NEW MAP : France

[francis 4]

Hi , im happy to show this on Bis Forum . Patton and me (Madelinot) are creating a huge map 500 km X 500 km its all the France and all the country close of the france (+ England + Spain + Belgique + Luxanbourg + swiss + italy) but divised by 3 around . This map have so many epic mountain , valley , river , beach etc... take around 45 minute to fly with a plane at 800km/h from a corner to another one. I know this gonna crazy to import with all objects . So that i decided to not fill all the map and im using enought mountain and river to skip some objects like ( no grass on snow mountain) . We are creating this for A3LEF exclusively (Arma 3 Life Emergency Francophone) . we get a satelite image and then we modified this on photoshop cause we divised the terrain by 3 we lost all realistic zone but we remake this with better river and better visual effect. we thought we dont finish the map before 2015 .

On this Post i will show you some pictures from the France map .And mostly i posted this to proove im making this before get stolen by someone too lazy to make it by himself like we see all the time, like OFRL3 doing this ( , they rename their team to not be punished by Bis and they have make a parteneriat with A3L (Arma3Life) , but the truth Ofrl3 was using "Patton addon" signed by orel and they shared all the patton addon just to be sure to have A3L addon. now

this ofrl3 team is renamed someting else , i will found their name cause im not sure what name they have at the moment.

Patton, Mauf and Madelinot are making a lots of addons civil for A3LEF exclusively. Patton do this since 2009 and im new on arma seris since march 2013.Mauf do this since 2009 .We are making a French addon so all is in French we are not participated at contest Make arma not war cause we need to all rewrite it in english and im too lazy to do it ...

By the way , Patton and me are Making a huge mod and we are only using the Game Engine Arma 3.instead of using arma 1 2 and 3 all in one addons and done this like what Arma 3 Life do ( look like impresive on video but arma 1 map house and building from arma 1 2 and 3 thats why they are so faster to show video and making money but faster doesnt rhyme with good mod dont miss that ... better to create all new stuff cause we make a new map, new cars, new animals , new animations , we do all we just need a long time cause we are not a huge team we are french . And just to be clear Delorean from Arma 3 Life server is Officialy the Patton Model 3d (the proove is : the model is a free on the net but the free model isnt pimped and the model Arma 3 Life is the modification Patton have make in 2011 We know OFRL3 shared this Model 3D of Deloran but they never script it like the video show us all work of the script was done by orel ka and the modification of the car was made by Patton . Its just ridiculous how Arma 3 life and OFRL3 are too Lazy to making their OWN job . Im just around 6000 hours of creating content for A3LEF is just epic how some guys just for making money they steal other addon maker ...

Thanks to every all to read this

Si tu parle le Francais , que tu es sérieux peut-être nous t'ouvrirons la porte chez A3LEF.FR sur TeamSpeak . Nous cherchons sourtout des addons maker : avec ou sans experience : les seul critère requis sont : Beacoup de patience . avoir de l'autonomie (capable de chercher sur google etc) , être Respectueux et honnête. Plus nous serons nombreux et beaucoup plus rapidement nous voirrons le lancement du mod pour vous donner un appercu de notre age : j ai 30 ans et patton est plus agé que moi.nous ne cherchons pas des addons maker qui fait un addon comme tous les autre addons . nous on veut de l originalité c'est a dire pousser les limite de ce que l on peut faire ( faire vivre les addon, example : faire un accident de vehicule endomage la voiture visuelement ) cause que nous somme tres exigeant sur les performance et le rendu dans le jeux ( en gros on prefere un addon qui a mis du temps mais qui a du poids lourd a l interieur)

Edited August 12, 2014 by francis
added some screenshot

[Wiki 1558]

Great project, eager to see it!

I just hope the map won't be too empty - as you decided not to fill it up completely.

Will you also make Paris (if one town needs to be made, it's this one ;))

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:32 PM ----------

And you should probably create a thread in the addon discussion

[francis 4]

probably some building where Paris but not all for sure , we gonna try somewhere in south side Epic muntain and Valley less object = more performance we want a lot of power with a huge map just lol btw i have enough time to think about that..

and just to mentionne too just the empty map is enough for the fun : a monster truck in mountain is just Epic how the fun are or flying with a plane in valley is just so much beautifull ... but i will try to cover the most as i can do without to wait 2-3 day to pack it lol dont worry

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=299474628

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=299504428

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=299504371

Edited August 12, 2014 by francis

[miketim 20]

I am fine if the map labeling is in french and stuff, but will the map be seperate from the french civil mod.

Also, a little big on the scale there buddy, I really hope you are having someone help you out (not just 1 manning it).

[Flemdot Jr 10]

a mon avis cest trop grand completer, est mon francais bien ? :)

[francis 4]

yup its ok

[Flemdot Jr 10]

I would suggest doing one province in France because having a big empty map would be boring, or you could scale back the actual size a lot.

[m1lkm8n 411]

This is not in the right forum location. I suggest you pm a mod and ask to have it moved to the addon/mod discussion section.

Good luck with this. It's a huge undertaking to say the least.

Edited August 12, 2014 by M1lkm8n

[francis 4]

This is not in the right forum location. I suggest you pm a mod and ask to have it moved to the addon/mod discussion section.

Good luck with this. It's a huge undertaking to say the least.

oops ok thanks for the warning this post can be delete i have write a post in addon discussion for our addon vehicle i will add the map into this post .

new post http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?181875-New-French-Civil-mod-Nouveau-mod-Civil-Francais&p=2751840#post2751840

and sorry again m1lkm8n

[m1lkm8n 411]

Hehe. U don't have to apologize to me my friend. I'm just letting you know. Can't wait to see some screen shots.

[rip31st 98]

Some words of friendly advice from the large map man himself. To put things in perspective, think about it this way. The game engine has a limitation of ~ 5,000,000 objects. The .wrp file reaches nearly 4 gigs at that point and as you may be aware, a 32-bit program can only reside up to that much in memory before dumping. Covering 500k x with objects will be sparsely done. 500 x 500k = 250,000 square kilometers. That equates to roughly 20 objects per square km. There's creativity needed on behalf of the 3D modeling perspective to create a beautiful landscape with nicely populated cities, towns, villages, and farms. Secondly, The game engine won't allow for rivers and streams with a proper height map. The only way to defeat that is to create waterways by cutting paths in your terrain and significantly lowering the elevation areas around the water ways, but then you lose the realistic feel of standing in Paris at 35m when your at 6m and there's weird valley's all over the map where they're not supposed to be. And lastly, I've been working on nearly the same area, but to scale since 2008. It's a huge time consumer. I've released a few betas of my map and the guys can tell you first hand that have played multilayer missions on it felt like they were in a big green desert. I still have no time frame of when I'm releasing my map. It's taken a lot of patience and countless hours of pulling my hair out for years to get to the point we're at now. Creating object's like the Eiffel tower to scale from Gustavs drawings took 5 month's alone.

I wish you good luck and look forward to your progress!

Edited August 15, 2014 by Rip31st

[sgtsev3n 12]

Some words of friendly advice from the large map man himself. To put things in perspective, think about it this way. The game engine has a limitation of ~ 5,000,000 objects. The .wrp file reaches nearly 4 gigs at that point and as you may be aware, a 32-bit program can only reside up to that much in memory before dumping. Covering 500k x with objects will be sparsely done. 500 x 500k = 250,000 square kilometers. That equates to roughly 20 objects per square km. There's creativity needed on behalf of the 3D modeling perspective to create a beautiful landscape with nicely populated cities, towns, villages, and farms. Secondly, The game engine won't allow for rivers and streams with a proper height map. The only way to defeat that is to create waterways by cutting paths in your terrain and significantly lowering the elevation areas around the water ways, but then you lose the realistic feel of standing in Paris at 35m when your at 6m and there's weird valley's all over the map where they're not supposed to be. And lastly, I've been working on nearly the same area, but to scale since 2008. It's a huge time consumer. I've released a few betas of my map and the guys can tell you first hand that have played multilayer missions on it felt like they were in a big green desert. I still have no time frame of when I'm releasing my map. It's taken a lot of patience and countless hours of pulling my hair out for years to get to the point we're at now. Creating object's like the Eiffel tower to scale from Gustavs drawings took 5 month's alone.

I wish you good luck and look forward to your progress!

someone mentioned in another topic that the limit has been increased to a few million.

[rip31st 98]

someone mentioned in another topic that the limit has been increased to a few million.

Oh I'm assuming you mean by a few million. Well that would help out by a few objects per square km. :)

[francis 4]

Oh I'm assuming you mean by a few million. Well that would help out by a few objects per square km. :)

By the way ,as i was saying at first , i'm not welling to fill all the map . i want to create a huge map with empty zone around 75% of the map. All water zone and the mountain zone will be probably empty. we will focus on a little zone around 35km X 35 km to fill all the zone of 35 km x 35 km. With a 500 Km x 500 Km thats gonna be great for Airfield Battle and changing zone in the map faster without having to create a new terrain. Making this huge map will help me to creating a new version without having to create new map only have to move object somewhere else cause terrain will be ready.

as i know someone in a topic was saying 20 km x 20 km with 3 million object gonna take around 10 hours to pack it with a good Pc

Im new to making map and i dont have any experience of the max object reference and memories i read some post but so many are saying yes you can . some else saying no you can't . So i have to said i need to make my own experience and nothing is impossible .I take care of any mention cause i know some limit will not help me . For sure im happy to work on that project. I have see vbs using a huge map of 500 km X 500 km ( in a topic i have found this )

With Patton we want to play a better game than arma 3, we know that the possibility of the game engine is great and we are not satisfied with the mission arma 3 MP and the concept of Them (war zone 2035). We want to create a civil mod "Play your life 2014." We need a new map building without breaking etc ... our map will be very low in the early counting objects, but players will be able to build houses, to grow vegetation and create businesses. Then come more player play more the map will be filled

that's why we create a map not completely empty but almost. It will take less time to create the map

Edited August 18, 2014 by francis

[sgtsev3n 12]

Oh I'm assuming you mean by a few million. Well that would help out by a few objects per square km. :)

yeah sorry my fault. i mean this. anyway, it would be good if a dev would tell us something about the maximum number of objects if they increased the limit or not.

[bushlurker 46]

Rip31st is pretty much spot-on with his info about maximum .wrp size, etc.

I'm not sure of the exact "object limit" although Snakeman has been running a few tests with high numbers of objects on various sized terrains... 5 million sounds like a likely figure, though as Rip says, other factors are at play too...

5 million objects seems like a lot, but vegetation in particular, can eat that total fairly quickly... I have a forthcoming (eventually) simple 51x51km island designed primarily for the Fly Boys, so I skipped dense forests and went for a simple overall light dressing of trees, bushes and rocks - the terrain is by no means heavily vegged, yet I hit 1.95 million objects just with vegetation alone...

However - the single biggest drawback of such a huge terrain in Arma is - resolution!

Yes - VBS features some ridiculously huge terrains - it's my job to make some of those actually, and 500x500km terrains are by no means the biggest which have been made, but VBS features a special exclusive terrain tech - "Multimaps"

Basically a multimap in VBS is a series of individual subterrains arranged in a grid and stitched together via a "master config file". Each subterrain is essentially a terrain in its own right and can even be made into a "standalone"...

The benefit fo this approach is - resolution... You're effectively using many heightmaps stitched together to overcome the limitations of a single heightmap...

In Arma this isn't possible, and you're limited to using a single heightmap. This is where big terrains can get messy...

Although TerrainBuilder has an "8192 x 8192 cell" option, so far it hasn't proved workable, so currently the biggest "heightmap grid" possible is 4096x4096 cells...

Now imagine that grid as a flat mesh with 4096 x 4096 "nodes"... To make a hill you pull a node up - but since you only pulled up one node of a triangulated mesh what you've actually made is a sharp pointed pyramid. To make a smooth and convincing "hill" you'd need tu gradually raise a whole area of nodes, each a little more than the last, until you have a rounded "bump" which doesn't look too triangulated or angular... As you can imagine, you've had to use quite a few nodes in an area to get that convincing "hill"...

This is "heightmap ground resolution" at work... If this were a "normal" terrain with those nodes spaced 5 meters apart, then the smallest convincing hill you'd be able to make might span 8 or 10 nodes - 40 > 50 meters... With "5 meter spacing" you can't really smoothly model a ground feature smaller than that.

Now remember - its a 4096 grid, and each node spacing represents 5 meters, so 4096 x 5 = 20480 - so this terrain would be 20480 meters wide - or roughly 20km...

Now - I guess you're guessing where this is going.... ;)

What spacing would we need to use with a 4096 grid to get 500km?? - the answer is - approximately 122 meter spacing... (4096 x 122 = 499712 meters, or 499.7km).

Now think back to our "Hill" and how with a 5 meter spacing we reckoned the smallest natural feature we could model reasonably neatly would be 8 > 10 nodes across...

With this big spacing heightmap we're talking "smallest ground feature between about 976 and 1.2km across!

That's REALLY low res... you couldn't have a 100 meter wide "river" or "inlet" with a 122m spacing, or any kind of small scale bumps, rises or "ditches" - coastlines which curve a lot will be "stepped" into 122 meter jagged "steps" unless they're very straight, and smaller coastline features can't be represented at all...

There's other aesthetic drawbacks, regarding max possible satellite imagery sizes and the sort of resolutions they'd end up like in game, but they're minor compared to the heightmap issue...

For high-jet flyers this sort of res would be acceptable - barely, if the sat imagery was halfway decent, but "on the ground" it's likely to be fairly featureless at best, and alarmingly crude at worst...

That doesn't, of course, mean that it can't be done - it should be possible, it's just a question of knowing the limitations inherent in the scale...

B

B

Edited August 19, 2014 by Bushlurker

[rip31st 98]

Hey Bush!

Do you know by chance if shape file polys count towards the overall object limit, or is there a separate limit? And if so, what is it? :)

[francis 4]

Rip31st is pretty much spot-on with his info about maximum .wrp size, etc.

I'm not sure of the exact "object limit" although Snakeman has been running a few tests with high numbers of objects on various sized terrains... 5 million sounds like a likely figure, though as Rip says, other factors are at play too...

% million objects seems like a lot, but vegetation in particular, can eat that total fairly quickly... I have a forthcoming (eventually) simple 51x51km island designed primarily for the Fly Boys, so I skipped dense forests and went for a simple overall light dressing of trees, bushes and rocks - the terrain is by no means heavily vegged, yet I hit 1.95 million objects just with vegetation alone...

However - the single biggest drawback of such a huge terrain in Arma is - resolution!

Yes - VBS features some ridiculously huge terrains - it's my job to make some of those actually, and 500x500km terrains are by no means the biggest which have been made, but VBS features a special exclusive terrain tech - "Multimaps"

Basically a multimap in VBS is a series of individual subterrains arranged in a grid and stitched together via a "master config file". Each subterrain is essentially a terrain in its own right and can even be made into a "standalone"...

The benefit fo this approach is - resolution... You're effectively using many heightmaps stitched together to overcome the limitations of a single heightmap...

In Arma this isn't possible, and you're limited to using a single heightmap. This is where big terrains can get messy...

Although TerrainBuilder has an "8192 x 8192 cell" option, so far it hasn't proved workable, so currently the biggest "heightmap grid" possible is 4096x4096 cells...

Now imagine that grid as a flat mesh with 4096 x 4096 "nodes"... To make a hill you pull a node up - bit since you only pulled up one node of a triangulated mesh what you've actually made is a sharp pointed pyramid. To make a smooth and convincing "hill" you'd need tu gradually raise a whole area of nodes, each a little more than the last, until you have a rounded "bump" which doesn't look too triangulated or angular... As you can imagine, you've had to use quite a few nodes in an area to get that convincing "hill"...

This is "heightmap ground resolution" at work... If this were a "normal" terrain with those nodes spaced 5 meters apart, then the smallest convincing hill you'd be able to make might span 8 or 10 nodes - 40 > 50 meters... With "5 meter spacing" you can't really smoothly model a ground feature smaller than that.

Now remember - its a 4096 grid, and each node spacing represents 5 meters, so 4096 x 5 = 20480 - so this terrain would be 20480 meters wide - or roughly 20km...

Now - I gues you're guessing where this is going.... ;)

What spacing would we need to use with a 4096 grid to get 500km?? - the answer is - approximately 122 meter spacing... (4096 x 122 = 499712 meters, or 499.7km).

Now think back to our "Hill" and how with a 5 meter spacing we reckoned the smallest natural feature we could model reasonably neatly would be 8 > 10 nodes across...

With this big spacing heightmap we're talking "smallest ground feature between about 976 and 1.2km across!

That's REALLY low res... you couldn't have a 100 meter wide "river" or "inlet" with a 122m spacing, or any kind of small scale bumps, rises or "ditches" - coastlines which curve a lot will be "stepped" into 122 meter jagged "steps" unless they're very straight, and smaller coastline features can't be represented at all...

There's other aesthetic drawbacks, regarding max possible satellite imagery sizes and the sort of resolutions they'd end up like in game, but they're minor compared to the heightmap issue...

For high-jet flyers this sort of res would be acceptable - barely, if the sat imagery was halfway decent, but "on the ground" it's likely to be fairly featureless at best, and alarmingly crude at worst...

That doesn't, of course, mean that it can't be done - it should be possible, it's just a question of knowing the limitations inherent in the scale...

B

B

thanks you Bushlurker for some info really helpfull. and yeah with 8192 x 8192 as resolution for some first try, after generated layer , click ok then Terrain builder shutdown. So i can only do it with :Grid size is 4096 x 4096 , cell size is 100 meter the terrain size is 409.6 km x 409.6 KM. The Satellite/Surface (mask) source image size pixel is 4096 x 4096 and the resolution is 100.The Satellite/Surface (mask)tiles size is 1024 x 1024 with desired overlap is 4 and the textur layer is 800 x 800 . Time to wait for binarize the empty map is around less than 4 min.

I am not really sure if is the best i can use,but i need to test all size to find the best one. For the moment , the best i have found is the info i shared just over

any helps are welcome

[IGhostAssassinI 10]

Bon courage

Good luck

[francis 4]

[sgtsev3n 12]

i saw your screenshots about your car:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/576778170934014256/519F93E32418B73BC702B10B60121A90E32E2335/

but what about the ground texture ? is the ground texture so low res because of the huge terrain size ? is there a way to fix it ?

[francis 4]

i saw your screenshots about your car:

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/576778170934014256/519F93E32418B73BC702B10B60121A90E32E2335/

but what about the ground texture ? is the ground texture so low res because of the huge terrain size ? is there a way to fix it ?

The textur i used on the terrain in the video its just a primary test for mountain and some area to see what i need to work or not

im gonna work to fix alot as possible this Terrain is a Work in Progress any helps are welcome !

[sgtsev3n 12]

okay.

i tested a map for arma 2 in arma 3 called "dbo afghanistan". it is the arma 2 version. it works with ArmA 3 mappack. it is 201km x 201km. pretty huge.

but there is a bug and i dont know if its only map related or if its a arma 3 bug itself: on some places, ultra low res ground textures suddenly appears.

i spawned and saw good / high res ground textures, i walked and walked and bam, ground texture got low res. i walked back and high res texture appeared. seems on some places are low res textures and on the other places high res textures.

i hope u wont get this bug. i will try now the arma 3 dbo afghanistan version which is 80km x 80km. maybe there isnt the bug.

EDIT: ok i tested the 80km x 80km version. works fine, no texture bug but it seems like that the objects are "flying" on huge maps.

you can download the 80km x 80km version here and test it yourself:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=18805

you dont need arma 3 mappack or anything. if you are in the editor, choose a place which is more flat, not in the hills, because on the flat area there is grass and there you can see what i mean with "flying objects". just look close at the ground and at the grass.

i thought about making a 201km x 201km desert island too. but i will wait for results.

i hope u wont have texture bugs in your map. with the flying objects i can live with it because if you dont look close enough, you wont see this bug and if you see it, its not dramatic.

Edited August 18, 2014 by sgtsev3n

[francis 4]

okay.

i tested a map for arma 2 in arma 3 called "dbo afghanistan". it is the arma 2 version. it works with ArmA 3 mappack. it is 201km x 201km. pretty huge.

but there is a bug and i dont know if its only map related or if its a arma 3 bug itself: on some places, ultra low res ground textures suddenly appears.

i spawned and saw good / high res ground textures, i walked and walked and bam, ground texture got low res. i walked back and high res texture appeared. seems on some places are low res textures and on the other places high res textures.

i hope u wont get this bug. i will try now the arma 3 dbo afghanistan version which is 80km x 80km. maybe there isnt the bug.

EDIT: ok i tested the 80km x 80km version. works fine, no texture bug but it seems like that the objects are "flying" on huge maps.

you can download the 80km x 80km version here and test it yourself:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=18805

you dont need arma 3 mappack or anything. if you are in the editor, choose a place which is more flat, not in the hills, because on the flat area there is grass and there you can see what i mean with "flying objects". just look close at the ground and at the grass.

i thought about making a 201km x 201km desert island too. but i will wait for results.

i hope u wont have texture bugs in your map. with the flying objects i can live with it because if you dont look close enough, you wont see this bug and if you see it, its not dramatic.

it's probably a mesh that has been miscalculated by stretching the surface. This smooth phenomenon more if you do not increase the maximum height. So you have to increase the maximum height proportionaly to the expansion that is why I will board a map with a square pixel ratio squared its easier to calculate it

[sgtsev3n 12]

it's probably a mesh that has been miscalculated by stretching the surface. This smooth phenomenon more if you do not increase the maximum height. So you have to increase the maximum height proportionaly to the expansion that is why I will board a map with a square pixel ratio squared its easier to calculate it

what problem would this fix ? the "flying object" bug or the low res texture bug ?