Map size

[Quobble]

Heyhoh!
I was wondering, what the BF2 engine can take.
ATM we have nice maps, and for 64 players most of them are fun, but my question is, how big could a map be?

Why is there a limit for the BF2 engine, and why is there hardcoded in a game like BF2?

Greetings!

[Mineral]

you mean pure water or land?

[Quobble]

I mean playable area where you are not out of bounds.

[SShadowFox]

16km^2 AKA the size of Kashan.

[Quobble]

Will the servers crash or why only 16^2?

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Look at Falklands whwn players are in main you get that jitter wobble sometimes i think 4 x 4 is the limit for no issues even then you can't have to many statics.

[SShadowFox]

Rhino did more than that with the Falklands, but it required him to remove the combat zone, he also needed to sacrifice the overgrowth and the undergrowth, that's why there's none on the map.

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Lucily theres not much there anyway!

[Rhino]

The maximum size BF2 terrain can be is 4x4km, which is a 16km^2 area. having different "layers" aka 16, 32, 64, 128 or as we call them, Infantry, Alternative, Standard and Large layers are only used for different asset and flag setups. Our combat zone on most, at least on all Standard layers reaches the very edge of our map borders.

As mentioned above, my map "The Falklands" which is part of v0.98 is larger than this, with the main islands being in a 8x8km area, although if you include the main bases outside of the minimap its more like a 16x16km area. This was done by ditching the BF2 terrain and replacing it with "mesh terrain", which in many ways isn't as good as BF2's terrain but it dose have a few advantages, mainly being size.

whwn players are in main you get that jitter wobble sometimes

The vertex wobble is due to being so far away from the centre of the map. As you get near the centre (mostly where the infantry fighting is) its just like being on a normal map, other than the terrain isn't so detailed)

Rhino did more than that with the Falklands, but it required him to remove the combat zone, he also needed to sacrifice the overgrowth and the undergrowth, that's why there's none on the map.

Could have kept the combat zone, I removed it so that jets and players could fly/walk outside of the minimap border area
The Skirmish layers do have normal combat zones on them since they are all inside the minimap area

Also overgrowth wasn't totally sacrificed, the method of placing overgrowth randomly using BF2 was, but you can do that using 3DsMax like I did for the rocks, but there are so few trees on the Islands in r/l that the only ones that where needed where hand placed down on the map, although many bushes where placed randomly throughout the map
Undergrowth as well as a few other key things was sacrificed however