terrain [WIP] Djalka

[Vectif 380]

Djalka WIP Thread
In-game pictures, screenshots, wips, and demos will be posted down in the replies as I update the thread!

Hello there!
Here I will present my personal and fictional representation of the South Georgia and Sandwich Islands, which is a snow/winter terrain based mainly on the South Georgia Island; with the slight modification of making it a habitated and populated place, to make things more interesting. Cities, military bases, villages, farms, factories, ports, and much more are going to be present in my rendition of this unique geographic area, hope you'll enjoy to join me in the journey of making it, and even more once it is released!
 

Release date:

February 7th, 2020.

Latest update:
February 3rd, 2020.

Map

 

Images
https://imgur.com/gallery/QtcMIGT

General Information and facts
In this thread, I will try to keep a development diary and a place to know how the development of my project "Djalka Islands" is coming along. The island is based off of the South Georgia and Sandwich Islands, it is a fictional recreation set in an alternate reality, cause in real life these islands only have snow and mountains, no trees nor civilization. On the other hand, my version will contain flora and fauna, and also cities and military bases. The island size is of 1000km2, 32x32km. In real life, these islands are always under very cold and snowy conditions, there's only been civilization (a factory) for a very short period of time in reality but I believe that is no longer functional, currently in real life the place is completely empty, but that will not be the case for this fictional recreation! 😛

I decided to make this map as plenty of my friends and people I knew were telling me that ArmA needed more snow terrains, so here I will try to get it around and hope for the best! I decided to make the South Georgia islands is it was both something that could fill the gap for the lack of snowy terrains, and also cause it was a place I could feel identified with 🙂

I will also be accepting suggestions and ideas, or things people would like to see featured! For example, would you like to see a mine? Caves? Ditches and trenches? Just say so and if you want where would you like it aswell and it take a look at it and see what can I do! 

Project started: March 2nd, 2017
Current progress and features (currently Work In Progress)
-3x Military Bases
-6x Factories
-10x Cities
-5x Farms
-Many mountanious peaks that go from sea level to 590m
-Sea approximately as deep as 300m
-Distance from one corner of the map to the other: 32.6km
-Custom snow ground textures
-Current object count: 103k
-A lot more to come as I develop, many things planned for the future! 🙂

Current release status:
Fully playable state, everything is ready for release, all that's left is details and embellishments. First release planned for Friday, February 7th.

Future requirements upon release:
CUP - Core, by the Community Upgrade Project development team
 

Special Thanks & Credits:
-M1lkm8n for very specific help fixing up errors and lending a hand into sorting things out and fixing issues, really awesome guy, I owe him one!
-BPS and PTR for their permission to use their winter vegetations

-ArmanIII for his permission to use his winter vegetation and his helpfulness

-Community Upgrade Project team for their conversion of the ArmA I and II assets to ArmA III
-Snake Man, Lappihuan, M1lkm8n HorribleGoat, Mikero, Ice, & bludclot for being really helpful and giving me a lot of pointers and help throughout the #terrain_makers Discord chat to make this terrain possible!

-The ArmA III #terrain_makers Discord chat, and all the help and support from diverse community members

-Adanteh for ObjectPlacementTBH, awesome tool and really useful!

-Bohemia Interactive for this opportunity to make our own content and express our creativity, making a welcoming environment for users to create wonderful things on, and for such an amazing game!
-And thanks YOU!

So yeah, I'd be glad to hear what you guys think, what you guys suggest and your ideas, or anything, just discuss as you'd like, hope this interests some of you! Soon it will be a place for combat and many adventures! 😛
Thanks you for your time and for visiting my thread! 🙂

Kindest regards and best wishes,
K9S.

[soolie 189]

Beautiful, and very peaceful looking. Will be keeping an eye on this GL!

[eh chaser 286]

Will have an eye on this. Keep up buddy!

 

Chaser

[Vectif 380]

On 3/11/2017 at 10:14 PM, soolie said:

Beautiful, and very peaceful looking. Will be keeping an eye on this GL!

 

On 3/12/2017 at 11:25 AM, eh chaser said:

Will have an eye on this. Keep up buddy!

 

Chaser

Thanks you both! Really happy you're both looking forward to it, I'll make sure not to let down! 🙂

[Vectif 380]

-snip- (old pictures)

[Vectif 380]

Update & status: Been filling the mountainous areas with rocks and other things in general to give them a bit more life. There hasn't been much work in details & building of areas, but just general design & preparation of the ambience. Went from 12,000 objects to 20,000 out of all just manual rock placement for both mountains and valleys (in the lapse of a few hours from 3-4 days), and some regions in general. Work on cities & landmarks & etc of interest will be resumed shortly. Currently no pictures of this cause it isn't very interesting (like, come on, it's just rocks!). Will keep working on it and get some nice screenshots soon. I'm currently dealing with thinking of where to place an airport (if I do it at all) and a few places to add some more cities, military foritifactions, landmarks, and some easter eggs of course! Thinking also the outlay I'll be putting in some places, such as plains, dense forests, lakes, etcetera.

Updates:
Object count: 12,000 to 20,058
Object placement: 5% to 6%
Added things to the "Special Thanks" section

Cheers and wish you all best of luck, see you soon!

[wsxcgy 1960]

I think CUP has a dead tree or two, which would look a lot better than the white leaved trees in my opinion. For spruces, either regular no snow or just a light dusting of snow plus some desaturation would be better. Usually in the winter unless its extremely cold and the snow is extremely heavy, it eventually settles down from or blows off the trees. If the area was permanent snow, there wouldn't be any trees most likely. Also if you could sink down the trees and maybe even the houses to simulate snow accumulation that would be great. Hope the project goes well and hope you don't take my feedback the wrong way, just want to see it be as genuine as possible. 

[Vectif 380]

On 3/26/2017 at 10:18 PM, wsxcgy said:

I think CUP has a dead tree or two, which would look a lot better than the white leaved trees in my opinion. For spruces, either regular no snow or just a light dusting of snow plus some desaturation would be better. Usually in the winter unless its extremely cold and the snow is extremely heavy, it eventually settles down from or blows off the trees. If the area was permanent snow, there wouldn't be any trees most likely. Also if you could sink down the trees and maybe even the houses to simulate snow accumulation that would be great. Hope the project goes well and hope you don't take my feedback the wrong way, just want to see it be as genuine as possible. 

Hello there! Sorry for the late reply.

You have a very good idea, and I will indeed implement that. I'll try to see what can I do about the desaturation and sinking a few things in. I have a few buildings sinked in to show that they weren't taken of and that snow just built upon them and etcetera, so I will keep at it! I'll see about adding a few dead trees aswell. Thanks for your support and input!

Cheers,

 

[Vectif 380]

It's been a little while since I last updated this on here!
I've been taking a little break, and have been having a rather unsteady development process, but as of recently it's been getting a lot steadier, work on the map is still being done, and the object count is now of 33,000+ objects. Still has got a long way to go!

Cheers!

[Vectif 380]

Edit: The problem has been solved and regular work has been resumed!

Edited May 8, 2019 by Rhaonoa
Everything has been solved!

[R0adki11 3949]

On 4/28/2019 at 6:13 AM, Rhaonoa said:

If anyone knows a possible solution to this, or anyone who could help troubleshooting or sorting this problem out, I'd be more than GREATLY thanksful - I've been completely unable to wrap my head around this and can't figure a way to solve the issue. This map has been a big passion and inspiration of mine that I REALLY really wish to release and continue working on, so yeah, I beg please, if anyone knows anyone at all who could help or give any recommendations or suggestions at all, please direct them to me!

 

I would suggest joining the Arma3 Discord and asking in the Terrain channel.

[Von Quest 1163]

.....Or release what you do have done (via download link) and one of us can take a look.

[Vectif 380]

On 5/3/2019 at 5:51 AM, R0adki11 said:

 

I would suggest joining the Arma3 Discord and asking in the Terrain channel.

Hello, yes, that's where I've been this whole time since I started making the map. I am currently going over a few things with a few of the experienced terrain makers in there, chatting back and forth, and getting specific individual help aswell - when it's more clear what will fix this is when I'll reupdate everything here. Getting a great deal of help from M1lkm8n, and bludclot, horriblegoat, mikero, and ice, among others! Thanks for the feedback and stay tuned! 🙂

[Vectif 380]

Work has been resumed, the biggest issue seems to have been resolved after long hours of troubleshooting and working together along with the ArmA 3 #terrain_makers Discord chat, people such as Ice, HorribleGoat, Mikero and bludclot who've extensively tried to help me figure out what my errors were, and with enormous special thanks to M1lkm8n for specifically helping me one on one to fix programming, hierarchy, and general issues along with troubleshooting with me, he has really helped and his effort is really appreciated, totally cool guy and absolutely helpful, I owe a big one to him, and funny he was one of the few people who -also- helped me out when I was barely starting to work on this map years ago! Still as helpful as always 🙂

I'll resume working and progressing development of the map as of this notice! Expect updates on the thread sometime soon.
Cheers.

[Vectif 380]

-snip-

[Vectif 380]

Hey, what's up everybody! Work is still being steadily done on the map, I've been adding a few new cities, planting a few trees, fencing up towns, military bases and fences, among some other various details. I've also made highways and roads connect parts of the map that were previously inaccessible thru ground vehicles. Cheers, some update pictures below!

 

[Nichols 243]

How do AI currently react when driving and walking through the map; particularly with respect to any bridges or other passes over water?

[Vectif 380]

3 hours ago, Nichols said:

How do AI currently react when driving and walking through the map; particularly with respect to any bridges or other passes over water?

Hey there! AI react positively to the roads, rock underpass and the long roads across the map, I haven't been able to spot any errors so far throughout the development and testing. There currently isn't passes over water, and I'm not sure if I'll be adding any, but it's something I'm considering, cheers!

[Vectif 380]

Update & status: Been working on placing down trees, adding fences and other minor details to towns that were already pretty finished, made a few changes to roads and connected a few places that were otherwise unreachable through land vehicles before. Added a new military base, quite a few farms around the long roads across the island, started adding scientific research centers around the map & micro-islands (inspired from how the South Georgia Islands in real life & the present are only inhabited by scientists for research), added another city, made more roads and bifurcations within cities themselves, along extra work on making forests and snow wastelands.

Updates:
Object count: 20,058 to aproximately 57,000.
Object placement: 6% to 9%
Detail placement: 2% to 5%
Added: New military base, new factory, a few scientifical research centers, more farms, fleshed out a city, added some extra roads to make more connection for going across the map.

Cheers!

[Vectif 380]

-snip-

[Vectif 380]

Just finished up placing all the forests, trees, valleys, among other things in the map! Object count was 57.000, now going around 86,000! I've made more adjustments to some towns, added more roads and a few more places, extended some towns in size aswell where I found fit and saw the opportunity! Things are still to be modified, and now I start to dig in deeper into details, such as fences, walls, and other minor objects that add more life to the map. Focus is now on building landscapes and environments for interesting gameplay and playability.

Cheers! 🙂

[Vectif 380]

Loads of progress in the work! Just thought I'd get a more 'general' showcase for you guys to know what it'll be like! A lot of details are missing still, and things are to be added, but it's beginning to take shape nonetheless! Enjoy, more soon to come!

Cheers, and stay tuned for lots more to come!

[Vectif 380]

Hey there! I am very happy to say work has been steadily growing on this map, as final stages for the first release of the map are just around the corner! A lot of things have been fixed, errors corrected, objects placed, changes made, and so on! I've learned a lot of things along the process that are being applied to the map as the project progresses. A lot of towns have been getting way more details to them, new factories and military bases have been added, and towns are beginning to be more polished. Most of the map is playable and ready to go, all that's left is extras and minor details, and there are only about 2 areas of the map that are missing the core/main assets to be decided yet. I've also replaced the road textures to be back to the original ones I retextured, I've replaced the rain and rain sounds for snow instead, changed the ambience/overall weather of the map, added clutter (which had been long waiting!) and much more. Do stay tuned, a lot more is to come - and soon a new winter terrain will be arriving for all your snowy, tundra-y, winter-themed ArmA needs - what was asked will be delivered, and I hope to add some variety into the mix of Arma terrains, maybe kick the ball! Cheers.

Have some of the latest previews of the map:











Stay tuned! Release is getting closer! 🙂
Cheers,
R.G., K9S.

[Vectif 380]

Updates:
-Implemented Enoch/Livonia assets & buildings
-2 New cities and started expanding already existing cities that had opportunities to get bigger and create interesting locations
-Further object placements, adding more fences and walls to construction sites, villages and towns - sheds, trailers, glasshouses, and more are being added to further liven up the landscape
-Added more landmarks, ideas for landmarks are also appreciated!
-CUP winter snow replacing rain has been fully implemented (& rain sounds removed!)
-New roads, and a few previously vast empty areas are now populated

More to come, I'm planning on touching up all the details and making the most out of all the possibilities the terrain offers, but release gets sooner and sooner. There are a few things to be discussed with the community that I'm deciding whether I should do or not, but that will come with the release. Mainly, the two halfs of the island are aggresively separated by a big mountain - I've always liked when games forced you to switch vehicles, as crossing via ground would be very difficult here, and you'd either need a helicopter or a boat to go around it and reach the other side, alternatively, I could make a long highway road and work around the mountain to connect both halfs of the island, making it easier to travel between them - but I'm not sure about what people would like more, it's something I've been discussing in my head and with my friends, but I assume time will tell!

[Vectif 380]

Djalka will be released publicly for playing this Friday! On February 7th of 2020!

Hey everybody. I've decided to settle on the first date for public playable testing, and release, of the terrain! The terrain will be made publicly playable on February 7th of 2020 thru the STEAM Workshop! Requirements will be CUP Core and nothing else! I want to thank everyone who has been interested in this terrain, whether long-time or recent! And everyone who has helped me sort thru all of the issues and hiccups this terrain had over time. I worked a lot on it whenever I had time, and it was entirely a one-man job. Started in highschool when I was 16, and worked on and off as I learned and had free time and the motivation and willpower to keep working on it. Stay tuned, and hope to see you guys playing! I am interested in all feedback, critic, suggestions, and tips. Hope it'll be of your liking, here are some more pictures before release!

























Can't wait to see what fun missions and game sessions you guys will have with it! Please do share with your friends or anyone who might be interested, this has been a passion project of mine and a way to give back to ArmA 3 and it's community which have brought me many moments of joy and fun, for many years, since 2014, and going on still today! Cheers and hope to see you soon!

R.G., K9S.