Wishlist for small objects to place on maps!

[Donken]

Yes, Great Estnische. I think the roads is exactly what is needed for the railroads, Is it possible to make the roads smaller? The railroad modules are pretty wide already so as long the road "covers" 80% underneath of the railroad width it would be perfect i think. But this is not my area, so beta testers needed on that also so i can adjust the model if needed =)

[Estnische]

Yes, Great Estnische.

Ahh, don't confuse me with the Great Kyth. I am a bumbling learner. 

[Donken]

Well, you are still 10times more experianced then i am Anyway, after you showed the road thingy i came up with this:




So i think that in the hands of an experianced mapmaker this could be very nice
And yes i also have the curves, just havent fixed the collision boxes for them yet, wich was a pain in the ass to fix on the straight modules btw ^^

[Kyth]

Looks great, a nice addition to the landscape,

[Estnische]

Its amazing! Even the tracks move to take account of the rails. Top work.



I have plans for them on the next campaign...

[Donken]

I have some good news and i have som bad news, The good ones are i found out how to make all objects to float on the terrain (look hedgehog screenshot, they are not floating) and the bad news is i tried to fix that on the rail modules but found out that items you want to float can only have 1 collisionbox and the railroad segments are using alot more (so the tanktracks bend over the rails for example). So i cant use floating on the railroad. This means the mapmakers need to do the railway 110% flat during the map creation on the whole rail to make them fit exactly to eachother or i can remove all collision boxes on the rails. What do you guys think?

[Kyth]

I have some good news and i have som bad news, The good ones are i found out how to make all objects to float on the terrain (look hedgehog screenshot, they are not floating) and the bad news is i tried to fix that on the rail modules but found out that items you want to float can only have 1 collisionbox and the railroad segments are using alot more (so the tanktracks bend over the rails for example). So i cant use floating on the railroad. This means the mapmakers need to do the railway 110% flat during the map creation on the whole rail to make them fit exactly to eachother or i can remove all collision boxes on the rails. What do you guys think?

Have to wrap my brain around this one, what's a 'floating' object? And how is it somehow limited to only one collision box?
I suppose you can set a long, narrow contour to an absolute height value, to maintain its 'flatness' for the railway track.

[Estnische]

This means the mapmakers need to do the railway 110% flat during the map creation on the whole rail to make them fit exactly to each other or i can remove all collision boxes on the rails. What do you guys think?

From what happened with the examples I showed of cuttings and embankments for the paved road, I don't think that it is realistic to have a road even 100% flat  . Am I correct in reasoning that the game makes cuttings is to even out the sloping terrain?

For the purpose I would use a railway, the Battle of the Tannenberg Line, it can be dead-straight and dead-flat. But it was built on an embankment to raise it above the marsh. The Soviets used the embankment for bunkers. But I would think 99% of map makers would have to cope with uneven terrain in the railway. Also, have you considered the tiling issue? Where does the railway go at the end of the map?

[Donken]

I will try to explain in pictures.

Picture 1:



Here are all collision boxes added to the config, As you can see the game engine only calculate the segment from the pivot point or s_root in the object editor. So if the road is a little to steep somewhere you get this result. But still, All collisionboxes works on these ones, The tanks drive over it as they should and everything. Very smooth and good transition between ground/railroad.

Picture 2:



Here i have commented out the collisionboxes for the rails and all but not the main box, Here the game engine calculates the whole model when it puts it on the ground, As you can see both ends are at the same level on the ground on each segment. But now there is only one big collisionbox and that makes the whole segment. And that makes whatever going over it very wierd.
Sofar of what i have learned is that all objects can only have one collisionbox when you want them to "float/following" the terrain, As soon as you add one or more collisionboxes it wont work.

Try to see for yourself what i mean, place one plate on the map (following surface as rail in picture 2) and also place something like a bench (not following like rail in picture 1) and put them on a little steep hill or on a very bumpy spot.

One other idea would be to find another type of object/item/vehicle type or something to put the rails on the map? Because now they are just counted as object similar to fences etc in the editor.

And Estniche, Railroads irl today are very flat actually, its only a few % degree up/down per 100m. back then probably not so good but still they should have been pretty flat. But the problem is the whole sloping of terrain, not the small tiny bumps All small bumps is even out by the model if you look at the pictures.
And about tiling issue i have no idea how far you can put stuff. This is kind of the first time i have tried to do something in the map editor so i have completely no experiance with this kind of stuff

[Kyth]

Okay, I'm slowly starting to get it.  I'll try to figure out a work-around,

Meanwhile, just to let you know it's possible to set an area to a uniform height, using "hill" with an absolute value. For example, the contour below is set to an absolute height of 4.5m:

[Donken]

Ah great Kyth, i will test this and see what it cames up with

EDIT: And this was the testing:




Seems are perfect and you cant see the single modules! And all collision works So that was exactly what was needed for the rails!

[norm]

Brilliant! Now all we need are armoured trains to run on them! 

eh? eh/ [nudge nudge]

[Estnische]

Excellent! With new crews, Hannomags, gravestones, hedgerows, sandbags, railways, this game is coming along nicely.

Who was working on urban buildings?

[frinik]

Impressive work Donken!!!!

[lockie]

Railroad looks a very impressive!

[Donken]

Because my lack of knowledge of map making and also im tired of trying to figure out everything i release a beta test here of the railroads. Problem is i think i need to remove all collision boxes or something. I got lots of wierd behavor on the rails sometimes when i have placed 30+ modules on a map. So here it is for everyone to test! The modules are slightly different then on the first screenshot. I removed the modelled ground so now its only the rail and ties (sleepers).

IMPORTANT: read the readme and also this is a "do it yourself" release, You do need to have almost everything unpacked from the games .datapack:s to be able to insert all lines by yourself.

Map Objects

Feel free to ask lots of questions and give lots of suggestions

[Donken]

So no one have tested the rails?

[Kyth]

What weird things happen with 30+ modules on the map?

[Donken]

When i try them out the collisionboxes kind of got twice their size for example. But only half the modules :S Stuff like that happens!

[frinik]

Hi Donken, rather than having railways lines which are more or less likely to be used anyway since we have no trains in the game why not make steel bridges???This is something we really miss in SF!The wooden bridges we have are crappy and more often when you try to make a column of tanks cross a river the bridge will collapse taking down most of tanks with it. Just a suggestion. Not sure if there are takers for the trains tracks?