Zephyr Net

Hi All:

I decided to do a little work with the terrain PICs (tiles) for the North Vietnam map -- nothing fancy, just add a bit of detail to break up the monotonous expanses of green that dominate that terrain and give the landscape the quilt-like appearance that I've observed in aerial photos of NVN. I successfully edited all the TVI PICs (TVI0.PIC to TVI41.PIC), and the results have been successful -- just what I wanted.

I've encountered just one minor problem: there appears to be a missing tile -- a tile that occurs every so often in the NVN map for areas that have no features (no rivers, coasts, roads, islands. or mountains) and that doesn't carry any of the enhancements I've made. This tile remains a flat green.

There are six tiles in the TVI set (# 15, 16, 29, 30, 31, 32) that are for "basic plains," but my enhanced versions aren't being used for certain flat expanses. I'm beginning to suspect that the "missing tile" areas of the map might actually be "no tile" areas.

So, does anyone with more experience editing terrains know what the problem is with this "missing tile"? Is there a way to edit the NVN terrain to force FA to use tiles for certain areas of the map?

Thanks,

Eric L. Howes

They are indeed no tile areas.

You have to locate the tile location and SEE IF YOU CAN ADD A TILE TO THAT LOCATION...

I say it this way, because it may be there simply because the map will not hold any additional tiles, as I have found with my korea map work that there is an absolute max number of tiles you can add to the map before it crashes...

How about posting some screenshots of this tile and giving me the total number of tiles in the MM file...

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CAG:

Thanks for confirming what I suspected. And thanks for the tip that the tile layout is in the MM file. I've now figured out how the tile layout works and am experimenting with adding tiles to missing locations -- a bit of a laborious task.

The "missing tile" is easy enough to spot once you've loaded my custom tile set. Download the latest NVN-MAP package:

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/fa/NAM-MAPS.zip

Then simply load the NVN-TEXT.LIB. (You can use it with the default FA NVN map or one of my custom maps.) At about 10,000 ft the "missing tile" is easy spot. One good location is just north of Haiphong. There's another just north of Hanoi. And if you fly around, the other locations become apparent as well.

By my count there are 1235 active tiles in the default NVN map. If you have an estimate as to how many tiles the map might hold (or any other advice for that matter), it would be most appreciated.

Best,

Eric L. Howes

CAG:

OK, I've now filled in most of the missing tiles. There are still some missing tiles along the northern and southwestern edges of the map, but those locations are rarely or never used. Plus, it's quite believable that those areas would be devoid of the farmland appearance that my custom tiles give the landscape.

All told I added 202 tiles (or, rather, the same tile to 202 spots on the map). The map/terrain appears to be completely stable, but I still need to do some testing with missions to verify that.

Thanks for the assistance.

Eric L. Howes

You should do multiplayer testing as well, since that interface has different limitations...

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