Altis: Criticism and Suggestions

[St. Jimmy 272]

It's probably too late to suggest this, but I really haven't had this feeling it was missing until I got to see Altis. I've been to the Mediterranean several times in my life and if I were to name one distinct ambiance that reminds of that area, and summer in general, it has to be the bird singing. For this island in particular; the swallows and sparrows. It's probably more of a sound suggestion, so please move if need be, but it relates to the island's ambiance in general.

This is a sound sample of what I mean:

Sound sample (freesound.org)

I haven't visited in Mediterranean but that reminds me exactly Finnish summer and that's kinda weird if it's the same in Mediterranean :D

I was just expecting some different birds.

[soapsurfer 12]

After two hours and a destroyed Littlebird (no, i did'nt run out of fuel!) I read the message about Oreokastro and went there for a visit. The village looked quite good and what excited me even more was the view of the castle nearby and it's tower with the window exactly pointing towards the village. Arriving there I saw that you can't get into the tower. Why? This is quite sad as this castle could be a nice foothold for missions in the region.

The castle is located on Thronos. [screenie]

It would also be nice to make the church towers as the one in Poliakko accessible. :)

Edited August 28, 2013 by soapsurfer

[EvEnLeaSe44 0]

The Island has all the terrain types, hilly, bumpy, smooth... its beautiful

I have no idea why people are complaining about the flatness of the middle, its about damn time everything isn't hilly! A big chunk of the map has hills anyway.

[Westonsammy 1]

Greece has forests and I think on higher terrain they would be natural...

Sorry to debunk your theory on the forests, but on that same link, if you move northeast just a bit into the Agean sea, you can find the island that Altis is base off of, and as you can tell by the satellite imagery, there are not many trees at all. I feel as though BI already included a ton of extra forests, as they did on Stratis (The RL Stratis is pretty much just rocks, dirt, and a few shrubs)

[roy86 367]

Hi guys

My nickname is Trpaslik and I’m one of the environment artists at BI. We welcome every kind of feedback, criticism and suggestions you can give to us about the Altis map so please use this topic to make some.

Please note that unfortunately we can’t promise to have the time to reply but we appreciated every piece of feedback here.

Hey Trpaslik,

Altis is great and the best part about the game by far.

The location data however need updating. A lot of small locations are not configured and might just be overlooked.

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA_2:_CfgLocationTypes

Running the nearestLocations command gets unexpected results.

Strategic = None

StrongpointArea = None

FlatArea = None

FlatAreaCity = None

FlatAreaCitySmall = None

CityCenter= 4

Airport = None <-- WT?? Should be 6

NameMarine = Many

NameCityCapital = 3

NameCity = Few

NameVillage = Many

NameLocal = Many

Hill = Few

Mount = Alot!!

ViewPoint = None

RockArea = Alot

There appear to be no "Locations" configured for airports, no "flatarea" and a lot of places that are not villages (including the airports) are just lumped together under "NameLocal". A separate category for the military bases too would be awesome :D

Anyways keep working guys. The island is impressive.

Edited August 28, 2013 by roy86
spelling

[Bashka_IF 1]

My idea is simple one to implement:

-----Variety of house colors------

Look at big towns from above 100-200 m. Majority of houses look like they are built a couple of months ago and painted the same color:

white walls, red tile, blue doors and windows. Put it simply - they look like 3-4 type of houses copy/pasted 50 times.

roof: tiles need to have gradations of red - dark red , grey-red, light red

walls: make some of them more yellow, some more blue, green.. slightly

windows: brown, cyan, green,...

look:

The same for Stratis.

If NordKindchen's mid-range textures system will be implemented, and perfomance problems solved, Altis will be 100% perfect.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Bashka

[Smurf 12]

Yeah, this would make a great difference with little effort.

[pharoah 65]

We definitely need more forested areas.

[UkropyPrivyet 32]

I have two big problems with Altis as it currently stands

1. It's too brown

I know that this is a modern fps, but that doesn't mean that it has to be 60 Shades of Brown: The Game. When you compare it to Stratis it looks like a desert. I understand this is supposed to be a Mediterranean Island (definitely not Lemnos), but I would've preferred to see an environment that doesn't remind me of Takistan. It would be nice to see a bit more grasslands like the South West portion of the map as compared to barren sun-baked terrain. Almost everything has at least a slight tint of sand color to it. This issue directly effects the second one.

2. The terrain feels too forced and in many ways out of place.

Because a good bit of the island is sandy brown, the small portions of the map that are not feel completely out of place. The green hills in South West Altis I could see, but the areas that aren't completely desert are a mix of green grass fields and sandy patches next to it, almost as if the sun was only shining on specific patches of grass because it didn't like them. The medium sized swampy area on the East side of the island feels completely out of place being right next to a somehow dirt and grass covered sandy beach. Not only does the swamp feels out of place, but it looks nothing like any swamp I've ever seen without the only trees being in the surrounding area and none in the swamp itself. About 4 Kilometers North of this swamp, there are two dry lake beds separated from the ocean by only a few meters at most in some areas. Not only do these two dry lakes feel awkward compared to their surrounding environment, one of them is HUGE. Why are they so big? It feels like a waste of valuable space. I honestly can't see anything useful being staged there other than maybe a few races with some buds who are bored of playing seriously and want to muck about for a bit. The last area I can think of at this time that I have a problem with is North West Altis, which has a forest growing out of the dead ground below it. The landscape feels inconsistent and like the developers had a lot of great ideas that they (for an unknown reason) tried to compact into one map.

All in all, I'm saddened to say that Altis was underwhelming to me. I really hope you guys address some of these issues, but it more than likely won't happen considering how close it is to release. Thanks for reading my issues with the map.

[minimalaco 30]

- Remove destroyed vehicles in urban areas, especially in the airport.

- flat areas are very nice but need some ditches...

- new garbage objects would be appreciated (Same washing from arma2.....)

- More mountains ? NOT

- More forest areas ? NOT

Edited August 29, 2013 by Minimalaco

[purepassion 22]

I have two big problems with Altis as it currently stands

I couldn't disagree more.

There are plenty of very green and lush areas. Let's please keep it authentic to the real island and the Mediterranean setting. In fact, if you look at the real Limnos, you'll see that it is actually much drier and browner than it is in the game.

Also I'm not sure what you're criticizing with the different grass colors. That's where different types of grass grows and that's how it looks like in reality. In fact, they create a very nice contrast which is very pleasant to look at.

The swamp and lakes are in the correct geolocation and adjusted scale as they are in reality.

Are you actually aware that Altis is modelled after the real island Limnos?

Edited August 28, 2013 by PurePassion

[maturin 12]

If you love forests (and I do), there's no reason you need specifically BIS-official forests. There will be half a dozen excellent maps before the first ArmA DLC inevitably adds a third, and history shows that they will be mostly European countryside and Middle Eastern desert.

[Smurf 12]

Don't change the fact that the a forest can lead to the creation of some type of missions. You have flat lands on both sides of the main lands (west is cool, east could use a forest, I suggested a man made one pages ago), if you change one a little you open a door for new possibilities.

[Ezcoo 47]

Some possible tweaks:

- the gas station in Kavala has a wreck in middle of the pumps, I think everyone agrees that it could be removed

- some areas around the map (eg. areas in Kavala) that are clearly made to be little more "luxury" than others have often their area full of garbage, it could be removed from those areas, looks quite weird... (ok, it's a war-torn area but still...) eg. the area near hospital is pretty clear from garbage and it looks definitely better that way... in general, I'd really prefer little less garbage and wrecks instead of too much of them

[Flaky 10]

Only skimread the thread so not sure if its already been mentioned, but the wind farms aren't synced with each other. ...

Wind farms are not always synchronised, because the wind is different at different places. Also sometimes a turbine will be shut down and stop completely to manage power output.

As for suggestions for the map, I would dearly love to see some more marine clutter on the extensive beaches/coasts eg. rusted out hulks and scrap, smaller derelict fishing boats, cranes, netting and foam floats, severely corroded heavy chain, driftwood, boat ramps, busted forklift, mussel encrusted pylons, all the flotsam of a wartorn coastline. Docks are always super messy places. I love what is going on with the textures, wonderful blending and contrast of the sandy and muddy textures gives so much character to the coastal regions. Maybe less of the umbrellas and deckchairs lol.

I have one other problem, that is with the small and very dense round brown shrubs which make up significant portions of the ground cover in some places. They are simply too dense and round, spoiling the otherwise great ground textures somewhat. If they were made more sparse/wiry or had their self-shadowing adjusted or perhaps were lighter in colour they would stand out a lot less. At the moment they resemble errant coral or large and very regular stepping or river stones.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Flaky

[trpaslik 10]

Hi again guys

Thanks for all of your comments so far. Its interesting for us to read this and to know what the community likes or not. Even things like which parts of the island you dont like are very useful.

Of course most of the things cant be changed at this stage of development, but it can at least serve as good inspiration for future.

[Zorg_DK 10]

I haven't explored much of the map yet, and I don't really have any complaints at this point. So far the map is fantastic as it is I think. I did miss some ambient civilians and road traffic in my exploring, but tpw has just made a script for that, so now Altis feels populated. One thing I'd love to see, as do others I see, is railroads with working and autonomously moving trains that you are able to board, and destroy. Imagine the possibilities - Take a relaxing trip across the Island in the saloon cart, or lay in ambush and blow up a bridge as the train passes. :D

You should be able to land on trains too, in DCS Black Shark I almost had more fun trying to land on moving trains than doing the actual missions lol.

edit: Forgot an oil platform, that would be cool as well.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Zorg_DK

[BadHabitz 235]

Of course most of the things cant be changed at this stage of development, but it can at least serve as good inspiration for future.

You have a lot of square kilometers worth of water, and besides some junk on the ocean floor you've failed to take advantage of it. That's my biggest gripe. A few little boats and a tiny sub really misses the mark. I'm not asking for giant warships, but some merchant ships for waterborne troops to interact with would've been great. Or oil platforms (I heard there might be one, but I haven't seen it).

[TFM_Callas 1]

Seeing as how the satellite photo of Limnos and BI's Stratis are damn near identical, I don't really have any massive issues with the map. However, I'd like very much if some of the vehicle wrecks at the airport were gone and some of the weird ones in the cities.

[nikiforos 450]

Will night time be optimized ? Going from day to night reduce the frames by almost 20 FPS.

[xXxatrush1987 10]

Will night time be optimized ? Going from day to night reduce the frames by almost 20 FPS.

try reducing dynamic lights, they eat up frames on all gpus even the fastest.

hd7970: day 77fps, night 51fps avg for example

[nikiforos 450]

Ok I will try this later , thanx for the tip :)

[doln 10]

Now that you mention it an oil rig would be awesome as hell.

[GranolaBar 10]

Easy suggestion : in the capital, the big house, hopital with helipad, we need "open door" or this big house was useless.

And in the same optic, more objects in the house, ok we can put them, but with an option, the game could be less empty.

Animals ? So less actually.

The game was so empty in term of ambiance... Ok we can put all elements in the editors, but after the performance were down automatically. For me, it's one of the biggest problem for arma to include a huge area with life, ok we don't need that life but in 270 km². There is no life ? and only 1 rabbits in 1km ? Hum, if it's the case, i want died..

[becubed 24]

The only suggestion I have so far would be to slow the speed of the doors on the domes as they open and close.

They should go up slowly like real garage doors, and only be operable from the control box on the outside and the one on the inside rather than anywhere along the door.

This would make them a bit more of a tactical obstacle.