Profile of OlaHaldor

I've had a few games on this vs AI. I love it. Could easily be released with the game.

I'm not going to allow vehicles to go just anywhere. There are clearly some issues with the landscape which I'll take care of.

For instance, right now one base is totally cut off from a couple of sectors because of the mountain you see in the front left of the previous screenshot. I have to give way for vehicles and infantry to go there, so it's like on the other base.


I'm also thinking of making it harder for the ones that wanna take shortcuts that are too obvious by cutting them off with deep snow.


Who knows how this map will be in the end. I see it as a workshop to learn different aspects of map making.

I have no idea! I'm just checking the world builder really, and want to make something cool along the way.

I'm streming on Twitch at the moment too if anyone wanna see what's going on.

http://www.twitch.tv/olahaldor/

I wanna share the journey from planning to a playable map. Whether it'll ever be "final", at least it will teach me a lot for future maps.


I started making a terrain in World Machine, exported as a TGA heightmap.



This was then taken into World builder with testing and tweaking of heigt mapping in order to get rid of some insane bugs as seen below. Not sure if it's possible for Relic to fix this ?


It looks like I can't make the tall mountains I had hoped for, but I think it'll be a bit interesting anyway.

I made a screenshot of the terrain that came in nice in the end, and started drawing and testing layouts. So far this is what I've got. Feedback and comments are welcome!



Here's how it finally came in, and with sectors drawed in using splines.




Before I add objects I want to texture the terrain so I get a general feeling for the map.

The more I work with World builder, I wish it supported tablets, so I could paint different opacity or brush size just by using the pressure sensitive stylus. Navigation using the Wacom tablet is also impossible as the camera view flips out of control the instant I press ALT. But navigation using the mouse and then painting textures using the stylus is a big win in any case!

Digging some more than last night, I found it under Scenario > Atmosphere Properties > Weather.

It's not the most intuitive way to do, so the quickest way is to import settings from a preset. Un-check everything except weather, and from there adjust to your liking.


Making ice is easier than I thought.
Make a body of water, open Scenario > Terrain Properties. At the bottom, under Ice, check the box next to Map uses ice.


Set up the tiling scale to 2 for all textures to get you started.
The tint should have an icy colored look as well.

Now you can paint the ice effects in on your water bodies. Use less strength to gain control over where the ice is cracked and worn, melting or refreezing.


To get the best out of the ice effect you should play around with the sun position and direction in order to get the specular highlights and reflection hitting the ice surface.