NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 Hello All! It has been a while since I have posted on the forums! (Personal Life and all that jazz) I have been a member of the community since OFP however, I didn't migrate my usernames and it seems it has all been lost in translation. My original usernames probably included something similar to OChristie etc! ;) Quick Background: OFP, ArmA 1/2/3, VBS 1/2/3. I make terrains and love it! Lampedusa Challenge The best terrain, mission and unit content pack wins! Summary The community that exists for any large game title always manages to bring a new dynamic to its respective platform. With the ease of modification to the ArmA platform since its conception, the possibilities have truly been endless. Because of all of this, I am very interested to see just how far we can take this little project. Lampedusa Island is here. I would do this myself however I don't feel that I have the skill in A3 terrain development and I love the power that the community have! Structure This challenge can be completed as an individual or as a team. The Challenge To create the best or most interesting terrain of Lampedusa, Italy combined with an in depth, diverse and fun mission to explore it. (Think CTI, COOP, Domination). If you want to create a content pack then feel free! Competition Rules You will have no more than 3 months to complete the challenge and all entries MUST be submitted as a reply to the main BI Forums thread by the 1st April 2017. Most importantly have fun! Tools You are able to use any GIS / Terrain / Mission tools that BI authorise the community to use. Data The starter pack contains Imagery, Elevation and Vector data which should point you in the right direction. You can download the data here: LampedusaChallenge.rar (via Google Drive ~275mb) Testing You are welcome to publicly test your Terrains / Missions on the A3 servers. Good luck. P.S. This thread will grow, please feel free to ask questions and I will add any key information to the thread. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mondkalb 1087 Posted January 2, 2017 Great to see more incentive for creating terrains and islands in particular! Overall the idea is very similar to the ancient old terrain competition I ran in 2012: However, I see some issues here: With this Lampedusa challenge won't you end up with a couple or so terrains based on the same location? Personally that deters me from partaking because of two reasons: - I can't work on a location I really want to, and - At the end there are similar terrains based on the same area, which makes the effort seem a bit more futile. One winner terrain is "used", and the others will be forgotten about. Running the competition with a wider scope ensures that even the results that aren't celebrated as the winner will still retain purpose and future use simply by being a different location/region/area. Basically my gripe with this is that the purpose of the contest is "Make 1 island as good as possible", and not "get people into making terrains". Some people may even suspect you are doing this competition as a proxy to "buy" a terrain you want... 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bludski 4421 Posted January 2, 2017 2 minutes ago, mondkalb said: Some people may even suspect you are doing this competition as a proxy to "buy" a terrain you want... I'd wager most... 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 I can remove the cash incentives if people aren't interested! You can treat it as some free data, work in progress at a high resolution or you can jump in and create your best attempt at a project! The data is all geo projected and I am now aware that TB requires a different type of projection! Was just a quick thought to release it as a fun competition, no one has to jump in at all! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 It's a shame people can't just be like 'Free data, maybe will win some money, cool.' :D Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
haleks 8212 Posted January 2, 2017 10 minutes ago, NexumX said: It's a shame people can't just be like 'Free data, maybe will win some money, cool.' :D That's not it. As Mondkalb said, the way this is suggested will lead to a lot of wasted efforts - map making is not the easiest part in modding, and it is very time consuming. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RoF 241 Posted January 2, 2017 12 minutes ago, NexumX said: It's a shame people can't just be like 'Free data, maybe will win some money, cool.' :D All this "Free data" takes like 10mins to get. All you have done is zipped them up lol 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Richie 330 Posted January 2, 2017 13 minutes ago, NexumX said: It's a shame people can't just be like 'Free data, maybe will win some money, cool.' Yeah times have changed, maybe put peoples minds at ease. What happens with the terrain/entries once you selected a winner ? Will it be free for all to use, available on PW6/Armaholic etc or exclusive to your server and community only ? Is your community monitized ? 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 20 minutes ago, richie said: Yeah times have changed, maybe put peoples minds at ease. What happens with the terrain/entries once you selected a winner ? Will it be free for all to use, available on PW6/Armaholic etc or exclusive to your server and community only ? Is your community monitized ? That sounds fair! They can be released into the public domain by their owners, completely at their discretion. All free! Always free it's the ArmA community! I am not a community or a server, just a member of the community! Literally just got some high quality data and wanted to give it to the community, except with a cash incentive. 26 minutes ago, RoF said: All this "Free data" takes like 10mins to get. All you have done is zipped them up lol You are welcome to try and find 4M DTM of the Island for free. I couldn't! So I purchased some topographic maps (digital) traced the contours and then after some fiddling generated a pretty accurate DTM, I then tidied it up in Visitor 4 and VBS and exported the work in progress ASC. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Richie 330 Posted January 2, 2017 6 minutes ago, NexumX said: That sounds fair! They can be released into the public domain by their owners, completely at their discretion. All free! Always free it's the ArmA community! I am not a community or a server, just a member of the community! Literally just got some high quality data and wanted to give it to the community, except with a cash incentive. Thank you, although I won't be participating, I wish you the best of luck. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
glennog 14 Posted January 2, 2017 I have to confess to being a little skeptical myself. You have purchased map data, you are offering cash rewards totalling £850. That on its own is difficult for me to comprehend, that you would essentially give away almost £1,000 with no gain for yourself and no clan/group/unit to benefit from the publicity of the competition. There's also nothing about rules - choosing the 'best' terrain, mission and unit pack is surely a very subjective thing, what constitutes a good terrain? What is a good unit pack? What is your idea of a good mission? Frankly I think you're asking a lot of people - that is an enormous amount of work you're asking of people - terrain alone is countless hours, whole unit packs - if done correctly, from scratch - potentially weeks if not months of hard slog. And then you're asking them to make a mission too - these skills are not transferable between each other. I wish you luck, although I suspect you won't get many entries. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mondkalb 1087 Posted January 2, 2017 38 minutes ago, NexumX said: You are welcome to try and find 4M DTM of the Island for free. I couldn't! So I purchased some topographic maps (digital) traced the contours and then after some fiddling generated a pretty accurate DTM, I then tidied it up in Visitor 4 and VBS and exported the work in progress ASC. You have my respect for this tricky set of data. I can see why you wouldn't want that work to go to waste. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 4 minutes ago, mondkalb said: You have my respect for this tricky set of data. I can see why you wouldn't want that work to go to waste. Thanks mate! If I had the time and the skill in the A3 terrain development field I would have a crack myself! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lumnuon 295 Posted January 2, 2017 I appreciate the idea but as others have said before, restricting terrain makers to a specific island will put many people off. Furthermore it´s quite a lot to expect that anyone will be able to complete a quality terrain with a quality mission in 3 months. Certainly possible but pretty tough. EDIT: These source files are pretty high quality ^^ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 11 minutes ago, lumnuon said: I appreciate the idea but as others have said before, restricting terrain makers to a specific island will put many people off. Furthermore it´s quite a lot to expect that anyone will be able to complete a quality terrain with a quality mission in 3 months. Certainly possible but pretty tough. EDIT: These source files are pretty high quality ^^ I see your POV mate! I can always extend past 3 months if people needed it! Just trying to give something back to a community that's been pretty supportive! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lumnuon 295 Posted January 2, 2017 5 minutes ago, NexumX said: I see your POV mate! I can always extend past 3 months if people needed it! Just trying to give something back to a community that's been pretty supportive! Currently doing a quick and dirty import into A3 with your source files just to see how they look ingame, I really appreciate you giving these files to the community for free - uncoupled from anyone´s feelings towards the competition Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 9 minutes ago, lumnuon said: Currently doing a quick and dirty import into A3 with your source files just to see how they look ingame, I really appreciate you giving these files to the community for free - uncoupled from anyone´s feelings towards the competition That is really nice to hear! It's not all perfect by anyone's standard but hopefully provides a base to build off! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lappihuan 178 Posted January 2, 2017 i feel like it would have gotten a much better reaction if you just provided the source data for anyone to peek in and eventually pick it up for a fully fleshed terrain project. the money kind of puts this past your described intention and leaves a bad taste behind. thats just my opinion so feel free to do whatever you please 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 16 minutes ago, lappihuan said: i feel like it would have gotten a much better reaction if you just provided the source data for anyone to peek in and eventually pick it up for a fully fleshed terrain project. the money kind of puts this past your described intention and leaves a bad taste behind. thats just my opinion so feel free to do whatever you please Again, fair point, I will happily remove the cash incentive then if the above is the general consensus! No skin off my back! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FallujahMedic -FM- 867 Posted January 2, 2017 First off, Welcome Back. On its own and in absence of all the "Life Drama" that has plagued Arma in recent times, it sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, said drama has poisoned our once creative community. Where creators would have once seen a challenge, they now (rightly or wrongly) see someone trying to steal content or make money at someone else's expense. On a positive note, I see it as an opportunity for a modder to showcase their abilities, gain some recognition and maybe make some money out of it. As the OP seems to suggest, if you have a suggestion about how the competition should be run (if at all) then make a suggestion to balance it back into the creators favour eg. Insist on a license that favours the modder or retain all rights... If this seems like a bad idea, help turn it into a positive one. Constructive criticism and genuine feedback goes a long way. My .02 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lappihuan 178 Posted January 2, 2017 if you really want to put some money into it you may just offer it to the guy/team that actually picks it up and release a real A3 terrain out of it just to show them you appreciation. i do not think this is low quality source or anything but i think you will be lucky if anyone does actually pick it up and if you happen to be in the situation that two do start working on it, they maybe even join forces and share your appreciation. the reason why i think it would be unlikely that many guys will participate is mentioned before as a terrain maker usually wants to choose his own location. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 1 hour ago, fallujahmedic(fm) said: First off, Welcome Back. On its own and in absence of all the "Life Drama" that has plagued Arma in recent times, it sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, said drama has poisoned our once creative community. Where creators would have once seen a challenge, they now (rightly or wrongly) see someone trying to steal content or make money at someone else's expense. On a positive note, I see it as an opportunity for a modder to showcase their abilities, gain some recognition and maybe make some money out of it. As the OP seems to suggest, if you have a suggestion about how the competition should be run (if at all) then make a suggestion to balance it back into the creators favour eg. Insist on a license that favours the modder or retain all rights... If this seems like a bad idea, help turn it into a positive one. Constructive criticism and genuine feedback goes a long way. My .02 Thanks FM! Good to see you again. No negative intent here just wanted to give some blokes a good set of data and see what happens, but didn't want to be boring with it! I am happy to work with all of the community to make this better for everyone! Yeah, I have thick skin I like a bit of constructive criticism, makes you human! 1 hour ago, lappihuan said: if you really want to put some money into it you may just offer it to the guy/team that actually picks it up and release a real A3 terrain out of it just to show them you appreciation. i do not think this is low quality source or anything but i think you will be lucky if anyone does actually pick it up and if you happen to be in the situation that two do start working on it, they maybe even join forces and share your appreciation. the reason why i think it would be unlikely that many guys will participate is mentioned before as a terrain maker usually wants to choose his own location. Again, a great idea, I had mentioned an individual or a team of people can enter! Lets see what happens with it! Let me know if you do start a version! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lumnuon 295 Posted January 2, 2017 Looks pretty great already, without any work put into it on my end 7 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
NexumX 7 Posted January 2, 2017 @lumnuon Great! Thanks for the support! I was hoping to save the time if even by a few days for other guys! :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lumnuon 295 Posted January 2, 2017 5 minutes ago, NexumX said: @lumnuon Great! Thanks for the support! I was hoping to save the time if even by a few days for other guys! :) Well I just got myself a nice cold beer and a task for this night. Maybe I can finish a first road network. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
