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Since the 4km Ughur Dam proved an excessively mammoth task for a budding new mapper such as myself, I am dedicating my summer project to the somewhat smaller mission of recreating the siege of Khe Sanh.

For those not in the know, Khe Sanh was a combat base on the border with North Vietnam, which was assaulted in 1968 by the NVA 304th and 325th divisions. The airbase was eventually abandoned by US Marines and Air Cavalry in July 1968, although they still claimed victory. You can read the wikipedia article about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khe_Sanh.

The basic idea behind this map is an asset-heavy NVA assault against an entrenched US team with good hilltop positions and helicopter mobility, but almost nothing in the way of armour support. So far I've put about 20ish hours into it, getting some good work done on the airbase and hill 950 but I need to iron out the flag positions and style before continuing on the hills.

Here's the current minimap with planned flag locations:

As you can see, it bears a pretty decent resemblance to actual maps of the combat zone, with a leetle artistic license.

My work on the other map has shown me just how much I need to learn about this stuff, so any and all advice is highly welcome. In particular, I need to decide how many flags to have and where to place them, as that informs which of the hills actually make it into the map.

Sneak-peeks of hill 950 and the airbase (heavily, heavily WIP) available on request.

Nice, been talk about making this map in the past but no one bit the bullet on it but good to see you have!

For now I would focus on just getting your terrain modelling and static placement done, once you've got that done I would recommend getting the map totally repainted with either L3DT or GeoControl since BFTPaint isn't at all good, especially for a map like this and will be really worth getting it done properly but first you want your terrain modelling pretty much done before you do it, then you can hand paint over the top of that

Anyways keep it up, will be an awesome map for sure and something very unique for PR!

Thanks Rhino! Looks like I'll have to learn even more tools when I've finished with the terrain modelling...

Looking at the map I feel like Hills 881N, 881S and 861 are too close together to look reasonable. I'm going to try combining 881 North and South to make one contiguous hill.

Where will you have the NVA spawn? On the edges of the map?

BTW Have you considered using DEM Data for the area? Could be worth it, even if scaled down from r/l?

I can create terrain from DEM data for you if you want.

BTW jedi I'm sure you've watched this but if not, worth a watch

Navo wrote:Where will you have the NVA spawn? On the edges of the map?

See, Jedi here was a bit derp that day so, among his other shenanigans, he forgot to write down the NVA spawn into that single unmarked circle in the NW corner.

Navo wrote:Where will you have the NVA spawn? On the edges of the map?

I was having them spawn in the position occupied by 325 division on that map, in a kind of staging area. So far I don't think the benefits of multiple spawn locations for the NVA outweigh the detriment to gameplay from the US having no real frontline. Either way it's not a decision I have to make properly for a while.

Rhino wrote:BTW Have you considered using DEM Data for the area? Could be worth it, even if scaled down from r/l?

You know I considered that for a while, but since the actual size of the area in question is only about 8km by 8km I don't think I'll get good enough resolution to make it worth it. I will take another look into the DEM files today though.

The other problem is of course that the airfield can't really be scaled down without ruining the runway, so there would have to be some flattening either way.

B2P1 wrote:I can create terrain from DEM data for you if you want.

Very kind of you, but I'll give it a go myself first, although I haven't had too much luck in the past.

EDIT: I fixed up the minimap as per CroCop's reminder...

Ye, but the advantages of using DEM Data is simply that you have a good base to work from and can then change it from there, saving you quite a bit of time overall

I'm flailing with the heightmap thing, it's been ages since I did it last and I can't find the tutorial I used before...

Jedimushroom I believe your second name is Jesus, you have listened to my prayers! Hail Jedi!

Pronck wrote:Jedimushroom I believe your second name is Jesus, you have listened to my prayers! Hail Jedi!

FH2 mapping tutorials - Create bf2 heightmaps with Geocontrol

This one perhaps?

That is more generating random terrain rather than importing DEM data but the saving to BF2 are the same.

Probably not the best tut but has the basics: Transport Tycoon Forums ? View topic - How To: Generate Superb Heightmaps

Ah yes, I used this tutorial to get the heightmap.

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-modding-tutorials/69889-how-make-awesome-maps-dem-geo2-image-heavy.html

B2P1 wrote:Ah yes, I used this tutorial to get the heightmap.

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-modding-tutorials/69889-how-make-awesome-maps-dem-geo2-image-heavy.html

Nice to see that people still use that! warms my heart

I've decided to leave the DEM stuff for now, the resolution is too poor to make anything particularly workable out of it. Either way, here is some progress on the top of Hill 689! (Please excuse terrible quality editor screenshots).

Nice work, a few points thou

First of all if your going to be repainting the terrain later then its not worth painting paths down right now and you may also want to do them with a road spline too, will have far more detail

Next you can use the Random Tool with a very low strength to mess up the terrain, then use the smooth tool on top with a low strength to clean it up to give your rocky cliff faces some more life to them

Next you shouldn't mix different types of sandbags, think I can see those "destroyable sandbags" around the helipad at the top which are buggy and are on the not to use static list too. Best to use the vBF2 sandbag series since they are the best we have unfortunately.

Is that a section of destroyable wooden bridge I see between the two trenches on the right? if so its not a good idea to use them since if they are kept destroyable they can be destroyed and even with the dest code removed, they will still require a wreck lightmaps which is a waste on resources.

Also for improving your editor view, follow this tut if you can, missing most of its pics now due to stupid imagehsack but hopefully you can still follow it: https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f189-m ... ution.html