, please post a message.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

Changed the title for this "thread" to Terrain, because lets face it... world does not need another Falcon 4.0 forum.

Feel free to ask/comment/help everything about Terrain business here.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

where can I get good info on the structure of L2 files and such ? I looked at the perl script but I don't know perl so I'm a bit at a loss there.

crossup, you are interested in germany apparently. Is that a RED STORM RISING add-on that you are preparing ?

YLR

[Guest]

Well I dont know the structure of map files, basically I dont need it anywhere.

Ask something specific and I'll try to help?

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

Well, I'm trying to get terrain from other sources than the NASA/NOAA DEM, that's why I need it. OK, will try with an hex-edit to have a look. Another question is about terrain orientation. Does the top of the terrain always have to be the north ? Was wondering if it is possible to tilt the region so that it fit better in the allowed range.

YLR

[Guest]

> Well, I'm trying to get terrain from other sources than the NASA/NOAA DEM

What other sources?

About terrain orientation, I dont think its possible to change it. its the long/lat coord thing and relates to real world location so.

But good news is that I'm now able to create larger maps to terrainview, these maps currently dont work in F4. They do work, I dont get CTD's or so but the terrain is .. uhm totally crazy. Will be looking for theater.map to increase the f4 map size.

Funny thing was that 20 by 20 DEM map which goes to 256 x 256 SEGMENTS in terrainview, the theater.l2 file takes about 100mb

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

>What other sources?

GTOPO30 at the usgs is another source of DEM for the world. The sea there is coded at -9999 wich make it easy to be set back at 0. There is also the US military (DTED0) wich is supposed to be better than GTOPO30.

>But good news is that I'm now able to >create larger maps to terrainview,
>but the terrain is .. uhm totally crazy
In what sense crazy ? That's sound very promising. Real SAC missions for the Buffs and Bones.Fixing the air refueling will be needed throught...

YLR

[Guest]

Terrain goes crazy in the sense of just being totally wrong. Like large box-styled 1000ft deep holes appear into the ground

But dont worry, the theater.map file as supposedly contains the size settings.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

>Like large box-styled 1000ft deep holes appear into the ground

Great anti-tanks ditch. Seems like the offensive side in the ground campaingn is going to need to boost its combat engeneers branch...

OK seriously, any kind of patern in the placement of the holes ?

YLR

[Guest]

No, they just seem to apprear out of nowhere as I fly by, then they disappear again.
Weird is that falcon does not CTD on me, you would think that if you tamper the files, thats the first thing to happen, but no.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

>No, they just seem to apprear out of >nowhere as I fly by, then they disappear >again.

A Twilight Zone add-on for F4 ?

Be sure to post your finding on the theater.map file. I will be greatly interested.
And yes, it's quite surprising that there is no CTD, given the rather bitchy caracter of F4. Maybe something the way it compute line of sight. It's probably a fast but not so precise algorithm so it discover only at the last moment the tile at this point should not exist.

YLR

[Guest]

theater.map

Dont know for sure, but this is what I found out. after hex editing the file, f4 dumbed error "couldnt read block offset data" on the 64 x 64 map.

Then test with the 128 x 128 map and it works ok. but gives those earlier mentioned 1000ft "holes".

Funny thing is that without editing theater.map, the 128 x 128 map gives me the same (hole) results, but after editing the original sized falcon map gives error. Hmm, so basically the hex edit should be correct.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

>"couldnt read block offset data" on the 64 x 64 map.

yes you are right. So the L2 seems to be Ok, its after geting the datas from it that something clogs. Humm, SACEUR posted some infos on the terrain group about terrain size if I remember well. Something about hard coding I think. But the micropose team made F4 really open to expension so there should be a way to get around this.

YLR

[Guest]

I have created a map and theatre for the Michigan, Ohio, Canada area in the US. Using the tutorials found here, everything has went pretty good. My question (and Im grinning here!) what do I do with now? Theatre has been created (ie. map, tile placement, etc) how do I actually create the theatre and sub-directories (weather, etc.) like the balkans? Any help would be appreciated and great work thus far people!!

Doogman

[Guest]

How to create new subdir for your theater?

Simply copy-paste the Korea dir, then rename the newly created dir to what ever you like.

Copy your new theater.l2 and theater.o2 files into this theaters terrain\ subdir.

Run tinstall to the dir you created, like:

"falcondir\tinstall.exe falcondir\terrdata\Ohio"

Hmm then you need to select your new theater, this is a bit complicated as you need to edit registry (terrain switcher dont support other than Korea / Balkans). I'm gonna create some tutorial of terrain switcher's registry edit.

But easiest way to test your terrain, install balkans, copy your l2 & o2 files in there, run rebuild terrain, select balkans terrain and start to fly

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

From the bottom to the top:
Registry edits= export existing Balkans key
edit the entries for where it goes to point to your new theater name, etc. Create the Key on left panel for theater name. Then import the modified key. A miminum of typing that way.
TerrainSize+Sacuer= the size of theater is NOT hardcoded, other aspects are like the
128 map. Like the entire game, this thing is
scalable:
fread(TheaterCells,sizeof(CellDataType),Map_Max_X*Map_Max_Y,fp);
fclose(fp);
This is typical of the coding, so larger theaters are possible.
YLR: the scenerio for the German terrain is
Fulda Gap (NATO vs Warsaw Pact) massive invasion.
SnakeMan: Im finding progress is poor without
the TE map( .rsc file) this is a major bottle
neck in checking out the terrain.
Crossup

[Guest]

Hi Crossup.

Can you generate "TE map( .rsc file)" for me, is the procidx.pl script for this job?

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

LOL, its a bottleneck for me cause I have
been able to make one.
Crossup

[Guest]

"Hmm then you need to select your new theater, this is a bit complicated as you need to edit registry (terrain switcher dont support other than Korea / Balkans). I'm gonna create some tutorial of terrain switcher's registry edit."
as you can tell from my previous answer on this, I too was doin this. BUT I have noticed with beta4 the Tinstall adds to the tswitch
list so no reg edit is necessary. COOL HUH?
Crossup

[Guest]

> BUT I have noticed with beta4 the Tinstall
> adds to the tswitch list so no reg edit is
> necessary. COOL HUH?

I dont understand, just installed beta4 and it only offers Balkans and Korea theaters. no adds for other theaters.

What did you mean?

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

I mean if you make another L2,O2 set, like I did for Hawaii, make your terrdata directory for it and run tinstall to install it you will see it in Tswitch. If this doesnt work
for you then it means the Tswitch setting are
global to F4, I have several(14) F4 installs
and some have upto 4 terrains installed. So
perhaps that why it is showing up for me.

AND it sure looks to me like our friend Julian has slipped a fast on on us , the
procidx.pl looks like a swiss army knife to
me, I sure hope it works. His post made it
sound like it didnt do hardly anything.
Keeping my fingers crossed.
Crossup

[Guest]

That does not work for me. Created new terrdata\blahblah direactory, run tinstall terrdata\blahblah and it did not show up at terrain switcher.

So have you any idea of how to produce results with the procidx.pl script? (I dont:).

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.

[Guest]

Hi Crossup.

> it looks like procXX.pl wont work with
> negative longitudes, Ive tried different
> input format but so far no luck.

It does now I've talked with Julian about this and now its fixed. Just generated negative long/lat coordinated Falklands for ccc, will be posting those scripts very soon for you guys to download.

PMC TFW,
Snake Man.