[Map] Colesberg (4km) [WIP]

[Scot]

Looks like an awesome start, keep up the good work

[Rhino]

I know that's what other maps do, but I've done a lot of fiddling:

Having the view distance 500 more then the maximum distance you can see in fog doesn't help much with gun battles, because no one can see anything past that point. However it's not wasted, the main purpose is that the player can see the grey outlines of hills in the distance which is helpful for finding your way around and feels more realistic. Essentially my level has a real draw distance of 500 for everything. Now I've tested this and usually having more then 150 undergrowth draw distance would slow everything way down, but by turning the overgrowth draw distance down to 500 (which is where things disappear in the fog anyway) I can bring the undergrowth up to 500 and things run really smooth. I'll have to get you a copy and also try it out on other peoples computers to test this more thoroughly though I guess. However you are right about the fog, I'll have to make it stop at less than 500 because it's exponential or something. Thanks!

the gfx card still renders statics, terrain etc behind the fog like you said, you can see the outlines of the hills in the fog, yes but is that really worth all the resource its going to take up, where you could take up the same resource by having a 700 or 800m view distance with the overgrowth rendering upto there as well where vehicles really need that kinda view distance to play out realistically.

[supahpingi]

This map reminds me of the stalker clear sky swamp

[PikminDoctor]

the gfx card still renders statics, terrain etc behind the fog like you said, you can see the outlines of the hills in the fog, yes but is that really worth all the resource its going to take up, where you could take up the same resource by having a 700 or 800m view distance with the overgrowth rendering upto there as well where vehicles really need that kinda view distance to play out realistically.

As there aren't loads of statics on this map like in urban battles having the view distance really high has very little effect on the performance if undergrowth and overgrowth are lower. All that's really happening past the fog on my map is rendering some very low resolution terrain textures and a very small number of statics plus the terrain geometry is less detailed too. I will try your suggestion though except I would like to keep the undergrowth draw distance and the maximum distance you can see to the same. Like you said, being able to see past the maximum undergrowth draw distance sucks because you arn't hidden from people really far away. It's a shame the draw distance and fog settings can't just change when you get into a vehicle or something as having battles in vehicles at around 700m or 800m would be better. I'll just have to keep tweaking things to find the best compromise I guess

[Maxfragg]

looks good so far, but please, Rhino knows what he's talking about, so listen to him, cause he is the one that will help you to make a map that will be part of pr, otherwise it will be one of the 100 maps that have never been finished, sorry for beeing so hard, but thats the way it is

[Rhino]

if you want your undergrowth to render upto the view distance your view distance will need to be around 100 meters...

undergrowth for BF2 was only designed to be used as a decorative tool, not as something that conceals players. Trust me I've seen many people try this in the past including myself and all have failed even if you have the simplest undergrowth mesh and only 1 type of undergrowth with a very small texture, the game simply can't handle it.

if you want to conceal players with grass then you need to use overgrowth fields, I would have not put soo much time into developing them and continuing to do so if we could in any way use undergrowth.

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f316-2 ... ields.html

[PikminDoctor]

if you want your undergrowth to render upto the view distance your view distance will need to be around 100 meters...

undergrowth for BF2 was only designed to be used as a decorative tool, not as something that conceals players. Trust me I've seen many people try this in the past including myself and all have failed even if you have the simplest undergrowth mesh and only 1 type of undergrowth with a very small texture, the game simply can't handle it.

if you want to conceal players with grass then you need to use overgrowth fields, I would have not put soo much time into developing them and continuing to do so if we could in any way use undergrowth.

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f316-2 ... ields.html

Yes I suppose although it woks on my laptop, I should of tested this on lower spec. computers first. I'll start work on using overgrowth fields instead soon.

[Rhino]

well right now I would only "prepare the ground" for the new overgrowth fields, dont use the old big block ones since they are being phased out since they have problems and are not flexible at all.

I've not tested on how well these fields work when you cover a huge area with them or with large view distances yet thou saying that Qwai handled it fine and Sangin will more or less use them like that.

For them to work your map your terrain can vary in height, it dont have to be 100% flat like the old fields, but the most important thing is that your terrain is smooth where you want to use them, if its not smooth with sudden changes in height then they wont go onto your terrain well and float etc.

So ye, with preparing the ground just know where you want to have them, make sure your ground is very smooth and for now just paint some undergrowth there, make sure with different types of fields that you have different types of undergrowth there.

Eventually I will get a tut up on how to get them into your map etc but its a pretty damn complicated process and I also want to look into simplifying it if possible but you can see they work well on Fallujah right now, and although yes Fallujah dose lag for a lot of people, the lag is in no way caused by the fields, in fact if you go out to the fields every tester that I talked to had far better FPS in the fields than the city, for some FPS increased by 20 which is a huge amount.

[PikminDoctor]

well right now I would only "prepare the ground" for the new overgrowth fields, dont use the old big block ones since they are being phased out since they have problems and are not flexible at all.

I've not tested on how well these fields work when you cover a huge area with them or with large view distances yet thou saying that Qwai handled it fine and Sangin will more or less use them like that.

For them to work your map your terrain can vary in height, it dont have to be 100% flat like the old fields, but the most important thing is that your terrain is smooth where you want to use them, if its not smooth with sudden changes in height then they wont go onto your terrain well and float etc.

So ye, with preparing the ground just know where you want to have them, make sure your ground is very smooth and for now just paint some undergrowth there, make sure with different types of fields that you have different types of undergrowth there.

Eventually I will get a tut up on how to get them into your map etc but its a pretty damn complicated process and I also want to look into simplifying it if possible but you can see they work well on Fallujah right now, and although yes Fallujah dose lag for a lot of people, the lag is in no way caused by the fields, in fact if you go out to the fields every tester that I talked to had far better FPS in the fields than the city, for some FPS increased by 20 which is a huge amount.

Yes I probably won't spend too many months working on the undergrowth as I do have other things to do, so maybe it'll just have to be a desert or something I don't know.

[General Dragosh]

This map looks very interesting and in my way very promising, maybe u could put up some "beta" versions of the map so the community can test it, no ?

[Nickbond592]

I know that's what other maps do, but I've done a lot of fiddling:

Having the view distance 500 more then the maximum distance you can see in fog doesn't help much with gun battles, because no one can see anything past that point. However it's not wasted, the main purpose is that the player can see the grey outlines of hills in the distance which is helpful for finding your way around and feels more realistic. Essentially my level has a real draw distance of 500 for everything. Now I've tested this and usually having more then 150 undergrowth draw distance would slow everything way down, but by turning the overgrowth draw distance down to 500 (which is where things disappear in the fog anyway) I can bring the undergrowth up to 500 and things run really smooth. I'll have to get you a copy and also try it out on other peoples computers to test this more thoroughly though I guess. However you are right about the fog, I'll have to make it stop at less than 500 because it's exponential or something. Thanks!

Firstly great start on the map, looking ace i really like the look of it all.


now,

On dragonfly i've got this effect using a dif method,
obviously you can tweak your fog levels, to have it starting and ending in different points, and not just fog at 500 veiw at 1000,

for example on dragonfly i have the veiw at 600 currently ( subject to change of course ) and the fog starts at 40 and ends at 580, this saves a lot on performance and looks exaclty as you describe it nice long veiw, but with the grey outlines in the distance

tweak with the fog settings a bit more to see what fits, 500M of 'wasted' terrain and objects will kill the performance on slower PC's.

hope this helps,

[PikminDoctor]

This map looks very interesting and in my way very promising, maybe u could put up some "beta" versions of the map so the community can test it, no ?

Thanks! That's a good idea.. I'll try and do that but obviously all the python stuff and the way flags are captured etc. doesn't work yet, I know that's a long process. Sorry if I was a bit confrontational there It's just I was thinking about all the work it would take to cover 16 square kilometres in overgrowth grass, and there would be a lot of flattening the terrain out to do so there won't be all the humps and ditches for infantry to hide in

It's still early days... And I will turn the ultimate draw distance down and change the fog.

[charliegrs]

wow this map looks really great! i like how the sky is dark. i also like how its not abundantly hilly like most pla maps, we kinda need a flatter map at this point. i can just imagine waves of pla troops getting mowed down by SAWs i hope you can finish this map

[PikminDoctor]

well right now I would only "prepare the ground" for the new overgrowth fields, dont use the old big block ones since they are being phased out since they have problems and are not flexible at all.

I've not tested on how well these fields work when you cover a huge area with them or with large view distances yet thou saying that Qwai handled it fine and Sangin will more or less use them like that.

For them to work your map your terrain can vary in height, it dont have to be 100% flat like the old fields, but the most important thing is that your terrain is smooth where you want to use them, if its not smooth with sudden changes in height then they wont go onto your terrain well and float etc.

So ye, with preparing the ground just know where you want to have them, make sure your ground is very smooth and for now just paint some undergrowth there, make sure with different types of fields that you have different types of undergrowth there.

Eventually I will get a tut up on how to get them into your map etc but its a pretty damn complicated process and I also want to look into simplifying it if possible but you can see they work well on Fallujah right now, and although yes Fallujah dose lag for a lot of people, the lag is in no way caused by the fields, in fact if you go out to the fields every tester that I talked to had far better FPS in the fields than the city, for some FPS increased by 20 which is a huge amount.

Hi Rhino, I've done some tests now (they're on the first post) just to show 500 view distance for undergrowth is possible but I guess having some overgrowth grass on flat areas couldn't hurt. I guess anything to improve performace is a good thing just so long as it doesn't make things look too bad.

[Rhino]

its possible for some gfx cards to handle that yes, but most will crash and burn, your gfx card being an exception, which is surprising for a laptop gfx card yes.

but trust me, dont have your undergrowth above 100m, best to set it to 75m and only use it as a decorative tool with no high bits that might be thought of places to be used as concealment.

[Scot]

Where is this map based off? I searched Colesberg in Google Maps, it came up with somewhere in South Africa...

[Conman51]

its possible for some gfx cards to handle that yes, but most will crash and burn, your gfx card being an exception, which is surprising for a laptop gfx card yes.

but trust me, dont have your undergrowth above 100m, best to set it to 75m and only use it as a decorative tool with no high bits that might be thought of places to be used as concealment.

if that's the case i probably wont be able to play the map

[PikminDoctor]

Where is this map based off? I searched Colesberg in Google Maps, it came up with somewhere in South Africa...

yes - I know but it does rain there, and you get thunderstorms etc. I have consulted someone from South Africa on this

[WeeGeez]

Well here's a change
This map looks Awsome.

Regarding the undergrowth, I sometimes experience a hell of alot of lag on Korangal valley when walking through those really tall grassy paddocks, so I see how this could be an issue for most players with an average pc, like myself. So I suppose the lag would be inevitable on this map, to a greater extent, if the undergrowth I'snt used correctly.

[Who Dares Wins]

Reminds me of the swamp in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky