Duck and Cover

People seem to have trouble making mountain walls, so I figured I'd make a little sample which should be pretty self-explanatory... It works just like the floor tiles, only verticle...

There's the addition of the ROCKtoSAND stuff at the bottom though, but it works just like the normal rock, only it's a bit harder to figure out since the sand hides the bottom... You have to actually read the names (flat, convex, concave) to figure out which one to use where, although once you get used to it you can actually see it yourself.



Additionally I highly recommend using the N, S, E, W tile selection options at the top of the tile list since it'll save you from looking for more "random matches" to avoid the tiles repearting.

Red wrote:People seem to have trouble making mountain walls...

Ain't that the truth! That's something I've been bitching about for some time now.

I recommend using a random batch of plain mountain tiles to initially set up whatever wall(s) you want to do. Remember to use the smaller tiles around the corner tiles (a "4 unit" and a "1 unit" wide tile) just like you would any other walls. Then, during the dress-up phase you can go in and use the lighter colored areas to break up the monotony, and perhaps add some graffiti/tribal art on top of it.

Mountain walls can be a major Occlussion Data headache since they don't use caps between each level of wall, so you have to be very careful and don't be afraid to use the "Cliff Face" tiles that are smaller than 6x6 units. (Those are found under Ruined City/Ruined City Floors/Road/Sloped/Cliff Face.)

Cheers, Red.

OTB

Notice however that if you use caps every "2 mountain walls", they'll match perfectly with normal walls Of course it makes for excessive caps all over the place

Red wrote:Notice however that if you use caps every "2 mountain walls", they'll match perfectly with normal walls Of course it makes for excessive caps all over the place

Yes, you're right. I should have clarified that I meant on mountain walls that are higher than two tiles (i.e. 12 elevations). It does look a bit odd, however, if you have rows of caps sticking out a cliff face...

I've got a map w/a village nestled in some mountians and boy did I ever have problems getting all of it sorted out so that it displayed properly.

OTB

Bascially you have to design the rock to be indepedant of the rest of the map ideally, where you're planting structures (like say a kind of bridge) onto it then use stairs, or holes in it which communicate with holes on the sides then you make the corrdirs move up or down.

It's quite annoying really. and as soon as you need an "exit" on a certain level in the face of the mountain, the WHOLE level needs caps... And quite frankly the caps don't really look good...

Yeah, I tried to sit down w/a basic idea of what I wanted and let the mapping..."flow". To make a long story short, there's an unfinished redesign of that map sitting on my HD because of it...

I guess we should bring up the "Six P's of Mapping":

• Proper
• Planning
• Prevents
• Piss
• Poor
• Performance

OTB

Yeah that's the thing about my maps... I don't plan them - and especially not plan them to be any good from a tactical standpoint. I more or less just do with what seems good, but that's why I never finish any of my maps... (um, ok, so far I started 2 maps, not like that was a lot - and both were vaults..)