Couple of tips needed

[icebreakr 3159]

I'm making my first island Panthera and I could use couple of tips:

1. is there an object (non-destroyable) to simulate lakes, since I cannot lower the ground in these mountain areas? Aussie did great "ponds" on his island Yanutha...

2. any ways to make rivers without lowering river-terrain height to 0 meters? Lifting water level is not an option.

3. I love RTE editor, is there an "easy" way to insert objects to Visitor, for example whole village at once? I'm only using BIS default objects (majority of houses will be entrable).

4. Is there a 3rd party tool somewhere for easier creation of roads? I have bunch of 'em over some very steep terrain.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Opteryx will have better answers, but ....

For 1 and 2 - download and test all aspects of Applegate Lake Terrain Source by Opteryx

The water simulation in ArmA is far from perfect.

3-Consider the 3DE tool;

http://www.armedassault.info/index.php?cat=news&id=1196

4 - not sure myself

http://www.armedassault.info/index.php?cat=news&id=1203

[.kju 3245]

4 - you may try to get your height data in WRPTool.

It is said to have far better road placement.

Then get the data back to v3 via Roller.

[Thrash 0]

There is a 'water' addon, not sure of the name but it's a square piece of water that you can place where ever you want.

[Nicholas Bell 0]

Use can use the "pond.p3d" object for creating lakes and rivers. However, one cannot swim in them nor do they cause the player to drown. Boats will ride on top of them. They just look like water. One good thing about them is that they do not have waves, which isn't realistic on a river.

A work around I was experimenting with was to create a very deep trench at the bottom of a river. You couldn't see it, but if a player tries to walk across the bottom of the river, he fell to the bottom of the trench and was killed.

When creating a river or a lake with the Pond, you can increase it's size to 500% of original. Be sure to overlap the objects a lot, or boats will fall to the bottom occasionally. Use the SetAbsoluteHeight script in V3 to get them all at the same level.

As far as road creation in V3, simply lay the roads on the mountains and use smooth roads script. You need to experiment with the settings. Moving average at 25 is good for normal terrain, but not so for mountains. Lowering the value to 11 or 12 will give you smoother results in mountains. If you want a constant grade use the Simple Average, or Slope settings. You may need to tweak the elevations around the grades a bit in Buldozer to eliminate the saw-tooth effect of the elevation changes.

These did the trick for Razani mountain roads. There is no need to attempt to create the road elevations by hand if you use the smooth road script.

[icebreakr 3159]

So, by using pond.p3d I cannot even swim across as a civilian or pass it with BMP? Damn... guess I'll be busy with Wilbur to adjust some heights... didn't Q have a solution to make waves/tide smaller?

[celery 8]

There is a 'water' addon, not sure of the name but it's a square piece of water that you can place where ever you want.

It can be destroyed with a bomb.

[icebreakr 3159]

4 - you may try to get your height data in WRPTool.

It is said to have far better road placement.

Then get the data back to v3 via Roller.

Afaik WRPTool requires old OFP installed? This road placement is driving me crazy.

[jakerod 254]

What part of the road placement are you having problems with?

If it is just the steep terrain part then I would say the smooth-road script. It requires some trial and error but that smooth-road script works well.

Edited April 22, 2009 by Jakerod

[icebreakr 3159]

is there no way to select a starting point and an ending point and the visitor completes the path with selected road?

[jakerod 254]

is there no way to select a starting point and an ending point and the visitor completes the path with selected road?

According to the Biki clicking should do it but I can't get it to work. Shift clicking and ctrl clicking cause mine to crash and alt clicking doesn't do anything. Visitor 2 (from OFP days) does it. I don't know why they took it out.

[icebreakr 3159]

Yeah, I guess BIS is just imagining that is actually working =) and we're sweating our asses off in Visitor :)

[jakerod 254]

Yeah, I guess BIS is just imagining that is actually working =) and we're sweating our asses off in Visitor :)

I actually never really used it in Visitor 2 that much. I liked having control over where the roads went piece by piece which is why you don't hear me complaining about it right now. I always found the Visitor 2 roads to be too crooked.

[icebreakr 3159]

Yeah, but road pieces appear in my Visitor (latest ver.) only when I click "finish" and then its usually too late to change courses without loosing a lot of time. Any tips?

[jakerod 254]

Yeah, but road pieces appear in my Visitor (latest ver.) only when I click "finish" and then its usually too late to change courses without loosing a lot of time. Any tips?

Only thing I can think of is practice. Learn what each piece does and how far they carry the road and such. I haven't tried using a satellite image before I normally just put down my roads and objects and then make them. If its not a big deal that they are 100% correct you could always just get them close and then edit them on the sat layer later.

[icebreakr 3159]

Thank you Jakerod, will do my best. I've posted couple of WIP terrain screenshots in Panthera topic. One question about the forrests - I have to make a lot of them in this sector, should I use the old OFP system? What do I have to be careful about placing tree objects to keep OK framerates?

[Auss 208]

I have 2 screens which come in very handy when editing maps. I have V3 in one and dozer in the other, when I'm laying roads I can see (after I hit the apply button) where the road is going in dozer, I then watch dozer as I'm laying the road in the other screen to see where its going.

[icebreakr 3159]

Aussie: great tip, tnx. Too bad that asf25 part is looking cool in Visitor but in-game the straight 25m part of asphalt appears totally black. Another BIS bug?

http://www.shrani.si/f/3t/3X/2Aix1PFX/black.jpg

Any tips? I've already tried export/import, reloading all p3ds...

Update: found the BUGger 3 hours later. It seems that asfaltka25 left inside by BIS is not configured properly. Asf6/12/25 instead of Asfaltka6/12/25 for change do work :)

Edited May 4, 2009 by IceBreakr

[Auss 208]

yep I guess its a little late now but I found that also Ashfaltk is buggered, I use SIL and ASh. I am also getting a "cannot find ca\roads\cesta.paa problem but not sure yet which piece is causing the problem

[icebreakr 3159]

AI is driving like drunk... is that normal? ;) but at least they are now able to pass two bridges =) at third they stop, reverse all the way back and then drive into the river =)

[bravo 6 0]

it is normal if the roads do not have the 'Gen. termonator' in both sides.

[icebreakr 3159]

Yeah, I'll recheck. For bridges I'll use that invisible empty6 road, hopefully it will work. Do you set terminators before the regular bridge object?

[bravo 6 0]

Note that some times Visitor3 do not show the 'Gen.terminator' even when they exist. You can only truly confirm them connecting to Buldozer.

I don't know the correct procedure about this subject because BIS never officially "thought" us how to correctly do it.

There might be several ways to do it though.

At the moment I'm using the following, I'm aware it might not be the correct one but so far, in my case, is working for AIs:

• I set the bridge model as an 'artificial object';
  After placing the road, using 'road network', until the bridge zone i close it with 'Gen. terminators' on both sides.
  Place the bridge model.
  Start another road after the bridge with 'Gen.terminators', complete hole road and close it using the 'Gen. terminator'.

Another thing that might have certain relevance, the bridge I'm using was edited in O2, so its slightly different then BIS original one.

[jakerod 254]

If you change the color of the general terminators it seems to show them. Im not entirely sure if it works but it seemed to work when I did it. Of course if you do it after you already placed a bunch then it doesn't work and you have to delete the ends and redo them.

[bravo 6 0]

I know what you mean Jakerod but when i said the "Visitor3 do not show the 'Gen.terminator' even when they exist", i know what i was saying.. that statement wsa based on a long tests.. its a know bug from Visitor3.

Others that experience the same "phenomena" can confirm.