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Ilanavis [WIP]


cring0

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So, I wasn't going to post about this for a while because I'm still learning as I go and I've got a ways to go yet.  Alas, I figured someone might be interested and may even be able to point out things I'm doing wrong. =]
 
Ilanavis is a "practice" terrain for me.  I was going to do something real simple and just pump it out for the sake of learning the ropes... but it didn't exactly go that way.  I originally had the idea of making an island with channels, representative somewhat to Venice, Italy.  However, it mutated more and more until I simply had several islands.  I'm almost done working on the satellite images of the texture map, but I got a good bit of work to do on the heightfield yet.
 
I'll just link a simple webpage from my dropbox that I'll keep updated as I go.
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7225557/WEB/Index.html
 

ILANAVIS

 

IlanavisThumb.png

 

|Current Features|

  • Terrain/Texture Size: 4096 x 4096
  • Horizontal Scale: 2.5m
  • Total Map Size: 10240m x 10240m(10km x 10km)
  • Comprised of many different sized islands, most of which separated by relatively narrow water ways and channels promoting use of water vehicles.
  • Roadways cutting through and winding along hills to make travel more interesting and allowing for elevated views over the land.

|Plans|

  • Bridges will be in place to allow for land travel between islands and boats to pass underneath.
  • Various urbanized areas, mountainous regions, flat regions, forested regions.
  • A focus on making roads that "make sense" as far as direction, distance, pathing, etc. with the exception of some roads that act as a scenic route.
  • Parks, ball fields, stadiums, a smaller airfield, a small racetrack.
  • A cavern, using rocks to act as the ceiling.

|Changelog|

 

 

--> SEE MORE INFORMATION ON MY WEB PAGE <--

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Well the highest point is 150m high. The map is scaled at 2m per pixel so it's only going to be 4km X 4km. If he means all the urban areas, I was thinking of cutting some of that out too, throw in some fields, parks, forested area, whatever. However, kavala is bigger than anything I have here..

My guess is the huge built up areas you have (planned), go visit Sabina on Taviana and watch your FPS die, yours looks to be 10 times that size., although your scale is off so maybe only 3 times that size, either way too many objects.

I think Sabina lagged because of all the different large scaled buildings along with that underground lair bit. Yeah, I could definitely cut down on the urban areas.
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Well the highest point is 150m high. The map is scaled at 2m per pixel so it's only going to be 4km X 4km. If he means all the urban areas, I was thinking of cutting some of that out too, throw in some fields, parks, forested area, whatever. However, kavala is bigger than anything I have here..

I think Sabina lagged because of all the different large scaled buildings along with that underground lair bit. Yeah, I could definitely cut down on the urban areas.

 

Sabina lagged on 2.0 before the lair was added, trial and error my friend, we're all new to this, just be prepared to scale somethings back, factor that in when adding objects :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

*huff* *pant*

 

Almost done with texture/sat map.  Still gotsta touch up a lot of places though, especially the coasts.  Need to blend some colors.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7225557/Show/My_Progress.html

 

Just did a 8hr stretch without even getting out of my chair.  2hrs to sleep and I'm starving! XD  Mostly working in L3DT though.  Once I get all the coasts finished I'll move to Terrain Builder I guess and see what I have as far as sea level goes.

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So far its looking like I'll need at least 20 bridges over water. That's not counting land bridges, and that's not counting train trestles... bad idea? lol I mean I could cut a few out if necessary, but don't really want to. I'd imagine this is going to lengthen the time it takes to finish this thing by a good bit. But it will be worth it right?! I'm not wasting my time right?!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7225557/Show/Ilanavis/bridges.png

It's looking a little ridiculous at this point but eh. lol Still gotsta cut down on a lot of urban area. I'll probably just layer bits with fields.

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Is the concern that bridges as objects are inherently tricky in game or is it that bridges will elongate the map building process unnecessarily?

Either way from an observers point of view I think you could feasibly cut down the number of bridges by leaving out the following:

5

9

12 or 13

15 and 16 leave as unattached island, (maybe this was an exclusive development and no bridges were wanted, same could possibly  said for bridge 17)

20

23 (you have bridges east and west and bridge 11 on south is the shorter of two, so maybe less chance to go wrong?)

 

I personally think that creating bottle neck routes would add to the jeopardy of traversing the map. 

 

As to the fielding idea to reduce the urban areas, makes sense to me, (but like Jon Snow, I know nothing). 

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Yeah Im probably going to get rid of a couple of those bridges that are near each other. One of my primary goals was to make a map where using boats made more sense. I think I might still make some channels in places even, leaning back toward my original plans. that might make a couple places inaccessible with ground vehicles, but as far as that goes I just want to make sure that you can get around the map in one, especially since it's a small map.

Another thing I think I'm going to do is remove the big airfield in the center and put in a small race track or something. This would allow me to drop the altitude there, since it's currently pretty extreme, and there is another landing strip on the west side.

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So, I wasn't going to post about this for a while because I'm still learning as I go and I've got a ways to go yet.  Alas, I figured someone might be interested and may even be able to point out things I'm doing wrong. =]

 

Ilanavis is a "practice" terrain for me.  I was going to do something real simple and just pump it out for the sake of learning the ropes... but it didn't exactly go that way.  I originally had the idea of making an island with channels, representative somewhat to Venice, Italy.  However, it mutated more and more until I simply had several islands.  I'm almost done working on the satellite images of the texture map, but I got a good bit of work to do on the heightfield yet.

 

I'll just link a simple webpage from my dropbox that I'll keep updated as I go.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7225557/Show/My_Progress.html

I like the professionalism in providing a daily progress report. In case you are not aware - some links are 404'ing. Otherwise great, keep it up! :)

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May I suggest a free imgur.com account?

if you combine it with the free Windows application sharex (after a 2 minute one-time setup to attach your free imgur account to your sharex software using an API key) you can practically right click and upload images instantly.

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I gotta say... I really am starting to notice how good Altis was designed when compared to the old ported A2 maps.

 

Even porting them into A3 with the changes in objects doesn't compare.

 

 

The difference is the ground firstly.  Altis has nice variation of the ground and the ported A2 maps are flat.

 

This is, for starters, something that should be looked at and considered for any new map in A3.

 

You can take a vehicle on Chernaraus and basically pin the gas pedal and fly through the fields doing over 100 without a care in the world.

You can't do that on Altis otherwise you'd be kissing the steering wheel.

 

Altis has way more realistic qualities to it.

 

The other thing seems to be the overkill of tree's on maps like Taviana.   I've seen a lot of maps that have a typical scenario they follow.. Lots of trees at the base of the mountain/hill but no trees on the hill itself.

 

Altis didn't overdo it on the trees but yet there are spots that the trees are thick.  They found a good balance and didn't fall into a predictable "lots here, less there" formula.

 

 

These old A2 ported maps should really be redesigned from scratch with things like this in mind while using the A2 map as a guide rather than just pressing "import" or whatever is involved.

 

 

I'd suggest using some of the techniques and features they did on Altis for any new A3 map.  There may be other A3 maps but that's the only one I've experienced so that's all I can compared to the ported A2 maps.

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That's exactly the way I've felt about Altis. As soon as I started playing Arma 3(believe I started playing Altis Life first) I was very impressed with Altis. The amount of detail within the large size of the island kind of blew me away a bit. While I understand some points people have about the downsides of Altis, I don't understand how someone can straight-up not like it whatsoever. I'm pretty excited to see what map they'll come up with next, along with any new buildings and objects that come with it.

Someone said Sesquisha is making a map for Epoch somewhere today.. didn't know anything about that. Though, with all the patch hounding and negativity that's been going on I don't blame him if he's trying to keep it on the down low lol.

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You can take a vehicle on Chernaraus and basically pin the gas pedal and fly through the fields doing over 100 without a care in the world.

You can't do that on Altis otherwise you'd be kissing the steering wheel.

 

 

Surface friction for textures used in maps are defined slightly differently in Arma3 maps than in Arma2 maps,.  - It's a complete mystery as to why they changed/moved it to where it is in Arma3 map config files, as it's night on exactly the same code required to define sufrace friction that's in Arma2 maps, but in a different section of the config, so Arma2 surface friction parameters are ignored due to them being in the wrong section of the config file. :)

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Surface friction for textures used in maps are defined slightly differently in Arma3 maps than in Arma2 maps,.  - It's a complete mystery as to why they changed/moved it to where it is in Arma3 map config files, as it's night on exactly the same code required to define sufrace friction that's in Arma2 maps, but in a different section of the config, so Arma2 surface friction parameters are ignored due to them being in the wrong section of the config file. :)

Sounds about right lol.

@Brez: Yeah, if I was to do an older map I think I'd venture to completely redo it. It wouldn't be exactly the same, and it would take a lot longer, and it might turn out not as nice maybe, but it could turn out better. ;) I guess there might be some things you would have to work out with the original creator of the map if you're going to make it very similar, but I wouldn't think that would be a big deal.

BTW I updated my webpage thingy and added some screenshots to imgur. I'm going to start taking screenshots of what I'm working on in L3DT.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7225557/WEB/Ilanavis.html

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