Pictorial Map Building

[Mad Russian]

It's time to see what we want our fields to look like. By that I mean the underlying color of the dirt.

Have you ever thought about the color of the dirt in an area before when you were making your maps?

PCO has two different dirt/mud colors.

My battle takes place in April in Northern Germany so the ground conditions are are mud. The textures can be shown to be either mud or ground in either a dark brown or a light tan.

Since the ground would be wet and wet ground is darker I'm going to use the darker textures for the fields.

I'm going to use the tiled_mud01 and Plowed_Field_Ryan textures.


Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here are the 7 fields with their settings. Assigning textures can be done in any order and they can be in any order on the list. I started with fields because they are the most numerous on features on the map.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I changed the texture of Field 6 to mud1. I wanted a bit more variety and something dark.

Here are what the fields look like in the SceneEditor.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Woods come in two forms. Light Woods and Heavy Woods. Both come in an LOD version.

Light Woods and Light Woods LOD both have the same texture and identical settings so the textures on the map look the same and you can't tell where the 3D trees and the LOD versions change over.

The same textures and settings used with the Heavy Woods and Heavy Woods LOD are also the same.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is the ingame shot of the fields.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

The ingame screen shot of the heavy woods and heavy woods LOD textures.

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MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is the ingame screen shot for the village. It shows the light woods and light woods LOD as well as the building locations.

The building locations are the light tan color.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

That is all the textures for this map. Now we'll move down to adding the structures.

The Structures are a different action altogether. There are two kinds of structures; specific and auto-genned.

A specific structure is just what it says it is. A specific tree, bush, building, tractor, etc. This type of structure is not color dependent.

An auto-genned structure is a structure that you want to clone. The auto-gen box will accept 999999 as the maximum number of cloned structures for a single color on the map. I don't know if MM will actually take that number or not. I would think not. The auto-gen number is the number of cloned items in a 1km square area. I would think MM would crash if I put 999,999 on the map for any large size area. The largest number of clones that I can remember using is about 20,000 and that's a lot.

The Structures work area has a place for you to name your structure. You can either use the name of the structure as given in the structures lists or you can name it whatever you like. If you want to make this map a random available map it helps to give some specific names to certain structures that will help the TacAI assign victory locations.

To the right of the name box is the folder for selecting whatever structure you would want to add to the map.

To the right of the structure selection folder tab is the check mark that allows you to save the structure to the map or save any changes you've made.

Next to the save check is the delete tab.

Under the name box is the structure type drop down box. This allows you to select what type of structure you're adding and have it's characteristics applied to the structure you've chosen.

The X to the right of that is whether the structure is a terrain "cut out" or not. You would check this box if your structure cuts into the terrain. This is for structures like foxholes and trenches.

The Alpha value is for vegetation structures and determines how full or thin the image is. This value can be set between 1 and 255. 1 being full vegetation and 255 being extremely sparse vegetation.

The H check box is to allow you to tell the map that the structure "Has Height". For instance a bridge over a river.

The N check box is for normalizing structures to the slope of the terrain the structure is sitting on. If you want a cow to stand naturally on a hill slope for instance you would select the N box when putting a cow on your map.

The B check box is for billboard graphics. Checking this box has the billboard structures always facing the camera.

Below the Alpha box is the Min box. This section of the structures work area is for auto-genning. To clone the structure you are getting ready to create. In the Alpha box you put the minimum distance between objects you are wanting to add to the map.

The C selection box means that the auto-genned structures will conform to the color you select for it and only generate structures in that specific color.

The sink box is for sinking a structure into the surround terrain. This is useful if you have more than one water structure on the the map at different terrain heights.

The density value box is directly below the minimum distance box. This is the number of structures MM will put in a 1km square area on the map.

To the right of the density box is the random orientation box. This allows you to set the orientation to the map of the structures you are adding.

The C selection button is where you can clear the color you have selected for the auto-genn.

The color box is where you set the map color to place your auto-genned clone structures. This color can be reset by clicking on the color in the box and then clicking on the new destination color.

Good Hunting.

MR


Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

There are reasons to use both specific structures and auto-genned ones.

A specific structure needs to meet a specific need. One building in one exact spot. One bridge at the spot on the river where the road joins the river on both sides. That kind of thing.

A cloned structure, an auto-genned structure type is most often done with trees. If you think a forest  of 7000 actual trees on the map you wouldn't want to place them 1 tree at a time. Well, you might, I don't. So you would tell MM to give you a four thousand trees of one type. A thousand of another and two thousand of still another. This would give you 7,000 actual trees, represented by 3 tree types, in random placement.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

The list of different structures is long and gives a map maker the ability to create a wide variety of structural support for his basic maps.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Selecting a structure is a simple process.

1) Click the Structure Selection Folder to the right of the structure name.
2) Open the structure folder that holds the structure you want to add to the map.
3) Double click the stucture to select it.
4) Click on the name tab and it will take the file name for the structure you have selected. You can give a structure a unique name if you want it to be considered for a victory location in a random map setting.
5) Select the structure type from the drop down menu.
6) Click the save structure check tab.

You have now selected, named and given the attributes to your structure. Once you click the save structure check tab you will move your mouse pointer over the map and click where you want to place the structure.



Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

The mouse pointer turns into a cross hairs when you move it to the map.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Once you click on the map the structure is set and you can orient the structure in any direction you want. Total time for selecting a single structure about 2 minutes. If you give the structure a unique name add typing in the name to the time it takes to create a structure.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

To move any structure on the map you can left click to select it and hold the mouse button down while the pointer is over the structure. Then drag it where you want it. The map in the work area can be zoomed for more detailed height/terrain feature information to help with placement.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

To make clones of any structure on the map simply select it - by clicking on it on the map or in the structure list box, hold down the shift key and click on the map where you want that structure to appear.

As you can see I hand planted every one of those trees along the road. I'll have to check in the Scene Editor to see how close they are to the road or if they need to be reset back a bit.


Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

In the very upper right hand corner of this map is the outer edge of a village. I've added some individual pine trees there as well.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Here is a screens shot showing where I've hand placed these pine trees.

All the blue squares represent a single pine tree.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Once I start putting trees on the map I start doing full Mega Texture saves to see how it will look with them in all phases of the game.

If you don't do a Mega Texture save the game won't see the trees correctly on the minimap or in the game. I never know when I want to see something like it will be so, for me personally, when I start adding trees then I start doing Mega Texture saves too.

This screen shot gives me the information about the save. It shows how long it took and how many structures were generated. In this case the only structures on the map at this point are the pine trees that I've hand positioned.

It also shows that I've applied 11 textures to the map.

The last screen shot I took of a save showed taking 474 seconds. This one with the 60 trees shows to have taken 804 seconds. Using a Mega Texture save with structures on the map can take quite a bit longer at times.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

When you are done with the save it asks if you want to go to SceneEditor to view the results. This is a form of what the map will look like but not exact.

In this case I want to see how close I have my trees to their final position. I can make minute adjustments with SceneEditor. Again, Stridor made MM as simple as possible to use and that includes tying it in with SceneEditor and making changes to SceneEditor as well to work closely with MM to get the simplest possible method for creating and implementing changes to your maps.

Here are the trees positioned in SceneEditor.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Now it's time to make a lot of trees. To clone a whole bunch of trees at once. What we term Auto-Genning them.

Here you can see that I've selected to have a density per km of 800 large pine trees.

When Auto-Genning trees you should leave the structure type as none. If you don't it will take much longer for the program to create the map.

You can see that I've selected the color of the area on my map that I want these trees to appear in.

NOTE: When auto-genning trees make sure that the alpha number is '1' and that the structure type is 'None'. If there is anything else in those two boxes Mega-Texture save could take HOURS to complete. MM will put those data fields in the game. If you tell it to put them in the game it will do that too. Over and above what it would give them.

Good Hunting.

MR