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[Map] Operation Tempest (4km) [WIP]

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:24
by ChiefRyza
Hello all, been promising to show this for a while now and the day has come I think it's in an at least semi-show-able state. This is the map I started about 6 months ago for the ARF faction. Since then, it has gone through two incarnations, the first one I scrapped in favor of a terrain created in Geocontrol 2 and from there, I have been slowly building from scratch.

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Map Name: Operation Tempest
Terrain Type: Coastal/Mountain/Jungle/Swamp
Factions: USMC vs ARF/A.U-U.A
Size: 4km x 4km
Map Region: Mid-West Africa Coast - Island Chain
Assets:

ARF - Tanks, Helicopters, Attack Helicopters, Gun Truck Anti-Air, APC's and Light vehicles

Marines - AAV's, Jets (Harriers), Attack Helicopters, Tanks (maybe), APC's and Light vehicles



BRIEFING:
The African Union has quickly taken form as a fully capable conventional force at the height of the global conflict. In an effort to draw imminent re-enforcements away from the Middle-Eastern theatre against Commonwealth and NATO Forces, United States Marines prepare fleets to assault the mid-western coast of Africa. A diversionary attack further north has drawn the vast majority of African Union forces away from a key landing area, containing abandoned cold war era bases and valuable facilities and military installations.

United States Marines will take designated beach-heads via forced landing, destroying immediate defenses and A.U. units, and then establishing a position for further assaults. Positions to be taken will be selected based on intelligence of enemy movements, thus the assault cannot be specifically planned until landings begin. Aircraft support ranging from AV-B8 Harriers and AH-1 Super Cobras will be available, while heavy armoured support will be available once a suitable beachhead has been secured. Beaches will need to be secured initially by ground infantry supported by AAVP7-A1 Landing Vehicles as quickly as possible before A.U. Heavy support is able to arrive.

African Union Forces are expected to be equipped with armoured support, infantry divisions and Attack Helicopters. Anti-Aircraft units will most likely be limited to conventional gun-trucks as most heavy anti-air units have been diverted further north.

Marines will rely on speed and co-ordination to succeed, while the African Union will rely on an iron-fisted defensive doctrine, utilizing their own environment to the best of their ability. Both factions will require the utmost amount of teamwork for any chance of victory. Operation Tempest is underway gentleman.


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The general idea about the map:

Operation Tempest is basically everything I wanted to see in PR combined into one. As it is my first real map I've learned a lot over the past 6 months and I'm learning every day. The map starts off with the United States Marines performing a full scale beach assault. The difference being there will be no helicopters involved in the initial landing, rather the Marines will utilize 4 AAVP7A1's to assault the designated landing location head on.

There will be by the time I am done, 16 possible flags on the map. I hope to incorporate a new game mode as the traditional AASv3 will have a very low chance of success in terms of balance.



There are at any one time 4 flags. There are four possible landing locations, each very unique in their layout and fighting style. Inland, the fighting will mainly be confined to the narrow jungle valleys that run through the mountain ranges. After a lot of testing, this was the only viable way for me to have a 4km Jungle map.

The area itself is entirely fictional. While I have used references of coastal areas, the map is filled with abandoned Cold War era defenses and facilities which have long since been reclaimed by the jungle. These include a mining facility, a nuclear facility, a mountain fortress, processing plant and many other areas. On the southern side of the map is the only place of civilization. One of the first landing locations is a seaside village, which then leads up to a large coffee plantation.




The asset layout is open to change but I have had it planned from the start. The Marines will always have a Harrier available as their heavy asset. They will start off with 4 AAVP7A1's, 2 of which do not respawn. More heavy assets are dependent on which coastal landing point is chosen at random. For instance, the village flag might be chosen, and after its capture the Marines will receive 2 M1A1 Abrams. A different landing location, such as the island group, will reward the Marines with a Cobra, and another location might reward them with a second Harrier.

The ARF/UAF will receive 2 T72's, 2 Mi-24 Hinds, 2 Mi-8 Cows, 2 BTR-60s and light transport. The heavy assets will spawn after 25 minutes (will be explained shortly)

Anyway, this revolves around a new type of AAS that has been seen before but still needed work. My plan is to have the flags unable to be recaptured after their loss. This will balance out the fact that the Marines will be up against tremendous odds of success, having to literally land against a huge fighting force.



New Game Mode Proposal: Siege Mode.

As I thought it would be way too difficult for the Marines to have to both move up and defend simultaneously, I would like to propose a new game mode for use in this map and others that might work better with it.

Siege mode is in essence, one team defending, and one team assaulting. At any one time the majority of players will be concentrated in a single area. The mode is still open for random layouts, but rather has the attacking team taking positions in sequence.

To shake things up, once a flag has been captured, there is a 10 minute period where it is re-capturable while the next flag is uncapturable. The opposing team can both set up defenses and make an attempt to recapture the flag, or do either with all available forces.

The defending team will have no ticket loss, but lose 100 tickets for each flag completely lost. (Has a maximum of 400 tickets.)

The attacking team will start off with roughly 300 tickets, and gains 150 for taking a flag completely. This will hopefully balance out the nature of one team defending (and obviously have the upper hand).

Of course, this is just speculation. I am not a coder and I'm not sure how difficult it would be to incorporate it, but at the very least I would opt for having the flags not being able to be recaptured after loss.





Now, before I am crucified because the terrain is too sharp, I am attempting to use the Terrain.con fix and I will be trying to find out exactly why it isn't working on a dedicated server. So, I won't be throwing in the towel just yet with the terrain, but I am ready to smooth the hell out of it, with many of the hand made areas being pre-smoothed just in case.


I hope to see this map through to completion in the next few months, and I am very confident in doing so. Performance is my number one priority and I have spent a very, very long time seeing what works and what doesn't. Overall I think this will be a unique map within PR (as all maps should be :-P ) and a whole lot of fun, hopefully with full scale beach landings. I will be doing server testing soon to make sure it runs ok with a full server and I'm constantly changing things as I go, often deleting days worth of work if I'm not happy with it. Most of all, it is still a very heavy WIP. Feel free to give feedback as positive or negative as you please, I will try and answer every question in due time and make fixes.



Screenshots of the map:


Thanks to: R-CON Rudd, For helping me get it in game

And of course, R-DEV Ghostdance for his brilliant Jungle statics.

Oh, and also to R-DEV Motherdear, the AAVP7A1 Model convinced me to make a map with it in it :-P

Enjoy :-)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:47
by IINoddyII
looking really nice bud

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:48
by Ford_Jam
<3
Like I said last night Ryza, Love it!

Hopefully you manage to get your game mode through, FH2 managed something similar on one of their maps so I'm sure it'll be fine.
Can't wait to see it in-game and best of luck getting the terrain warping fix to work!

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:50
by BlackMagikz
that looks awesome , the bridge kinda reminds of me Operation Ghost Train and i love the fortress amongst the jungle

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:50
by anglomanii
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

friggin awesome......................

it's like six maps in one!!!

i just cant wait.

i wuv you man... in a completely dude way ok...

i dont see any coffee though?

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:54
by Amok@ndy
really good start

some suggestions:
- using custom textures and darken the palmtrees texture the bark just looks to bright
- using custom lowdetailtexture cause the hills look a lil bit odd with a default lowdetailtexture
example: http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll23 ... een217.png
i would use a 2048 lowdetailtexure like on kashan
->Creating Custom Lowdetailtexture<-
play around with the stretching of the rock layer so that the texture doesnt look that kind of strechted like in this screen http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll23 ... een217.png

greetz @ndy

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 08:55
by ChiefRyza
Object Lightmaps havn't been done yet, that could be the problem.

- using custom lowdetailtexture cause the hills look a lil bit odd with a default lowdetailtexture
Tried a few custom ones and I havn't been happy with any of them, though I'm working on a new lowdetailtexture. It's an almost instantaneous change, so I'm not too worried about that one atm. I assure you I think it looks as bad as you do, just working on making it better at the moment.

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 09:02
by Amok@ndy
ChiefRyza wrote:Object Lightmaps havn't been done yet, that could be the problem.
the palm trees / clusters are Overgrowth and Overgrowth is not getting lightmapped you can darken the trees by painting the ShadowMap but then you will also darken the other JungleVegitation

so Open the palm Meshes with ShaderWrapper get the path of the palmbark .dds and then copy it in the same folder hierarchy into your mapfolder and then darken it ;)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 09:53
by dtacs
I see you changed some stuff around since the last pic, looks good with more beaches near the coffee plantations etc.

Looking forward too it, if its anything like the beach assault in OFDR.


Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 10:31
by Chuc
Congratulations on sticking your flag in the sand, Chief :)

Looking forward to seeing you with CON tags eventually ;)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 10:33
by motherdear
Strap those helmets on and get ready for landing :m1helmet:

I am in awe sir

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 10:46
by Adriaan
Sorry, but i'm afraid that's too much awesome for one map. ;)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 11:59
by Rudd
you sir have talent.

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 12:55
by VapoMan
Want to go on holiday in this map :D

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 18:23
by Startrekern
Pretty amazing stuff. I reeeeeeeeeeeally hope you don't have problems with terrain warping, i.e. in the cliff faces in screen217.. that would be a shame if you had to destroy that beautiful, beautiful terrain to fix it :(

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 20:37
by Rhino
cool, I'm not so sure about the jungle areas only around the rivers etc and a few other things like the ever so common bunker statics etc but looking pretty good. geo-control is a really good tool :)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 20:57
by RaSgO
Image:
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll23 ... een208.png

How would you be able to go inland (Deja-vu IRL here) with any armour here? I don't see any exit routes from the beach...

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 21:10
by blues&royalsdylan
I really like the sound of this, especially the mountainous terrain in a jungle.

The proposed game mode sounds exciting, I really like the idea of that, and it sounds like it could be incorporated into other maps currently in use right now.

Good work :D

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 23:02
by Jigsaw
Liking this map, looks like a great idea for a beach style assault and the more exposure those great AAV7VPs get the better :)

I quite like how the jungle terrain is only around the rivers and in the valleys, I think that's actually quite realistic and a big booster for performance. I would personally much prefer smaller areas of dense jungle terrain with a mixture of hills/mountains etc than trying to have all jungle and it being fairly sparse in the name of manageable performance.

Really impressed, keep going son :)

Re: [MAP] Operation Tempest (4km)

Posted: 2010-07-07 23:26
by ChiefRyza
[R-DEV]Rhino wrote:cool, I'm not so sure about the jungle areas only around the rivers etc and a few other things like the ever so common bunker statics etc but looking pretty good. geo-control is a really good tool :)
It's just the only way I've been able to have stable performance + dense jungle in the one area. Any large amounts in the same area and the lag goes through the roof. As for getting off the beach, don't worry, there are plenty of places to get off it, not to mention you can drive over the wall anyway. The bunker statics are supposed to be long abandoned defenses of cold war era bases in the area (map isn't based off a real location btw.) I felt the bunker statics are the most suitable for what I need, plus, they come in their already destroyed form which adds to the idea they haven't been used in a long, long time. Destructible count will be well under 300 as well.

Like I said still a WIP, anything could change.