[Map]MountainsInfantry (4km)

[B4rr3l]

That looks really nice!

I think the satellite look is great for stuff in the distance. If it's outside the playable area, it's not a big deal I'd say.

Nice idea, maybe paint only the playable area, it does look very impressive indeed

[cataly]

Hey Rhino,

yes, indeed, some problems appear, effectively, once one exceeds 500 meters of altitude;

for example, after painting your terrain, the editor will paint in black all the landscape, beyond this value; but it can be remedied by recovering those of the editor, which are intact, and place them in the color folder of the map; it is a problem that I mentioned a long time ago on Bfeditor forum:

there is also the problem of density of the air which makes that one loses the control of all the aircrafts; solved with a single line of code!

Other oddities still exist, but not possible to talk about everything....

As for the difficulties of using satellite photos, there are constantly compromises to do: our previous friends have summarized the situation, it seems to me: this is what I did, in part, with the map proposed here; those who open the map in the editor will see that there is no lightmapping for the terrain; only for objects: normal, the shadows are already there, as you say! I had to darken the whole landscape to stick with the color of the trees objects, given that I did not want to load the map with a complete overgrowth unnecessarily: I needed to keep the satellite image of the distant trees, which was less heavy, in terms of memory and cpu / gpu time machine !

it was also necessary to erase the most parasitic shadows, and to create others:especialy in the village: I then realized the difficulty of recreating an acceptable shading with 1024x4 terrain; very crenellated, unfortunately:

And so, it is certain that all is not perfect; with this map, I only wanted to illustrate the fact that this "high altitude" mapping approach is possible, and interesting in terms of gameplay; I encourage everyone to test it and make up their own mind!

[Fastjack]

Oooooh! it makes me very happy, [R-CON]Rusty_42 !
How did you manage that ?

You used only bf2nilla statics (maybe some of them have to be renamed in the staticsobjects.con) and they are also in the PR Mod and the texture datas are in the map. Only thing that must be changed to run the map in PR is to set up the faction in the init.con.

In PR you call a faction (predefined soldiers and kit layout templates) and not setting each soldier model and kit in the init.con manually like you must do in BF2.
Changing GPO to spawn PR vehicles and not BF2 vehicles is also not a big deal.

Your map can be played in every bf2 mod like AIX, AP, OPK and maybe bf2142 too.

[Rhino]

Hey Rhino,

yes, indeed, some problems appear, effectively, once one exceeds 500 meters of altitude;

for example, after painting your terrain, the editor will paint in black all the landscape, beyond this value

Ye that sounds like the main issue most people had. Interesting to see it is only an editor painting problem and not an ingame issue, guess they never looked beyond the editor.

[cataly]

You used only bf2nilla statics (maybe some of them have to be renamed in the staticsobjects.con) and they are also in the PR Mod and the texture datas are in the map. Only thing that must be changed to run the map in PR is to set up the faction in the init.con.

In PR you call a faction (predefined soldiers and kit layout templates) and not setting each soldier model and kit in the init.con manually like you must do in BF2.
Changing GPO to spawn PR vehicles and not BF2 vehicles is also not a big deal.

Your map can be played in every bf2 mod like AIX, AP, OPK and maybe bf2142 too.

thank you for the info, [R-CON]Fastjack: I had never refected! will be very useful ..

[cataly]

Ye that sounds like the main issue most people had. Interesting to see it is only an editor painting problem and not an ingame issue, guess they never looked beyond the editor.

probably one of the reasons why we stayed, so long, without real mountains maps : it's really a shame! Imagine what it would be if the infantry could traverse the whole extent of the mountains. Clearly, in our Bf2PR , it remains a complete unexplored universe to discover !

what do you think about that ?

[arjan]

I just think these types of maps could be great in PR.

[Fastjack]

Ye that sounds like the main issue most people had..... guess they never looked beyond the editor.

Another excample is the helipad in the Editor. When you place (SnaptoObjects) it on a industrial building roof it looks totally shitty in the Editor ... floating in air ..... Ingame ..... it fits perfectly.

[Rusty_42]

With permission from cataly, adopted it to PR standards.

US with transport helicopters vs NVA with permanent spawn points in mountains.
Denser overgrowth, added minimap with grid, terrain material changed to one with more friction. No coop.

Pics - https://imgur.com/a/vDIo8
DL - https://mega.nz/#!YB82RBTB!3edEivd52TkCvXfSwMyT6wfCg2MNCeuyi71fgdE9Xq8

Not sure how well it will work, so if anyone want to play it and test it - ask for event, PRTA for example.

[Sequadon]

OMG it's going to happen? I'll try ASAP but until then... How It looks when a player is lying on steep slope like this? Half of the 3p model submerged into the terrain? I think it's going to be an issue.

[AfterDune]

Just did a little testing. The mountains in the distance look absolutely incredible and I think maps could really benefit from this.

I only did some flying around, but the 'satellite' terrain looks quite bad/weird when you're close. There are these spots everywhere that just don't make sense. From a distance they certainly do, but when up close, you expect "something" to be there. The trees just stand out way too much and I can't unsee that.

When you're on the ground, as infantry, it's not as bad, as the grass draws all around you, hiding those spots. But when you look a little further away, there it is again.

Obviously the terrain is morphing, but from what I've seen in only a few minutes, it's not that bad, as the large mountains aren't really playable area anyway. As in, you don't go there as infantry, as there's nothing of value there.

The actual playable area where the flags are is alright, albeit a bit small from what I could tell. I must admit I really like what you've accomplished with just vanilla statics. As long as these large satellite mountains are in the distance and not in the playable area, it's perfect.

The current setup wouldn't really work for PR I think. The playable area is too small to do any large scale tactical fighting. As a vBF2 map however, this is perfect.

The PR version should have the overgrowth distance set a little higher btw, the trees pop up all the time when you're flying around. Oh well.

[Rusty_42]

Playable area, fallujah for scale

[AfterDune]

I saw that, but from the sky it didn't feel that big at all, hehe

[VTRaptor]

Land vehicles are getting terrain damage.

[cataly]

if someone wants to see the whole map ... a little flight?

https://youtu.be/Q0McnB4hlYc

[Fastjack]

About the Ingame Clip. Track IR?

[cataly]

]No ! Bf2freelook : unfortunately work only with os 32 bits...

[cataly]

As said before, this type of map is a set of compromises: in the last example provided, that of the dogfight mode, there is no infantry mode, no vehicle, and almost nothing on the ground; in order to avoid attracting the eye: the mountain is there, only as a backdrop; if we had to fill the map with objects, we should first have a lot of trees, as well as rocks; which would kill the FPS, given the necessary long distance vision: only, perhaps, the most powerful computers could display it; what remains to be verified: in the version on the ground, there is only a small playable perimeter , with enough objects to be acceptable: the fact that the soldiers move slowly does not cause appearance / disappearance trees, as disturbing as with planes; if we want to keep the mountain scenery, while limiting the number of objects, we could, indeed, extend the overgrowth to the nearest peaks, and marry the color of the trees with those of the satellite photo! For the near mink, it is quite possible to rework the texture with photoshop tools, which I have done very little here! And, in the editor, simply, using various levels of gray, we can easily remove unnecessary shadows or inconsistent: we can even go further by removing all traces of shadow and inappropriate colors (traces of buildings), and do a lightmapping of the ground, only on the reworked tile. As for the issue of morphing, I met it, also in the village: I place then under the surface, a flat rock, which makes it possible to circumvent the visual inconvenience; or some bushes.

The first conclusion is that with this type of map, we will probably not be able to play both on the ground and in flight: unless we have very powerful computers; and it's not even certain ... If you choose to develop the game on the ground, the vehicles will have severe limitations, given the sloppe; but nothing prevents the development of the whole map for the infantry; the few tests done with the bots, on the whole map produces a dispersion of the AI, which seems to me incompatible with a realistic gameplay: here, a set of scripts would be more suitable, it seems to me. Many things remain, therefore, to explore ...!

and thank you for your analysis [R-DEV]AfterDune and [R-CON]Rusty_42

cheers

[Rhino]

cataly have you tried the Falklands map? If you're making a map that is mainly aimed at dogfighting, mesh terrain is by far the best solution, as you can make it more optimized than normal terrain, and also make 8km(+) maps with it in BF2, as per Falklands. Also do have an infantry side to that map (and soon naval side too), although mesh terrain's main downside is you can't have BF2 undergrowth, and you also can't have transitions in the detail textures, but this all isn't an issue for jets flying high above it. I also had quite a few rocks on the map and some overgrowth too, although you could have still had more OG tbh, just the real islands didn't have much in r/l so didn't need to put much on them

[cataly]

thank you Rhino, this weekend, I'll have a little time to open the Falklands map in the editor, and see all this more closely: very interesting this idea! I had heard about it, but nothing seen so far ..