I have worked on 6 desktop and laptop computers in the last 4 weekends (major cleanup and repair and all for free). Well, from here on out, I will not be working on anyone's computers until the Hickory Branch MOD is done.
back to map making...I now have a lot of ground dirt textures as well as ground grass textures...one step closer
I made and placed over 200 ground tiles and, before I started the post map tiles generation effort, I am not entirely content with it. So, this weekend, I will continue to be busy with the map making effort.
I am happy with the new map so far. It took about 380 ground tiles. *whew* That's a whole lot of tiles, in case you don't know. I had to use a picture editing program to remove the tile edge lines for each side of most of the 380 tiles. Plus, I had to 'round' the corners so there are no square corners in the areas made by groups of tiles; I even made the straight lines formed by groups of tiles to be 'wavy' so the grass and dirt areas have more of a natural look to them; and I slightly modified the texture of each individual tile or, in some cases, modified the look of the texture for a group of tiles as I progressed through building the new outdoor map. Anyway, I am content with it now. Am I done with it? Nope. *laugh* Now, I get to add stone walls, some small boulders and some really big foot-busting rocks, and, as well, some building ruins. And, these additions for my mod are not pre-made; each item has to be built, one at a time, and requires assembly. When I finish this set of tasks, I will add some stairs and, maybe, an underground corridor or two. After that, I can finish re-texturizing the Mausoleum, add it to the map and add Ax Thrower's special map he made for my mod. Finally, once all is done, there will be the arduous task of cropping the completed map (trial and error with huge maps) to be a specific size to allow software to properly disassemble the big map in to a multitude of small maps.
If they're anything like coffee, it really depends on how you grind them. My ground coffee has been like dishwater lately.
I'll be posting an update here. Update: Hickory Branch will be one entire single big map, including the underground maps.
This weekend, I will use my high rez digital camera to take lots of pictures of trees at a distance to be used as masks, generate lines of trees and add the trees to the edges of my main map.
Use the game's tree models, K! There's several of them and you can size or rotate them as you like. Much more interactive.