[Question] Large map types

[moj]

In theory, would it be possible to create a useable, mostly urban map of a similar size to Kashan or Qinling, or would there just be too much stuff there resulting in a ton of lag?

I'm thinking of learning how to make maps, this (if possible) would be my eventual goal.

[J.F.Leusch69]

i think its possible, but the important points are:

- view distance
- density

[Hans Martin Slayer]

why destiny?



on top: i guess the sheer amount of statics you'd need would cause serious lag, but never tried it on scale 4. pretty sure you'd never get it to look nice. let alone things like ladder limit, networkable limit..

also, it would look very repetitive, after all you've got a limited 'static pool' and at that size it's unavoidable to use the same static over and over and over again..

guess there are way more issues you'd run into but i don't want to discourage you. - a serious urban environment on a scale 4 map would be cool, but it has to be limited.. imho there's no way to create a urban env that large

maybe rather go with 2 medium type towns, with desert/ villages etcetc in between, something like that.


on the plus side though, it would be quite flat, wich is good for scale 4 maps.

[moj]

Thanks for yr input, folks

So if (eventually) I go for a large scale, say 50% urban map set in China (think Sunset but bigger and not as centered) it might work? I just needed to know that it's worthwhile persuing this, sounds like it might be worth a shot.

Hans, I really like yr idea of 2 seperated towns on one map.

[Rhino]

its possible yes, but ehhh, having a 1024x2 map filled with statics is hard enough let alone performance issues.

Hard part is, keeping each block in the city of that size as unique as possible while also keeping them detailed, having repated blocks of the same stuff over and over again you can only really get away with 2x or at max 3 times, do it more and the map feels like ****, why have such a size if its all going to be the same? the next problem is to get it all unique and detailed, takes a hell of a lot of time, even if you built the city in blocks on the grid, which muttrah wasn't so took fecking ages to get everything to merry up, normally you can snap everything to the grid and take 1/4 of the time than if you decide to stry off it like I had to for muttrah

now performance wise, the problem wouldn't necessary be how many overall statics you have in your map but the amount of lightmaps needed for all of them, buildings for the most part need large lightmaps, large lightmaps = large amount of memory usage, large amount of memory usage means long load times and for most players, it would probably fill up all there ram and they would lag to ****. Having lots of statics with no LMs dose take up recorces with mesh memory etc, but for client side this isn't so much of a problem, its more of a problem for the servers that have to deal with the vast number of collision meshes over this vast area, taking into account every player, bullet etc.

So to do this, you need:

• a hell of a lot of time (muttrah took me over a year...)
• a fast as hell PC (I have a pretty damn good PC, and with lightmaps on muttrah, it still lags in the editor for me)
• a plan before hand on what you want exactly what the map to be and how you are going to go about making this map as efficient as possible performance wise and how you plan on doing stuff as quickly as possible so you are not working on it forever

All in all, if you try this, best of luck, your going to need it

[IronTaxi]

big limiter in my opinion is we only have 64 players on one server and city that size would spread out the battle soo much... there would rarely be any large engagements...

you have to consider that urban areas actually make combat closer by their very nature.. buildings act as walls to both movement and fire.. going A to B in a city and on flat terrain is totally different..

i dont think we have enough boots on the ground to even consider a 4x urban map...

[moj]

Holy ****, Rhino. That's a hell of a lot to be dealing with, but it definitely paid off with Muttrah since it is the dog's. Kudos to you, sir.

I guess I'll plan to go for an urban area, comparable to that of Muttrah at the most, whether I actually get that far or not only time will tell. I'll scrap the idea of using the largest map size. I do however really like the idea of a map containing a pair of Sunset City type towns, but with some of the new Muttrah statics thrown in.

All in all, I just want to make a good PLA map, with a decent urban element. Sunset doesn't quite do it for me. Of course, I'll need to find somewhere appropriate with Google Earth too, for that added realism. Thank you all for your helpful advice, now I need to get started on the tutorials.

[marcoelnk]

J.F.Leusch69;858432']
- destiny

haha
i assume you mean density... good one