[Map] Margow Desert (4km) [WIP]

[hiberNative]

i love the layouts of the bases and the small villages. i'm just hoping the gameplay will be different from al kufrah and kashan.

[Netieb]

new update: uranium mine

- added clouds etc.

updated: minimap

[google]

Looking good. Might I suggest you put down a lot of flag (and possibly more villages) in order to let this map be AASv3? The current problem with Kashan is that all the flags offer no tactical advantage over the enemy whatsoever. The desert and it's textures do look very nice though!

Also, if you're planning to put in Jets (which it looks like) I suggest you decrease the angle of the slope of the mountain near the MEC base.

[Netieb]

Also, if you're planning to put in Jets (which it looks like) I suggest you decrease the angle of the slope of the mountain near the MEC base.

Well the so called mountain is only a small hill, it just looks big I tested landing and starting and it works fine. ( I dare to say im a bad pilote ^^)

[marcoelnk]

Not sure if the structure of the mine is very realistic... never seen an uranium mine of course but i doubt it would be that straight and ordered and small. do you got any ref pics
other than that looks quite good so far.

[McBumLuv]

VERY nice, I'm loving it. Make sure to use Paramedic's/Space's .con file that stops terrain morphing, though.

Also, my advise on the main bases...

THe US main is in big trouble... It's right next to a ridge line and descends a fair bit, so landings wil be very hard to execute. Same to some degree with the MEC base, according to the minimap. Make sure you fix those, since they'll be a huge problem. It seems that the ridgelines being that close to the bases don't server a strong purpose to the map, though, so you might want to just push them back and smooth their incline a bit. I'd say at least 500 meters before the base should be level ground with it. Otherwise you'll find that it's a pretty big problem with the UK Quinling base as well, where there's a hill only a few hundred meters before the runway.

I'd also strongly suggest against using the static runway. It encourages baserape, and it's much harder to repair now. I'd also suggest to lengthen the runway by a few hundred meters, painting the runway and then applying the road ontop, because I find they don't render at a far distance and Z-trooper has said they can have Z-fighting issues.

Make sure you address those especially, otherwise you'll get the Karbala/Quinling effect Otherwise goodjob, I'm quite looking forward to this

ETA: also suggest having a large VD, somewhere between 1200 and 1500 would be amazing.

[space]

VERY nice, I'm loving it. Make sure to use Paramedic's/Space's .con file that stops terrain morphing, though.

I just helped para with textures and colourmaps - I was nothing to do with the terrain morphing "fix".

Afaik it has a few problems, and also causes increased load, so it maybe best to just manually smooth the areas that are affected by morphing. It takes a log time to do this, and its tedious work . I've not read all this thread, but if your maps in its early stages, you could apply a slight Gaussian blur to your height map, and this should automatically remove any extreme angle changes from your whole map, and minimise morphing.

EDIT : I've had a quick read through I love the village layout in this pic :



There's still lots of work needed on the map, but it shows some great potential.

[McBumLuv]

I just helped para with textures and colourmaps - I was nothing to do with the terrain morphing "fix".

Afaik it has a few problems, and also causes increased load, so it maybe best to just manually smooth the areas that are affected by morphing. It takes a log time to do this, and its tedious work . I've not read all this thread, but if your maps in its early stages, you could apply a slight Gaussian blur to your height map, and this should automatically remove any extreme angle changes from your whole map, and minimise morphing.

Hmmm, I now it slightly increases the load, but I've tried it, and it's not that bad, and from what I gather it's only a drop of a few FPS. But you'll have to see and decide yourself, if you want the ridgepoles and stuff like that you'll definitely need it.

[Rhino]

Afaik it has a few problems,

I believe the main problem is that it dose not work on a dedicated server (ie, when the map is ran online, it dont work ) but I've yet to try it myself and it might be just something wrong with the way it was being used as to why it wasn't working online, dunno at this point.



Anyways back on topic, I agree with space the map looks to have some good potential in it, keep it up

[Outlawz7]

And the roads don't render with that terrain fix.

Thread related, the runways on both bases should be longer and they shouldn't not end straight at the wall of the base.

[McBumLuv]

I believe the main problem is that it dose not work on a dedicated server (ie, when the map is ran online, it dont work ) but I've yet to try it myself and it might be just something wrong with the way it was being used as to why it wasn't working online, dunno at this point.



Anyways back on topic, I agree with space the map looks to have some good potential in it, keep it up

I think CA imported it and tested it on a few maps (like Kashan and Muttrah), and It's worked on dedicated servers, EXCEPT:

1) The terrain looks wierd-er, might just have been the way it was imported or something.
2) I found it worked in block-like patterns, and didn't extend all the way out to the VD, so you could sometimes see small lines through the terrain way ahead due to it (prolly fixable, though)

But you know way more about it than me, so I dunno what's caused those problems or w/e.

[Netieb]

New update (omg two updates in one day^^)

- new village added
- smoothed out the hills at the mainbases (MEC/US)
- fixed the mainbases (MEC/US)

[Rhino]

Just taken a look at your minimap and ehh, your main bases are really, really close to the edge of the map. Would be good for both gameplay and visual aspects if you can move them a little more away from the edge of the map.

[Netieb]

Just taken a look at your minimap and ehh, your main bases are really, really close to the edge of the map. Would be good for both gameplay and visual aspects if you can move them a little more away from the edge of the map.

Well they are just the bases so they wont be much fighting. I can live with the visual aspect.

[McBumLuv]

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Rhino;1093968']Just taken a look at your minimap and ehh, your main bases are really, really close to the edge of the map. Would be good for both gameplay and visual aspects if you can move them a little more away from the edge of the map.[/quote]

Yea, I agree, and what about this:

[quote="McLuv""]Also, my advise on the main bases...

THe US main is in big trouble... It's right next to a ridge line and descends a fair bit, so landings wil be very hard to execute. Same to some degree with the MEC base, according to the minimap. Make sure you fix those, since they'll be a huge problem. It seems that the ridgelines being that close to the bases don't server a strong purpose to the map, though, so you might want to just push them back and smooth their incline a bit. I'd say at least 500 meters before the base should be level ground with it. Otherwise you'll find that it's a pretty big problem with the UK Quinling base as well, where there's a hill only a few hundred meters before the runway.

I'd also strongly suggest against using the static runway. It encourages baserape, and it's much harder to repair now. I'd also suggest to lengthen the runway by a few hundred meters, painting the runway and then applying the road ontop, because I find they don't render at a far distance and Z-trooper has said they can have Z-fighting issues.[/quote]

I think that should also be taken into consideration, with the ridge and length of the runway.

[Rhino]

Well they are just the bases so they wont be much fighting. I can live with the visual aspect.

Not so much a fighting issue, you will want to some how also think of having the main base flag outside the main like Kashan and Qinling so you dont have the spawn raping at the end like you use to see when you had to cap the final flag in the old versions of pr and vbf2.

But the main issue is landing etc, people dont want to be flying in and out of the combat zone. In future versions of PR we might remove the combat zone for jets we have to look into that more so that might not be so much of an issue.

Visual aspect wise thou, you can live with it but its better not to live with it. even 50, 100m more away from the edge would really decrease the chances of people noticing it. One of the worst points of Qinling is its main bases being right on the edge, and they are like 50m+ away from the edge. At the very min, dont have the players having to look into the surrounding terrain like I did with the PLA main on qinling, as you have to stare out there pretty much all the time and looks crappy
Good thing about the brit main on Qinling is most of the time your looking away, thou at the same time its easier to rape as a result
Since your map is a desert map it will be eaiser for you to get away with it but trust me, moving your base 100m or more away from the edge will really help, do it before its too late.

Yea, I agree, and what about this:



I think that should also be taken into consideration, with the ridge and length of the runway.

Ye all good points there McLuv, the static airfileds are going to be turned into non-dest versions since the dest versions didn't go down well, like you said really all it dose is encourage base raping. There is no real good way of making a runway thou on a 4km map. Using the vBF2 road ones will have loads of zfighting problems, even more so than the dest runways on Qinling and Kashan. Painting a concrete texture onto the ground and maybe adding some lines on via painting or the road tool will look pretty bad overall since it will be really low detail, but wont have any zfighting issues. So ye, there is no real good way of making a runway on a 4km map

And ye, you want a clear, flat flight in and not have a huge bump at the end as it dose make it a lot harder to land.

[Netieb]

I can only repeat myself landing is not that difficlut how it looks but im making the runway longer and im smoothing out the terrain

[Netieb]

Not so much a fighting issue, you will want to some how also think of having the main base flag outside the main like Kashan and Qinling so you dont have the spawn raping at the end like you use to see when you had to cap the final flag in the old versions of pr and vbf2.

Visual aspect wise thou, you can live with it but its better not to live with it. even 50, 100m more away from the edge would really decrease the chances of people noticing it. One of the worst points of Qinling is its main bases being right on the edge, and they are like 50m+ away from the edge. At the very min, dont have the players having to look into the surrounding terrain like I did with the PLA main on qinling, as you have to stare out there pretty much all the time and looks crappy
Good thing about the brit main on Qinling is most of the time your looking away, thou at the same time its easier to rape as a result
Since your map is a desert map it will be eaiser for you to get away with it but trust me, moving your base 100m or more away from the edge will really help, do it before its too late.

The mainbase flag will be outside the base itself. Like you said yourself to prevent baseraping.

I think its alredy to late to move the base because i already painted the terrain and it was much work. But I already used the sugesstion and changed the terrain and the length of the airstrip.. pics will follow

[McBumLuv]

The mainbase flag will be outside the base itself. Like you said yourself to prevent baseraping.

I think its alredy to late to move the base because i already painted the terrain and it was much work. But I already used the sugesstion and changed the terrain and the length of the airstrip.. pics will follow

Good to hear

In future versions of PR we might remove the combat zone for jets we have to look into that more so that might not be so much of an issue.

I like that. Especially on maps like Barracuda, where it was a good strategy to fly around the island, that will be good, and it should lessen constrictions on jets on maps like Kashan. I think it's a good decision, it's so silly having jets fly around in a 16km^2 block of land

Visual aspect wise thou, you can live with it but its better not to live with it. even 50, 100m more away from the edge would really decrease the chances of people noticing it. One of the worst points of Qinling is its main bases being right on the edge, and they are like 50m+ away from the edge. At the very min, dont have the players having to look into the surrounding terrain like I did with the PLA main on qinling, as you have to stare out there pretty much all the time and looks crappy
Good thing about the brit main on Qinling is most of the time your looking away, thou at the same time its easier to rape as a result
Since your map is a desert map it will be eaiser for you to get away with it but trust me, moving your base 100m or more away from the edge will really help, do it before its too late.

Mmhmm, I realize you've painted the terrain, Netieb, but even if you had a really small incline before the edge of the map it would be beneficial. I realize you've decided somewhat against it, but in that case you could do a few things to lessen the sight of it

Ye all good points there McLuv, the static airfileds are going to be turned into non-dest versions since the dest versions didn't go down well, like you said really all it dose is encourage base raping. There is no real good way of making a runway thou on a 4km map. Using the vBF2 road ones will have loads of zfighting problems, even more so than the dest runways on Qinling and Kashan. Painting a concrete texture onto the ground and maybe adding some lines on via painting or the road tool will look pretty bad overall since it will be really low detail, but wont have any zfighting issues. So ye, there is no real good way of making a runway on a 4km map

And ye, you want a clear, flat flight in and not have a huge bump at the end as it dose make it a lot harder to land.

Yes, it's a no win situation

you could always lengthen the runway with more runway statics I guess, though, especially since they're becoming non-destroyable. I'm really glad to hear that you've lengthened them though, since even while it is possible to land on them currently (especially with some planes more than others), it can be quite finicky with some of them, and they should really have a larger room for error, especially with the J-10

Though, I dunno Rhino, what if you had the texture under a road runway the same as the runway? The Z-fighting effects ould definitely be reduced, right? But to what effect, I dunno. I'll try that out some day.

EDIT: Just saw the abandoned village and North village, think they might need some work expanding them and making them seem less linear. THe walls in the North village are extremely straight, and the abandoned village looks like it grew up around the road. You could make it seem like there was an oasis there once, but that it has since dried up, and because of that it's become abandoned.

Otherwise looking quite nice, hoping that you might have an open beta test so we could try it out when you're further along

[Rhino]

Otherwise looking quite nice, hoping that you might have an open beta test so we could try it out when you're further along

When you save complied terrain it dose bake the road onto the game's colourmap, so when your not in view of the road (since they only render at so many meters away) which works fine. The problem is that under the road up close is the terrain's detail texture under it, which will most likley look very different than the road's detail texture and that's when it looks crappy.