Sorry, more map maker queries

[Banquet]

Sorry about this.. I have read the manual.. honest!

I thought I'd load my mostly unfinished map into the scenmaker to see how it was behaving. There seem to be some strange things going on.. can anyone help?

Firstly this one;
The bit with the terrain info tag is supposed to be a cliff..(if u can see the contours in the dodgy screenshot!) The LOS tool looks ok but the slope is only 25 degrees which means a tank could drive up it!

[Banquet]

This shot, is a beach.. nice smooth area for tanks.. again the LOS tool looks fine the slope reads at 33 degrees.. too steep for anything motorised to climb?!

[Banquet]

And finally, I made a terrain effect changing 'lake' to 'impassable water obstacle' for the sea.. but COTA thinks it's a major river?

If anyone can help with any of these conundrums I'd be most grateful! [:)]





edit, apologies for the widescreen shots.. forgot to resize

[Vance]

At the moment I am not at my computer so I can't check with the MapMaker application myself. So I give you some tips from the top of my head.

- First image. Your clif is 60 meters.Look at the Z value, it is 20 meters, perhaps you are not that far up the cliff and the angle is not that high yet. The different layers are very narrow, perhaps you only see the angle at the base and top of the cliff, and not the very narrow spot where the clif is nearly vertical.

- In the MapMaker check the movement tables visually, there you can see if the cliffs are impassible for motorized transport.

- There was a problem with calculating movement tables and visibility tables see here. I don't know if it still applies.

- Remember movement tables have a resolution of 100x100 meters (rather rough). It could be the that the majority of the flat base is in one square, and the majority of the flat top is in the next square, and the vertical cliff is so narrow that it hasn't a majority in any square so that it is missed.

- You renamed the 'lake' layer to 'impassable water obstacle' and it doesn't show up. I think that is stored in the map file. Check in the MapMaker that the layer dialog at the left of the screen says 'impassable water obstacle' for the water layer.

I hope this makes sense and is of some help. Again, I can't check if what I say is right because I have no access to my computer for a while.

[Banquet]

Thanks for the advice Vance. I'm going to try drawing a selection of terrain on another map at various intervals and see if I can see what creates a slope and what doesn't in terms in the 100 meter movement grid (if that is the culprit)

As a further point, I don't have an option for 'Calculate Visibility Tables' Per the manual the option should appear in the map menu between Calc Terrain and Generate Map Draw Cache.. I have nothing there.. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here!

I note there are some improvements scheduled for the map maker in BFTB. I would love to see the following functionality added;

1. Make the cursor keys scroll the map. Then when drawing the terrain the map could be scrolled without having to take the mouse away from what you're doing. (The current cursor key assignment is less useful and could be relegated to shift + cursor key.)

2. Make 'undo' only affect the last corner point added while in tracing mode. If my hand slips while tracing and I cntl z I lose everything I've done in that part. The only way around this is to 'bank' now and again by single clicking to save previous points from undo.

3. An option that shows the 100 meter movement grid. I would suggest an option (similar to G for grid) to display the 100m grid. The same terrain icons as used on the left of the map maker screen could be placed in each grid to show what the computer has recognised as the dominant terrain in that grid. This would really help get maps working well.

4. In conjunction with point 3. An option to drag select an area of terrain and have the computer only calc movement for that area. This would make it easy to adjust the terrain in a certain area and then see the results without the computer having to re-do the entire map each time.

These are admitedly quite minor points, although showing the movement grid would be a great help!

In the meantime ([:D] ) Can someone confirm that the movement grid effectively divides the 1km grid into 100 (squared) 100 meter grids and that a road (for example) passing through that grid will be taken as the terrain for the whole 100m grid, rather than the road extending for 50 or 100 meters on either side?

Also, some explanation of which terrain the computer uses if 2 or more types are present would be very helpful.

cheers

[Arjuna]

Yes we use a 100m Movement and Terrain grid.
 
Agree it would be nice to have a 100m grid overlay. I'll see what can be done.
 
TT3258 - MM - Add 100m grid overlay option

[Banquet]

Arjuna, thanks.. any idea why I'm not get an option for Calculate Visibility Tables?

[Arjuna]

Yes we removed that option from the MapMaker and automatically recalc visibility tables on loading a scenario/saved game. That way we can take into account any dynamic terrain changes. We obviously forgot to update the MM manual. Sorry for the confusion.

[Banquet]

np, thanks for the reply [:)]