Project Reality Forums

Hey,
I know underground tunnels have been suggested before, but a problem associated with having them is that within several weeks of playing a new map, players will memorize the locations of the openings and even exact twists and turns inside tunnels.

Maybe the tunnels can be randomized every time the map is loaded: certain tunnel sections/pathways open on some rounds and closed off during other rounds. Sometimes that hole in the ground the ground may be right in the middle of the rice paddy like you remembered it; sometimes all you may find is a mound of dirt. This can be done similar to the way weapon caches’ locations are randomized. Instead of randomly placed caches, we would have randomly placed piles of dirt, or “blockages”. Assuming most of the tunnel’s is of the same width and height, these randomly placed (but “blockage” locations are from a larger predetermined pool of possible locations) completely seal off some tunneling and/or entrances. They could take an extremely high amount of damage, making them virtually indestructible.

Is this possible?

If this were possible, imagine a Jungle map like Mao Valley or OGT, where a cut-off company of PLA has their HQ, field hospital, and barracks underground. They start with an outpost or two above ground, but once the US or GB team overruns that, the PLA team must start in essence a guerilla war against the other team which has less tickets but perhaps air mobility. Either AAS or Insurgency game modes could work for this. Barbed wire could be placed at the bottom of some pits to make booby traps.

Not sure how lighting or the BF2 night vision works, but perhaps there could even be a Bi-Ming style map with lit tunnels, or a daylight map with dark tunnels but lit “chambers”.
Or imagine a map with terrain like Helmand Province with this feature.

thoughts? suggestions? Is it even possible?

Good job on checking that it was already suggested but you're also supposed to check if it's hardcoded.

I don't know if it's listed anywhere though, I just remember reading that they couldn't make caves and tunnels with the regular terrain and if you do it the other way it looks weird.

There are ways to do it, but it is very challenging, and the amount of work required to make it look 100% is ridiculous. So basically unworkable.

lol, it is "just" possible but it would require soo much work it would not be worth it.

its abit like asking for random buildings in a city each time you play...

it would require about 10x as much worth, but i agree that we need more tunnels

Jonny wrote:just like the caches would require soooo much work its not worth it, huh?

ps. most of the coding is already done because of the cahes isn't it?

caches are objectives, that is a very different thing...

and really I would prefer is we did the caches in a slightly diffrent way, as in we had a model for them that used dynamic shadows and not lightmaps as we have to lightmap every single random cache location, and then pack the lightmap into the atlase which the player has to load all of the lightmaps for all the random cahces, which there is over 100 off, and only like 10 are used soo thats alot of wasted mem used there.

As for the tunnels, we would have to code it in a much diffrent way because ehhh, first you can just have random tunnel sections spawning everywhere, as how would they connect? if they connected it would be by pure luck, so you would have to make afew random combination of lots of sectiosn, which would take a huge amount of coding and time spent over working out every single combination possible, and then you would have to lightmap all of them, doing dynamic shadows with them would not be a good idea for soo many sections in such a small space, and then that would go into the point of loads of lightmaps wasted, and each section would have a much bigger lightmap sample than the one already there soo thats even more space wasted, let alone saying we would have to use a huge amount of sections to make any kinda tunnel worth going into.

And there is probaly even more problems that dont creep on my mind ammedily that you would encounter when doing this.

And for what would you get? some random tunnels that ehh, dont have really any real advantage over normal tunnels? so what if players work them out over time, its not a problem...

Jonny wrote:You build and lightmap the entire tunnel network, placing 'blocks' as objects at intersections. The python code then just shows a few of those, like the caches. The tunnel is always there, but not always accessable. The tunnel is also in shadow, so no extra maps for the blocks. You could also do it in layers with different 'blocking' objects to get a few of each appearing each time you play. The blocks cannot be 'destroyed', so the tunnel network is fixed each time.

Basically, use the blocks as caches, not the tunnel sections.

you really have no clue...

If you are soo sure of this idea why dont you go off and do it and show me it works well and has no hit on performance and good enough to go into PR? I bet you £50 you will fail, with most likly giving up as its got soo much work involved in it but even if you do, performance wise is flawed before you start.

but i think tunnels are so much work, it would be wastet if you make some unaccessable, better make more usual tunnels and lock some entrances with destroyable doors or other destroyables

Jonny wrote:so how come the cahes work on insurgency?

Why can this not be applied to objects in a tunnel system?

i've already exsplained, caches are small objects with small lightmaps, even with over 100 of them on the map and doing them as lightmaps there is abit of a performance hit but its not much since there samples are quite small, but for a detailed tunnel section would require much bigger lightmap samples because its a much bigger and more detailed object, you could make it really low detail but that way it wouldn't look anything like any of the other statics in PR.

Then to make this worth it you would also have a min of 10 diffrent veriantes to make the randomization worth it, with probably more if you really wanted players not to learn them, even thou they would over time just like players learn where the ammo chaches spawn, soo all it dose just make the learning time longer.

Also another point to note is that these objectes would become networkable objects, so on maps like Al Basrah, Sangin which are on the limits of there networkable objects (which is 1024, and networkable objects including vehicles, players, pickup kits, destroybale objects etc) and even the ones not in use would count as one of thous objects, soo ehhh you would be limited that way in the amount of variants you could make.

The only way you could get away with it is a really small tunnel, but then you couldn't make really many variants with it being that small in the first place.

soo really at the end of the day, static tunnels are far better, and pretty hard to do well as it is tbh because you first need a good terrain cover, and then a good place to do them in with a good layout.

HellDuke wrote:i'd say not making the tunnels appear at random, but rather having a tunnel complex with holes blocked with random stone walls (just a few big boulders like a caved in tunnel or enrance/exit.

wouldn't that be easyer?

ahhh didnt realize you meant that Jonny, that is an idea to get it to work but still you would need to let the python still know all the consternation which would work and still not worth it from a gameplay perspective IMO where we could use that coding work to make a new game mode or w/e which comes much more into gameplay.

Jonny wrote:most of the coding is already done, it is literally copying and pasting from insurgency to this and then running it as a 'tunnel' mode almost identical to INS, but with flags you can cap and blocks which are not objectives. I think it actually cuts most of the INS code out and only leaves the placement.

ye, you would only need that part of the python code but then you would have to add on quite a bit of extra code to define the different verieants you could have, you wouldn't want all the blocks to cut off all the first entrances.

Jonny wrote:why not? It would be one of the unique parts of it. sometimes you have extensive tunnel networks (perhaps more than one) and other times they are just a load of small rally point hiding places. I dont see the problem with that. Really makes it something new when there are no places to hide set by the maps, you basically have to fight or you loose.

So long as all the spawns are above ground then all of the tunnel defences are by squads with rally points, so can also be taken.

well in r/l the defenders of the tunnel who made them/use them would know them from inside out anyways...

and like i've said, players would still learn about the tunnels, it just takes longer for them to do so which is really not much gained.

I'm still not convinced its worth it at all