Sugar Lake [67 sq km river delta terrain]

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Got a changelog, major_desync?

 

EDIT - disregard, found.

 

FIXED: Error message on start-up: “Cannot Load Texture Ca\misc3\wf\data\black.pac†by removing several objects including tents from the DP camps. (Thank you Auss for the pro tip!)

FIXED: Placement and height of a number of objects - including oil platforms, wood docks, powerlines etc.

ADDED: More pier ladders to oil facilities and wooden piers to make it easier/possible to climb out of water.

[Guest]

Thanks for sending us the updated release :)

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Sugar Lake v1.1 beta

All in Arma Terrain Pack (AiA TP)

OR

CUP Terrains

[kecharles28 197]

Updated mod v1.1 available at withSIX. Download now by clicking:

[autigergrad 2034]

I love how unique this map is.  Lots of possibilities with combined air/sea actions.Patrol Boats, Helo inserts, hostage rescue, scuba, and demolitions. Very very nice.  And I LOVE use of A3 assets as well.

[ares_military_recrutement 10]

Does no one have these critical-crashes to desktop?

[major_desync 137]

Hi Ares!

 

Apologies - I meant to answer your post sooner. I do get CTDs with Sugar Lake active, but usually only with a lot of other mods switched on too (like the RHS's and ACE3). Generally if I just have SL, AiATP, MCC, and say X-Cam (or even the minimum mod load out - AiATP and SL), it's stable on my set up.  

 

When it does crash, the most common one I get is the "Access Violation" one. I don't know if that's your experience as well? 

 

So I'm not sure if it's a "you thing" or a "me thing". :) 

 

Are there any common features to the CTDs that you've noticed? Anything common that seems to trigger them? Are there any mods that seem to increase the rate of crashing? Might help see if there's an incompatibility? 

[ares_military_recrutement 10]

I will test it with my crew again. Would you like to have the .rpt's an Windows-Error-Reports? Would that help you?

[major_desync 137]

.rpts might help, but I'm no expert in the ins and outs of Arma 3's guts, so I'm gonna say that unless there's something really obvious, .rpts are likely only to be a small help. But better than nothing, right? 

[Echo5Hotel Actual 8]

Hey Major,

 

Awesome map sir.  My group played the Operation Cottonmouth mission last night and loved it.  We never could get it to finish for us though.  I think we had some of the opfor in the reeds that we were missing or something though.  It was a blast hunting the opfor from the bench of the little bird.  Loads of fun.  Thank you for making this map.  The group I play in has been together for a while, since OFP:R.  When we were all in the air moving toward the 1st objective it was almost simultaneous that every one said we needed ships!  I have no knowledge or ability on porting over ARMA 2 mods but there is the Isolda Fleet add on that maybe someone could port over.  It would compliment this great map wonderfully!  Here is a link to the addon I am talking about.  If I know how to do it myself I would be all over it.  Just a suggestion but the map is great!  Thank you.   


http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=13417&highlight=ISOLD 

[stburr91 1004]

Hey Major,

 

Awesome map sir.  My group played the Operation Cottonmouth mission last night and loved it.  We never could get it to finish for us though.  I think we had some of the opfor in the reeds that we were missing or something though.  It was a blast hunting the opfor from the bench of the little bird.  Loads of fun.  Thank you for making this map.  The group I play in has been together for a while, since OFP:R.  When we were all in the air moving toward the 1st objective it was almost simultaneous that every one said we needed ships!  I have no knowledge or ability on porting over ARMA 2 mods but there is the Isolda Fleet add on that maybe someone could port over.  It would compliment this great map wonderfully!  Here is a link to the addon I am talking about.  If I know how to do it myself I would be all over it.  Just a suggestion but the map is great!  Thank you.   

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=13417&highlight=ISOLD

 

 

I can confirm that I saw bad guys in the reeds at the oil platform. It's kind of pointless to go in after them, you have not chance.

[major_desync 137]

Cheers Echo! Glad you enjoyed it.

 

Yes - there are scattered pickets on the islands around the main platforms. They need to be either killed or driven off. I did consider reducing the trigger radius to just include the platforms, but thought where was the fun in that?  One of the features of Sugar Lake is brown-trousers-close-quarter encounters in the long grass.  :devil:

 

Personally, I found the combination of FLIR (especially if you've got a spotter team in a Littlebird or bring a Darter UAV to direct a hit team on the ground) and liberal use of grenades a good way to smoke the pickets.  :D

 

As to Isolda Fleet - it's a great thought, but unfortunately, I know nothing about porting A2 objects, and the author (Gnat) hasn't been active here in over a year (even if I did know how to port, I'd need his permission to use his stuff). 

[ares_military_recrutement 10]

@major_desync:

Hey dude,
the error we reported lately isn't there anymore since the last ARMA Patch. We're using your fantastic map now.

 

Are you open minded for some ideas and requests?

[major_desync 137]

@Ares - good to know!

 

I'll always listen to ideas and requests - though I'll not guarantee acting on them. ;) 

 

Oh and - known issue: the fence and gates at Tidewater 4 are triplicated for some odd reason. I've fixed this in TB, but am running into a problem binarizing the terrain with the latest versions of PboProject (processes fails at the MakePbo stage). So any fixes and updates are delayed until that's sorted out. 

[p_siddy 58]

How have i only just seen this map. It looks very good! Nice work

[dakaodo 52]

I've had this map DLed for a while, but finally took a chance to really tour it by car. I have a boatload of my default mods (ACE, CUP everything, Massi) loaded in A3, but not in my tourist editor scenario for this map. I only loaded a couple of CUP vehicles to tool around. No crashes, but not helpful since my scenario doesn't load anything major.

 

#1: Awesome use of Arma 3 assets (re: trees and buildings in particular) to create the perfect feel of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. I've only been there a few times, but I drove this map at 9 am with clear skies. It very much captures the feel of the region on a pretty day. The derelict warehouses and piles of debris make it feel like it's been a few years since the last hurricane, but no one ever quite got around to cleaning up those last abandoned properties. The power lines and poles, transformer stations, it's very true to backwater America. ...Right down to my impromptu race down one of the straight bits, where I binned my car in the water coming off the embankment.

 

The rigs and industrial areas are really well done, from the pier design on up. I walked the chemical plant by JAF, and I can look forward to many cramped firefights in those areas. Everyone else has mentioned the bayou and swamp, and with some fog and low light conditions they'll be similarly claustrophobic.

 

The neglected heliport concrete pads overgrown with grass are very nice. And I liked how you used a damaged speed limit sign to simulate a sign shot up by bored joy riders. :D Did you retexture the gyro-turned-newspaper kiosk and A2 supermarket signs to be in English? Nice Red Burger diner. Is that custom or an Arma asset?

 

The A2 assets (like the picket fences, chicken coops, etc.) really help to mask the A3 Mediterranean assets, but your inspired layouts (detached garage, bedroom community neighborhood, bayou landing layouts) are what make it really right. The trees and shrubs are scattered just like I've seen in back road neighborhoods many places.

On the paved roads to the JAF and the radar station west of JAF, I really liked the fact that you designed the surface to be a bit uneven, as though the road is old and a bit buckled in places. I'm no map maker, so I assume that took conscious and tedious effort. Applying the same uneven surface by about an additional +25% to the dirt roads would make consistent sense, since the western dirt road that runs NW-SE that I took to go south to that radar station was glass-smooth by comparison. The dirt road east of Sugar Lake, by The Jump, is a great example of what I mean, for dirt roads that you have already worked on. But please disregard if that's too much re-work or if changing the terrain geometry across all roads to achieve the unevenness would consume too many system resources and slow down the map.

 

In the US, lines look like they are arrow straight over the long distances we tend to build things, along the Gulf Coast and other vast, open regions. But up close, the lines are never perfectly straight. And you captured that with the terrain geometry along the levees and other spots that I walked. Many legacy A2 maps give themselves away b/c of this, so it's nice to see that you put so much effort into these little details.

 

In the JAF itself, the old concrete bunker has a crown of sandbags on top, but they are misaligned by one sandbag's width, to the back of the bunker. If you climb the ladder, you can see sky between the sandbags and the concrete bunker side. I didn't notice any other issues.

[shomu1 193]

I just downloaded this yesterday.  Great map, man.  I echo what dakaodo says about it capturing the feel very well.  

[major_desync 137]

@Dakaodo and Shomu1 : Thank you very much for your kind comments!

 

It's great to hear from someone who's been in the real world location that it captures the feel at least somewhat. I've not had the good fortune to visit that part of the US (yet), so all I had to go on was Google Maps/Street View. 

 

The kiosks, supermarket signs and Red Burger stalls are all A3 vanilla. I think if you look closely, they have the Altis currency symbol on the price lists. As to the uneven roads - I'd love to say that was deliberate, but it's probably more of a happy accident from working with the leveling tools in Buldozer. 

 

Oh and cheers for the heads-up on the sandbags. I've noticed a few other glitches (floating garbage bins in the port, for example), but right now Make.pbo crashes when packing updated versions of the map. I'm not sure what's causing it (something weird in the textures since the Nexus update, I think), but until it's sorted I can't push any updates. Have no fear though, I'll bank these bugs reports and when it does get sorted, I'll do a mass bugfix and there will be a SugarLake v1.2

 

Thanks again - good luck and good gaming!

 

PS: I've also ramped quite a few vics over the embankment at the end of the straight. I really should put some wrecked vics on the river bottom there ;)

[CrazyCorky 463]

This is a well made map. Spent quite a bit of time actually wandering the map.

[Hate 232]

One of my favorite maps. Calico Alpha is my favorite spot, I'd love to see it get some more love, or even expanded. Dive operations have never been so fun in A3.

[shomu1 193]

Is it just me or are the runways and taxiways the bumpiest things ever?  It's like I'm going offroad in a Tomcat.  XD

[major_desync 137]

@Shomu1: the main taxiway is certainly fairly bumpy because of the drainage ditches beside it. I thought the main runway was better, but maybe not. I'll add that to the potential fix list. 

[Von Quest 1163]

Super excited to finally try out this map. I'm under the impression this is a Fictional Map?

[Private Evans 498]

Small request...since thw outer terrain is not working in A3 (looks horrible), could you make this completely surrounded by water please :)

[Von Quest 1163]

Yes! I second that.

We tried it out last night. Mixed reviews. It's off to a GREAT start. We love the map, except getting around is tuff and inaccessible. Need to open the waterways more for boat traffic. We found too much was restrictive and blocked. Especially in the bayou parts. Also adding more variety to the environments below the water would be great. Fluctuating depths instead of straight flat for the whole map. At least a little here and there.

Good map though. We will be keeping this in our rotation for Game Night.

Keep it up. Thanks!

[Jnr4817 215]

I love this map. The airport and runway are awesome. Id love to see an oil rig or two place somewhere in the bay.

 

Keep up the good work.