[WIP] Terrain - Woe Betide, UK

[jacknorrisuk 146]

It's about time I officially unveil my work-in-progress terrain, Woe Betide!

 

 

New Woe Betide Image album on Imgur

 

 

Set in the UK, Woe Betide is a flat, coastal area east of London. 

The map is relatively small and very flat, but full of dense hedges and small spaces - making it most ideal for close-nit infantry and motorised operations, perhaps with close air support.

Small hills and tall buildings can give sneaky snipers a massive advantage...

 

Apologies in advance for the unnecessary detail here, I'm actually updating this for my own project management as much as anything else...

 

Current progress:

 - Sat map: 30%

 - Heightmap: 85%

 - Ground textures: 50%

 - Object placement: 60%

 - Roads: 75%

 - Map config stuff (Locations, airports etc): 20%

 - Back story, accompanying materials: 25%

 

I'm working towards an alpha release which will be a shared file, hopefully followed by a Steam beta and then full release.

Will require CUP. 

 

You can expect:

 - High-detail terrain derived from open source UK government data (real data accurate to 1 metre per pixel, majority of manual terrain work is road smoothing)

 - Mostly flat and open terrain, but filled with intricate and claustrophobic spaces and tight roads

 - A wide choice of settings including a derelict petroleum plant, Victorian coastal defences, flood plains, a landfill site, police shooting range, boat yards, seaside resort, roman ruins and railway depots - all inspired by their real-life counterparts in East England

 - A solid rail network which will hopefully work well with Advanced Train Simulator one day

 - Designed with a Brexit-inspired fictional political situation in mind

 

Key locations and features progress (pictures coming soon)

 

 - Coldshoulder Shoal Gasworks: A long-gone and overgrown gasworks hidden inside a brownfield site - 75%

 - Spanhare Refinery: A petroleum plant in the process of being decommissioned - 30%

 - Deadwaite Fort: A well-preserved Elizabethan coastal defence fortress complete with moat - 10%

 - Peter Plimsoll's Playground: A relatively well-kept mini seaside theme park resort with a number of rides and pleasure pier - 25%

 - Woe-on-Sea Shopping Quarter: The central, pedestrianised street leading through the main town - 75%

 - Woe Central Bus and Coach Station: The controversial new EU-funded transport hub - 75%

 - EuroTrade Port: The new container shipping port, still under construction - 50%

 - MOD Test Grounds: A rundown woodland army base - 25%

 - East London Constabulary Special Training Centre: This weapons and tactics training centre features a shooting range and urban-style shoothouse for police training - 50%

 - Woe4all Rail Depot: The train maintenance yard operated by the monopolist regional rail company - 50% 

 

Fellow modders needed!

I want to recruit a couple of modders who have experience with custom objects! Get in touch if you're interested in helping me get some more British objects and signs made.

 

Looking forward to hearing what you think. More details soon!

Edited August 27, 2020 by jacknorrisuk
updates

[-ben- 499]

Looks like a solid start. Good luck on your journey. 

[Gilatar 272]

It looks quite convincing as a UK terrain already! Will there be any military bases or airfields?

[Vvalerie2 48]

Post-industrial, semi derelict, partly ruined, partly overgrown by nature, very British environment in a sort of collapsed society setting? 
Oh my, interest engaged and running full.

[jacknorrisuk 146]

1 minute ago, Gilatar said:

It looks quite convincing as a UK-terrain already! Will there be any military bases or airfields?

Thanks! :)

Yes - there will be a somewhat overgrown and dilapidated army base hidden inside a woodland. 

Airfields are still up for grabs...there are none at all in the real terrain I'm using, but there's more than enough room for a private airfield or two.

 

Also of interest will be the grounds of a derelict WW2 munitions factory... 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

19 minutes ago, Vvalerie2 said:

Post-industrial, semi derelict, partly ruined, partly overgrown by nature, very British environment in a sort of collapsed society setting? 
Oh my, interest engaged and running full.

You've summed it up pretty perfectly! This land is absolutely pockmarked with past industrial ruins, a good handful of hidden hazards and wrecked vehicles, and crumbling infrastructure.

[EO 11275]

Nice!.....I wish you the best of British with the project. Screenshots look great, especially the railway station, although it should really have a platform full of pissed off passengers standing in the rain while engineers perform inadequate repairs to the crumbling ancient network.

[jacknorrisuk 146]

Apologies for the lack of updates on this, here's a quick one - progress is coming along nicely on all fronts:

 

 - Heightmap is nearly ready, mainly just road smoothing

 - Ground textures are looking good, with 8 textures carefully mapped out so far, including a 'rubbish' texture for the two large tip sites!

 - Object placement will of course be the thing that will suck up most of my spare time...but I've been experimenting with some unique compositions for making lovingly-tendered British gardens and various other areas such as farmyards. Soon I'll be rolling out the objects across the map, with loads of hedges and woodlands to crack on with.

 

I'll be updating my original post with progress and info and posting new screenshots to the Imgur album.

 

Here's a quick look at the work I've been doing on a railway junction which includes a derelict branchline. 

[wsxcgy 1960]

not sure how I missed this one, looks great so far, though it looks like the satmap needs a lot of tweaking to fit in with everything else. interesting setting/lore too. could be good for zombies, the brexit alt timeline thing mentioned, and maybe even something in the world of 1984. good luck with the development! 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

18 hours ago, wsxcgy said:

not sure how I missed this one, looks great so far, though it looks like the satmap needs a lot of tweaking to fit in with everything else. interesting setting/lore too. could be good for zombies, the brexit alt timeline thing mentioned, and maybe even something in the world of 1984. good luck with the development! 

 

Thanks! Yes indeed, the sat map will need a full makeover at some point, but at the moment I'm using the raw data to inform object placement. I completely underestimated how much I would need to work on all these separate parts in iterations, just going round in circles...

 

Yes, I want it to be good for zombies, although the layout of the map might make it easy to outsmart the AI pathfinding (lots of bridges and quays etc)...but being split in two by an estuary would be fun for setting up quarantined vs. stronghold scenarios. There'll also be some creepy locations that should make good horror missions and Zeus games...

 

The real life version of the main 'island' on the map was one of the most pro-Brexit voting regions in the UK. It also has its' own 'Independence' movement to break away from the local constituency on the mainland...My version will be taking it a few steps further with a full-blown hyper-Brexit insurgency takeover. The island only has 2 public access points, so things could get complicated very quickly if they are seized... :O

 

[DaveP 66]

This' looking fantastic! I've started work on a new mod that will fit in perfectly with this scenery. Looking forward to how this progresses

[Guest]

This looks fantastic, hoping for an Alpha Steam Workshop release!

[Crielaard 435]

Fantastic dude. Im working on a simmelar project. Although it all looks perfectly familliar I think it doesnt look as good as this. 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

1 hour ago, Crielaard said:

Fantastic dude. Im working on a simmelar project. Although it all looks perfectly familliar I think it doesnt look as good as this. 

Cool! Another UK terrain? Might need to form a group at some point and create some shared assets, only now do I realise how none of the grass textures in any of the Arma games really look like they belong in the UK...

[EO 11275]

Just a suggestion.....Smiley Nick created around 10 new building models for his Isles of Scilly terrain, there's a really nice detached house and a red GPO phone box in there. I think he still visits the forum from time to time.

 

Shared assets ftw!

[Crielaard 435]

2 hours ago, jacknorrisuk said:

Cool! Another UK terrain? Might need to form a group at some point and create some shared assets, only now do I realise how none of the grass textures in any of the Arma games really look like they belong in the UK...

 

No no Netherlands. sorry...

[jacknorrisuk 146]

9 hours ago, Crielaard said:

 

No no Netherlands. sorry...

Western Europe, all the same thing really, right?...

In fact my terrain has many characteristics that would be similar to the Netherlands, as a large amount of it is land reclaimed from marshes and floodplains. Drainage systems abound! 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

12 hours ago, Evil Organ said:

Just a suggestion.....Smiley Nick created around 10 new building models for his Isles of Scilly terrain, there's a really nice detached house and a red GPO phone box in there. I think he still visits the forum from time to time.

 

Shared assets ftw!

 

I did consider this - and also thought the Isles of Scilly map was great when it was released!

But I am trying to restrict objects to Vanilla, Tanoa and CUP at the moment. If there is a good chance of building a shared UK asset pack at some point in the future, then I'll push a major update...

[Crielaard 435]

9 hours ago, jacknorrisuk said:

Western Europe, all the same thing really, right?...

In fact my terrain has many characteristics that would be similar to the Netherlands, as a large amount of it is land reclaimed from marshes and floodplains. Drainage systems abound! 

 

Aah yeah sounds good

[jacknorrisuk 146]

Still plugging away at road laying and smoothing, ground texture map improvements, and of course object placement...

 

The village of Gordon Bennett is mostly finished up now. I put myself in the boots of an angsty AA van man and took a drive down its' winding little road. 

 

 

I've put a couple more screenshots in the Imgur album, more to come soon!

[jacknorrisuk 146]

(100% fictional/Fake News/For entertainment purposes only)

 

Extract from AAN World News

 

Is far-right isolationism in Woe Betide leading towards 'Woexit'?  

19th June 2021

 

The Woe Betide region voted for Brexit more than any other region in the UK; with a mere 14% voting to remain in Europe.

Euroscepticism is rife within the predominantly white, working-class population of the Woe region - who are defensive of their strong, local identity. Woe Island, in particular, had become a political hotbed for hard-right isolationism; seemingly spurred by the geographical isolation of the island. In the years following the Brexit vote, the island gained a new status as a super-Brexit mini-state, with the local elected council dominated by hard Brexiteers and local businesses voluntarily boycotting European imports. 

 

But the latest development in this political situation has come as a surprise to outsiders: Hard-liners on Woe Island have started discussions about a possible 'Woexit'.

Activists have made no attempt to hide their disgust at the negotiation stance of their government; viewing the latest round of trade agreements as a slap-in-the-face to those who were seeking their so-called independence day. Eager to stay true to their dream of self-sufficient independence, they are now moving to reject the position of the mainland and 'pursue their own destiny.'

 

This is evidenced by the first major unexpected move by local politicians - Last Thursday, the publicly-owned Woe Island golf course and sports grounds were unexpectedly requisitioned by Council bailiffs, accompanied by a statement declaring that the park was 'unfit for use' and would be converted back to agricultural land. The Thymes Estuary Parks and Leisure Department expressed serious concern after the incident, but their comments were swiftly redacted.

 

A spokeswoman for Thymes Estuary Police said "We want to reassure all residents and visitors around the Woe area that we are acutely aware of current political tensions, and working hard to ensure that everyday activities are not disrupted in any way."

An AAN journalist asked the spokeswoman to clarify why police checkpoints had been established on the two access routes onto Woe Island in recent weeks, but she declined to comment.

 

 

 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

Don't worry, I'm still chipping away at this...had a bit of a roadblock in development recently, a tiny bug that took me literally days of dev time to identify, and about 2 seconds to fix, sigh.

 

Anyway, I've added some new screenshots to the Imgur album, more coming soon. First up is something that feels quite different:

 

 

This is the Pirate's Cove swimming pool, part of the pleasure pier adventure park at Woe-on-Sea, a traditional seaside town now in the middle of the Woexit crisis...

(Safe to say AI units don't enjoy navigating the theme park very much)

 

Aside from that, I've been populating various farms around the map, and ground detail textures are starting to look good too:

 

 

 

Next up, I'll show you my progress on some very British junctions and crossings!

 

[Flinty 454]

Looking lovely! Nice to see another British terrain being made

[B. McFly 11]

Was worried how quiet this thread had gone as I am very interested but Oooh baby, its looking very saucy. 

[jacknorrisuk 146]

On 2018/06/11 at 2:00 PM, B. McFly said:

Was worried how quiet this thread had gone as I am very interested but Oooh baby, its looking very saucy. 

 

Sauuuccyy is exactly what I thought about how well these Arma runway lines work as double yellows, m8

 

 

 

Generally only the UK, former UK colonies and Ireland use double yellow lines at the sides of roads to indicate no waiting at any time, so they feel quite essentially British to me.

 

This is part of an urban area I'm building at the moment which is a fairly new bus terminal, taxi rank and short-stay car park for visitors to Woe-on-Sea...