Winter map pack

[Stealthgato]

As most of you know, last year a winter map pack was released, containing three maps:

-Barentz Invasion - British vs. Militia, with both AAS and INS gamemodes;
-Operation Snow Storm - British vs. Chinese - AAS
-Northern Lights - Germans vs. Russians - AAS

Project Reality 2010 Christmas Map Pack Released! news - Mod DB

I thought these maps were a breath of fresh air (pun intended) and played and looked quite nice, but one day the servers stopped using them altogether. Iirc the only map which had a problem was Barentz Invasion, with some people getting FPS lag on it due to, I think was said at the time, the falling snow. Since the problem is known and a fix should (DEVs please don't hate me) be easy, why can't these maps be included with PR?

It's a waste not making use of these maps, with all the work put into them and they turned out awesome.

[saXoni]

They're supposed to be there just for Christmas, but I do agree with you. I'd love to see these maps on servers not only at Christmas, but all year round.

[Bradley364]

Haven't played them, but a snow map sounds hella fun.

[Spec]

Add them again I say. Christmas or not, the maps were good! Fix the falling snow and we have a really excellent map among them as well.

[Rudd]

the reason we don't add loads of maps to the main installers is because it would explode the mod's size

a 4km map is around 90mb, and iirc at least 2 of those maps are 4km

I also love those maps, though they lack alot of details, and would be happy to play them again

they do work in 0.97 iirc? or does it say you require 957 to install them?

[Bringerof_D]

yeah i miss them too, they were awesome maps, simple but awesome. my only complaints were the FPS drops and of course the water sound effect used on the snow.

It simply is not fair that winter maps are restricted to the holidays and some time after. that begs the question, why then dont we restrict obvious summer / spring time maps to their seasons? i want to see snow!

[Rudd]

well one reason Bringer is that the Winter maps do lack certain things that some would say are required to be part of teh main mod, e.g. we don't actually have sounds for walking on ice or snow, the British player model textures would have to be redone as well? I suppose ACU works in snow, though I've no idea if the USA actually plan to use that there.

Perhaps the Norwegian comfac can use these maps for effectively when they are doing testing

[Mora]

PR needs snow maps. They are simply too awesome to leave out. I know it takes ages to get it properly done. With objects needed to be made and loads of textures.

[Murphy]

If you could just work the kinks out of which ever one is closest to completion (I personally like barentz safe for the massive FPS problems on the eastern side of the map, and some really dumb cache locations). I think having a snow map really brought a more expansive feel to the overall theme of the maps, it really brings something new to the table that no other PR maps even come close to. And while I realize you guys are lacking in the sounds department, it seems like one or two of these maps are very close to their pinnacle, closer then a lot of other maps.

As for size, well won't the game eventually become a bigger download anyways? What with all the comfacs and new maps in the works there is a lot of goodies in store that we will download anyways. If it's an issue of the extra download size being worth it I think this thread stands as proof positive there are players who feel it would be worth it.

A lot of potential just needing some more work, maybe the mappers wouldn't mind adding a few touches here or there...or worse yet audit?

[Jolly]

Play those winter during the summer,reaaaaaaally cooled myself!!!Hope they are back!!
BTW,why i love snow so much,cause we can hardly see it..........

[Sgt.BountyOrig]

They do supposedly work in the new version, the problem is there is no fast link to additional maps for people who say, didn't download/play these maps at Winter 2010, so should they be used there would be a large chunk of players unable to utilise the server running them for the map duration.

[Sgt. Mahi]

Northern light were just a lag fest though...

[lukeyu2005]

But they were great fun bring them back.
Defending the cargo ship with your militia squad from waves of incoming helicopters with a FAL was awesome.
Running out of ammo and shooting at the helicopters with a scorpion is epically awesome.

[PoisonBill]

Northern light were just a lag fest though...

"Lagg fest", scandlish ftw!

Even though these maps had problems, I had loads of good PR experiences on them. Charging a German Leopard up and down snow covered hills is one of the coolest things you can do! Also sniping on a skirmish version, of one of these maps was just awesome!

[H.Maverick]

the reason we don't add loads of maps to the main installers is because it would explode the mod's size

a 4km map is around 90mb, and iirc at least 2 of those maps are 4km

I also love those maps, though they lack alot of details, and would be happy to play them again

they do work in 0.97 iirc? or does it say you require 957 to install them?

This is why you guys create such awesome map-packs

[Wicca]

Look, i dont know what everyone thinks. But i dont mind downloading 20gb worth of gaming, i have to spend that amount anyway, with the amount of modding i do on PR. Aswell as recording which takes 1tb.

So if the mod gets bigger, i dont mind. its how life is. Bring it ON! BIGGER IS BETTER! More replayability, more factions more everything!

[Rhino]

As I said in the OSS topic when I first released the map for the 2009 xmas map pack:

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Rhino;1210474']in order for PR to have an "official snow map", we would need to do lots of work with crating lots of new materials, sounds, effects, textures etc that would take a lot of our workforce a lot of time to complete, this map is a simple knock up right now [/quote]

OSS and the other maps where done as cheap knock-offs and in order to bring everything up to full PR quality a lot of extra work would need to be put in which right now, we have higher priority things to be working on.

I suggest if some of you really want this to happen is for you guys to start making new materials, effects and sounds for snow maps as thous are the main things missing right now as while we do have a few snow textures, most of them would need to be redone which is also something else the community could look into but this isn't a small, simple task, its a pretty big task which will take some real commitment to complete to a high standard so ye, anyone who thinks they can do this is more than welcome to give it a try


[quote="Wicca""]Look, i dont know what everyone thinks. But i dont mind downloading 20gb worth of gaming, i have to spend that amount anyway, with the amount of modding i do on PR. Aswell as recording which takes 1tb.[/quote]

The mod size is mostly a put-off to potential new PR players rather than old committed ones that know what PR is all about. A brand new player is 1000x less likely to try something if they are going to have to spend hrs, possibly days downloading it even if they have friends telling them how amazing it is. Its not only a put-off to old players but also to players who are getting a bit board of PR or some players who think they might come back to PR, but then confronted by a huge download will probaly think twice. Also not to mention thous players with limited download limits, which is something very common with the Australian ISP and a huge download would kill off the Aus community over night for example.

We need to keep the mod size down as much as we can with only putting the very best into the core mod.

[Web_cole]

Iirc Northern Lights and Snowstorm were largely featureless. They were presumably thrown together quickly, to give the community something novel to play with over the holidays. They were interesting for the short period they were intended to be played over, but I feel like if they were included in the regular map rotation they would never be played.

They might be interesting as Vehicle Warfare or C&C maps, but considering no servers play those game modes (and as a result the gameplay doesn't feel as "finished" as AAS or Ins) it wouldn't seem to be worth increasing the size of the installer for that.

Barentz on the other hand had potential, although I think the flag layout needed to be rethought.

Anyway, the winter map pack this year is going to be all round more awesomer, and hopefully should bring a bunch of people back to PR over the coming months

[Maverick]

Damn these maps bring back memories, I remember a friend played over Mumble, he played National Lampoons "Christmas Vacation" and my squad was in the most intense hill battle EVER, with no casualties, literally us expending all of our ammo on a mortar team, helo coming in to drop ammo, it gets shot so we don't get ammo, it was AMAZING.

[Intrepid]

I love the number of Canadians, Brits, Swedes and Norwegians that commented this