[MAP-WIP] Novoya Forest

[[TW]Swag]

Originally Posted by Xendance

You have to make a "skirt" mesh to be used with the wall.

He is correct. The terrain patches just in front of the wall have been deVis'd and a "cap" was put over the gap in the terrain.

[Nylle]

Trenches is looking very intreasting! Keep up the good work!

[Nightingale]

Ah, I feared that that would be the case. I don't have any modelling experience, so I think I might use create multiple terrains and sculpt them to my liking and have them overlap/intersect the main terrain. Would it cause any problems for gameplay or performance if I did this? The characters would move smoothly over from one terrain to the other, right?

Also, for any that might be interested: I deleted all of the trenchwork I did. I felt that having a giant continuous network of deep trenches favoured the SMGs too much, and would leave little incentive for players to use the trees as cover. It also felt like the map resembled Mamayev greatly, as I had made a number of underground portions to the trenches.

Instead, I have decided that to make a large number of very small, shallow trenches, distributed haphazardly over the map. I hope that this will encourage a "Fallen Fighters" kind of gameplay, where everyone stays down for long periods of time and only rise up to fire. I've already gotten a fair amount of work done on these new trenches, but I'll post a pic later when I feel there is something important enough to share here.

[[TW]Swag]

I would strongly urge you not to use multiple terrains. The lighting system in RO2 is really heavy weight in regards to actual byte wise payload (++many megabytes per terrain). The fill rate for terrain is really high as-is since it occupies so much screen space. Multiple terrains will have a negative impact on the render thread multiplied times two. In a pinch, use BSP like we did. Requires very little modeling experience and it'll get you over the hill. The level designer that put that map together used an alternative material in that section that is shown earlier in the thread to pull off the blending. I salute his "sticktoitiveness" to successfully pull off the illusion.

[Nightingale]

Oh, I see. Thank you.

In that case, would you also recommend that I delete the facade ring I made, and just extend the main terrain in all directions to replace it? (refer to picture)

Spoiler!

And here are some boring pics of not really much going on, if anyone wants to see. I have removed the skydome because it kept getting in the way of doing things.

Spoiler!

Like Harley suggested, I'm trying to find a suitable terrain variation texture to put on this map, but none of the default assets seem to satisfy me. I'm likely to go into Photoshop and make a dirty-speckle overlay texture to use over the snow I already have.

I'm also trying to get some green back into the trees, to make it look as if it has been a few days since it last snowed, and there is only residual snow left on the tree pines. However, I am having a bit of trouble trying to accomplish this in the material editor. This is the best I got so far:

Spoiler!

I want them to look like the trees in this video: FROSTBITE: Red Orchestra Skirmish - YouTube. Could anyone offer some advice on how to do this?

[11_HARLEY_11]

The cheapest and quickest way to do it would be in photoshop. Try adding some white (on a layer) to the tips of the branches first, test it in game and add more until it looks believable. It all hinges on how good your branch texture is to begin with though.

[Jorg Biermann]

I'm pretty sure there's some good photoshop tut out there on how to make good looking snow overlays or something.

[Nightingale]

D'oh, I just remembered that you can export textures. Thanks guys.

EDIT: No, wait. Looks like I'm wrong. I'll go ask Wolvy if he can give me the source texture.

EDIT2: Goddamnit I am blind. Finally found the export button.

[Nightingale]

Hey, I just want to thank everyone who put in some effort into helping me learn the SDK and with building this map. You guys are a great help; I know I definitely would not have learned this much without this community.

So, I re-textured the trees. They look better now, but I'm thinking I might add some more snow. They don't look very good in the pic. I'll show you guys a better picture later.

Spoiler!

As you can see from the picture, after a light rebuild on production quality, the shadows on the trenches look weird as hell. I don't have this problem with any other meshes. I'm suspecting it's due to the unusual properties of the trench materials (I just took the corresponding ones from Mamayev and added a multiply operation to match the colour to my snow) interacting with the terrain. I've had this problem for a while now, and decided that I wanted to get it fixed now.

Also, one more problem: I have some trees (part of a decolayer) which exist outside the edges of my terrain. One is reaaaally far out in the distance. I have no idea how it got there. I haven't tried doing it yet, but I expect I can delete them by extending the terrain sector to the trees and then deleting them, but I just wanted to check that this doesn't mean I have done anything horribly wrong.

[11_HARLEY_11]

Originally Posted by Nightingale

Hey, I just want to thank everyone who put in some effort into helping me learn the SDK and with building this map. You guys are a great help; I know I definitely would not have learned this much without this community.

So, I re-textured the trees. They look better now, but I'm thinking I might add some more snow. They don't look very good in the pic. I'll show you guys a better picture later.

Spoiler!

As you can see from the picture, after a light rebuild on production quality, the shadows on the trenches look weird as hell. I don't have this problem with any other meshes. I'm suspecting it's due to the unusual properties of the trench materials (I just took the corresponding ones from Mamayev and added a multiply operation to match the colour to my snow) interacting with the terrain. I've had this problem for a while now, and decided that I wanted to get it fixed now.

Also, one more problem: I have some trees (part of a decolayer) which exist outside the edges of my terrain. One is reaaaally far out in the distance. I have no idea how it got there. I haven't tried doing it yet, but I expect I can delete them by extending the terrain sector to the trees and then deleting them, but I just wanted to check that this doesn't mean I have done anything horribly wrong.

Hard to tell from the pic but the trees do look better. A better pic will be good.

Are the trenches your own mesh? If they are, do you have a second set of uv's for the shadow map? If not that could be the problem. If it's a TW mesh I don't know what it could be. Maybe turn off 'cast dynamic shadows' for each trench mesh in their properties.

As for the rogue tree...

[Nylle]

This map really gives me that 'Finnish winter war' feeling. Thats a very exiting looking log bunker you got there too.
Cheers!

[Nightingale]

Thanks Nylle.

A better picture of the new trees:

Spoiler!

I was sort of hoping that a TWI staff member familiar with Mamayev's trench meshes might post here telling me what I did wrong, but I suppose they must have their hands full with everything else going on right now. Or maybe I am just committing a very common error. Either way, fiddling with the dynamic lighting doesn't seem to help.

So instead, maybe some of you WWII military history geeks could assist on the historical accuracy front? I want to make a realistic map, but I'm not sure if I am knowledgeable enough to do so.

Some background information first: The map is a German Defensive set in early May 1943, just after Operation Little Saturn. The small German outpost in Novoya Forest near Belgorod must hold out against the approaching Soviet forces. It is a mild 2*C, and visibility is very poor.

And now, some questions:

1.) Would a small outpost in this kind of woodland set up tank traps?

2.) Aside from an ammunition bunker and radio bunker, what other kinds of "special-purpose buildings" would a lightly-fortified outpost like this have? I can't seem to think of any other ideas for objectives after the preliminary set of trenches.

3.) Would it be unrealistic if this outpost had no vehicle-accessible roads leading out of it?

4.) Did either side have enough artillery power to spare a rocket barrage or two for a small skirmish like this?

5.) Assuming that the outpost was built in January 1943, would the Germans have built wooden bunkers for the men to sleep in? Or did they just pitch up their tents on the snow and keep warm some other way?

[=GG= Mr Moe]

These are my opinions...

Originally Posted by Nightingale

1.) Would a small outpost in this kind of woodland set up tank traps?

Unlikely, too easy for infantry to attack tanks in an area like this with all sorts of small weapons and tanks probably wouldn't want to venture inside. Still possible though.

2.) Aside from an ammunition bunker and radio bunker, what other kinds of "special-purpose buildings" would a lightly-fortified outpost like this have? I can't seem to think of any other ideas for objectives after the preliminary set of trenches.

Some sort of covered foxholes?

3.) Would it be unrealistic if this outpost had no vehicle-accessible roads leading out of it?

I don't think so but probably doesn't matter.

4.) Did either side have enough artillery power to spare a rocket barrage or two for a small skirmish like this?

I would think there is always a chance of mortars.

5.) Assuming that the outpost was built in January 1943, would the Germans have built wooden bunkers for the men to sleep in? Or did they just pitch up their tents on the snow and keep warm some other way?

Probably have dug holes in the ground for protection from the elements and the enemy. Maybe buildings?

[Nightingale]

Thanks for the input, Moe. I think I have a better idea of what the map will look like now.

SDK question now; is there a way to make the terrain's wireframe appear as a different colour? I've put a hundred holes in the terrain for foxeholes, but it's almost impossible to see these holes in the orthographic wireframe viewports because the terrain wirefrom colour is almost the same as the grid colour. It's very tedious to line up the foxhole meshes this way. I tried opening the terrain properties and changing all 3 colour boxes to green, but nothing has changed. It should be possible, if I have done my Googling correctly.

[Calumhm]

In the viewport settings for your perspective viewports, you could turn off Show Grid or whatever it's called.

Btw, earlier in the thread, I saw you saying you'd deleted your Skydome because it was getting in your way all the time. - I suggest you familiarise yourself with these editor buttons:

Spoiler!

[Nightingale]

I realized that, due to the unique properties of the trench meshes, you need to use a very particular material with them or else you get weird looking stuff when you build the lighting. I'm not nearly experienced enough to make my own trench materials, so I opted to use the dirt ones. I chose dirt over the dirty ice as in Mamayev, because Novoya is set during early spring, where the snow is beginning to melt.

I mixed up a snow on dead grass texture and added a few splotches onto the terrain. I still have to alter the snow material to match the texture I made, but I think the transition is pretty good. I don't know if I like it or not. What do you guys think?

Spoiler!

I tried using the dirt material provided to smooth out the transition from snow to dirt, but for some reason when I paint it onto the terrain, this happens (refer to picture below). I'm pretty sure that the snow and dead grass material does not align to the terrain grid, so why the dirt material does this is a mystery to me. What exactly is causing this to happen?

Spoiler!

[Catalavos]

Maybe try to recompile shaders? (the RS button in the terrain editing tool, right side column)

[Nightingale]

Didn't work.

I even tried making a new material that consisted solely of the texture samples of the diffuse and normal maps, but it also has the same problem. It could be that all of the terrain textures are actually like this, and I am only noticing it with the dirt because it is drastically different from the colours of the snow?

[=GG= Mr Moe]

You mean the rectangular looking areas?

[Nightingale]

Yes, those. Might you now what is causing them to look like that?