Terrain types upgrade 2007

[Snake Man]

Terrain types upgrade 2007

Currently this theater is having really lame terrain textures / tiles pretty much as shown below



Now I think everyone agrees we need to create new ones. Basically we need to decide how many default terrain types we need for Afghanistan.

[marvin157th]

Hmmm,

Well from my experience, Afghanistan has it all.. The only positive note is that the shades are very much the same. There are rocky mountains, as well as complete sand hills in the Northern ragions. In the East (Jalalbad area) there is quite a lot of vegitation.

One thing that would be very hard, but very specific to the Afghan theater is all the sand houses built into the mountains. I do have some pics of those. Damn I need to remember to post those tonight.

We can keep this simple though, as it already is. We would need sand tiles for the main floor. Sand and mountaneous tiles for the mountains, some farming fields, slight vegitation, and of course the city tiles. It would be cool to have mountain city tiles very evident in Kabul, however not sure what that would look like in Falcon.

As I stated before as there are few major cities, and operational air bases in Afghanistan, it would be very cool, and compliment the theater nicely if we used real tiles from Google Earth.

Jody

[Snake Man]

All right now we get going. So to recap what we need from the expert just returned from the region:

- Sand for the main floor.
- Sand and mountaneous tiles for the mountains
- Farming fields
- Slight vegitation
- City

Okay one thing just need to be cleared, is farming fields and slight vegitation two different terrain types or did you mean they are one?

I have several city tiles which we could use, but the other terrain types are unknown to me. We could of course borrow some from ODS tiles if they look the same, but otherwise we need to snag them from other sources.

Here is one terrain image T_Rex sent me back in the old days


Does that match anything you've seen out there?

T_Rex you remember where you got that image? You got more?

[ranger822]

this is interesting . . . only for Afghanistan or for ALL possible future theaters?

Be nice to create a terrain tile repository . . . follow CATE rules for naming then create a whole series of tiles and transitions to others. Need PSDs to start - - sort of like an OPEN SKINS - OPEN TILES concept. Store the basic PSD then use it to create transitions from one terrain type to another - - In effect you could build terrain types to transition to any reasonable terrain in a group - - need to build a structure such that you have parent terrain - and then branches from that - - I.e. using say some key terrain types - you could then build transitions that are either linked to it and perhaps one or two others OR have a terrain that is terminal - ie. only transitions to one other terrain. By establishing a convention you could perhap control the terrain tiles made - - as well as ensure that tile sets get completed - - same for base tiles . . . One thing to do would be to survey the existing tiles - ensure that incomplete sets get completed then use that as the base from which to plan tile sets. There is nothing to say you can't use a few tile sets from various theaters - mix and match ... I think it is possible if you structure the key terrain tiles in such a way that dictates what is transitioned to.

[marvin157th]

SM,

Wow, can't believe I missed this one.. Considering I am always trying to motivate the Afghanistan creation.

That is actually a pretty good tile.. Can it work for Afghanistan? Of course it can. Believe it or not Afghanistan has it all.. Soil sand, light blowing desert sand, rock sand, it seems to have everything. Afghanistan does have a darker side to it then Iraq or the ODS theater.

Is it possible to have different tile sets for different mountains? I think it would be cool to have those mud/clay houses that are built into the base of the mountains.

I think Afghanistan would be a great choice for a current project, cause it would be the quickest theater to actually complete. There are very few airbases in Afghanistan, (We could google tile them for authenticity) as well as the major cities such as Kabul and Kandahar. We would only need a few village tiles that could be used throughout the country. And it would be realistic, cause there is not too much to see out there bu mountains and dirt!

Jody

[Snake Man]

Open Tiles idea with PSD resources would be good idea. Also alot of background info in readme/etc of where the source image (terrain type) was found, like from google earth or real life photo etc something like this.

Also satellite pictures of SAM sites or other "objectives" would be great to have, we could create independent tiles with those and sprinkle across the populated areas like under factory objects etc.

But to get the ball rolling with Afghanistan tile fixing, we need to set those basic terrain types, then we need to find the tile graphics for them and then I can create the transitions, roads and rivers.

Edit:

Is it possible to have different tile sets for different mountains?

Yes. We can have different terrain type for different area and different altitude which can be painted to the CATE bitmap.

[ccc]

how about checking REAL AFghanistan terrain with google Earth? tile texture may be sampled from real sat image.

[marvin157th]

K, so it is obvious we all want to have a more extreme tiled version of Afghanistan. However, is there anything we can do in the immediate future? It is apparant we need some extensive testing as this theater is so alpha stage. I think with more impressive tiles this will motivate people to fly this theater more and more so we can get it finished.

Open Falcon is probably the most desired flavour of falcon to date. (not trying to get into a battle, just stating my opinion) What I mean by this is, this theater may have the potential to be included in a later OF 4.7 install or something. Can we do a quick retile with Qaz's Nevada tiles for now just to put this theater in a more beta state?

I can probably discuss this with Naldo and possibly have this theater included or at least listed as an semi-official working theater with Open Falcon, thus getting more and more feedback and interest in this theater's development.

[Snake Man]

is there anything we can do in the immediate future?

Yes, set the terrain types for starters. Then search/create the terrain type tiles, then I can go to work to create the actual tile-sets and put them ingame.

Can we do a quick retile with Qaz's Nevada tiles for now just to put this theater in a more beta state?

It takes rough the same time to do the qaz tiles or brand new ones (I said roughly), so why go with the qaz stuff if we can do it the right in the first place?

I'm not saying there is no terrain type we can use, dont remember so precisely the contents, but I think making brand new stuff is the way to go.

[ranger822]

Perhaps the best way to know what we have versus what we need or want is to conduct a detailed survey . . . I kind did this for Israeli, Korea, and ODS . . .I have to dig around but I have some pretty detailed spreadsheets on commonality of tiles - what each theater uses by each individual tile . . . includes old Korea tiles, Hi-Tiles Korea, AF-Hi-Tiles Korea, Hi-Tiles Balkans, Israeli Tiles, and ODS512. It also makes it pretty easy to see all the broken/incomplete sets as well as sets that don't follow CATE rules for naming etc. . . be nice to have a place to put these files as a referecne for people.

One thing I didn't do is keep a copy of my transition diagram - I made a simple diagram of the terrain tiles and what it transitioned to - simple little balloons with terrain tile name with arrows connecting to tiles transitioned to. Help identify parent tiles and child tiles as well as terminal tile sets (terrain that only transitions to one other terrain tile. However, this can be done pretty easily.

I am not sure about the tiles for Afghanistan but it is is pretty easy to extract the tiles to a folder and then extract the file names as a text file and then load that in to the excel spreadsheet - if someone can do that for me I will be glad to add Afghanistan to the spreadsheet I have now. In fact, we could have all the theaters in one sheet - - and see how they all compare. . . . So, - - anyone interested?

[marvin157th]

SM,

Ah very good points, and I have to agree.. If it takes the same amount of work, lets just go for the gold. I really like the Nevada tiles, and would much rather keep them specific to that region.

I really want to help out to get this theater moving, unforuntately I do not really understand or know what needs to be done, nor do I full understand the lingo. So please if there is anything I can do, just give me a task and I will see what I can do about getting it done.

I like was Ranger was writing. Maybe start some continuity with all theaters in progress and get them all done. Wonder if we have enough members if we can make theater groups? Or is this done already?

Jody

[marvin157th]

One more thing.. Afghanistan is probably the best theater IMO for having a complex terrain with all the mountainous area. Is there any way about getting the terrain redone with that BazT type such as the latest Korea?

Jody

[Snake Man]

I really want to help out to get this theater moving,
So please if there is anything I can do, just give me a task and I will see what I can do about getting it done.

Reread my first two posts in this topic, then reply back to me the specific terrain types with descriptions what we need to create. Images for these terrain types we then find/create later, just the terrain types need to be decided now.

Wonder if we have enough members if we can make theater groups? Or is this done already?

You mean one group working for Afghanistan and another group for Europe while third group works for Nevada? If thats what you mean then no, we have no way close to that many people.

Since I sent the email to Codec about "can you help me with terrains??" there has been a countless number of people passing through the theater development. Seems that there is very few people who stick around for years commitment. Heck, even I retired some time ago hehe

Is there any way about getting the terrain redone with that BazT type such as the latest Korea?

Getting the SRTM terrain to all our theaters is one of my goals, so yes. But what I understand about the editing, I dont want to rush it right now since we still have long way to go to fix all terrain tiling, tiles and the objectives (I believe you have to have objectives finalized before SRTM process can begin).

[marvin157th]

SM,

Understood everything.. Right on! Now time to shut my yap, and get cracking!

Jody

[marvin157th]

Ok, given my time in Afghanistan I did a lot of travelling. All though war torn, Afghanistan (IMO) would be an amazing place to visit and experience should it ever stabalize. Throughout my time flying around, I always took mental notes of the features that caught my eye the most, for future Afghanistan creations. Using my digital camera, and searching the areas using Google Earth, these are my impressions of the terrains we should consider modelling that will represent Afghanistan as they way I saw it.

Urban City (Modern) Kabul



Desert Villages (Poor Community)



Vegitation Village (East) Jalalabad



Farms Desert



Northern Mountains



Central/South Rocky Mountains



Mountain Village (Poor Community) Kabul



Profile shot



Like I said, this does not show the entire Country, but honestly, to a normal person, the Country relatively looks the same. But these are the key areas I noted.

And of course my Tour Video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPdEU1k9SU

[ccc]

woow... tour video..so real..

didn't you encounter any sniper?

[Snake Man]

Damn, you picked good looking google images. I mean where I stand we could start by using those right now. Not much editing need to be done, there was some roads on the desert farms and northern mountains, but we could use them to make generic roads too.

Anyways, that is a great start, thanks for the images. Oh and btw, thanks for your service in Afghanistan, I always respect and appreciate anyone protecting my freedom sitting in at my home editing stuff.

[Snake Man]

Okay lets not waste anytime and put the existing tile raw material into use.

First there is the quite nice tile example T Rex posted: Afghan.tile.T_Rex.jpg, is this any use for any terrain type?

Next is a urban city google earth image: urbancityKabul.jpg which needs some photoshopping to fill out the areas with houses completely, otherwise when its "tiled" it will look bad.

Then we have desert village image: poorvilliage.jpg which itself looks great to me, but again needs bit photoshopping to even out the mud huts into the whole image, not just on the upper left hand side. Also the road should be removed for generic village tile, of course we could extract and insert it into a village-ROAD tile.

The EastVegVilliage.jpg vegetation village image again looks great, it looks maybe good enough for normal vegetated farmland without any villages. Perhaps we could remove the villages... or just leave the huts there, no matter. I think this is very very nice vegetation farmland image.

Then there is the farms.jpg desert farms which is bit too dark on the darkest spots, they are basically a black. Not sure if it could be touched up on photoshop.

The mountain1.jpg northern mountains is great overall image, very easy to create tile out of it. Again need to extract the road from this image to get generic tile, then we can create roads from the extracted road part too. Slight photoshopping required to smooth out the dark mountain area as if this tile is "tiled" directly it well show bad repetition in the whole landscape.

Then we have rockymountains.jpg the south rocky mountains which generally resembles the starting T Rex image, overall at least. In itself its good tile material, perhaps same photoshopping requirement as previous tile to remove the repetition.

The mountainvilliage1.jpg mountain village image might be used to snatch the poor village huts, but dunno if it can be used like this. Perhaps we could find better source image from google earth for the same purpose?

So who would be willing to do some photoshopping for these tiles roughly on the guidelines I suggested above?

Then the Afghanistan terrain type guidelines:

- north mountains
- south mountains
- desert farmland
- vegetation farmland
- urban city
- villages desert
- villages mountain

Is that all we need, do we need any simple desert terrain type? Right now the list suggests only desert/vegetated farmland and then two types of mountains?

[marvin157th]

SM,

Wow I never thought those tiles could be used that easily, I just wanted to show how I saw the place. We definitely need some flat desert area, much like the tiles in ODS. I looked for a nice area in Google, but due to the sat images, some areas were the wrong shade. I will work on some more tomorrow if you like?

CCC, Nope, not that I know of anyway, nothing went by my head at least. We took a lot of SA fire in the Eastern Valleys, as they always shot at BHs when they flew through, but nothing to really worry about. Plus the ride always got interesting at that point. 8)

Jody

[marvin157th]

SM,

I know we wrote about this before, but maybe we should bring it up again. Since there are very few major cities in Afghanistan, most important Kandahar and Kabul, can we tile the complete city as shown on Google. If not, not really a big deal, cause I think we can do a nice job with those tiles. But since we have a theater with minimal work, be interesting to see how a complete tiled city would look in the theater.

Jody

[Snake Man]

Yes please find proper pure-desert satellite image.

Yes if there is only two (2) big cities, we can tile them the "photorealistic" way. It needs some work sure, but its only two cities to what the heck.

[ccc]

CCC, Nope, not that I know of anyway, nothing went by my head at least. We took a lot of SA fire in the Eastern Valleys, as they always shot at BHs when they flew through, but nothing to really worry about. Plus the ride always got interesting at that point. 8)

Jody

i see.. i assumed the scene looks as dangerous as iraqi cities..

[marvin157th]

CCC,

Oh don't be fooled, it is not too far behind. Let's face it there is just more battles that you hear about in Iraq then Afghan. However, we use many tactics to blend in the the population as many of our movements are whithin the local population. But I won't get into details, for security reasons. The point is, our tactics, and luck I think was the reason we avoided conflicts. We were strictly defensive nature as we were a 6 man unit working with high government officials. So the more we stayed out of the trouble the more effective our mission was.

Sorry for derailing SM.

Jody

[marvin157th]

Yes please find proper pure-desert satellite image.

Yes if there is only two (2) big cities, we can tile them the "photorealistic" way. It needs some work sure, but its only two cities to what the heck.

SM,

I will get on that tomorrow. Stand by,.... Well in all there are a few more major cities, but we can make them generic, as the two major are Kabul and Kandahar. Kabul is a city, there are like a million or two IIRC. The roads are like NYC with 90% pakistani cabs as you can see from the video. So doing those two major cities, I think will really make Afghanistan a sought after theater.

Jody

[marvin157th]

I also think we will need transitions tiles from Veg to Desert, and Farm to Desert. So I will do that as well.

Jody

[marvin157th]

Some more...

Dry River Beds







Desert Urban



Veg Desert Trans



Coast



South Flats


ANA Training Camp

[marvin157th]

Funny, I just realized something... If you watch about half way through my tour video where I had the video of the destroyed building from OEF, well that was taken at the ANA training camp in the last tile. However, as I look I can't remember exactly which building it was, but it was in that camp.

Jody

[marvin157th]

SM,

Ok as you said, we have some good tiles to work with, now what??? Afghanistan is a real diverse looking place, however we cannot expect to have a gazillion tiles. I think what we have above will suffice to at least make a destinctive theater, and of course represent Afghanistan well.

So who is the tile master that can do something with these tiles? Cause as you said, they won't look good all tiled together.

Also, how do we scale these tiles? I never paid much attention to scaling, I just zoomed in where I thought it looked good, and that was it.

Jody

[bigstone]

SM,

Ok as you said, we have some good tiles to work with, now what??? Afghanistan is a real diverse looking place, however we cannot expect to have a gazillion tiles. I think what we have above will suffice to at least make a destinctive theater, and of course represent Afghanistan well.

So who is the tile master that can do something with these tiles? Cause as you said, they won't look good all tiled together.

Also, how do we scale these tiles? I never paid much attention to scaling, I just zoomed in where I thought it looked good, and that was it.

Jody

Try asking Tom Twaelity.

[dandixie]

Looking great.....
really.....

[Snake Man]

Ok as you said, we have some good tiles to work with, now what?

Now we need to decide how many terrain types we are going to use, name them and associate with these google earth images. Once done, we need to photoshop/edit the images to a tilable 512x512 resolution image.

When we have that done, then I'll take the source images and create transitions for them. Put them in the texture.bin/zip and we have terrain upgrade package ready.

So who is the tile master that can do something with these tiles?

For the management and .bin/zip part, that would be me but I cannot do artistic image editing, just some clone brush photoshopping mut the more I have to do that, the worse the tile will look like.

Also, how do we scale these tiles?

Kinggeorge once said something about taking a look of a car for example, then comparing that size to scale... I need to look up his post from search.

[ranger822]

Another option is to use Google Earth - - apply the measurement scale tool - - YOu should be able to google several areas -- with similar terrain to get an idea of scale ... do a screen capture and then resize for 256 or 512 tiles.

using a standardize size for width of road - you probably need certain factor of a number of pixels for the width of the road - -probably 5 pixels wide (so 5, 10, 15 pixels wide, that gives at least one pixel width on each border of road, one for centerline and then one lane of traffic each direction - to put your night lighting dots when you sprinkle them around. cars are good but probably dont want to see cars because they cant move on the tile - so if present you want to photoshop them out and let the Falcon engine generate all your traffice - -

That is another thing - perhaps use existing tiles and then take some game shots to see how well the vehicles "fit" on the roads? If they fit okey then you have a good scale factor to use . . . I think your unit vehicles are the better factor to use for terrain tiles - similarly, use actual aircraft size and factor that "in=game" to size your airbase tiles so you have a proper scale. Use the Satellite imagery more for creating a "scale-less" backgroun - a field of corn doesn't have to have any particular size, neighter does a sand-dune or mountains - - . . ., it can be anything.

Just my opinion. I would mind taking a crack at making some new tiles - but lets figure out what we need = = we should plan out in detail what terrain we want and what it will transition to FIRST - dont make a bunch of beautiful tiles and figure out what to do with them later.

[marvin157th]

SM, Ranger,

Ok, well here is my take on the tile sets.

Cities

I say we completely tile Kabul. I have been just about to every policial/defence building in the city, as well as other places so I can detail where these buildings are, and name them as such. So in short:

Kabul City tiles

Vegitation Village (East)

Mountain Village

Desert Urban (can be used for Kandahar, so no need to detail Kandahar)

Desert Village (Poor community for out in the waste lands)

Mountains There are countless types of mountains, I think we could get away with two.

Lower Alt Mountains the rocky tile similar to the mountain village

higher Alt Mountains

Flat Terrain

Dry River Beds Although Afghanistan is dry there is some water but very little compared to the existing theater. I think we should just model dry river beds and not worry about water. The actual flat part of the desert is not very sandy, mostly like hard clay surface, so these ruff looking flat desert tiles with tons of river beds would be ideal for flat terrain.

Farms

Desert Farms

Veg Farms

Camps Be nice to have camp site tiles for army bases or factories or whatever out in the middle of nowhere.

That's all I can think of?

[ranger822]

How will they all fit together and what will transition to what? --

Also, do you want to include any old tile sets from other theaters? If so transition sets will be needed.

Airbase tiles for different terrain sets? If so transitions planned for that.

Then include all the road and river tiles that will need to cross the terrain tiles.

are there any lakes in Afghanistan? Any desert or scrubb? How to handle a phototile as far as CATE? Skip the convention and just index tiles like a puzzle and handtile?

Just a my own thoughts on this but mountains and desert are two very difficult things to really do well - two tile sets for mountains will give a lot of repetitive terrain. Desert - probably the same way. A good example of a terrain tile is the lake tile set. Using a tile set to create a terrain type - - be nice to due tiles that create small pools of terrain types with a few universal transitions between these. Maybe create a tile variation set that allows the "pool" of terrain to vary a border and be bigger - - but how to use CATE for that sort of variation? Mabye use BMP mode?

Just curious - has anyone ever built a theater without using the rivers - ie. skipping the bridges, so no bridges? Is it even possible to build Falcon terrain without bridges? Could that eliminate a problem with the campaign engine? How to do it and still have the appearance rivers? -- Would it be possible to build terrain first with the rivers data - tile it add your bridges. . . then go back and rebuild the terrain without the rivers but leave the tiles in place. Rivers aren't traffic routes - just points to cross and possibly problem points for entities to move? Just a thought here. SM - you are the expert any comment on this?

[marvin157th]

All honesty, this stuff is way out of my league. After reading your post I realized I left a whole bunch of things out.

There are some lakes and stuff as I have flown over them, but I forget where. We could use rivers both dry and wet to ensure there are bridges., Just not as many as Falcon usually likes to put in!

We should use other terrain set for the different countries just so the whole theater does not look like one big Afghanistan.

Jody

[ranger822]

Jody,

Terrain work - especially really good work is a huge task even for a 64x64. I am not sure but I think there are about 220 tile sets (3500+ tiles) for theaters that have so-so terrain. If you are serious about doing great terrain tiles each one needs to be a piece of artwork.

Instead of trying to tackle an entire theater - a more doable approach might be to select just a few terrain types to make new tile sets and transitions for. Add those - see how it looks. The great thing about tiles is they don't really affect the other stuff. Take an iterative approach. Unless you plan to spend a 1 year+ like Tom Waelti making tiles - a theater project is kind of big. Every time somone decides they want to build a theater - they start with expending a lot of energy on DB and UI artwork, most theaters really suffer in the terrain, tiles which is almost never done to perfection prior to the eye-candy. The jury is still out but I suspect some of our campaign issues may be related to terrain problems. Better to have a bunch of triangles for everything, build the terrain and get campaign running to perfection. Then you can go back on spend a bunch of time of models, skins. Most theaters groups get bogged down in the campaign and terrain side because it is really hard, repetitive, not so fun, work and take months and months to do. Anyone can make a skin in a few days, go fly it and presto instant gratification. Anyone can make a few simple TEs and go flying. Anyone can't make a campaign that actually works. There is a lot of experimenting and this sort of dirty work without sometimes seeing any solution tends to discourage all but the most insanely committed developer types.

Maybe Snakeman has some suggestions but I think it would certainly be faster to look at making new tiles that will work with the existing tile sets and follow CATE naming conventions - then retile using one of various CATE methods. There is still going to be a lot of hand-tiling anyway.

The last most expedient way to improve terrain is to use existing tile names and tiling and substitute with something like HI-Tiles.

Personally, I think the idea of folks just contributing to a tile repository would be very useful - the repository could contain the new tiles and a key to which terrain/theater they were designed for. Then make a simple excel sheet that lists all the tiles - what they will transition to. New theater makers could in theory shop thru the repository and select the tiles needed for any given theater.

I am willing to work on a few sets to contribute to a repository - but I can't do all of ITO or any other theater by myself - I just don't have that kind of time anymore.

[Snake Man]

then resize for 256 or 512 tiles.

We definitely are going to use 512x512 res tiles.

to put your night lighting dots when you sprinkle them around.

We havent used night lighting palette on any roads so far, not sure if Balkans is using it. Also I think Afghanistan is such poor countryside that they dont have much of streetlighting, but I dont have any hard facts for that.

I say we completely tile Kabul.

Okay, but lets put creating Kabul tiles & tiling it to the last of the list, its easy to do it when we know what terrain type we need to transition it then, also its the ultimate eye candy, if we cant make it in time, fine we'll do it on next release.

About the terrain types, the latest list is bit long for strictly terrain types. What I'm really looking for is terrain types for altitudes of:

terrain type 1 for 1meter -> 1650meters.
terrain type 2 for 1651meters -> 6560meters.
terrain type 3 for 6561meters -> highest point whatever that is.

Thats three terrain types, thats what the current setup uses now. From the first post image here the types are the bottom desert and top most light and dark mountains. The elevations suggested above have been just roughly done according to Terrainview altitude coloring, I have no idea is the desert floor will go to sixteenhundred meters and so on. It is just an guide...

What I'm trying to say is we look for something simple as three big basic terrain types. Yeah we can add four or so, but if we tile according to altitude (not bitmap) then we need to set the altitudes naturally.

How will they all fit together and what will transition to what?

In my altitude config its pretty clear.

do you want to include any old tile sets from other theaters?

No.

Airbase tiles for different terrain sets? If so transitions planned for that.

There is no transitions for any airbases, they are dropped in to be surrounded by the main terrain type.

How to handle a phototile as far as CATE?

We are not doing any phototile with the exception of planned Kabul, which I'm planning to create with manual tiling. But I want to slap everyone out of daydreams and fantasies, I'm looking to get the basic terrain types first, when we have those set, then we can start cautiously look into the photorealistic kabul.

has anyone ever built a theater without using the rivers

No. There has been talk about this in some of these desert theaters which get riddled with bridges, but so far we have been using the traditional TDF tiling method.

Perhaps leave out the rivers, manual/bitmap tile only the biggest ones and then have only like "few" bridges on the whole theater. Basically to think of it now, it would be damn easy to do in bitmap, only thing left to do is the long-span bridge placement then.

However, I think we just do the basic terrain types now and get over it. Lets tweak and fiddle later if necessary.

I am not sure but I think there are about 220 tile sets (3500+ tiles) for theaters that have so-so terrain.

ODS has the largest texture.bin and it has 127 tile-sets.

making new tiles that will work with the existing tile sets and follow CATE naming conventions - then retile using one of various CATE methods.

I guess it depends on the mood I am when to start creating this. The current texture.bin is kind of limited to those three terrain types, so if we use it then all we need to do is edit 3 tiles (heh to put it short), but I'm sure we need to add more, then comes the question why reinvent the CATE configuration wheel and instead using ODS texture.bin and its CATE conf files.

Questions questions.

I am willing to work on a few sets to contribute to a repository

Okay why not start with one or more basic terrain types for Afghanistan?

[marvin157th]

Snake man,

Ok, I got you.. I think your current three types should suffice. I mean as far as I remember they were fine in Afganistan.

You are right, Kabul has street lights on the major roads, and that is about it. The long open flat roads are BLACK!!

Jody

[ranger822]

512 tiles - great idea - lot of artwork but should produce great results if done well.

Not too clear on the three terrain types. See below.

Regarding the texture.bin . . .hum only 127 sets for ODS? Well that is a heck of a lot less than 220 sets for sure. Israeli has a few more sets - how does its texture.bin stack up SM? The tile count is over 2300 I think. Not all sets are complete so maybe 170 sets? But, I am not very happy with Israeli terrain, else I would be here talking. IMHO it has a LONG WAY TO GO. No matter - what is important is the final product, if we can make some great tiles that can be used across a spectrum of theaters I am definitely interested.

Jody would you be willing to make the master background tiles for the terrain? Then rough out exactly what transitions are needed. Then lets breakout how many sets were are talking about, develop a work plan to determine who is going to what. Before I sign on to the project I would like to have an idea of how much time will be needed to invest and know that there is something in it for Israeli Theater - it a pretty well developed and getting sidetracked with another theater isn't exactly what I had in mind.

I have a lot of other Falcon interests and this is getting a bit off my track of Israeli theater and Falklands, DB, Skins, UI, etc..

[ranger822]

SM - not sure about just dropping airbase tiles straight in - - unless you mean to photoshop the airbase on top of the terrain tile.. I am pretty sure most if not all airbase tile sets use a background tile - -like HFARM, HSWAM etc... the airbase will look artificial and really standout if you drop them in as is . . . you are going to need a transition tile set around the aribase or you need to remaster the aribase tiles to match the terrain around. Since you indicated you are going to use existing sets that tends to limits things...