I've been trying some things to make good looking hills and cliffs that stop infantry and vehicles from going up. http://users.telenet.be/samhannes/mapping/emp_bushed/test/ Obviously they are not part of the map, but i'll be making terrain similar to these examples for the entire map. I could use a better model for the last screenshot though. I've used fences to see how it looks, but it doesn't look like real ... whatever they're called.
all look great excpet for the fences, looks awkward and don't make the bottom so dipped, makes for weird driving issues with the empires being in the older engine
Lol. Even all of those pictures look awesome. :D And naturally the last picture's fences are to prevent land sliding. Duuuuh. ;P Like preventing all those rocks falling down and the land masses sliding slowly down the hill with rain water. Don't say those don't fit in. :D They have a purpose there. Anyway. I doubt you need any higher mountains than that because take a look in Slaughtered at those hills which are facing that small pond. Not those cliffs which are next to the bridge but those others at the east side of the map. You can somehow drive those cliffs up with 3-phase jeep and it requires quite much speed. But I still think that you could add some trees, bushes, rocks and all that kind of things at the edge of the map to prevent people getting too high.
normally landside fences are horizontal and embeded in the rock face, in order to catch the rocks on the way down. At least, thats how the Swiss do it, and they have some of the worst land slide issues since their country is built on mountain sides.
You are correct that it doesn't look right though. But the fence model was the closest thing i could find to landslide obstacles.
There's no progress to report. I'm in the middle of my final exams of my last year at college, and all my mapping time has gone into fine tuning emp_arid. Also, this map is more like a project, even with time it would take many, many, many months.
Well vehicletraining rc6 is finished, and only needs to be compiled (takes less then 7 minutes these days, which confuses the hell out of me cause it used to take like 3 hours). I found arid_rc4 as well. Apparantly i did make it at some point, and i'll be looking at it this afternoon to see how far i got before i forgot all about it. I did plan on dropping this map (emp_bush) at first, but when i opened it in hammer i couldn't stop thinking that the small part that i did have, wasn't all that bad, so i will continue working on it one of the following days hopefully. It might get delayed cause i'm searching for a job right now and i want to make an empires trailer as well. I'll let you know when work continues.
As promised here's a notification. Because most of my maps seem to crash sometimes i'm not so eager to spend a lot of time on a map before releasing it, knowing it might be all for nothing. So from now on i'll start releasing a lot earlier, when the gameplay is already close to what it should be, but without details added to the map. So i should be able to put a working version of this map (see screenshot first post) online before tomorrow evening. It won't look as good as the final version will (read should) be, but if this one crashes as well at least i know i don't have to continue working on it. I have been experimenting with some other stuff trying to create a nice looking map, but of course none of this will be in this first version: http://users.telenet.be/samhannes/mapping/emp_bush/emp_bushed30014.jpg http://users.telenet.be/samhannes/mapping/emp_bush/emp_bushed30016.jpg EDIT: alpha 1 is compiled and uploaded. One ref (the right ref in the south middle area) doesn't work though. http://rapidshare.com/files/131891591/emp_bush_alpha.rar
Looks quite pretty already. One question though: why are you using intersecting displacements rather than overlays in this screenshot?
I'm trying to create some sort of dense low plantlife effect. The idea is that the lower part of weels, feet, ... etc will be 'covered' by plants by having them stand on the underground, with the non solid plant texture a little higher But i'm not there yet, that was just my first attempt