SMD Sahrani A3 - Bohemia's Sahrani Terrain as ported by SMD

[serjames 357]

yeah, but if they're not pathed on Sahrani as Cifor mentioned previously... that won't help :-)

[cifordayzserver 119]

Whatever you decide and how ever much time is eventually spent is much appreciated. All I do ask is that you have a plan of some sort formulated if you do decide to move on. It's how these projects are managed at start and end that seem to decide their final fate and I'd hate to see your huge efforts just go to waste if the source files were not passed on to someone or some agency responsible enough to at least maintain them.

Anyway fingers crossed you'll miss it all too much to completely go - we can deal with slow and steady improvements... :-)

SJ

Well, there's not doubt that Sahrani literally calls to me... that, and I have a huge poster of it up on my bedroom wall...

I don't think there is any doubt that the project will continue. It just might turn into something that I can work on 2-3 times a quarter, instead of 2-3 times a day/week/month. The workload is truly enormous, even for a result that would be less than what I want. Hopefully this lack of time to focus on it will force me to better organize my efforts.

Would it be possible to make the buildings enterable for AI units? When i try to command an AI to enter the building the marker didnt show the possibility to reach 1st or second floors. A couple of buildings are working, ATC on Airfield for example is working, but a lot of other buildings are not enterable for AI Units

So, M1lkm8n did do AI pathing for almost all his buildings, which is the vast majority. I really don't know anything about the AI, I don't even know how to command them in game really, so even testing it for me is a PITA. Doing the paths is just tedious. At some point, I'm going to go through and do all the buildings for A3 again, which will mean I have to open/edit them all anyway, so the plan was to learn how to do the paths first, and then do those as well for everything.

Again, the breadth of a project like that is huge, it's not just a matter of the actual model editing which once into a good workflow would only take 5-20 minutes per model, there are hundreds of models... and that's just step one, they have to be repacked, tested, checked, almost always there will be minor/stupid packing or random errors that need to get bug tested/fixed prior to final packing, testing, releasing... and I'm borderline obsessed with trying to do videos for releases, but didn't even have the time to do that for the initial A3 release... It's something I want to do, just not sure It's a realistic goal for the foreseeable future.

Hi LSD - I think this is a known fault for the moment. No Ai Pathing on the custom buildings. I recall it was a bit of a pig of a job, but on the list somewhere :-)

Yeah, my buildings totally lack AI paths, M1lkm8ns have them, but I THINK many default A1 buildings do NOT.

---------- Post added at 01:29 ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 ----------

Whatever you decide and how ever much time is eventually spent is much appreciated. All I do ask is that you have a plan of some sort formulated if you do decide to move on. It's how these projects are managed at start and end that seem to decide their final fate and I'd hate to see your huge efforts just go to waste if the source files were not passed on to someone or some agency responsible enough to at least maintain them.

Anyway fingers crossed you'll miss it all too much to completely go - we can deal with slow and steady improvements... :-)

SJ

Yeah, I'm juggling around ideas in my head about how to handle this... What I'm leaning towards right now (and was planning prior to all this) is to release ALL the source, as supports to my modding tutorial series.

The idea is, I do some tutorials with several examples from the package so that people can DL it and work with it 1 for 1 instead of trying to apply a generic non-specific tutorial to their project. I find that the tutorials and even many Biki entries are just too vague to be properly understood.

I'm mulling around the plan of attack in my head, and as my schedule allows, I will finalize that and then move forward from there.

Ideally I want to:

I. Update SMD_A3

1. Fix the existing bugs in the SMD A3 package

2. Add the ocean floor clutter

3. hopefully terrain drag coefficients/dust effects

4. Release update

II. Publish Building modding tutorials with source

III. Publish Terrain modding tutorials with source

IV. Plan how to either

- do a standalone SMD A3 release

or

- Merge AiA_TP into SMD_A3

OR

- Just crank out all the building work for A1/A2/SMD so they're ALL up to A3 standards for CUP, that way depending on where they are in their work, there might be a CUP alternative to AiA.

Realistically with my current schedule this is a 1-2 year plan.

[serjames 357]

Well you have our support :-)

[cifordayzserver 119]

Took a bit of time this weekend to play around with the heightmap editor (L3dt) it was Sooooo easy to use.

Sahrani has a new height map with a LOT of cool topography on the ocean floor.

Link to Full Size pic since it's hard to see as a thumbnail

It has spots as deep as 800 meters. LOTS of ocean mounts, lots of steep drop offs off the coasts, it's not by any means a pro job, but for now it really looks pretty darn good for a first shot IMO.

I'm going to research a bit more to see what an accurate mid atlantic island chain's sea floors would look like, but I fear those would be super boring, as it would basically be a super deep sea floor with the islands jutting out. I went for that effect, but not a super deep un-explorable floor taking up the majority of the space....

I'm going to try to tune up the ground texture blend too, it just doesn't look very good, the BI ocean floor texture tiles really obviously, and the blend I did basically leaves huge long lines of breaks between the sand and seafloor which doesn't look great at all.

I'm NOT going to screw with the heightmap anymore for now, but I might take some time to do the texture blend better.

Then, I'll fix the alpha issues, hopefully get the ground surface frictions working, include the updated unit textures, and pack an update.

I took some video of the ocean floor, it's not great, and doesn't really show any of the dramatic areas, or the real depths of it...

Edited January 19, 2015 by CiforDayZServer

[domokun 515]

Glad to hear that you've found a tool to easy the painful conversion.

While I applaud underwater environment, plz bear in mind that 99%of users will be onland.

And even the 1% that dive, most will not dive deeper than 20 metres as that's the limit for most rebreathers.

[serjames 357]

That being said - it's cool to get the topography sorted. Who's to say what amazing sub mod might be down the line :-) Naval warfare is just aching to be included in A3.....

[cifordayzserver 119]

Glad to hear that you've found a tool to easy the painful conversion.

While I applaud underwater environment, plz bear in mind that 99%of users will be onland.

And even the 1% that dive, most will not dive deeper than 20 metres as that's the limit for most rebreathers.

Regular DAN diving limit more like 40m, but Arma meters don't feel right IMO. Being down in game at 90m looks/feels like being in the ocean at 90 feet. People also regularly exceed the "safe" diving limit. The current record is 318.25m. I've been to 50m

Having said that, I want/need to have the depths so that the drop offs look natural, and you have plenty of room to get yourself in trouble if you ARE using a diving simulation mod.

That being said - it's cool to get the topography sorted. Who's to say what amazing sub mod might be down the line :-) Naval warfare is just aching to be included in A3.....

That's actually exactly what I was thinking.. missions/mods for the ocean, I'd love to see a bathysphere Mod, or ROV, or...

It's also just unbelievably ripe for easter eggs.. who's to say Atlantis isn't sitting at the bottom of one of those trenches... or Rapture for that matter lol.

I Love the idea of Sahrani being as interesting under the water as it is above.... obviously not going to prioritize that over bug fixing... but I wanted to check L3DT out and it was so easy to get a decent job done on the ocean floor I couldn't resist... Long term, I still may increase the cell density and smooth out some of the harsh edges on the mainland as well.

For now, I'm going mess with the ground texture blend for the ocean more till it looks a bit better, then I'll try to loop back and focus on the bugs. The thing about the ground textures, and Heightmap are they're fairly easy to do the work in L3DT or Photoshop and then repack the island... I don't really have to "think" about it... fixing the ground surface frictions/dust/sounds, and fixing the alpha issues in the buildings take a bit more focus/time/testing... which I just don't have right now.

[stroudja 10]

Nice mod

[slatts 1978]

Would you being adding wrecks along the ocean floor? Or leave that to mission designers?

[Outlawz7 1]

or

- Merge AiA_TP into SMD_A3

Are you sure it's not the other way around? :P

[cifordayzserver 119]

Definitely going to add some, to tons of wrecks depending on whether or not they get drawn for players on land.

As far as AiA, if kju stops supporting it, it would only make sense for me to do a smd_AiA

[axelius 10]

I'm glad to hear that you are continuing on this project, be it standalone or expanding to SMD_AiA. Perhaps might be an idea to do separate packs for each map or map family (Chernarus/Utes, Takistan/Zargabad) if there aren't too many shared objects to reduce general size and increase modularity (of course, this will just lead to people complaining about the lack of a single unified mod, but people will bitch no matter what).

Keep up the great work!

[cifordayzserver 119]

The thing is, separate packs will still be 3-5gb, instead of 8-10 for a pack with all of them.

A2 has a TON of A1 buildings in it, So you'd have doubles of lots and lots of buildings, objects, vegetation, etc etc etc.

Really best thing to do would be to do an all in one, but unless AiA gets broken, there's really no point in me taking on the project till it's needed, or I have the time to contribute something serious to it. I would like to edit and repack all the terrains like we did with SMD, but that's a LOT of work, that I prob. couldn't get done on my own.

I have been meaning to discuss some thoughts/ideas with kju but haven't had a chance. Essentially, AiA was meant to be replaced with CUP eventually anyway, which was going to be largely M1lkm8n and my buildings... so whether it's called, CUP, or AiA, or SMD or w'ever... I'm going to do my best to get as much improvement done to as many buildings/terrains as is logistically possible.

I think the key is going to be getting the next 1 or 2 tutorials done so that more people know what needs to be done and how... hopefully a few more folks might start work on the buildings then.

Then, if I can focus on getting all the SMD buildings done for A3 properly, I should get myself into a good workflow to do a quick job on the remaining A1/A2 library that isn't already done for Jbad by M1lkm8n.

At this point though, I'm still playing with borrowed time though, I just can't spend much time at the computer when I'm not at work, otherwise my work suffers.

[cifordayzserver 119]

Flying around a bit the other day, took some video with my new video card..

Also got some fixed textures from Plisken, and then made some materials, and an rvmat for them, I THINK it worked, I dunno, I'm going to play with it more at some point. I was hoping to get it a little practice/knowledge for messing with the ground textures a bit, I also want to soften the midrange textures. I'd like to kill multiple birds with one stone so to speak, by getting all that done along with the seabed ground textures so I can regenerate the layers, and repack once, instead of a few times.

I still have to loop back to the buildings to fix the alpha issues, but I don't even have a clean list of which one's yet. I know I did some work on the noise/dust/surface friction on the ground textures, but I think the roads/sidewalks need to be done, which is another project, that would be better done once correctly than for me to shoehorn it now. The roads and sidewalks are still done with objects instead of A3's method of using shapefiles... I have the shapefiles to use, but haven't applied them yet.

I'll see if I'm up for some serious work on trying to get a patch out tomorrow, but can't make any promises.

[serjames 357]

Looking good :-)

[inlesco 233]

Lovely island! It's a joy to play because I've never actually experienced Sahrani in its full (played OFP during A1 times ;)).

Nice to see the progress and I hope you guys make it as wonderful as possible! Best of luck!

[cifordayzserver 119]

I changed the midrange texture a few times, and actually ended up liking one from the original Sahrani the most lol. I got my list of buildings a little more detailed, but still has a way to go. Got word from Plikin that he's got some more textures done, he's just working out a few more, and then will send me an update.

[domokun 515]

Video looks really sweet (I'd fancy spending a summer treking and swimming round those creeks).

I can't wait to see this progress and, if possible, for someone to re-create A1's original campaign (though that probably requires PRACS to be ported and CUP completed).

[cifordayzserver 119]

I made another short comparison video between AiA_TP's default BI Sahrani and SMD Sahrani A3 in AiA.

TAKE NOTE on the video above, this shows the current midrange texture I like so far, it may change again, but it gets rid of those really obvious jagged lines that some folks pointed out.

On the campaign, I'm really not sure, I know someone worked on it for A2, and still didn't get it done AFAIK, it's a daunting task ironing out all the minutia to get a campaign running smoothly all the way through.

I wouldn't even be able to test it lol.

I've got a lot of other pretty good video that I want to mix into a video as well, but there's no real direction for it, it's just a bunch of fighting... but it looks cool! lol.

Edited January 26, 2015 by CiforDayZServer

[phronk 895]

Looks waaaay better. Although, anything is better than blotched up glitchy SatMaps and jagged textures. ;)

[cifordayzserver 119]

It's an addiction, was all ready to go to bed, and checked email... Pliskin has been a busy bee... He's redone the Black Ops, Black Ops Digi factions, and done a BUNCH of vehicles, also config'd them as their own faction. He's working on the RACS units as well:

[domokun 515]

It's an addiction, was all ready to go to bed, and checked email... Pliskin has been a busy bee... He's redone the Black Ops, Black Ops Digi factions, and done a BUNCH of vehicles, also config'd them as their own faction. He's working on the RACS units as well:

This!

If Sahrani is ported and RACS too then a redux of the entire A1 campaign could be possible.

Just like Outlawz7's effort from last summer for A2

[El Tyranos 1263]

Could you please add fations/uniforms etc. in a separate pbo ? :)

[corporal_lib[br] 396]

This!

If Sahrani is ported and RACS too then a redux of the entire A1 campaign could be possible.

Just like Outlawz7's effort from last summer for A2

My Thoughts exactly! Outlaw7 has been doing some serious A2 campaign reduxes for A3 (check his steamworkshop) I´ve hinted him many times to remake his A1 redux for A2 into A3 lol

Let us hope it does happens (by him or anyone else willingly)

Outstanding work CifordayZServer =D

cheers!

[cifordayzserver 119]

Just for clarity, this is NOT PRACS RACS units, this is just a loose compilation of reskinned A3 units done by Pliskin. The vehicles are new, the units are currently included with the package, and available separately, but some have some minor glitches. Non have proper materials/rvmats, although we're both working on getting that stuff down.

We plan on making them droppable as groups, and hope to add a bunch of reskinned citizens as well. We did SLA units for A2 that we could also do for A3 if folks are interested.

A3 SMD Units/vehicles Links:

RACS - http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25207&highlight=SMD%2BA3

BLOPS - http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25240&highlight=SMD%2BA3

Vehicles - http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25241&highlight=SMD%2BA3

A2 SMD Units/Vehicles Links:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162936-SMD_Assets-Standalone-PBO-Release

Honestly there is a SHIT TON more stuff in there than pictures, including a lot of objects and custom models. Some of it is of questionable quality though (the buses and a few cars are not great)... and as above they all lack materials/rv's. I'm fairly sure it also includes all the custom item models we did for DayZ mod.

When/if we get up to speed on doing that properly, we will definitely update A3, but only A2 if it's requested.