ToraBora "Sandbox Edition"

[Sleep 10]

Ebanks made a Nice cave with the rock objects and the side of a hill. That's an idea

I could only imagine how crazy that could have been when the "killer rock bug' was a serious issue.

[tpw 2315]

I just stumbled over this great map yesterday (downloaded 1.2 doh) and am really enjoying it. It's refreshing to move around an enormous map without tripping over a town every few metres. Plus it has a fantastic framerate and looks great. Downloading 1.4 now and looking forward to the changes.

Great job, thanks very much for it.

[mcnools 62]

I know this has probably been suggested before, but what about small patches of snow here and there on higher altitudes? would suit the atmosphere of the map fine I believe.

[Chill xl 10]

do you gonna make any tunel systems or something like that in the hills for taliban / Al Queda ?

http://www.kannnichtsein.com/wordpress/1_images//2009/01/Tora%20Bora.gif

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/graphics/attack/images/caves_1205.gif

or like AA positions and bunkers?

The way maps are build do not allow for caves or tunnels, basicly the ground cannot go over other ground (which essentially is the case with caves and tunnels), it think at the very best the engine allows for some 100% vertical ground, like a wall, but not over your head. Imagine the whole ground / terrain as a cloth draped over alot of xyz coordinates what hold up the cloth. There's now way to get 2 xyz coordinates on top of each other to form the overhang.

I'm no 3d artist and so far i have seen several attempts to create a cave or tunnel using rocks or purposed build objects. None of them was a real winner imo.

[ray243 11]

Oh btw, didn't medal of honor had a mission on the tora bora?

[Chill xl 10]

i dont know, never touched any medal of honor game, but they propably would have i guess. Lots of mission happend in the Tora Bora region, operation Anaconda was one of well known: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Anaconda

[minimalaco 30]

which will be the next update?..this is a great map, and well optimized. please, not insert objects of LAGabad.

[mcnools 62]

I've been playing some more, and I've got two suggestions.

First: As far as I've notivced, the ambient civilian module isn't working, it would be nice to be able to populate the small villages with it. :)

Second: Shouldn't the map have the Takistan-horizon? With all the mountains etc. I think right now it has the one from Chernarus.

[Chill xl 10]

Next update will most likely concern finetuning the towns, cleaning up the houses, adding some details to the towns. Also defining citycenters for the Alice module to spawn civilians etc. Furtermore some smoothing to the roads. Ans possibly tweaking the sat map / mask map so that the roads and houses are blending more in with the environment. Lets see from there what steps are next...

[galzohar 31]

I've already mentioned it but I'll mention it again: If you want all buildings to not glitch, make sure they are all placed on 100% flat terrain. Otherwise you'll likely have AI unable to path into those buildings and possibly players as well.

It's extremely annoying when making random missions on Takistan where the mission ends up rolling a building that is not enter-able by AI because BIS neglected this issue (especially those "terrace" buildings such as the ones in Feruz Abad).

[Chill xl 10]

Tnx for reminding, i understand the issue. I'm not sure if i'm going to flatten out all the foundations of the buildings, thats hard process with terrain this mountainious. I will however make each building enterable atleast by human players and will try to have the ground not visable inside all buildings. For me the map is all about the terrain around all the towns, not so much the towns themselves. I will however give the towns attention in the next update.

[konrad1 10]

BUG FOUND every small lake the water is moving in the speed you move. and when you drive in it car is destroyed and soldiers swim in air .

Ah and make pls some flat ground for an FOB or so ^^

[weedman 10]

Konrad i second this, please please make some flat ground for a small FOB with maybe 1 or 2 helipads.. would just finish this map off if you ask me.

[mcnools 62]

Tnx for reminding, i understand the issue. I'm not sure if i'm going to flatten out all the foundations of the buildings, thats hard process with terrain this mountainious. I will however make each building enterable atleast by human players and will try to have the ground not visable inside all buildings. For me the map is all about the terrain around all the towns, not so much the towns themselves. I will however give the towns attention in the next update.

I must say I agree with you completely. I feel that the indoor-AI is too bad to have any sort of indoor combat anyway, apart from maybe a couple of placed AI. As long as the buildings are enterable by the player, I think it's fine, if the ground is flat in all the villages it'll be very boring, I think they look great as it is now, they just need some more detail, which your'e working on, and I'm looking forward to it a whole lot. Glad your'e making it work with the Civilian-module aswell!

What's your thought on using the Takistan-horizon instead of the Chernarus one btw?

[Chill xl 10]

Tnx for the great feedback, outdoor combat is just awesome :) We just finished a 2.5h coop mission on TB and a real blast! A combat patrol from Garuntha to the town of Jool Hul. Some very exciting long ranged firefights from hilltop to hilltop and severall times we all of the sudden had an enemy patrol right on top of us. Flanking around hilltops, really diggin it (if i can say that of my own map lol).

Anyway, im trying at the moment how the map is without any horizon texture as the fog and objects popping up might be better without it. If not, i will aply Takistan horizon.

Edited January 2, 2011 by Chill xl

[galzohar 31]

You don't have to flatten the whole town though, just the ground under the building, as said.

The biggest problem with buildings that AI can't enter is that scripts pick them up as enterable buildings, give the AI a doMove command to a building position, and then the AI stands next to the building in a dumb position after failing to get in.

As for outdoor combat, this island definitely seems better than the BIS ones, but I think to really get outdoor combat going you'd need even more rocks around for cover and possibly more detailed terrain (as in, less "smooth").

[mcnools 62]

Isn't it hard to flatten small parts of ground though? I don't remember how small the terrain-cells are in ArmA2, but they're not small enough to just flatten the terrain around one house?

I think the outdoor terrain is pretty darn detailed as it is, more objects etc. would just decrease the performance. That's my two cents at least. :)

I just finished an awesome patrol-turned-to-battle in the Tora Bora mountains. We entered a valley and suddently found ourselves surrounded by an enemy force increasing in numbers for each minutes that passed. We called in for support and got mortar-support from our nearby FOB, and they sent us a helicopter, which finally arrived when I had only half a magazine left on my automatic rifle. We got the hell out of there just in time!

I have a feeling we might back into those mountains with a larger force later.

Good stuff! Seriously, the terrain is perfect for this kind of combat, there are plenty of places to hide among the mountains, so you have a hard time knowing where the enemy is. Perfect!

[ray243 11]

Some reference pictures:

http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/0303-pakistan-taliban-cave-600/7497360-2-eng-US/0303-Pakistan-taliban-cave-600_full_600.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01589/cave2_1589035c.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01589/cave1_1589030c.jpg

and a video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFkgifKNllM

And maybe look at medal of honor since its based on tora bora.

[zonker3210 1]

@ray243: A few posts back Chill gave a rather good explanation of why there aren't tunnels in his ToraBora map. It's a shame, I agree, but it's a limitation of the Arma2 game engine. Also, if you're referring to MoH the game, that's a completely different game and uses a different game engine. Just because something is possible in one game engine doesn't mean it's possible in all game engines.

@Chill xl: Really nice job on this map. I'm not too fond of how the road turned out (looks a bit off, somehow...expected more of a dirt road instead of a pair of well-defined tire marks across the terrain maybe) but this is still an outstanding map. I'm really enjoying it so thanks much for the hard work!

[Chill xl 10]

tnx for the feedback, the roads didnt turn out they way i would have liked either. Unfortunally BIS haven't yet released the appropriate road piece models / objects from Arrowhead, therefore i have to use the roads from Arma2 (chernarus). I do have picked up a sign somewhere that could have been indicating that BIS will soon come up with map editing stuff for Arrowhead. If that happens i will change the roads asap...

For the next update i will also look into the ponds / lake issue, not sure whats going on there... Maybe i used the wrong models?

[minimalaco 30]

can add more plantings to the side of the road, not only in the area of houses ?

[Gruman 123]

Was the half of Saturday in the Editor on this map. I love the new towns and the roadsystem.Some variation in the roads would be nice. You know, a path going there, a gravel surfaced road there. Some path over a passes would be nice :cool: The Runway i was working on, is even bigger and flatter than the one in Aiktalik. Great

@FlatGoundFOB's

Sure, it would make creating FOB's a lot easier (and 2d Editor friendly :P), but it would would look wierd if there isnt a fob in the mission... But there are many spots, a Outpost works well! The Template from Eight (i think) works very well in that terrain. Did found nice place with roadaccess. Move some Hescos and you are able to place some HLS in it too.

@Ray

I'm sure Chill will incude a full tunnelsystem, when you model the rocks with the tunnels in them for him... :j: Basicly you would have to do static objects of big rocks in O2 and make the tunnels in there. But as soon as you get ove 50x50x50m object, the GeoLod (the one which defines its not an object you can walk through) has holes and you will fall in them:). And you need a unique model for each cave... And the filesize of the map will just increase a lot... Did i mentioned the added polygons for a cave would decrease the performance a lot?

Of course to use this caves with AI, you would have to model waypoints inside the caves too.

What i try to say is: It would be awesome, it is possible, but the work needed for this to be done, cant be handled by Chill alone.

[ray243 11]

@ray243: A few posts back Chill gave a rather good explanation of why there aren't tunnels in his ToraBora map. It's a shame, I agree, but it's a limitation of the Arma2 game engine. Also, if you're referring to MoH the game, that's a completely different game and uses a different game engine. Just because something is possible in one game engine doesn't mean it's possible in all game engines.

@Chill xl: Really nice job on this map. I'm not too fond of how the road turned out (looks a bit off, somehow...expected more of a dirt road instead of a pair of well-defined tire marks across the terrain maybe) but this is still an outstanding map. I'm really enjoying it so thanks much for the hard work!

I see, because everyone was talking about caves so I thought he was going to do it.

Er, I mean using MOH to get inspiration.

[zonker3210 1]

I see, because everyone was talking about caves so I thought he was going to do it.

Er, I mean using MOH to get inspiration.

Looks like I misunderstood your post. My bad...sorry!

[Wastelander 10]

A quick fly around....

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