Spec_Operator wrote:The engine limit for terrain appears to be 4x4km. For water, 8x8 would be possible, by using the surrounding terrain. But then you'd not see any enemy anymore ^^ There was a map being worked on... Wake Island, a huge version of it... 8x8, with the island in the middle, in the 4x4 area. The rest water and two carriers for both factions... There was an idea about having jets capping huge flags in the air or sth along these lines... Did that map make it into Combined Arms? Or is that a different one?
Yes and yes. Seethed Waters (otherwise known simply as "Big Wake") is an 8x8km map included in Combined Arms, which allows for far better fights in regards to the large air superiority operations trying to be modeled than any other PR map.
Technically, using static terrain should allow for any sized map. The problem being really that they'd have to be cut into multiple terrain "slices" so as to get proper LODs and such so that the engine isn't unbelievably strained
But, I believe you can place terrain outside the map's boundaries, though I'm not sure if you can when you reach the "water" boundary, though it
should be possible. Anyways, if it is, all you need to do is take away the out-of bounds and place everything outside.
That itself should allow for maps larger that 8x8 km with (static) terrain, but does involve a few very large problems. Firstly, it's all theory and I doubt it's been tried at all, so who knows how far everything is possible within the BF2 engine
Secondly, you'd be force to use 3d modeling programs, for lightmapping as well, and as such would require wayyyyyy more work.
Thirdly, even if you got it in-game, you would only be able to see the 8x8 map, so anything outside of it wouldn't be on the map you get with the "M" button, so finding your bearings will be a whole lot harder.
Fourthly, there are probably around 50 other problems involved if you wanted to get a map of the same complexity as some of the new ones into pr. It would be an epic undertaking that would probably be finished after pr2 was released anyways, so any large map of that size would probably be done in pr2, and never be seen on the BF2 engine.
Having said all that, if someone wanted to make a fairly barren Kashan-esque desert map with very few statics and vegetation, then it should be a relatively easy undertaking if only to experiment and put the theory into practice, but I don't know to what degree my knowledge of the BF2 engine is right. Rhino or any other mapper is much more savvy in the BF2 editor than I, and seeing as Rhino was the first really to try 8x8 maps IIRC, he'd be the one to know whether spawns/statics would be able to be placed outside the map boundaries.
