[Map] Karachi (2km) [WIP]

[CobraHumvee]

Name: Karachi
Location: Karachi, Pakistan
Size: 2km
Factions: Bluefor vs. Taliban (possibly MEC vs. Taliban)
Game Play Type: infantry, APC, Helicopter Trans

This map will be an insurgency with some undecided faction against the Taliban. It is early WIP, as I haven't even placed all the buildings yet but I wanted to show what I have been up to.

The first pic is the overlay i am using for this map and the current minimap.

The rest of the pics are from the southeast corner city where I have pretty much placed all the buildings, and the Bluefor main in the SW corner. I am hoping that with the dead space in the middle of the map that I will get away with my city size but we will see. Also the third pic is the building from the map "warlord" from BF2SF, is this building allowed?

[Psyrus]

I wish there was some way for community members to collaborate on mapping projects. Over the years I must've seen 50-100 maps being started and given-up-on here on the forums. They all look so promising but as the devs say, [not sure exactly but it goes a little like:] it takes about a year for a first time mapper to get a map ready for PR standards. In that year a lot of people lose focus or their HDDs crash or they run into an editor error they can't solve and the map dies. If we instead had 5-10 people working on a single map at a time, I suspect progress would be much faster and there would be less chance of the map dying off.

In any case, I'm rambling a bit... I wish you all the best in your mapping experience CobraHumvee!!!

[LITOralis.nMd]

First off, that look really promising.

And to Pysrus, it is possible using any number of repository programs,
The single limitation is this: when one mapper has checked out files, no other mapper can access the files.
Second part of this limitation is the server and clients' upload/download speeds. Dev 1 checks out files, all his saves have to be reuploaded, and only then can another developer check in and download the files.

This isn't a problem if say you have one developer in NY, one in Germany and one in Australia, but is a problem for those with slower internet connections or who all live in similar timezone, work on similar schedules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembla using SVN would probably work well, imho.

[zombie-yellow]

Looking forward to this map Seems similar to Fallujah

[CobraHumvee]

Progress continues slowly started to add the buildings for the main block of the city. And yes I have a backup of my map, no worries guys.

[Rudd]

don't use the big grey building on the right with loads of windows if you can help it, it's not well optimised; you can get away with it if you must, but gotta be careful

[zombie-yellow]

Why you don't remove all those broken/laggy/unoptimised/whatever statics ? Lot of mappers get tricked by them

[Rudd]

because at some point mappers used them before the issues were highlighted, removing them is problematic - especially for maps by mappers who have left the team.

the static in question isn't the worst, just keep an eye on it. Look at Op Marlin, it's used it and is fine, but the same static has caused problems on other maps; mainly due to the complicated colmesh iirc. Use a subsitute if possible, or just be careful if not, my advice is to dump it to avoid painful optimising later

[Ason]

because at some point mappers used them before the issues were highlighted, removing them is problematic - especially for maps by mappers who have left the team.

the static in question isn't the worst, just keep an eye on it. Look at Op Marlin, it's used it and is fine, but the same static has caused problems on other maps; mainly due to the complicated colmesh iirc. Use a subsitute if possible, or just be careful if not, my advice is to dump it to avoid painful optimising later

Hey, I was thinking of maybe using that one, my question is what do you mean by "has caused problems" and "be careful". What problems can it cause? Crash the map on load or something like that?

[Rudd]

more performance issues really, particularly server side if there are lots of trees and enterables on the map

[CobraHumvee]

Thanks for the feedback Rudd I will be replacing the buildings in question.

[Felix]

It would be cool if you tried to make the roads really tight with buildings everywhere. And ofc lots of small tight alleys with minicover everywhere. The two coolest cities in PR are; the one on Black Gold and the one on Shija Valley. You should study them hard to see what makes them fun to play and how they look realistic. Making another city like Beirut or Muttrah wouldn't be that cool in my opinion, they don't look good, aren't fun to play, and doesn't look very realistic (in my opinion).

[CobraHumvee]

Bumped for justice with some new pics. Probably half done placing the basic city layout, not including the separate village in the nw of the map.

[Rudd]

Nice, I like how you haven't fallen into the common trap of putting enterables everywhere, your setup looks quite optimal.

The issues you are going to find are the same as I had on burning Sands I think, you're going to need lots of original ways of filling up those blocks that have a sizable hole in them, quite frankly I ran out of ideas pretty fast.

You're also going to want to think about roads soon, planning ahead is crucial. There are basically 2 systems to use, one is the one from Muttrah and to a lesser degree, Burning sands where road splines are placed on top of your terrain textures, the editor will burn these into the colourmaps. This has the advantage of being very easily modified (if you have the editor files for your map, which you obviously do)
The other system can produce a more realistic effect and also potentially avoid the problems of road splines, and that is to use only a detail texture. This pretty much requires the use of pavement statics (either vbf2 or PR's) So you'll end up doing quite a bit of modification to your current setup to make it work with those pavements I think.

If you want to include a less dense area of housing, i recommend looking at Fallujah west and Black Gold for guidance (however do NOT use the afghan statics like in Fallujah west, or you'll get punished by poor performance and too many lightmaps later)

[CobraHumvee]

Yeah i was wondering to myself "what in the world am I going to do with all these empty blocks", we will see how that goes. As far as roads i would like to use the sidewalk and dividers from fallujah and use a detail texture for the road, my only concern is that the pavement will take up too many objects. How many objects is optimal on a 2km map?

[Ason]

Hey Rudd, about the trap of too many enterables, do you think the Dragon fly city is a good max limit to follow ?

[Rudd]

Hey Rudd, about the trap of too many enterables, do you think the Dragon fly city is a good max limit to follow ?

honestly I don't think Dragonfly is a particularly good example to follow in general, but had to follow its design to an extent due to lack of non-enterable versions of the buildings

it would have been better if teh enterables were better spaced apart to encourage more firefights and use of street furniture for cover

on a middle eastern map its a good idea to put non-enterables between enterables to space out the performance impact of the enterables as well as save lightmap space later

on a russian grozny type map, we're a bit more limited by lack of non-enterable buildings for that theater, so my advice is just to space them out as much as possible without them looking silly. I think the setup I've seen on your screenshots does this quite well.

[Ason]

honestly I don't think Dragonfly is a particularly good example to follow in general, but had to follow its design to an extent due to lack of non-enterable versions of the buildings

it would have been better if teh enterables were better spaced apart to encourage more firefights and use of street furniture for cover

on a middle eastern map its a good idea to put non-enterables between enterables to space out the performance impact of the enterables as well as save lightmap space later

on a russian grozny type map, we're a bit more limited by lack of non-enterable buildings for that theater, so my advice is just to space them out as much as possible without them looking silly. I think the setup I've seen on your screenshots does this quite well.

Alright thanks

[waldov]

This map sounds good looking forward to a map with MEC vs insurgents (for once).