[WIP] Rhodesia Bush War

[souldrinker 74]

Keep up the good work mate, looks promising

[RhodesianScout 189]

Adding details to mask....... area of sand being added around each water hole, stream and dam.

Mask is then saved with palette information text file which will show additional RGB colors for yellow.......these additional colors are then replaced with the original RGB color for yellow....sand... to keep textures down to 5.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Keep up the good work mate, looks promising

 

Thanks souldrinker....... the complex terrain mask and the models I am creating for this map are what I believe will be the timely part of this map. 

Map is now 900 square km in size.

[RhodesianScout 189]

At this stage of the map development I am running some tests on pond objects which over the last year seem to have had issues of one kind or another. With this test I am using a map ported over from Arma 2 which has the pond objects included...at least 3 or 4 over the entire map.

 

I set the fog level to 100% and this is the result I get as shown in the first picture below........ anything more than 1% fog gives a picture with water texture issues becoming more severe and black with the more fog you have.

 

As you can in the picture this is not something I want to see in the map and previously I thought the only solution was to have fog set at 0%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, being one who is always looking for a solution I have been looking into this issue today and made some progress.

 

The picture below is the same area with fog also at 100% but this time the water is fairly acceptable ...actually a whole lot better. The second picture is darker however it is taken at exactly the same time of day as the first picture. You can also see the fog in the background of the second picture.

 

Testing continues.

 

 

[skelig 27]

you're making real good progress nice one

[RhodesianScout 189]

More pond objects with fog in the hills while testing a map ported from Arma 2.

 

I would probably be happy with getting this amount of fog in the map with the pond object looking like this.... Next testing of the pond objects will be done in my map during the next 7 days.

 

With Rhodesia I probably don't want too much fog close up but fog in the distance hills  would be important .

 

Next stop .......  create Mpopoma Dam using a pond object.

 

With the picture below fog is at less than 50% but looks as dense as it appears in the prior two pictures.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

When opening up the map after importing it into Arma III    I soon discovered that I had unknowingly created a mod based on the memorable movie Waterworld with Kevin Costener...... refer picture below for initial look at my map.

 

"Where did all the land go?"

 

I had some config file issues that I needed to fix up and this afternoon looking at the heightmap issue as my map is flat as a pancake and very much like Waterworld.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Tweaking the config files to get the correct clutter of dry grass into the map....... also correcting the sounds when walking on grass, granite or through water. 

 

In the picture below I had put a question on what the sound environment class should be played when walking on granite rock. Instead of "grass" it has being changed to "rock".

 

With entries showing Sound Enviroment = "grass" this has being changed to "drygrass"

 

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

The flat terrain with no hills and under 2 feet of water picture of my map shown 2 posts back should be fixed now. The problem was that with my first test map (which worked) I had followed one tutorial for creating the map and for this map (which had issues) I followed another tutorial which skipped some important steps.

 

So the Rhodesia Bush Wars map has now being added to Terrainbuilder and the picture below shows the map as it should look.

 

Also because I am using a normals map for the terrain I have also opted in the processing tab to export the surface mask as 5 materials per cell instead of 4.

 

Next step is to import this map into Arma III and test the terrain out.

 

With creating maps my tip is to make sure that you are using a good tutorial that goes through every step. If you do not do each step that is required the end , result of your map will not be what you are expecting.

 

With the map below you can see the dam in the top left corner of the map, you can see the high terrain points and the valley stretching out from the bottom right where the water holes and small streams can be found.

 

The scale at the bottom left shows the distance for 7300 meters ...which of course is 7.3 km. This gives you an idea of the map size.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

After importing the terrain into Arma III this is the in-game map showing a zoomed in view of the top left corner of the map where Mpopoma Dam is situated.

 

This of course is prior to objects such as roads being added to the map.

 

The dam is several hundred metres above sea level and to the right of it is a rather tall hill at about 1151 metres.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

I have been doing a fair bit of research for the last few days as well as doing some tweaking to the map textures.

 

As I am still fairly new to Arma III there is a lot to learn on how to get new models etc into Arma III....and if it does not appear in-game properly then I have to trouble shoot what went wrong.

 

The mod is developing day by day and slowly progressing.

[RhodesianScout 189]

A busy week at work and lots of bad weather this week..... but the weekend is here so plenty of time for me to work on the map.

 

Screenshot of a test I did in the map tweaking the ground textures while the rabbit is on the lookout for leopards.

 

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Following are 2 more pictures from the Rhodesia Bush Wars Map

 

 

 

Early morning and the Rhodesian Infantry patrol breaks camp and moves over the crest of the hill as the sun begins to rise over the horizon.........

 

 

 

 

30 minutes later the patrol find themselves on the top of a steep hill with a sheer drop off to the side....... one false step and their day will be over. Somewhere in the valley below ZAPU terrorists are watching their every move.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

The first picture in the last couple of posts was taken in an area of the map which is flat and will be covered with trees and thorn bushes when done. Though the ground is more to the soldiers liking the dense bush still makes this a rather difficult area to cover. When this area is finished there will be trees  and bushes spread as far as the eye can see and large granite boulders spotted on the ground will provide perfect cover for terrorist snipers.

 

The last 2 pictures show the more rugged part of the map with tall steep hills which make the journey for the infantry a lot more challenging. Each hill can be climbed but if you go up the wrong side of the hill you may find this more difficult to climb. Ideally you would want to walk around the hill to see which side is the easier to climb but if you are sneaking up on an enemy camp you may not be able to do this. 

 

Before you climb up the side of the hill you may want to look up and check to see if there is anything on the hill that will prevent you getting to the top. Many hills will have dense vegetation somewhere up the slope which you may get around but some hills will have dense and impassable vegetation or boulders blocking further climbing up that side. In that case you would need to find another way up.

[skelig 27]

wow, beautiful landscape

[Alex150201 894]

wow, beautiful landscape

Yeah the mountains in the distance look amazing!

[RhodesianScout 189]

In a somewhat less hilly part of the map all this rabbit could do was look off to the sun setting in the west.

 

The height of the hills has been reduced by around 25% as I ran a test with a patrol and the terrain was a little too steep in some places ........doing some more tests today.

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

With all the videos I have watched of Arma III I think this is the first time I have actually spotted a rainbow in Arma III.

 

This picture also shows an issue with the terrain on the left hand side of the picture on the horizon...... this appears to be the edge of the map causing this. Will fix that this afternoon.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

Completed final tweaking of terrain heightmap and now happy with the map....next step is to add a little life to the map by adding grass , trees and thorn bushes.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

During certain hours of the morning and given the right weather conditions a script will add fog to the map. This will make early morning missions into the valleys more interesting and more hazardous if ZAPU or ZANU terrorists are camped in the valley.

 

Testing level of fog and fog runoff.

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

I have completed and edited together a video showing a preview look at the Rhodesia Bush War mod for Arma III which is very much still in development. 

 

Early this morning I got to a stage where I was happy with the results I was seeing with the hills and this now allows me to move on to the next step of the project.

 

The video is just over 12 minutes long and has being edited and is currently being published to youtube. This will take another 2 or 3 hours to finish which may stretch out to four hours as I need to do some real life work in the mean time before doing final checks and publishing.

 

Please come back a little later to see the preview video which I will link in a following post and add my channel to my forum signature.

[RhodesianScout 189]

I have recorded a completely new video  and I have added the new version of the preview video onto my youtube channel and pasted the link below. Still having some issues with the audio but much better than the first video I did yesterday.

 

Video quality is the same as seen in game if you leave the youtube video window at the size it appears in below...... larger video windows reduces the quality of the video.

 

 

[RhodesianScout 189]

I recorded and added the replacement video and pasted the link in the previous post. This time the video looks a little better though there is still a little issue with the audio but not really noticeable. Will have a look at what is happening in Adobe Premier Pro to cause this slight audio issue.

 

This new video follows almost the same path I took with the prior video (which has now been removed) however there is some new scenery towards the end.

 

The video is now just over 9 minutes long and has improved sound and editing for those who saw my first attempt.

 

The sounds you hear in the video are what you would hear in the Rhodesian bush and I have over 32 different sounds of birds and background animal noises that you will hear throughout the map.

 

I have bloom set to high in my video which you can see in the video. Will test this to see if I keep these settings for my next video.

 

Next video will hopefully be added in a few days time ....  by the weekend at the latest...... and hopefully I can add some video previews of models I am working on for the map and testing.

[Aniallator 164]

Wow, looks awesome!

[skelig 27]

Looks cracking, once you add foilage (clutter) it will look 10x better still