spookygnu

its good to see you advertising your project and seeing new people coming into terrain building, but do you think it might be easier to begin on a smaller island so that it won't frustrate so much trying to work out the cfg files etc. If you don't entirely know what they do and how they work then you may stumble across all kinds of things you may not fully understand and eventually dump the project because it isn't working out for you. May I suggest doing 3 things to get you started. Join the map makers skype channel research start small best way in my opinion, then you won't need to worry about a wasted project through frustration because you learnt the fundamentals first. I began a project on Alcatraz, renaming it Armatraz and put a thread up on the BI forums, saying I'd keep people updated etc, that thread has died a little because I've learnt what to do on that and moved onto bigger terrains. Experimenting and testing my abilities to no end and to the detriment of my family sometimes, but map making is never an overnight thing. Bornholm was 11 months in the making I'm to believe. Just a thought if alot of this stuff is confusing.

making a fantasy island can all be created using L3DT. If you haven't already I'd suggest following jakerods Quick terrain tutorial on getting started with terrain builder first. If you have already done that then read on. For a basic mask and sat image you don't even need photoshop as L3DT does all the work for you. heres a base guide for a simple quick and easy terrain done in two stages. Stage 1: Open L3dT and click new map, then follow the wizard. Designable Map click next. Heightfield size: this is where you decide on how big you want your map. To begin with I'd recommend going smallish. 512x512 (use the sliders to do this) then adjust your horizantal scale. This will give you the meter per pixel differentiate. set that to 10 and you have a map just over 5x5 Km, or 26sq Km overall. Click next twice and you come to a window showing you map parameters. Design Map: Here you can set you land features, more water, less water, rolling hills or mountains and valleys. Use the sliders to choose what you want more or less of and then choose what type of climate you want. Climate choice; When choosing your climate you need to be mindful that when you come to generating your layers in terrain builder you may not be so lucky in having all 18 or so ground textures that L3DT gives you. Terrain builder use 4,5 or 6 ground textures per grid. You can find more info on that here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?186855-Is-this-really-what-our-mask-should-look-like&p=2843467&viewfull=1#post2843467 if you wanted to use a temperate climate in L3DT you WOULD need to use Photoshop or similar program to alter the mask colours to fit in with the 4,5,6 rule. However: demo-grass-rock gives you just 3 textures and it is as basic as can be for your first random generated map. and fits within the 4,5,6 rule. Select demo-grass-rock-sand from the list in the dropdown box, you'll find that at the bottom. Then click next. Calculation queue: Here you can select all your maps in one go to get generated in L3DT. Check off all the boxes and then click next again. The following 2 boxes you can just click next through Attributes map. Attributes map: The Attributes map is the map you can use for your mask. Check off the box that is "Make High-res attributes map" then click next. Normals map; Normal mapping: this one generates a normals map you can use if you want to. Terrain builder will allow you to have 5 textures on your map using this map. Check off the high res normals box again and click next. Light mapping. the next two windows are for lighting effects. my advice would be not to mess around with the values much as it will screw things up on your map when you look at it in 3D mode (More on that later). click past the first window then when you are at the second lighting window you only need to select "Make High res light map. You have already applied the bump mapping. click next and next again on Light/water effects. Texture map: Texture settings again click on next and save the project under something you can recognise and put it in a folder you can easily locate. (when you save your project a number of folders will be created and you also will get a project file. When you close and reopen L3DT you only need the project file to load,not the files within the newly created folders. ) Once saved, L3DT will go through the motions of creating a map based on your own parameters you set in the wizard. Using a small map of 512x512 you should get a map within 20-30 seconds showing on your screen. Stage 2: You should now see a number of tabs across your screen starting with Design map through to TN-Tangent. you can click on any one of the tabs and once that map loads you can see your map in various different ways. Once you do, click on the 3D button at the top and you should see all your hard work (cough L3DTcough) work in 3D format. Navigating your way around the map is quite easy. ,W,A,S,D for the usual, then you have E for height up and R for height down. Rotate and select are the mouse and LMB. If you press H you get your heightmap tools so you can actually alter the map however you like if you are not fully with L3DT's result. by Pressing Esc you go back to your map tabs. heightmap editing is quite extensive so looking at the L3DT tutorials would be best for that. Once you have your map and are happy with it, there are 3 maps you need to use from your project. Heightmap, Attributes and textures. You can export each of them into your Pdrive; work folder for your Arma map. then at least you will be able to figure out where those 3 files go too. It would be in any case, Pdrive/Yourtag/projectname/source. Once you are ready to export the maps from L3DT to get them in terrain builder, start with the Heightmap. Exporting the maps: Heightfield map: Click the heightfield tab in L3DT, let it loadup if you are looking at another map, then put your cursor on the tab and rightclick. then Export layer. The wizard appears again, drop down the file format box and select x.y.z or ASC, then click options and double click on true, it shoudl change to false, then click ok. In the filename box click the three dots, and navigate to your source folder for your project in terrain builder. Name your map "heightmap" and then save. Attributes map: Now go to your attributes map and do the same thing, except you don't need to go with x.y.z its just a simple BMP image you can save it as. If you are not entirley happy with the why L3DT has produce textures you can optionally edit it in photoshop or similar. Again navigate to your source folder and save it as "mask_lco". Without quotations marks of course. Now when you export this map, L3DT also exports two other files for you. an HTML file containing the RGB colourings and their values, it also gives you a text file doing the same except it is just text. Unless you don't like the L3DT colours and you changed them in Photoshop you can use these values for the layers file so terrain builder can cross reference the information. texture map: As you did with the attributes map you do the same with the texture map. Navigate and save it as a bmp image again in your source folder but name it "sat_lco". Thats pretty much it for generating a basic L3DT "fantasy island/map. the rest of the work is done using terrain builder. If you have gone through Jakerods tutorial then you should be having a wail of a time figuring out what works and what doesn't in TB but for the most part you are as you have seen on armaholic able to generate a full blown map to play on. I hope this has helped! enjoy Spook

Is there any possibility someone could drum up a terrain grid template we could overlay onto our masks images. Or are they not generic?? In other words it depends on the size of the terrain?? this would really help if someone could then deciding what how many textures are in a grid wouldn't be such a head f***!

Thats what I was thinking an extension of this script relating to all vehicles would be great for emmersion.

thats great stuff code34. I'm thinking of placing them on four maybe five points front hull left and right http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Royal_Navy_Merlin_Helicopter_MOD_45155806.jpg and mid/rear left and right this would give pilots great peripheral vision when landing and seeing troops de-bus.

thats cool. I'm not great at scripting but am I right in saying where you have player that would be the name of the helo?? Am i understanding this correctly?? _cam = ["new", []] call OO_CAMERA; ["backCamera", player] spawn _cam; --------------object sleep 1; ["r2w", [-0.4, 0.8,0.3,0.4]] call _cam;--------------camera positioning

this is a great idea, I can see this being useful for cctv on helos and the osprey. Will come in handy for landings! is it possible to activate it using an action button and then de-activating it, so that it does not clutter the screen all the time?

best thing I can suggest for not having the ladders error is not to use MCC.

Icarus Solar Farm by Spookygnu Description: The Icarus Solar farm is part of the Agola Solar Corporation that manages the Wind and Solar plants on the island of Altis. The facility is a research centre for the combination of Wind, Solar and Hydro power energy. A small team of eight Scientist run the facility living there 365 days a year on a rotation basis. Features: - walkable gantrys - Working security cameras - Active Intel files - Working Lights at night - Submersible pool - Lots of sneaky places to hide Known issues: = Moving the complex or rotating the complex you will find that the objects may displace and you would need to readjust the heights. The complex is placed in the sea where the seabed has no contours. = There is a bug even on the main island when walking through the gantrys. If you decided to turn around you may glitch into the pipes and get stuck in a bouncing animation. There is nothing I can do about this. A way to counter the effect is either rotate yourself, crouch or use the jump key. Sometimes using the Jump key you may fall off. = If you place AI down you will need to make sure that they have the same height as the platform you are placing them on, same goes for any waypoints you are placing that are attached to them. AI will walk through the buildings aswell, so make your paths go around them. Most of the platfroms are lined with Lamps or fences so you can use these for referencing the edges of the platforms. = The Dome pool has an invisible floor. You can surface through it, but you cannot go back down into it. You are essentially able to walk on water when inside the building. = changing the weather before mission start will alter object heights. you need to initialise the weather after you start the map/mission. This is released on Armaholic. View page here It also has a demo mission for it as well so you can play on it once downloaded. Great for you SF types out there. Download Here: version1.2 Requirements: @ARP2 Please note this post if you have v1: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?177174-Icarus-Solar-Farm&p=2681961&viewfull=1#post2681961

I have decided to not release an updated version to fall in line with the ARP patches. Reason is I have found a few issues and it is way too much working considering, it'll be easier using a 3d ediotr like buldozer, zeus or MCC to make form scratch. I have plans to build an ISS2 which will be attached to one of my own islands in the future. Hopefully I'll have the knowledge by then to create some interesting models myself and have some new features. Thanks for Downloading so far and Hope you are all enjoying yourselves on it.

Thanks SPIDYpiet and Gunter for the more detailed explanation. That'll save hours of 2d editing templates.

re-export the shapes file, then restart BD and you'll see the changes.

Like I said earlier in the thread, its not like making a simple mission. It all takes time even to get used to the basics can take a few weeks if you are new to map making. Let the info sink in when you are reading it through, even if it means reading stuff 10 times over and doing those steps over and over to make sure you are not getting the errors.

have you by any chance looked at this tutorial? http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?174933-Quick-Terrain-Builder-Tutorial

dude I'm so sorry, my mistake I read it on my phone and I couldn't see the image on my phone. I interpreted your post as if you were using custom textures. Edited the post now! I've had that issue myself at one stage. If I remember what it was and how I resolved it I'll let you know. Looking at your layers config, could the problem lay within the texture = ""; parameter. You have nothing there. This is one of mine: texture = #(rgb,1,1,1)color(0.5,0.5,0.5,1,cdt); material = "spooks\skiathos\data\spkg_concrete.rvmat"; Try copying the texture line and pasting it into all of your texture params for your each texture. see what happens???

Map making you will find is nothing like making a simple mission, if you want it to have playability for the community. Bornholm took 11 months, afaik, and altis took over 2.5 years. So a great bit of advice everyone gets is, start small, use the default stuff, research and follow as many tuts as possible. In the end it'll be worth the graft in gaining from what is already available. Saves a lot of headache in the long run.

for people having a couple of issues with the choppy in game map image. I came across a fix to my map today. I was getting exactly the same results everyone else was. Then I changed the Resolution (m/px) to 10.000000, packed up the map and went in game and all was gone. Perfect looking sat image. Here are my map settings: ================ Grid size: 2048x2048 Cell Size: 10.000 Terrain size: 20480.000 =============== Satellite/Surface (mask)source images Size: 2048x2048 Resolution(m/px) 10.000000 ================== Satellite/Surface (mask)tiles Size (px): 2048x2048 Desired Overlap : 16 =============== Texture Layer Size: 40x40 ======================================= Now, something I thought I would try because I had time and was not in a rush was to change the resolution to 5.000000 this then gave me a thin cross right through the very centre of my map in game. I also went back to 1.000000 to make sure this was causing my choppy image. Guess what?? I was right! so I went back to 10.000000 and all is fine in game again. Only issue is I have a sat image that is not as HIGH RES as I'd like but is good enough for me and anyone else to recognize. Think about it, most of the island is covered in objects anyway and when you go to an area where there are pine trees the ground will have a pine forest texture covered in broken pine branches and pine needles with the odd pine cone kicking about. The Sat map is really useful for recognizing places from the air, but close up it doesn't really matter as it fades away right in front of the player. so for you guys worrying about your choppy maps in game, try messing with the resolution(m/px), that should sort it out easily enough.

How far back do you have to go before a logical reason or solution/outcome to the issues is discussed. AFAIK there wasn't much in the way of it be looked at at all.

too many posts to sifted through atma but has anyone picked up on this thought in anyway yet?? I'm not talking about whilst in helis, its more a case of when in side the back of an offroader. The seats in the back are ,1,2,3,4, if you are in moveInCargo [vehicle, 1 or2] you sit in the section right behind the tailgate of the pickups. this gives you a good arc of fire probably just under 180 degrees. If you are in moveInCargo [vehicle, 3 or 4] you sit with your back to the cab and can only really see about 100 degrees arc of fire. This I can understand helps with sitting so close to the next player. My main issue is the stance in these last two positions. shouldn't we be able to have the ability to be able to use crouch and stnad and be able to fire over the roof of the cabs, so that if you were in an unarmed offroad, you could at least have some fire cover facing front. Then the two units by the tailgate can cover the rear, being locked into the sitting position I think is fine here, but can we not have the ability to crouch or stand up and have a 360 degree arc of fire if in positions 3 and 4? Also to add some flavour to the new function, if were are sat in the cab passenger seat, we cannot fire at all, couldn't we have the ability to shoot out the windscreen and fire forward or even out the right side passenger window??

I, like many others have been playing around with the new DLC and found that there is a slight disadvantage to the new firing from vehicles additions to the game. I'm not talking about whilst in helis, its more a case of when in side the back of an offroader. The seats in the back are ,1,2,3,4, if you are in moveInCargo [vehicle, 1 or2] you sit in the section right behind the tailgate of the pickups. this gives you a good arc of fire probably just under 180 degrees. If you are in moveInCargo [vehicle, 3 or 4] you sit with your back to the cab and can only really see about 100 degrees arc of fire. This I can understand helps with sitting so close to the next player. My main issue is the stance in these last two positions. shouldn't we be able to have the ability to be able to use crouch and stnad and be able to fire over the roof of the cabs, so that if you were in an unarmed offroad, you could at least have some fire cover facing front. Then the two units by the tailgate can cover the rear, being locked into the sitting position I think is fine here, but can we not have the ability to crouch or stand up and have a 360 degree arc of fire if in positions 3 and 4? Also to add some flavour to the new function, if were are sat in the cab passenger seat, we cannot fire at all, couldn't we have the ability to shoot out the windscreen and fire forward or ever out the right side passenger window?? Does anyone else agree on this? (If this has cropped up before, since the dlc release then delete this thread, I could find one when I searched) ---------- Post added at 15:25 ---------- Previous post was at 15:14 ---------- found it in dev branch never thought of looking there, can a mod delete this thread please??

this little tut is something I got from Bushlurker on the skype mapmaking channel. Now there are many ways of making roads but this one seems very easy to do if you already have defined your layers and what not. This also works for all your other surfaces such as beach area, pine forest and all kinds of different textured surfaces you'd like on your map.

Blender! its free and there are are tonnes and tonnes of tutorials on youtube to see you through till the apocalypse. http://www.blender.org/ You will find that the L3DT route will have limitations regarding an actual building, my guess is best to try blender and see how it goes. you can model terrain in blender aswell. Back on topic anyway, I have a little tutorial that can help with painintg roads I'll start another thread so that bushlurker (who advised me on it in Skype) can also add more detail and keep it on topic. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?185003-Road-painting-and-concrete-surface-tutorial&p=2807949#post2807949

With having a family, working on Jbad and other things he wants to put into MANW, think he might have a lot on his plate. I've not spoken to smoke for a few weeks now myself, as I'd be interested in seeing whats up with sangin too. So bare the first part in mind and i'm sure he'll bring everyone up to date at some point.

have you put in the toilet box?? lol! or the "head" as the Americans refer. I know what you mean about it being alot of work. It took me two whole weeks to apply of non stop editing to get the Icarus solar Station to a point of it looking liveable. there are things there I could change and make to look better but I spent so long on it I can't be bothered now and plus I might end up fucking it up in the process. I am how ever thinking of adding this template to my demo mission I made for the ISS, so that the special forces have a base of ops to start from.

pretty cool setup dude! I'll be using this mate! cheers for the release. Have you thought about putting rifles on the inside of a container on the sides, so players can walk in and pick a weapon of the wall and then load up at the table? You could even use the shelving objects and place things like NVG's, Bino's and all kinds of smaller items on them, to kit it out, maybe even a medical shelving unit too.