Hazar-Kot Valley

[mcnools 62]

RELEASED HERE:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=2077215

Introduction:

Some may already have seen a few screenshots in the "Things you are workin on"-thread, but I figured it might be time to create a proper topic for this addon since I've come quite far.

To put it short, it's a small (5x5km) fictional Takistani terrain loosely based on the Shah-i-Kot Valley, this map is however in smaller scale than it's real life counterpart and different in many ways.

Description of the map:

The map is centered around an inner and an out valley, the outer one is desert, with a small village and a few compounds, as well as an abandoned mine. These settlements are meant to be run-down and rather abandoned due to the remote location of the area and the fact that the mining operation failed.

The inner valley however is very rocky and has dense vegetation, mostly in the form of bushes, but also a few scattered trees. Within the valley there are a few settlements, mostly living off goat-herding etc. I'd imagine.

There is also snow. Since the entire area is over 2000 metres above sea-level, it gets rather cold, especially during the nights. Therefore there's patches of snow here and there in the inner valley, some areas are snowier than others. No snow in the outer valley and it's deserts though.

Screenshots of the inner valley:

VIDEO (courtesy of Blackfox34 and TF86, thanks!):

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I'm not giving any release date on this, since it's impossible to know, but progress is steady. Hope you like what you see so far.

Edited December 23, 2011 by McNools

[mcnools 62]

Screenshots of the outer valley:

Edited December 5, 2011 by McNools

[DrunkenVeteran 10]

Looks awesome so far!

Just curious what size are we looking at here? 15km x 15km?

[glowbal 13]

That defindly looks good! I like it. I am as well interested to know the size of the map.

[WyndonP 10]

Always a need for good Afghan-type maps. Looks awesome.

[mcnools 62]

Looks awesome so far!

Just curious what size are we looking at here? 15km x 15km?

Yeah, I think it's about 15km x 15km :)

Edit: Or no, More like 5x5, but I seem to recall it being bigger, hm, I'll try to check.

Edit agin: Yeah, it's 5x5km, so it's pretty small, but there's quite a lot of detail. Will probably be best suited for infantry-missions though.

Edited December 4, 2011 by McNools

[papanowel 120]

Sounds great :)

[Higgings. 0]

Looks great.

I like this "smaller" maps as they fit perfect for mp missions :)

[Robster 11]

As told you before, I really like the look & feel of this map...

The overall desaturated color looks very natural... and I may notice that you are an artist my friend... congrats so far!!

EDIT: You posted "inner valley" photos twice... is it ok?

Edited December 5, 2011 by Robster

[clawhammer 10]

Looks nice Keep it up! :-)

[mcnools 62]

As told you before, I really like the look & feel of this map...

The overall desaturated color looks very natural... and I may notice that you are an artist my friend... congrats so far!!

EDIT: You posted "inner valley" photos twice... is it ok?

Thank you very much! And thanks for noticing that, it should of course be "outer valley", not inner in the second pictures. Corrected!

Oh, and thanks again for the snow-textures Robster!

[Black² 10]

This is looking very awesome dude.

I'd rather have 1 small detailed map than 20 huge and rushed ones.

Very cool, everyone in my unit (6th AB) is looking forward to this one!

[metalcraze 290]

I want this map. Nao.

[pauliesss 2]

Always a need for good Afghan-type maps. Looks awesome.

I agree, nice job so far McNools. :cool:

[lennard 447]

I agree, nice job so far McNools. :cool:

x2 :)

[mcnools 62]

Thanks for all the compliments guys! It's encouraging. :) I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to decide how far/close you need to be zoomed in/our of the map to see the satellite-picture over it (ingame that is), right now you can only see it when zoomed in quite a lot, which makes it hard to get a good overview of the map, especially for those who don't know it as well as I do I guess.

(other than that, work is moving along nicely)

[jakerod 254]

Thanks for all the compliments guys! It's encouraging. :) I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to decide how far/close you need to be zoomed in/our of the map to see the satellite-picture over it (ingame that is), right now you can only see it when zoomed in quite a lot, which makes it hard to get a good overview of the map, especially for those who don't know it as well as I do I guess.

(other than that, work is moving along nicely)

The code below maybe. That is from the Chernarus one. I'm not sure though. It was the only thing in the config that I saw that really mentioned zoom so I thought maybe. I'm kind of new to the island thing though.

 class Grid: Grid
 {
  offsetX = 0;
  offsetY = 0;
  class Zoom1
  {
   zoomMax = 0.15;
   format = "XY";
   formatX = "000";
   formatY = "000";
   stepX = 100;
   stepY = 100;
  };
  class Zoom2
  {
   zoomMax = 0.85;
   format = "XY";
   formatX = "00";
   formatY = "00";
   stepX = 1000;
   stepY = 1000;
  };
  class Zoom3
  {
   zoomMax = 1e+030;
   format = "XY";
   formatX = "0";
   formatY = "0";
   stepX = 10000;
   stepY = 10000;
  };
 };

[bushlurker 46]

offsetY = 0;

Watch out for this parameter... on Chernarus its "wrong", or, at least, people complained about the coords starting from the top when they should start from the bottom, or something like that...

I'm much more comfortable with that old OFP "Delta Charlie Six Three" stuff personally... when it actually sounded cool to give your location :D... and there was always room for amusing improvisation...

Oh well... "old git moment" over...

this offset value should actually be the width of your terrain in meters... so if you have a 10km (10240m) terrain then it should be...

offsetY = 10240;

... for a 20km terrain it'd be...

offsetY = 20480;

... and so on...

That should have the grid the right way up...

B

[mcnools 62]

Thanks Bushlurker, I'll have a look on that, right now I don't think I have any grid-settings whatsoever (just using the ones from Takistan), so it might be a good idea to get it right. :)

Hm, the offset thing seems weird, I entered 5120 on both since that is the size of the map, but now the grid starts at 90 or something, and 1 is somewhere in the eastern part of the map, so it seems very off.

Edit: Ah, I misread, only changing it for OffsetY doesn't help much though, the X coordinates show up correctly (starting at 0 at the westernmost part of the map), but the Y-coordinates start at 0 at the southern most part of the map and go down, in other words, at the top of the map they're at about 95, since it counts up to 99 and then start at 0 at the bottom, man, I'm not good at explaining at all, haha)

Edit again: Having them both at 0 starts them both off at 0 on the top left corner of the map though, seems more correct?

Edited December 7, 2011 by McNools

[paragraphic l 2]

If I understood Bush's post correct only Y needed to be 5120, X could stay 0

[mcnools 62]

By the way, does anyone know any tips when it comes to editing the satmap around objects etc. more exactly? In other words, I want to be able to see EXACTLY how the objects are placed on the satmap when editing it so that I can make the ground darker around buildings or such to make it better looking from the distance.

Right now when exporting the terrain into a picture (.emf) I can't make it work correctly for some reason. I guess I need some better software for looking at/exporting vector graphics to very high resolutions to have a more exact picture to use as a backdrop. Can anyone recommend any such software? (Preferably free software), right now I'm using Microsoft Office Picture Manager which doesn't seem to work correctly.

Microsoft Office Picture Manager doesn't seem to view the file as vector graphics at all, since it blurs when I zoom in etc.

Edited December 7, 2011 by McNools

[jakerod 254]

I use photoshop but I do believe that GIMP is highly recommended as a replacement for it. I normally export the EMF and then use the EMFtoPNG convertor in the visitor folder to transfer it and then open it in photoshop. I also normally do a 1px per meter image.

[mcnools 62]

Ah, there's an EMFtoPNG converter in the visitor3 folder? Whoops, haha. I'm gonna try that, hopefully that will work better than the Picture Manager. :)

Edit: Ah, worked perfectly, thanks mate!

[bushlurker 46]

I'll have to remember to nag Mondkalb once again to release this in a proper thread of its own over in the mapmakers section... then nag a moderator to get it stickied.....

Mondkalb's Terrain Tutorial

Unlike my own beginners guide which focuses more on initial setup and the basic fileset you need, Mondkalbs excellent new tutorial covers "All The Rest"! - all that Arty stuff like placing roads and buildings, making basic Sat & Mask layers, and - importantly - how to export info from Visitor - via EMF2PNG - then removing that all-important BlueEdge so things all overlay properly.....!

Essential reading if you're unsure about any of this stuff....

B

[mcnools 62]

Thanks mate! I'm having some problems with that blueedge, so this will surely help!

Edit: Worked like a charm! finally, a perfect-fitting satmap overlay, thanks again!

Edited December 7, 2011 by McNools