lecholas

Agreed. And I just started to dream about using some kind of opensource GIS software (my favorite QGIS for example) as a common platform for making source files for V3 (by converting all the dispersed community tools used for one purpose into QGIS plugins that generate appropriate files...). It could be an open source imitation of the quoted earlier TerraVista TerraSim... Just dreaming :)

Thank you for the info. If you read my earlier post, you'll see that I've created my terrain outside V3 (QGIS + GIMP + L3DT + Wilbur to be exact). I use World Tools and Road Painter. I also used some of mikero's tools and I used 3DE in Arma but AFAIK 3DE is not compatible with Arma 2, am I wrong? But there is a lot of things that to my best knowledge can't be done to fix V3's unwanted behaviour as e.g. the problem that the only way to import objects to V3 is by ImportObjects script which every time it is run it generates random sizes, direction etc. of objects (based on V3 project settings), is there any community tool to overcome this?

Well, I'm all ears. Which tools do you mean? Are there any real alternatives to circumvent V3? In my experience there are some great community made tools that can replace or extend some of uncomfortable/ineffective V3' funcionalities but there is no one tool to combine their outputs apart from V3. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.

Thanks. You surely mean that getting in any form of contact with Visitor 3 can't possibly be described as 'work' but only as 'pure pleasure' or 'relax', right? :j:

As some of you may already notice in the September 1939 tread, I'm working currently on a map for the mod. The main source for me is a Polish historical map from 1937 from which I acquired heightmap and something along the lines of 'historical land cover'. I'm making extensive use of GIS software (mainly Quantum GIS) as I find it faster, easier and more flexible in some respects to use it, especially with big raster files than e.g. GIMP. And I'm trying to emulate some of the marvelous possibilities of TerraSim VBS2 maps creation software (can be seen here) with freeware GIS software and software created by the community (World Tools, Road painter). The vegetation that can be seen on the provided video was 99.9% generated with World Tools (there is some room for improvements there though). The satellite texture is being created by Topas. We've considered using high-resolution orthophotos form the Polish geoportal or sat pictures from Google or some other mapping service but decided to create the custom texture due to copyright restrictions. And I must say that thank's to Topas' skill it was a very good choice. I wonder what do you guys, who have experience with creating maps for Arma and your own workflows for this think about such an approach.

Well, as a matter of fact I've already visited Wola Gułowska a few weeks ago and collected some , but of course I'd be more than happy to get more of it. I intend to go visit the area a few more times but that's when I have more spare time. I'd be especially interested in photos of old houses and areas that supposedly did not change a lot from 1939. When I visited the area I used the georeferenced WIG 1937 map as a custom map on my portable garmin GPS to search for such places (well, I would find the places even without the GPS but it was fun to play with it ;) ). Eg. I tried to find some chapels that should stand near some roads (ie. that are marked on a 1937 map) but it occurred that only in one place I found some concrete remains of one of them. And of course collecting that kind of reference, although its fun, takes some time so any help would be appreciated. Topas as always makes wonders if it comes to finding reference photos (from real estate sales announcements from Charlejów for example) but good pictures of one object taken from many angles are hard to find.

Hello everyone. So it looks like after being only a parasite inside a healthy body of the OFP/Arma community for quite a long time I finally decided to make something useful and help the folks from the September '39 mod to bring a little part of pre-war Poland to Arma2 engine. The area we are striving to recreate is Wola Gułowska and it's surroundings (10x10km). It's the place of the last battle of regular Polish units during the Invasion of Poland in September '39 (though the battle actually took place in October). SGO "Polesie" (Independent Operational Group) - the Polish unit that fought there - comprised of the remains of various formations of the Polish Army: infantry, cavalry, police units, KOP, Riverine Flotilla of the Polish Navy, artillery, some armor and reportedly a few civil planes adapted for recon missions. The unit fought both Soviet as well as German armies and finally surrendered because of lack of ammunition on 05 October 1939. Wola Gułowska witnessed heavy fights in the last part of the battle especially near the graveyard and the church. A painting picturing the fight around the graveyard in Wola Gułowska: What more can be said about Wola Gułowska? Let's listen to the memories of a former soldier who fought there: "How many years can a man wander across Poland and yet never learn about the existence of a village named Wola Gułowska. Now, as we are standing at the edge of the woods and we have the village right in front of us, just within the reach of a hand it seems to be an oasis of idyllic atmosphere and undisturbed peace. A long row of small, tidy houses, a white baroque church, colourful orchards. Let all the world fight, as long as the Polish country remains quiet... And yet, if anything interesting at all can be said about Wola Gułowska, it is that it lies on a trail of ever-lasting Polish wars, among old battlefields of Parczew, Kock, Adamów... What more? The adjacent Wola Okrzejska at least is a place of birth of Henryk Sienkiewicz (the famous Polish writer). In Wola Gułowska noone famous was born. People here only die. Not once did they come here to die from far away. In the woods near Wola Gułowska graves of insurgents from 1863 are commemorated until the present day. Some places here have disturbing, ominous names as Krzywda (Harm), Ofiara (Sacrifice), Mogiły (Graves)... The woods surround the village from all sides - quiet, safe, huge..." Memories of M. Brandys - leader of a HMG platoon in 79th infantry regiment. But I'm sure everyone would like to see some moving pictures now... The first part of the following movie shows some information about the process of the creation of the map and the second moves to actual gameplay recording. YGN5NhB_cyE I'd go for one year later - 1944's Operation Tempest... EDIT: note that the movie above is recorded with Sumer pack mod (by "Bushlurker and Beton under supervision of Homer Johnston") enabled. It's so good that I've just forgotten that I load it every time I start Arma. I hope the authors don't have any objections.

Well, that's a way for creating a heightmap (and what is more, for randomly creating it). I think that the thing that DC39 wants to do is to use an existing real-world data from ASTER DEM. A projection is a cartographic method for unfolding or unwrapping an ellipsoidal approximation of Earth's surface into a flat plane. There are many ellipsoids (one of which, the most common thanks to it being used by a GPS, is WGS84) and for every elipsoid there are many projections, global or local (eg. UTM zones, older soviet pulkovo1942 and many, many national projections (or 'grids') as for example Polish PUWG1992. The thing here is to remember that geographic degrees are not flat plane coordinates. They must be projected onto a plane in one way or another. For most Arma purposes I'd assume that UTM projection with a correct zone would be a good choice. Unless you're making a map based on a historical scanned map which is in a different coordinate system (or you have other reasons) as I am at the moment. I'm personally using QGIS combined with other software (GIMP, L3DT, Willbur). I'm using my hand-made DEM (from contour lines from a historical map), but if I were to use an ASTER DEM my workflow would be as follows: - download and install QGIS; open it and go to Plugins->Download more Plugins (the names of menu items here and below can differ as I'm using a localized Polish verision of QGIS) and find and install 'Rectangles, ovals digitizing' plugin - download a for the desired area DEM (I assume you already know how to do it) - load it into QGIS - go to Settings->Project settings and tick 'project on the fly' and change the projection to the one which is suitable for you (eg. UTM with the correct zone) - convert the DEM layer into proper raster (e.g. GEOTiff), remember to tick the option named something like 'Add to layers after finished' (not sure if that's required) - reproject the resulting raster to your desired spatial reference system (i.e. projection, eg. UTM), Raster->Change Projection; settings: source srs: WGS84, target srs: UTM with your zone, for your purposes 'Nearest neighbour' method of resampling should be good but you may try the remaining ones; again check 'Add to layers after finished' - create a new shapefile: Layer->Create new layer->Shapefile; make sure it's polygon-shapefile and that the srs (projection) is set to your desired projection (UTM); don't worry about adding any attributes apart from the default FID - create a new polygon in your new shapefile: select the layer, click 'Edit mode' (a button with a pen or something), then 'Add polygon', and then, using 'Rectangles, ovals digitizing' plugin draw a 'Square from the middle' (AFAIK there is no, more suitable for us, 'Square from the edge' option in the plugin yet) that will cover your desired area (if you're planning for example a 10240x10240 meters map the side of the square should be 10240m - could be tricky with QGIS, I took a shortcut and created the square shapefile in ArcGIS to be sure its side is as close to 10240m as you can get; in QGIS you can for example use the measuring tools, or maybe there are some plugins that I'm not aware of which serve that purpose; or find some other tool just for a purpose of creating a shapefile with a square polygon of the desired dimensions and importing it into QGIS - on thing to remember that such a shapefile should be natively in the target srs, in our case UTM). This will be our cake-cutter layer for cutting all the different layers we ever need (e.g. Sat mask; if you could acquire a land cover layer for the area you could then cut it with the cake-cutter and get a mask for Sheazan74's brilaint World Tools for generation of randomly placed vegetation that way); stop editing (the pen button) and save changes to the layer - then, at last, clip your DEM raster with the cake-cutter layer: Raster->Clip raster; select the name of your source projected DEM raster and a name and destination for the clipped raster You should receive a greyscale DEM raster corresponding to the desired area. You can resample it to the desired resolution (eg. 1024x1024) in any program for digital graphics (eg. IrfanView) and you should be able to load it either in visitor or in L3DT. One thing you need to check is to check the min and max pixel values which should correspond to minimal and maximal heights in the covered area and which you should put into right places in Visitor (pbl file) or L3DT - the form when importing the heightmap. But that's a different story. I may be not precise in many points but I don't have time now for writing a comprehensive tutorial. Maybe some time later if there is some interest. It's not the prettiest method in the world but it works. If you have any questions feel free to PM me and I'll answer if I can.

I don't want to overcomplicate things, but... Aren't Aster DEMs in an unprojected geographic coordinate system (WGS84)? If yes, wouldn't that mean that cutting a square raster (ie. with even pixel size edges, eg. 2048x2048) from it would result in a representation of non-square-like area? Edit: Ok, I've glanced through the ZGM's tutorial and looks like it's covered there for Global Mapper. One thing to remember when you use Microdem instead of Global Mapper is to define a projection in Microdem as well (I suppose it allows for that - if not, I'd suggest using for example opensource QGIS).

First of all, great job. HETMAN really has a lot of potential. It reminds me a bit some other projects in Arma community like Urban patrol script (dynamic, but not of such a wide scope), or Planned Assault (not dynamic and constrained to a defined number of units/groups) or Rube's Fire mission Ants (semi-scripted, semi-dynamic, I encourage everyone to try it) or other (eg. granQ's Epic Battlefield System). One of the greatest features of your scripts, which makes them one of the most successful attempts, is that they work almost out of the box, they are very easy to implement, and we can quickly enjoy some epic battles. I think that among the listed above only Epic Battlefield System is more flexible, because it doesn't require configs for custom units, it acquires all the needed information automatically. Of course, there is a room for improvements ;) . One of the things that instantly come to my mind after some tests is communication. When I play as a member of a squad that is commanded by the script I keep getting ordered to move somewhere, and that's all I know about the whole situation. I don't know where, why etc. I know that that's a life of a simple grunt - marching, marching and again marching, without knowing where, why and for how much longer but even grunt could have some more background (eg. move there to participate in a bigger, performed by some more units, flanking maneuver to conquer this particular objective) and also from the gaming-experience perspective this could be desired. So maybe it wouldn't be so hard for the script to convey such information to a player (by sidechat, by creating a task with a simple description or by markers) when giving his group an order to move somewhere. One other thing could be warnings given by the HQ (ideally by a radio protocol) about known near enemies that were spotted by other units etc. I'm not sure how hard would it be to implement, but it would surely be a nice addition. Anyway, thanks for your great work. BTW, I've prepared a config for I44 (may be incomplete because of the huge amount of I44 unit classes), if anyone wants to try or improve it here it is: Edit: I use init.SQS so above commands lack ';' signs at the ends

Interesting remark. I had the same feeling when trying my own experimental high-heightmap-resolution maps (2 meter resolution 2x2km map felt like a huge terrain). But I always wondered if it is not for the fact that I, as a maker of the heightmap (it was not downloaded from the Internet, it was made from vectorising scanned map's contour lines) know every little land feature of it and even when I don't see all of the landforms I know that they are there; my consciousness holds all the data in the background (let's call it a phenomenological horizontality of perception) and I have a feeling that the terrain is 'reach' and every 100 meters contains big ammount of landforms and 'affordances' for using them (contrasted to big flat surfaces of a lower-heightmap-resolution - there's nothing there). On the other hand when I play other modern games which have smaller but more dense terrain (of which I'am not a creator) than ArmA series I have a similar feeling. edit Thanks Bushlurker. So should I take it that first LOD of a tree for ArmAII should have about 8000 faces?

Thanks for links to the tutorials. I wasn't aware of the funcionality in blender 2.59 and I must say it looks very promising. I've recently experimented with ngPlant combined with other tools (intended workflow: sculptris for trunk, ngPlants for branches and blender for uv mapping and p3d export) and the results were quite encouraging (don't mind the unfinished textures and the lack of leafs). I was wondering though how polygons-intesive should be a tree for ArmAII as AFAIK BIS haven't released any sample tree for us to learn from. I was also thinking about using Autodesk's free beta of 123D Catch (formerly Project Photofly) and as a matter of fact even today I tested on a trunk of a tree: 1, 2 (the great advantage of this program, not to say it doesn't have any disadvantages, is that it generates models and mapped textures at once; wheather they can be easily used for model cration for Arma is a topic for a different discussion).

Nah, it spent only about 10 minutes on it. And that's how this community works. Someone asks for help, and someone else tries to help. I have no words to express how much I've learned from the others on this forums during those... 10 (!) years since I've registered here.

I downloaded your pew file and after some investigations come up with the solution. The background image works only when it is in the same folder as the pew file. When you have it in a different folder Visitor automatically changes the background image's path to the path of pew file (you can check it by by adding in visitor a background image with path different than pew's path, accepting it, and then checking the properties of the background image; you'll find that the background's path was changed to the pew's one). I hope it works for you.

And I was wondering why the message didn't show up in my 'sent items' folder ;)

For anyone interested, look what I've found: http://hgis.cartoninjas.net/ It's a web service with old Polish WIG (Military Institute of Geography) ovelayed on modern scanned raster and vector maps and ortophotos. It's in the WGS84 datum, so it could be relatively easily overlayed on eg. SRTM DEM files for elevation model. It could be useful for the mod, I think.

Thanks Topas. My curiosity is satisfied :) I think that's quite a lot of faces for a fence, good to hear that it doesn't affect the performance.

Out of curiousity, how many polygons has a single wooden fence segment shown on that pic? It looks quite complicated. I saw the reference photos for such fences on your forums and I wondered, how to make it without straining gpu too much with a single segment of the fence (and ususally there are a lot of segments of the fence in one area). BTW. Very nice work.

Beautiful.

Double and triple spies... codes which after decoding are not answers but another questions or codes... The thread is almost as good read as St. Lem's Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Heh, I've been there. I'm very pleased with what you present. I must say I've been thinking about creating some custom Polish buildings and terrains from the wwii period myself for a long time (with some already made attempts and gathering some reference photos). I think you could (if you haven't already) make a use of the reference materials of Open Air Village Museum in Lublin. They're attemping to recreate a typical small town from the 1930's. You can find a pdf with a map here. One another nice project from the area where I live is a 3d model of part of Lublin city from around 1936 which could also be used as a reference.

Very nice news! I feared that the mod was abandoned. I take it you plan to make a new terrain? What area you intend to recreate?

I played it for a few more times. And every time I played it I discovered something new. For example... I depboed the mission and took a glance at the files... there are a lot of functions, fsms (I think I've never seen so extensive use of fsms in a custom mission so far) etc. It gives the idea of the enormous work you put into it. One thing that could be considered a bug is when you become a squad leader and you are ordered to pull back you need to activate 'set as current task' in the tasks manager with regard to either OPFORT or point Viper because if you do not do it, there will be nothing there when you reach the destitnation (I reached the point Viper and it was a lone well on the desert; and there were no radio message, hint or anything like it). I guess the camp should be spawned there when you chose the point of your retreat (but you're far away from that point?). I also think that the mission is sometimes a bit too hard. It's because of the fact that static weapons are too deadly. A few seconds and you can lose most of your squad because the AI soldiers don't know they should take cover from it. And although I really appreciate (seriously) the attitude towards the safety of Takistan that you expressed some posts earlier: My system is: Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2410MHz), Radeon HD4870 512Mb, 4Gb Ram, WinXP, and as I run the mission for several more times I noticed that the performance varies a lot from one time to another. It may be, for example, dependent on the location on the map.

Although it still has some bugs, I regard it as one of the most interesting ofp/arma projects I've seen. The mission is random (which forces using tactics, and not playing by memory), it allows for some customization, it seems to react flexibly to the course of the mission (no: do or die - if you take too much loses, then pull back, which adds a realistic feel to it) and at the same time it is very cinematic (voicing, burning houses, civilians, environmental effects, etc.). I'm really glad that I was not repulsed by the first run of the mission (which resulted in exiting it because the leader of my squad got stuck and all other squads were fighting in a chaotic manner). So the mission has some bugs. Sometimes my squad (I tend not to play as a squad leader) gets stuck. It often happens that the other fire ants get in contact and there's shooting all over the place, and yet they do not report being engaged and the mission goes on as the 'premature contact' wasn't made. The other thing is a bit low performance of that mission. But I'm not complaining ;) As for suggestions, as far as I understand the mission could be (relatively) easily ported to other islands and even other mods, because it uses some general rules and libraries of units. So the general rules (algoritms) could stay, and the libraries could be replaced. Is that correct? If this is so I think it could become a great tool for testing the possibilities given by new mods in the area of single player. I'd love to see the Invasion44 version of the mission :rolleyes: (without the chopper transport of course ;) ). Anyway, great work. It's really appreciated.

I don't think it's a PMC campaign related bug. I haven't even run PMC campaign with zeus AI so far and I keep getting this bug when playing for example official BAF single missions or Wolle's CWC classics converted missions.